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It was late when Robin called. The sun had slipped over the edge of the horizon hours ago, and the cold, dry winter air made the stars twinkle like snow under headlights. Danny was just polishing off his last little skirmish of the week before the Holiday Truce took effect. Last year he’d convinced his usual band of rogues to give him a week-long vacation instead of just a day, and if the way Ember shot him a mockingly-severe salute and blinked out by midnight was any indication, it seemed the request would stick. He was beyond grateful, of course: the holiday season was a stressful one even without the constant threat of violence. But there was something else that settled in his chest as well, something melancholic and hollow. Danny didn’t have much of a life outside of Phantom, and Sam and Tucker were always busy with their own families this close to the holidays. Jazz, too, wouldn’t be home from her first semester at college until Christmas Eve. Ancients knew he didn’t want to hang out with his parents; but then, what teenager did?
Needless to say, he picked up Robin’s call on the first ring.
“Phantom,” he was saying before Danny’d even had time to say ‘hello.’ “We need you at Mount Justice tomorrow morning, 10:00 sharp.”
Now, Danny could count the run-ins he’d had with Young Justice on one hand. They weren’t exactly what he’d call ‘close.’ The JLA at large were usually insistent they avoided each other altogether; overshadowing was a major threat even to regular civilians, and younger minds historically had a harder time staving it off (not to mention the threat it posed to secret identities). Danny knew from experience that the Ghost Zone was Gossip Central; it was why he’d fought almost every ghost willing to challenge him within the first two months of his accident. It was also why Danny agreed to steer clear of Young Justice too, despite his initial curiosity; any extended association with the League was bound to have repercussions. They had only collaborated on ghost-adjacent missions or, on one notable occasion, a complex stealth operation that required Danny’s unique skillset in one location while most of the team infiltrated another. He’d also only been contacted by Batman himself (that had been a scary first encounter, though he’d never admit it out loud). So the situation, he knew, had to be dire. He turned midair and rocketed towards the nearest Zeta Tube.
“I’m free now, actually; I just finished up. I can be there in 25 minutes,” Danny said, cupping the speaker to his mouth to block the wind.
“No need for that. It’s not time sensitive. Just show up on time tomorrow.”
He slowed to a hesitant stop. “Are you sure? I can—”
“I’ll see you then,” Robin said, and then Danny was listening to the discordant beep of a dial tone.
Danny stared down at his flip phone, trying to tamp down on his mounting annoyance. Even Batman, infamous for his brevity, at least had pre-mission briefs for him. The age difference between him and Robin, even if it was only a year and a half, had never felt more pronounced. He contemplated calling back, thumb hovering over the button, before he snapped it closed with a sigh.
There was nothing for it now. If the team didn’t want him there tonight, he’d just have to wait. There was no telling what the problem actually was. It couldn’t be a ghost thing—despite Danny’s request for a definitive week of vacation time from his own personal roster of foes, major ghost events always ebbed between December and January. He’d been contacted before by Batman and by Justice League Dark for his expertise, but nothing so serious as a dedicated, in-person meeting. No world-ending threats or adults disappearing en-masse had popped up in the news as far as Danny was aware, so not something that would require all hands on deck. It was probably another covert operation. Maybe, in the face of impending boredom, he was jumping the gun a little bit.
Ancients, this line of hypotheticals was reminding him of Jazz. How she had put up with his brusqueness all this time, he’d never know.
Yet despite all his reasoning, Danny struggled to sleep. He tossed and turned for an hour before giving up altogether, alternating between playing Doomed in global co-ops on his laptop and refreshing news sites for information. Finally around five he slipped into an uneasy sleep, the kind where staring at the blackness behind his eyelids and genuine rest were indistinguishable from one another. The sound of his alarm came both too soon and too late. He bolted from bed, transformed, and took off towards the Zeta Tube without regard for breakfast.
Phantom—and Amity Park in general—weren’t near important enough for their own Zeta Tubes. Actually, it was more of a risk than it wasn’t: ghosts were finding workarounds for the portal all the time, even after his parents had built a million defenses into it. The closest one was in Chicago, an almost two-hour drive from Amity for the average person. At his top speed, Danny could make it in a quarter of that time. He tried his best to pace himself anyway; he was rocking on four hours of sleep and no food, and it’d be stupid of him to waste the remainder of his energy just on the flight there. Still, he approached the dilapidated phone booth that marked its location with twenty minutes to spare. Robin would just have to put up with him being a little early.
“D-01: Phantom.”
He closed his eyes and held his breath through the electric sensation of the Zeta Tube zipping down his spine, and then he was flying through the meeting chamber and into the common area of Mount Justice, whipping his head back and forth to see…
Holiday decorating. Garland being hung by Rocket, a tree being righted by Superboy, Kid Flash piling present after present onto the center of the living room floor. Danny averted his eyes at the sight of so many heroes out of costume. Shock, confusion, and a little embarrassment rippled through him all at once.
“Phantom!” Robin called, appearing on his left to set a hand on Danny’s shoulder. He had dark sunglasses over his eyes—the only person, it seemed, that had a semblance of concern for his secret identity. “Glad you could make it.”
“I—you—” Danny stuttered dumbly. “There’s…no mission?”
Robin’s careless shrug belied what his smug little smirk could not: Danny had been pranked, and Robin totally thought this was funny. “Well, you know. A little birdie told me you weren’t the biggest fan of the holidays. Wanted to make sure you came.”
Tucker. That asshole. Danny felt righteous anger rise in his gut and settle coldly in his chest. He never should have let those two hackers work together. Just his luck that they got on like a house on fire. Danny opened his mouth to complain, or lecture, or just plain groan—he hadn’t decided yet—when suddenly another hand landed on his back and he was pressed into the shoulder of Miss Martian.
“Phantom!” She was grinning wildly when she pulled away from the hug, and a bit of her fiery red hair caught on her lipgloss. Danny stared at it, bluescreening, while M’gann went on talking. All frustration he felt fizzled and died. “I’m so glad you made it! Zatara, Artemis and I are making sugar cookies. Do you eat? Or, sorry, maybe that was insensitive. You can still help us frost them, if you don’t. The last batch just came out!”
“I can eat,” Danny muttered, still recovering from his stupor. Robin gave him one last pat on the back and went to help Superboy with the tree, looking, if possible, even more smug than before. Danny read it instantly, and he fought not to blush green up to the tips of his ears. It seemed that Tucker couldn’t keep his mouth shut when it came to Danny. He wouldn’t be surprised if Robin knew he was half ghost, at this rate.
Because Tucker and Sam were the only people Danny had confided in about his little ‘crush’ on Miss Martian (if you could even call it that), and Danny had definitely not spent enough time with the team for Robin to infer that kind of information. Danny and M’gann had similar skillsets, so they’d hardly worked in close proximity to one another. His mind was always deadset on the mission, anyway—impresssing the heroes he’d looked up to since he could talk had always taken priority over whatever dumbfounded, starstruck emotion he experienced when Miss Martian got a little too close. Hell, the team shouldn’t know anything about Danny on a personal level; there was never time to talk about his interest in space, or his research into intergalactic relations, or the Martian Manhunter action figure collection he didn’t have the heart to give away and so kept tucked in his closet. Unless Batman had bugged him and given his sidekick full access to the footage—which was possible, if completely stupid and deranged—there was no way Tucker hadn’t betrayed him. In fact…
Danny pulled his phone from his thigh pocket while M’gann led him into the kitchen. Hey, he typed, u didnt tell Rob abt my thing with MM, did u?
“Welcome in. I like the tech,” Artemis said. She was waving a hand towel over the top of a steaming pan, and the smell of fresh-baked cookies wafted over. Beside the oven was the biggest cooling rack Danny had ever laid eyes on, shaped like a square pyramid and vying for his height or taller. It was covered in cookies. Danny’s stomach rumbled low in response. “Very early 2000s.”
“Thanks. I’ve broken too many newer models to justify buying another one.”
“Feel that.”
Danny’s phone vibrated in his hand. OMG, are you at the YJ party? Yay! Tell Rob I said hi.
The nonanswer was answer enough. Danny schooled his expression hopefully into something neutral. Remind me 2 sic Johnny 13 on u l8r.
He slipped his phone back into his pocket while it was vibrating. M’gann’s gaze followed the sound. “A friend of yours?” she asked. There was an adorable little wrinkle between her brows.
No, he scolded himself. Bad Danny. Be normal. Out loud he said, “It’s Pharaoh. Apparently he and Robin colluded to get me here.”
“Pharaoh?” Zatara asked. She was seated at the island, mixing bowls of frosting and food coloring to make the icing. Pastry bags and piping tips littered the counter space around her.
“He worked with Rob to fix that ghost comm interference thing,” Artemis said. “Right?”
“Yeah. He helps out with most of my tech stuff.” Danny gestured to his pocket. “Including the phone breaking thing. He armors them up for me.”
“Wait, what do you mean ‘colluded’?” M’gann asked. She was still standing next to him, looking at him with that slight worried tilt to her head. He really hoped she wasn’t reading his emotions right now, turmoil that they were. He didn’t want to be a killjoy, honest. He just wished he’d gotten a little more sleep, that he’d been a little more prepared.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m kidding, mostly. Robin made it sound like there was some sort of dire mission going down when he called me yesterday. I didn’t know it was just a holiday party. I’m still calming down.”
“What a jerk!” Artemis whipped her head around in search of Robin, looking like she wanted to give him a piece of her mind, but he had disappeared alongside Kid Flash and Superboy in search of ornaments and string lights. “Why would he do that?’
Danny reached up to rub at the hairs on the base of his neck, feeling sheepish. “Probably because Pharaoh told him me and the holidays don’t mesh super well. Bad, um…Bad family associations.”
It got quiet. Danny listened to the upbeat Christmas music playing quiet over the speakers, completely at odds with the switch in tone. “It’s really not that big of a deal,” Danny rushed to tack on. “I’m just tired. And hungry. Those cookies still up for grabs?”
“Of course,” M’gann murmured, and Danny rushed at the opportunity to change the subject. He went to the massive cooling rack beside the oven and piled five un-iced cookies into his hands, all varying holiday shapes: a star, a pine tree, a reindeer.
“This is my first time celebrating Christmas without my dad,” Zatara admitted. Danny’s eyes shot to her, blown wide with surprise, sure he had just slaughtered whatever lighthearted vibe had existed before he’d shown up—but Zatara was smiling fondly, lost in memory. “We were all too busy around this time last year for the holidays. Which, you know, kind of a blessing in disguise, because I would not have had much fun. He was awful at Christmas, too. Always too busy for it. I swear, it was like I took care of everything.”
M’gann stepped forward to take her hand from across the table, a quiet well of support. Zatanna grinned at her, squeezed her hand, and went back to shoveling icing into pastry bags.
“I’ve never been much of a Christmas fan, either,” Artemis admitted. She leaned against the counter and shrugged. “You know, what with my dad and my sister…” At Danny’s blank look, Artemis jolted. “Oh! Or, I guess you don’t know. Jeez, you fit in so well I forget you’re not just part of the regular team.” He blushed fiercely, but Artemis ploughed on, unbothered. “They’re assassins. Real hard types. And my mom was in jail for a lot of my childhood.” It was Artemis’ turn to blush. “Anyway. This is my first Christmas where I’m actually kind of happy where I am. So.”
“This is my first Christmas ever,” M’gann said. It broke the tension. They all laughed, loud and undeterred. As cozy as the Mount Justice common area had become, it was still made up of stone—the sound echoed around the room and down the halls.
“This time of year is all about new beginnings,” Zatara started saying. “Our pasts make us, but they don’t define us. We can build a better holiday here, together.”
Artemis rolled her eyes. “Okay, fortune teller, that was a little too sappy. Don’t pull out the tarot cards just yet.” And they laughed again.
Kid Flash zipped into the kitchen, planted a kiss on Artemis’ cheek, and started shoveling cookies into his arms using the bottom of his shirt as a pouch. “You girls having fun in here without us?” he asked. Then, when he saw Danny: “Oh, Phantom! When’d you get here? Good to see you, man!”
Artemis swatted at his hand. “Don’t take all of them! Look how much icing Zatara made, c’mon.”
“I’m all done,” Zatara said. She turned and shouted over her shoulder: “Rob! Conner! Rocket! It’s cookie decorating time! Get in here!”
Danny helped carry the cooling rack to the dining table and they all sat around it. He took a spot facing the kitchen and M’gann immediately took the seat next to him, laying a hand on his lower arm and giving him a bright smile. Goosebumps raced up his arm and over his entire body; he was beyond thankful for his long sleeves.
Robin and Superboy had yet to come back. Artemis tapped her foot against the floor, leaned heavily against the back of Kid Flash’s chair, and yelled, “Robin! Conner! Hurry the hell up!”
Conner? Danny thought, glancing around the room to gauge everyone’s reactions. Except for M’gann, whose name he knew only because she’d directly introduced herself to him as such some months ago, he’d only known the team by their aliases. Superboy’s real name was…Conner? And, like their lack of costumes, nobody seemed to care if Danny knew?
Finally they emerged, and the cause of their delay was a welcome distraction: Conner was tangled head-to-waist in string lights. Behind him, Rob tugged tugged fruitlessly on a loose end, trying and failing to stop laughing.
M’gann covered her mouth with a hand to hide her smile. Danny’s eyes lingered on it; he was endlessly enamored with her mannerisms, and it was becoming harder to pretend like he wasn’t. “What happened?” she asked.
Conner grumbled out a response too muffled to understand, and Robin cackled again.
“Here,” Danny said, standing to meet them. He laid a hand on Conner’s shoulder and passed his intangibility over, letting the lights fall in a heap at their feet.
“Thanks,” Conner said. He picked them up and tossed them onto the couch in the living room. “Somebody else’s problem.”
“Where’s Aqualad?” Danny asked over the growing din of conversation: Kid Flash arguing with Artemis over the green icing, Zatara giving Rob a lecture about funny and unfunny pranks, M’gann laughing at a joke that Rocket made.
“Oh, he should be here soon,” the latter said. “He went for brunch with some of his Atlantean buddies.”
The hour passed, smooth and easy. Danny’s exhaustion melted like butter beneath the distraction of good conversation, but the hunger refused to abate: he was shoveling freshly-iced cookies into his mouth almost as fast as Kid Flash. Finally M’gann leaned in and whispered, warm against his ear: “Could you get the sandwich stuff out of the fridge for lunch? And help yourself first, please. I don’t want Wally to take it all. You look like you need it.”
One look at Kid Flash and he knew exactly who M’gann was referring to. He blushed, again, for the hundredth time that day. He felt more than a little undeserving of all this trust. The Phantom persona had never been uncomfortable before, but now he found himself itching to give them something, even a snippet, in return.
But he didn’t just yet. It scared him about as equally as he wanted to do it. Batman, he was sure, knew his identity; he was a detective by trade, he was incomprehensibly well-connected, and when Danny had first met him, he’d been perched on a rooftop visible from Danny’s bedroom window. But Danny had never actually had to say it out loud. Everyone that he knew—Tucker, Sam, Jazz—they were there when it happened or they figured it out themselves. He told himself he’d just give the team his first name—please, just call me Danny—and leave it at that, but the words wouldn’t form on his lips. Instead he nodded and stood, disappearing into the kitchen and burrowing the embarrassment burning at his face into the cool relief of an open fridge.
And boy, was the fridge well-stocked. It was bursting at the seams and yet somehow well-organized, labelled containers stacked upon containers all the way to the back. The sandwich stuff was right in front and stored altogether: turkey, ham, pepperoni, cheese, mayo, tomatoes, lettuce—all looking so fresh and perfect that Danny wiped at his mouth just to make sure he wasn’t drooling.
“Kaldur!” Rocket shouted, and Danny glanced up from slathering mayo on both sides of his bread to see Aqualad entering from the meeting chamber. They made eye contact; Danny sent him a little wave in greeting, and Kaldur offered a grin and a short nod in response. He set his duffle bag by the foot of the couch and went to join his team at the table.
After stuffing two overloaded sandwiches down his throat, Danny finally started to calm down. He didn’t know if he would have refused the party invitation had he not been tricked into it—certainly he would have overthought it anyway, like he did with everything—but as he laid the sandwich supplies out on the kitchen island and got a million grateful smiles in response, a contentedness passed through him. Not that he’d ever thank Tucker or Robin for manipulating him into it. Encouraging their scheming tendencies was a disaster waiting to happen.
It took another hour to finish icing the cookies. They’d replaced them on the cooling rack as they’d went along, but so many had been eaten it was already half empty. Icing and crumbs were everywhere, splattered across the red tablecloth and staining everyone’s hands. Again Danny helped to move the cooling rack—seriously, this thing needed two people to keep it upright—while M’gann raised her arms above her head and folded up the tablecloth, crumbs and all, to take to the washing machine.
“Okay people,” Artemis called, clapping her hands to get their attention. “Christmas tree, then White Elephant. Wally, put the present down.”
“Bossy,” Wally said, shooting her a wink. The responding eyeroll was unanimous.
Danny was just about to join them when he noticed M’gann paused in front of the entrance to the hallway, tablecloth still floating beside her. She seemed to steel herself as they made eye contact, and with a wave she beckoned him over.
“Why don’t I give you a quick tour of the base?” she asked. “The laundry room is at the end of the hall.”
“Oh, uh, sure. I mean, definitely.”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled up at him, and together they disappeared around the corner, the sound of music and conversation dimming as they walked.
“I didn’t bring a White Elephant gift,” Danny admitted as he walked. “I mean, I didn’t know there would be a White Elephant, or really anything at all, but. You know. I think that disqualifies me.”
M’gann hummed. “I think Robin came prepared. That pile of presents seemed more than enough.” An amused half-smirk graced her lips. “You can have Robin’s present if not,” she whispered. “He doesn’t really need it.”
Danny shot her a lopsided grin. “You think?”
“Oh, I know,” she said, winking. Again, Danny felt goosebumps go down him, and again, his skin itched uncomfortably. What, was Robin a rich kid? Scratch that, he didn’t want to know. Why was she trusting him with something like that? What had he done to earn it?
Danny shrugged up his shoulders and turned away, searching for something that would change the subject. Even the hallways were decorated for the holidays: pine garland swooped above them, connected at the intersection between wall and ceiling and wrapped in warm yellow string lights. Between the strands, someone had hung 3D paper mache stars in a million pastel colors, each lit from within by little battery-powered tea lights.
“The stars are pretty,” he commented. There was no discernible order, no constellation they followed, but he mapped their locations nonetheless, drawing lines and pictures in his head.
“Thank you. I made them,” M’gann said.
Danny looked down and back at M’gann. “All of them?” It was a long hallway; there had to be at least a hundred.
M’gann shrugged. “I suppose it took a while. But I like crafts. Oh, and the tea lights were Zatara’s idea.”
They passed an ornate frame, and Danny’s attention was further diverted to the walls. Photos stared back at him. Some looked professional and serious: the team standing together in the meeting chamber unsmiling, a news clipping with Robin, Superboy, and Aqualad posed mid-battle. But there were also other, sillier ones, which looked like they had been taken on an old digital camera and printed out: Superboy playing with a white wolf, Robin hanging upside-down from training equipment, a smug Black Canary judo-flipping a yellow and red blur over her shoulder while Rocket and Artemis keeled over each other laughing in the background.
“You guys are like family,” Danny murmured, soft.
They came to the laundry room. M’gann tapped at a floor lamp near the door and washed the space in more warm yellow light, so starkly different from the overhead fluorescents that otherwise littered the base. She deposited the dirtied tablecloth in an industrial-grade silver washing machine while Danny took in the labelled hampers, the clothes hanging from a wooden drying rack, and the countertop littered with detergent bottles and dryer balls.
It was so…domestic. Danny knew logically that Young Justice and all of the Justice League had to have lives outside of being heroes, but he’d looked up to all of them for so long that it was shocking to be presented with the reality: they were just regular people. Kids, even. Like him.
“Thank you for sticking around,” M’gann murmured, turning to face him. She leaned against the washing machine and crossed her legs in front of her. “When you first showed up, I thought maybe you’d…”
“Leave?” Danny finished.
M’gann shot him a timid smile. “You never seem to stick around for long.”
“I know.” He leaned against the opposing countertop with a sigh. “But there’s, you know, reasons for that. Batman said—”
“Batman says a lot of things.” M’gann rolled her eyes. “He’s not always right.”
Danny’s jaw all but dropped to the floor. “We talking about the same person here?”
“Do you know how many times we’ve disobeyed direct orders and been thanked for doing so?” M’gann asked. “He’s a little…overprotective. All of them are. We can handle ourselves better than they think.”
Danny fell silent. Someone’s barking laughter echoed down the hall, distant yet still so close.
“Phantom…”
“Danny.”
M’gann tilted her head. Her bangs swayed with the movement. “Hm?”
“My name.” He felt the heat of anxiety rush up his throat, try to cut him off, but he tamped it down. “It’s Danny. Danny Phantom.”
M’gann grinned crookedly at him. She pushed her hair behind her ear again. Unshadowed, her eyes twinkled in the lamplight. “Danny,” she acquiesced. “I like having you around. A lot.”
He felt his heartbeat, so slow in this form, thump in his chest. “Really?”
She blushed. Nodded.
“Well, I, uh…” He was floundering. Why was she looking at him like that? He couldn’t hold her gaze. “I like being around you, too.”
“A lot?”
Danny went green. He nodded mutely. M’gann giggled behind her hand. Danny’s stomach was doing acrobatics. It was balancing on a tightwire. it was jumping from a jet.
M’gann pointed at the ceiling with one manicured nail, and Danny followed it up. There, on the ceiling between them, was a bundle of green plants with little pinkish-white berries. Mistletoe.
Danny’s jaw dropped. “Really?” he said again.
M’gann laughed, light and tinkling and clear like stars on a winter night. “Really.”
“Are you sure?”
“I wouldn’t have put it up if I wasn’t sure.”
“You put it up?!”
“I set it all up.” She started crossing the room but frowned suddenly, stopping. “Except for Robin tricking you. That was mean.”
Danny closed the distance. He took M’gann by the hand. “I’m glad he did. It got me here.”
M’gann smiled again. Danny’s eyes drifted to her mouth, shot back up to her eyes, drifted back to her mouth…
“Are you really sure?” Danny asked. “Because I—Mmph!”
Danny’s brain shut off. He was at a party with people that cared about him, that related to him, and M’gann was kissing him—one long, sustained, fierce kiss—and her lips tasted like cherry, and her perfume smelled like lilacs, and her hair was tickling his forehead…
Why had he been so scared again?
Danny kissed her right back.