Chapter Text
Danny doesn’t know what’s worse: dropping fourteen beakers across five science classes, or getting detention for dropping fourteen beakers across five science classes and not being able to defend himself. The teacher could at least pull him aside to talk privately; instead, as the latest beaker slips through Danny’s palm and shatters against the floor, the teacher sighs and declares, “Detention.”
“But—”
“Detention, Daniel! And a phone call to your parents. I swear, a delinquent from the start.” The teacher mutters that last part, but not quiet enough. Snickers roll through the classroom, making Danny’s ears burn.
So much for high school being a fresh start. Jazz had gone on and on about how it’s such an important time in his life, where he will undergo “significant psychological development that will affect you for the rest of your life!” Yeah, well, Jazz is a significant psychological development that will affect him for the rest of his life. He already knew high school was a lost cause, though. Too many of his middle school classmates came to Casper High with him for it to be anything but the same old slog. At least he still has Tucker and Sam, who agree to wait until his detention finishes so they can walk home together like usual.
The science teacher has some mercy in his blackened heart, because he settles on a thirty-minute detention.
“Next time, it’ll be longer,” he says when Danny shuffles into the classroom at the end of the school day.
“I didn’t drop it on purpose,” Danny mutters.
The teacher glares at him. “Daniel, one beaker I could believe, or two. Maybe even three. But fourteen?”
Danny opens his mouth to reply, but what can he say? He settles on a soft, “I prefer Danny,” but the teacher ignores him, instead staring at his computer as he scrolls. Danny claims a seat at the back of the room, slouching as far down as the backless stool allows, silently wishing the science room had regular desks so he could sink all the way down until his chin is barely above the desk.
This sucks. What is he even supposed to do? Sit here and think about what he’s done like some toddler in a time-out? His first ever detention, and it isn’t even his fault, not really. You try holding onto something when your body goes intangible against your will. He glares at the offending hand, but it’s normal now. Flesh and blood and perfectly solid where it rests on his leg. His fingers curl, nails digging into his thigh through his jeans.
There’s never any warning before his body does something wrong, whether that’s going invisible or passing through objects at random. If he could feel the change before it happened, maybe he could stop it, but most of the time any sensation he gets comes too late. A few times, cold has swelled within his chest, as if frost is creeping over his insides, and he won’t be surprised if one day he finds patterns swirling across his skin. He always shoves the feeling down at the first hint of a shiver and wonders if he finally has a grasp on this…whatever it is. Until something else happens.
Danny sighs, relaxing his hand, and rubs at the now sore spot on his leg. Stupid. Stupid portal. Stupid powers. It’s only been a few weeks since the accident, and honestly? He still doubts if it was real.
He wants to brush it off as a dream. A shared hallucination. Some form of mass hysteria caused by severe trauma, or whatever psychobabble Jazz would say if Danny confessed what really happened that day in the lab. But it’s hard to convince himself when stuff like this keeps happening. Unless it’s a coma dream. Oh, what a wonderful thought. The portal certainly hurt enough when it turned on, it could have put him in a coma.
Danny squeezes his eyes shut, breath hitching as he remembers that moment. It was so fast; he had no idea what was happening. The wall wasn’t supposed to give like that when he reached out to balance himself, and he caught the hint of a green button under his palm before his whole world lit up. Smoke and lighting tore through him, his muscles seized, his eyes burned as something so vast and unknowable seared into his retinas, tearing him apart at the atoms and building him back up with something else pressed into his DNA that made his bones burn like ice.
“No sleeping,” the teacher barks.
Danny’s eyes snap open, and he yelps when he finds the table inches from his nose. He jerks upright, but his body has other plans and slips through the stool. His chin just misses the edge of the table, and his flailing arms knock the stool over as he goes down. It’s also the closest handhold, and he grips it for dear life as the floor tries to eat him alive.
“Daniel, I won’t stand for any foolish behaviour in my detention. There are no classmates here for you to impress,” the teacher says.
Right, because falling halfway through the floor is impressive and not something that’ll get him tossed in a freak show if someone sees. Huffing, Danny pulls himself up, thankful when his knee turns solid as it leaves the tile. He does not have the upper body strength for this. The teacher isn’t even looking Danny’s way when he peeks over the table, and he wonders if the man glanced up from his computer at all. Probably not. Danny rights the stool, reclaiming his seat, and keeps a firm hold on the table for the rest of detention.
By the time he’s let go, his fingers are numb and his legs sore from sitting so stiffly. He has to pause and stretch his limbs when he stands, but takes off the second he’s ready. The teacher calls out after him—“No running in the halls!”—but Danny ignores him and bolts for the front doors. They burst open, nearly slamming into Tucker, who is standing closest.
“Dude!” Tucker shouts.
Panting from the run, Danny adjusts his backpack so it sits properly and smooths out his shirt. “That sucked.”
“I can’t believe you got detention,” Sam says. “I’m so disappointed.”
“Gee, thanks, Sam.” Danny brushes past her and tries to dodge a well-aimed kick to the shins. He’s not very successful.
“Not like that.” Sam falls into step at his right side while Tucker takes the left. Besides them, the schoolyard is empty. At least detention has one benefit: they missed the crush of students squeezing through the double doors. Sam continues, “I was going to sneak into the cafeteria and replace the chicken nuggets with a plant-based alternative.”
Tucker gasps. “You wouldn’t!”
“And you wanted to get caught for that?” Danny asks.
“They don’t have any good vegetarian options for students, much less vegan. I’m protesting.”
“Again, you wanted to get caught?”
Sam grins. “Two-in-one. I was going to demonstrate how detention is a poor form of punishment and does nothing to address the root issue.”
“Let me guess, by getting out of detention and then doing the exact same thing next week?”
“I had other ideas, too! But…basically, yeah. And can you imagine my mom’s face if I got detention? Her poor Sammykins, a delinquent. But now you got it first, so she’ll think you’re corrupting me. Ugh, I guess I’ll go to Mr. Lancer with my menu reforms like I originally planned.”
“You’re a vile, evil woman,” Tucker says.
“Thank you!” Sam skips ahead and turns around to face them, walking backwards. “So, seventeen beakers, huh?”
“I heard it was twenty-three.”
“Fourteen! Stop making it higher!” Danny whacks Tucker’s shoulder and reaches for Sam, too, but she dances out of range.
Tucker whacks him back. “I wonder how many it’ll take before you’re banned from touching them.”
“Please, I don’t want to think about it. It’s bad enough this is even happening, but getting detention for it?” Danny kicks a pebble, watching it skitter across the sidewalk and bounce into the road. “I guess it could be worse. No one has actually seen anything yet, somehow. I think our classmates might be blind.”
A beat passes, during which Danny glares at the ground and wonders if he should let it swallow him up next time and be done with all this.
“Has it, you know, happened again?” Sam asks.
Danny’s stops, stare fixed on a crack in the pavement.
While his memory of the accident’s immediate aftermath is lost to a haze of pain and swirling colours, minus a few sensations and a flash of white, his friends told him what they saw. A gloved hand reaching through the now-active portal, soon followed by the rest of him. White hair, green eyes that glowed, the suit changed from white and black to black and white. How he drifted forward, staring at nothing at all, and didn’t respond even when they called his name.
How scared must they have been, watching him collapse? They said he changed back after a minute or so, and offered little else about that time. Danny did ask them if his heart had stopped, and while they didn’t tell him outright, the stricken look they shared was answer enough.
“No, it hasn’t.” He shakes his head to cast away the thoughts and starts walking again. “We don’t even know if it will happen again. Maybe it was just a fluke from the portal activating?”
“I know you’d like to think so, but I don’t,” Sam says, pausing just long enough to match his pace once more. “The portal changed you, Danny. I get that you don’t want to think about it, but you can’t avoid it, either.”
Danny scoffs. “You think I’ve been able to avoid it? How the hell can I when I can’t control it. I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and I can’t see myself in the mirror. I reach for a door and my hand passes right through it. I can barely walk without tripping every few steps because I can’t stay solid for any longer than that. I don’t want to be changed, Sam. I want to be normal, and not a loser, and not some freak with powers he can’t control. Half the time I feel like I’m going to disappear and this time, I won’t be able to come back!”
He doesn’t mean to explode on her, but it’s been a rough few weeks, and rather than feeling better as time goes on, he’s become more ragged. He’s been avoiding his parents and sister, too, afraid of what might happen if they witness one of his little mishaps. All the stress and paranoia is getting to him.
Sam grabs his arm and tugs him away from the street. “Danny, your eyes.”
He catches his reflection in a passing window and rather than blue, bright green stares back at him, the same swirling glow as the portal. That cold feeling is welling up again, and he stops to slap his hands over his eyes.
No, no. Stop it. Not here. The problem with trying to shove down the burning cold in his chest is that it pushes back, and it’s stronger every time. He forces himself to breathe deeply, to focus on his heart thumping in his chest, the blood rushing in his ears. Things that make him feel human and alive. After some time, he peeks through his fingers.
“Better?” he asks.
“Uh…maybe a little?”
Tucker leaps between them throwing his hands in Danny’s face. “Boo!”
“What the hell!” Danny jumps, and the telltale prickle of invisibility shoots through him.
Sam and Tucker leap into action, pressing their shoulders together and shuffling him toward the nearest wall. They stand like that for a few seconds, backs to him, glaring at anyone on the street that dares look their way, until Danny taps them on the shoulder.
“Clear,” he says. “Tucker, what was that for?”
Tucker shrugs. “I thought it might be like hiccups. It worked, though! Your eyes are back to normal.”
“Gee, thanks for the help.” But a small part of him means it. It really did seem like he was going to lose that fight, until Tucker startled him so much that his instincts took over and handled it for him.
“Any time, man!”
The rest of the walk is incident free. Sam leaves first, peeling away from their little group to head for a different neighbourhood, while Danny and Tucker continue on for a few more blocks. When they reach the intersection where Tucker goes right and Danny goes left, Tucker stops him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Listen, dude. I know this whole thing is stressing you out a lot, but it’ll be okay. If you’re sure that you don’t want to go to your parents with this, then we’ll have your back, no matter what.”
Danny already knows that, but it’s still nice to hear the words out loud, and some of the tension leaves his shoulders. “For real, Tuck. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. It might have been scary at the time, but thinking on it? If you can get a handle on these powers and do the ghost thing again, that would be pretty cool. You’ll see.” Tucker sounds so confident, and Danny wants to believe him, but doubt still stains his thoughts. Tucker squeezes his shoulder.“See you online tonight? Actually…”
He squints, peering at Danny’s face. “Maybe not. You look like you could use some sleep.”
Rolling his eyes, Danny shoves Tucker’s hand off. “Whatever, get out of here.”
They laugh as they go their separate ways, although Danny quiets after a few steps and finishes the walk in silence.
He ends up taking Tucker’s advice and doesn’t join him on Doomed later that night. He still logs in, though, to say hi, goodnight, and see you tomorrow, and wishes Tucker luck dealing with that Chaos guy solo. After that, he sends Sam an IM, too, with the same sentiments, minus the Doomed stuff, before logging off for the night.
Sleep doesn’t come easy despite how tired he is. He lays in bed, watching the shadows creep along his wall as the hours stretch on. Around two a.m., he sighs and rolls out of bed, going to his window to stargaze instead. Not that there are many stars to see from the middle of the city, but he spots a few shining specks that probably aren’t satellites or planes. He would have to be far outside Amity, or far above it, to get a proper view. Tucker and Sam said he floated out of the portal. Ghosts are supposed to be able to fly, right?
Danny’s room is warm, and he has a blanket draped around his shoulders, but he shivers anyway. For once, he doesn’t immediately shy away from the sensation. He doesn’t pull on it, either, but lets it slowly rise up until it feels like something presses against his ribcage and each breath spreads cold across his tongue. It stops there, waiting, letting the choice be his.
Danny stares at the empty sky, thinking about Tucker’s words, and sinks into the cold.
A ring of light seeps through his chest, bright enough that it should make him squint, but somehow looking at it doesn’t hurt. The ring splits, one half falling and the other rising, and his body changes with it, pajamas melting into the jumpsuit he wore that day. The rings fade as the transformation finishes, and Danny is left staring at a face he doesn’t recognize, but is undoubtedly still his. He thought his friends might have been exaggerating when they said his hair was snow-white. Apparently not.
“Okay.” His voice carries a slight echo. “Maybe this is kind of cool.”
Suddenly, he’s not so tired anymore.