Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"You know," Danny said, "I buried my own body. It's in the woods. Did a pretty shit job at it, though. Not nearly deep enough " Dash stared at him. There was no way this kid, clearly alive and clearly breathing, chest heaving, even, was telling the truth. But he was so deadpan, so… almost forlorn, like he was missing something important. Besides, Dash would know if Danny had died, right? His friends would've said something, done something, right? They wouldn't be so… normal. But, deep in his bones, Dash knew Danny was telling the truth.

So. He went into the woods, took Kwan with him for backup. Paulina and Star watched for any cops or druggies, Star would send a text to Kwan's phone to make it buzz if they needed to bust ass and get out of there. Danny didn't say where his body was buried, but based on what little Dash knew about the guy and his friends, he found a likely spot. Beneath a tree, huge and evergreen, where kids carved their names into the bark like a forever promise. Dash knew Danny, Sam, and Tucker's names were on that tree because Dash's name was on the tree, too, next to Kwan's and Paulina's and Star's. The tree was important to most of the kids in Amity Park for one reason or another. It was fun to play underneath when they were all in elementary school, a good place for a hideout and a clubhouse, and later it was a good place to smoke a joint or engage in other slightly illegal substances. He and Kwan had had a bonfire using spare branches from this very tree in the clearing fifty or so feet away. 

Dash dug beneath the tree, noticing with deliberate reluctance that the grass was a deeper shade of green and the mushrooms were unusually dense. Kwan hit something solid first, letting out a small shriek when he did. The two of them scrambled to dig it out, Dash on his knees and getting dirt beneath his fingernails. It was a rocket ship, a plastic one like you’d get from the toy section at Kmart or from a Happy Meal at McDonald's. Dash held it in his hands like it was on fire and freezing cold at the same time, keeping it away from his body but not wanting to let it drop carelessly to the ground. Gently, he set it aside, propping it against the tree. They continued to dig and, eventually, they hit something solid again. This time they were both on their knees, scrambling bare-handed in the dirt. What they come up with was a shock.

A tattered shirt, still white in some places but otherwise completely overrun by dirt and what looked like left-over scorch marks. And bones. Jeans, shoes. There wasn’t any skin- Dash wondered just how long Danny has been buried. How long ago had he buried himself? There were some clumps of hair, but not much. Dash didn’t know anything about the usual burial process, embalming and whatever, but he knew Danny hadn’t gone through it. Dash saw moss on one of the exposed bones. He turned and threw up, Kwan quick to follow suit. They ran out of the woods, back into the car. Paulina and Star were talking nervously before him and Kwan had bolted into the car and now their anxiety was doubled. Dash could barely talk, he was breathing too hard to get a syllable out. Kwan had tears streaming down his face and occasionally made a pathetic retching sound like a dry-heave.

“He was telling the truth.” Dash said eventually, monotone. They had been sitting in the car for nearly an hour. 

“Who was?” Paulina asked. Neither of the girls had been informed of the extent of this expedition, just that Dash and Kwan needed them as lookout. 

“Danny. He’s dead. He’s really dead. That was his body… that was his fucking body. All tattered up… fuck, that was his fucking body!” Dash slammed his hands against the steering wheel and the resulting honk startled the rest of the more than his outburst had.

“Dash, what are you talking about? What do you mean?” Star asked, her voice rising in pitch as she talked, nervous and scared.

“He’s fucking dead, Star. He told me himself. He fucking… he buried his own body in the woods, under that tree. You know the tree. He’s there, bones and shirt and that fucking rocket.” It occurred to Dash that they didn’t rebury anything. It occurred to Dash that he didn’t think he could bring himself to go back and see it all again.

“Dash, what the fuck are you talking about?” Paulina asked. She sounded angry mostly, but there was a hint of fear there, too.

“I’m talking about Fenton!”

“Look, Dash…”

“Don’t fucking start, Polly. I know what I saw and I know what Danny told me. Kwan knows it too.”

Kwan only nodded, he couldn’t bring himself to speak. His cheeks were ruddy with tears and his eyes burned. 

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“Look,” Dash said. They were at lunch. Him and Kwan and Star and Paulina had all sat at Danny’s usual table. “We dug it up. You know. But… it’s out in the open now. We can’t go back, we just can’t…” Dash trailed off. Danny nodded, and ate one of his fries from his tray. Danny looked at all of them, the people who had either bullied him or ignored him for the better part of his high school career, and saw them, with startling clarity, as who they were. Kids. Kids who weren’t used to this shit, kids who looked pale and like they hadn’t slept in a few days, kids who were used to ghost attacks but not used to their peers being dead but still at school, anyway. He looked at Sam and Tucker, saw them looking down at their own lunch trays. He looked around the lunch room, saw some lingering stares at their table.

“That’s cool. I can go by later today and take care of it.” Danny said. He took a sip of his chocolate milk carefully since the carton had busted a little when he tried to pry it open. Both Sam and Tucker had laughed at him. He had to open the carton all the way to avoid milk dribbling down the carton whenever he tried to take a drink, and it took all his strength not to look inside the carton whenever he brought it up to take a sip. Look: Danny knew it was kind of fucked up, this whole exchange, but he had never invited Dash to go looking, you know? So, really, it’s kind of funny. To him, at least.

Dash’s face had turned fifty different shades of white, and Danny didn’t even know how that was possible. Paulina looked green around the edges, Star had a hand over her mouth. Kwan had put his head in his hands and looked like he might start to cry any minute now. Danny could sense Sam and Tucker’s want to be rid of the situation, and really, he wanted to be rid of it too, but it did involve him directly, so.

“Your rocket is against the tree.” Dash finally said. It had been a few minutes by then, maybe two or three. Danny noticed that Dash had been clenching and unclenching his fists. “Did…” Dash trailed off.

“Did somebody kill you, Danny?” Star asked, quiet. Sam looked up from her tray and saw Star’s eyes wide and watery. Danny almost laughed. Tucker choked on his juice.

“Not exactly, no.” Danny said. Star didn’t blink. Dash made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded kind of pathetic. 

“Did you kill yourself?” Dash asked, with much effort.

“Not exactly, no.” Danny said. He could feel Sam roll her eyes, and Tucker scoffed. The A-listers didn’t seem to notice. 

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“You know, Danny,” Tucker said, “this is going to bite you in the ass. I guarantee it.” Danny rolled his eyes. The three of them were walking down the hallway to their respective last classes of the day, which they didn’t have with each other. 

Danny shrugged; “Oh, well. The only thing that might happen is they call the cops. But how do you explain an alive teenager that matches the bones buried in the dirt? Be kinda hard to, I think.”

“Danny, come on. You know it was stupid and, not to mention, kind of a dick move to be like ‘oh yeah, Dash, I buried my fucking bones in the woods’, a place you know Dash would know where to look because everybody knows where that tree is, Danny.” Sam huffed. She reapplied her dark purple lipstick without looking. Usually she had it perfect, but if she didn’t Danny or Tucker were there to fix it for her. In this case, she had a bit on the skin above her upper lip, which Tucker wiped away with a quick swipe of his finger, which he had licked, much to Sam’s disgust and dismay. “Tucker!” Tucker just laughed and wiped the lipstick on his finger on Sam’s jacket. Sam groaned. 

“Look, guys. I really do not think they’re going to do anything, least of all Dash. There might be a few more lunch interrogations, but otherwise I think I’m good.” As he said this, none other than Dash Baxter strolled up to the three of them.

“Fenton. Look, I know I give you shit all the time, but if somebody actually hurt you, you need to tell me.” Dash looked serious, eyebrows knit together and shoulders squared. Sam and Tucker made a point to look at Danny.

“Nah, it’s fine, Dash, really. Nothing to worry about.” Danny shrugged and moved to continue making his way to class. Dash stopped him before he could take more than a step.

“Danny, look. This isn’t a fucking game. You’re dead, or half-dead, or whatever the fuck you are, and someone or something was responsible for that. And I just want to know who or what was. Responsible, that is.”

Sam scoffed, “Dash, he’s not going to tell you. And before you ask, neither will I. Or Tucker.” She looked pointedly at Tucker when she said that. Dash glared at the both of them and turned on his heel, heading down the hallway to his own class, presumably. Sam and Tucker each raised an eyebrow at Danny.

“Look, man, now you’ve got Dash trying to avenge you!” Tucker exclaimed. Danny rolled his eyes. Maybe he was in over his head, but the damage had been done.

Chapter Text

When Danny went to the tree later that same day, he was surprised to find everything as, he assumed, Dash had left it. His rocket was perched carefully against the trunk of the tree, a gesture Danny thought was kind and didn’t want to think about very much. Relics were weird, oftentimes more important than the body itself, and the fact that Dash had held it in his hands, and had set it down carefully, even while he was probably freaked out of his mind, was not something Danny wanted to dwell on. He wondered if Dash had felt the energy of the toy. 

Danny had brought his own shovel, Sam had driven him and he would go intangible and fly back when he was done. Danny decided to dig the hole a little deeper this time. The last time he did this he was fourteen and panicky and desperate, trying to get rid of the body as quickly as possible with as little evidence as possible- even though the body was his. The logic, if you could call it logic, didn’t kick in until much later. Actually, there still wasn’t much logic involved in this. Burying your own body once was one thing, but doing it twice? That was another. Danny never expected to have to confront his own body again, much less in the form of almost completely skeletonized bones. His flesh had decomposed almost completely, though there was still at least one spot of rotted flesh on one of his leg bones. Danny shuddered. This was traumatizing the first time, and it was traumatizing now, he guessed. Some things don’t get better the more you do them, that’s for sure.

Mostly, it was surreal. You didn’t get very many chances to bury your own body. Or to see your own bones, moss and all. It took a while to get the hole deep enough, to where Danny thought it wouldn’t get more attention. He had been stupid when he was fourteen, and honestly not too physically fit. Now he was able to dig a few feet deeper when before he had only made the hole big enough to just barely cover his body. Surprisingly, to both him and his friends, he still grew and gained weight like normal. In fact, he had gained a good amount of muscle from all the ghost-fighting he had to do on such a regular basis, phasing in and out of his ghost self and human self. It was weird. He had died, he had buried his body. Logically, he should be stunted; forever fourteen. But here he was, nearly eighteen, in his senior year of high school, a solid six foot three inches tall, and stronger than he’d ever been - no thanks to any exercise done willingly on his part. He knew Sam and Tucker, and even Jazz, were just as confused as he was whenever they let themselves think about it. 

Danny shook his head as if to physically rid the thoughts, and he continued to dig. When he was satisfied, the hole roughly six feet deep with Danny’s head just barely poking over the opening, he took his bones and carefully placed them into the hole. When he was fourteen he had just dumped his body: he had wanted to get away from it as soon as possible. Now, he was more careful. This was him. This was his body, or maybe it was just a memory of a body. Maybe his body, dead, didn’t exist - maybe it was a phantom, a figment, something Danny had made up when he was fourteen and first went ghost. Maybe all that really existed of him anymore was as he was now, half ghost, half human - an anomaly. He tried to arrange his bones in as body-like a shape as possible, but, really, Danny didn’t know what a kid’s body was supposed to look like when it was just bones. He knew, roughly, where each piece went, but he’s sure he got pieces wrong. Maybe he had mistook his ankle bone for his wrist, or something dumb like that. Finally, he retrieved his rocket and placed it where he had placed it before, all those years ago. Right in the middle of his chest, or, in this case, between his ribcage. Careful, he heaved himself out of the hole and got busy depositing the dirt back into it. He spread some leaves over the fresh mound to disguise it and he left.

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“Sam, come on. You know Danny doesn’t think before he talks.” Tucker and Sam were at the mall, walking from store to store, each with a bag of pretzel bites in their hands. Sam’s style had remained much the same from when she was fourteen, but Tucker’s had changed slightly. Though he still wore a lot of yellows, reds, and greens, he had branched off into neighboring color families, mostly browns and blues. In fact, the three of them spent so much time together over the years that their respective styles seemed to evolve around each other. They all had the same band t-shirts, or maybe only one of them had the shirt and the rest of them borrowed and borrowed until it wasn’t clear who it had originally belonged to. Tucker and Sam were discussing Danny’s predicament with the popular crowd, something he seems to have trouble with at least once a year. 

“I know. But who says that? I know we joke as a group, but you’d think Danny would have some sense around other people!” Sam popped a pretzel bite into her mouth as she talked. Tucker hummed in response: Sam had a point. But also, Danny only really talked to him and Sam, and sometimes Jazz, so maybe it was more a lack of socialization than anything else. 

“Sam,” he said, “I know for a fact that you would say exactly that to somebody. And! It wouldn’t even be true.” Sam huffed, but smiled. Tucker was right, but people would expect that from her, and she told him as much. “Sure, but what kind of person goes and digs up a grave they don’t even know the exact location of? And somehow they find it? Come on.”

“Dash may seem stupid, Tuck, but he’s got some good common sense.” Sam crumpled her now empty bag of pretzel bites and handed it to Tucker who slipped it into his own empty but uncrumpled bag.

“Actually, where is Danny? He said he was gonna meet us at two, but it’s almost three now.” Tucker threw the empty bags away in a trashcan they passed as they continued to walk through the mall. 

“He’s probably shaken up still, you know? Burying yourself a second time has to mess up a person’s psyche.” 

Tucker sighed, “I guess.” The two of them stopped to sit on a bench, and Tucker texted Danny:

                   tucker: yo u meeting us @ mall still?

                   danny: oh shit yeah lol

                   danny: musta lost track of time ig

                   danny: where r we meeting?

                   tucker: sam said pizza house so there i guess

                   danny: 👍

“I guess he’s on the way, said he lost track of time,” Tucker said. Sam hummed in response. 

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Dash was fine, really! Was he stalking Danny Fenton and his friends at the mall? Maybe. Maybe he was just browsing the wares each time the trio walked by. Kwan hadn’t wanted any part of it, and Star and Paulina had cheer practice today for some reason, so Dash was alone. In the mall. Where people went to hang out with their friends, or maybe to shop. To be honest, Dash still kind of thought this was all some sort of sick dream - and not the good kind of sick, either. Danny Fenton was dead but alive. And Dash was barely processing it. Did that mean he was a ghost? Was he half ghost or a full ghost? How did he grow if he was a ghost? Dash remembered when Danny was shorter than him, but now the kid was half an inch taller than he was. 

Anyway, he was getting off track. So what if he was following Fenton and his friends? Who wouldn’t do the same after what Dash had seen? The trio were walking shoulder to shoulder, honestly too close for what normal people would find comfortable, almost touching each other and bumping into each other constantly. Sam had bought the three of them slices of pizza and Danny had bought them sodas. Danny was still holding his soda, tucked snugly in between Tucker and Sam. 

“Yeah, so anyway, Grant was our only president who ever declared the KKK a terrorist group and took measures to, you know, illegalize the klan. And Woodrow Wilson is, like, directly responsible for the return of the KKK.” Sam said to her friends. Tucker had a look of astonishment on his face and Danny seemed to be in the same boat.

“What the fuck?” They said, almost at exactly the same time. Sam nodded. Dash guessed he should look up which president Grant was and how many presidents after him was Wilson and wondered why nobody ever taught any of them this in school. But, then again, this was the midwest. Even if it was a decent-sized city they lived in, the Klan was still pretty much present in a lot of places. 

“Oh!” Danny said, “I dug the hole deeper this time. Shouldn’t have much of a problem with it anymore.”

“Dude, Dash and them already know. The problem still exists.” Tucker was typing on his PDA, Dash wondered if he was looking up who Grant was and who came after him. Danny just shrugged. 

Really, Dash felt like Danny was too nonchalant about his bones being buried in the woods, and having buried his own bones by himself. But, what did Dash know? If Sam and Tucker were just as nonchalant about the whole business, minus the concept of outsiders knowing, it must not be that big a deal. But Dash was still curious, and curiosity always had more control over him than he would like to admit. He wondered, briefly, how he would get the information he needed. Danny obviously wasn’t going to tell him straight out, so he had to figure it out on his own. Dash squared his shoulders and left the mall- stalking Danny and his friends was kind of boring, anyway. They didn’t really do all that much.

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When Dash asked Jazz about Danny, she honestly wasn’t all that surprised. She still tutored him sometimes, so it wasn’t even odd that he was at the Fenton home. And, anyway, Danny wasn’t all that good at hiding his secret identity. What she hadn’t expected, though, was to find out that her little brother had buried his own body at just fourteen, that he had actually died, that he hadn’t just accidentally become half-ghost because of one of their parents’ experiments. Her lips were parted in shock, the pencil she had been writing with clattered to the table and rolled off of it onto the tiled floor until it finally rolled underneath the refrigerator. She imagined her brother in the woods, probably at night, sneaking off after herself and their parents had slipped into sleep, with a shovel in his hands. She remembered, suddenly, how skittish he was at that age, how evasive. He hadn’t eaten as much as he should have for several months, and he always dodged her questions about it - saying he had eaten with Sam and Tucker, saying he had eaten with just Sam or just Tucker, saying he had a stomach bug and wasn’t feeling up to eating. She remembered, too, the heavy bags beneath his eyes, how sometimes they were more green and rot-like than they were purplish and skin-like. It didn’t take all that long for Jazz to find out Danny had a secret identity, all things considered. How her parents still didn’t know was beyond her. How Dash didn’t seem to know, either, was beyond her. 

Dash seemed surprised to find out that she didn’t know about Danny’s grave, and he apologized excessively for bringing it up to her. She noticed Dash’s eyes were heavy with bags and a little watery. She wondered how much her brother had been dealing with alone from the start, how much he didn’t even tell Sam or Tucker. Dash had bit his lip so hard the skin had broken, and Jazz offered him some Fenton-brand paper towels. 

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Jazz had loaded Dash with several of her own books on the paranormal, with a stern reminder for him to bring them back to her when he was finished, or to get his own if he needed them for longer than expected. She told him to take any notes on either sticky notes or in a notebook and not to touch the pages, but he was welcome to use her own annotations if he found them useful. Dash had thanked her about fifty times and left with his backpack loaded with the many, many books. 

Many of them were pretty much useless, but a few of them had information about something called a “relic”. A relic, according to the various, sometimes contradictory, accounts from Jazz’s books, was something that tied a ghost to the physical world, something that had meant something to them in life, and something that had an energy of its own, though not ectoplasmic in nature. Dash had to look up what “ectoplasmic” meant in one of the reference books, and found that, basically, there was nothing ghostly about a relic except, perhaps, an emotional or sentimental tie to the ghost when they were alive. Dash found an old pen, shook it a few times to get the ink flowing again, and wrote in a notebook: relics?? rocket?? ask fenton. 

Dash didn’t know how to ask Danny about the rocket, why it had felt simultaneously too hot and too cold, why he had had to hold it away from himself, why he had felt it necessary to be extremely careful with it. And, if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t so sure he even wanted to ask Danny - sure, he wanted to know, but did he want to bother Danny, apparently dead and buried, about what might be the only thing tying him to their physical realm?

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“What’s a relic?” Dash asked. Danny didn’t know how Dash had found him: it was the weekend, Danny was taking a walk in the cemetery, half-alert in case any ghosts tried anything. Danny guessed a cemetery was an obvious place to find a dead person, though.

“It’s just something that attaches a ghost to the physical realm. Without it, they’d be in the ghost realm forever and wouldn’t be able to come over to our realm.”

Dash had fallen into pace next to Danny, much to Danny’s dismay. It was weird to him that Dash was so obsessed with this. Sure, Dash had matured from his bullying days, but he was still a huge jerk, and still a huge jerk to Danny and his friends. And anyway, their whole school still had a weird class-based hierarchy. Danny was glad Sam didn’t have the same ideas about class and money that the A-listers had, even if part of the reason was that Sam was rebelling against her parents in middle school and had a stint as a pseudo-communist. None of them had the resources to find out anything more about communism apart from the bare minimum, so Sam eventually discarded the label, though she still had pretty much the same ideas about class and wealth. 

“So…” Dash trailed off and was silent for a few minutes before he said, “If your… your rocket was like, destroyed, or something, would you not be here anymore?”

“Well, I don’t know. The thing about me is I’m not fully a ghost, you know. I can change into a ghost, but right now? I’m just a normal human.”

“You’re not a ghost now? How does that even work, your body is literally in the fucking ground!” Dash sounded like he might hyperventilate. Danny put a hand on his shoulder, hoping to be reassuring. It seemed to startle him more than anything and Danny slowly removed his hand. Really, Danny was surprised Dash didn’t know he was Phantom already. What other kid at school looked like Phantom, anyway? 

“Well, you know my parents right? They made a ghost portal and… well, it didn’t work at first. Sam, Tucker and I were messing around in the lab- my parents have a lab, you’ve been in it a few times. Actually, you’ve seen the portal. Anyway, I went inside and I  accidentally turned it one and, well, it sort of split my entire dna makeup in half and now I’m half ghost and I have to keep fighting ghosts off to keep the city safe because it’s mostly my fault that the ghosts can even get here in the first place since I was the one who like, activated the portal or whatever.” Danny honestly didn’t know why he told Dash all this, but if he didn’t find out he was Phantom then he was more dense than Danny had originally been led to believe. 

“So, wait… you’re Danny Phantom!?” Dash’s eyes were bugged out and he looked like he had seen a ghost. Well, Danny guessed that, technically, he had. Danny shrugged and nodded, a sheepish smile on his face like he’d been caught. Danny wondered if this would cause anymore problems. Dash idolized Phantom: now that he knew Phantom and Fenton were the same person, how would he react?

Chapter Text

If you asked Tucker, the whole situation Danny had created for himself was kind of funny. Dash had started following him around like a lost puppy, Paulina and Star avoided him even more than before, and Kwan had tried to get Dash to stop practically stalking Danny more than a few times. But that didn’t mean there weren’t more serious, much less funny situations. When Danny ran up to him and Sam out of breath and ashen-faced, Tucker knew something had finally bit his friend in the ass, just like he said it would. Danny’s harsh whispers about how Dash had inadvertently told Jazz about his grave was not what Tucker had expected, though.

Jazz had been on a rampage that weekend, it seemed. She was tapping her foot expectantly at Danny everywhere he showed up in the house, including while he was brushing his teeth and while he was eating his breakfast. When Danny finally asked what was up with her, she told him what she had found out. How Dash had asked her about Danny, but not about Danny being Phantom, which he didn’t even know about - until later that night, that is, when he had, assumingly, skimmed through the books Jazz had given him and, upon chance, stumbled across the relic information and gone out to find Danny. She had been pulling her therapist thing more and more lately, Danny said, and it was starting to piss him off. He couldn’t even tell Jazz that Dash was lying, that he had made it up, because Danny couldn’t lie to his sister - she knew his tells by now, especially about ghost stuff. Danny told them, slumped over, head on Tucker’s shoulder, that he was surprised she hadn’t followed him to school that day. 

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Time, as it turned out, was a funny thing when you were part dead. It passed incrementally, like it did for the living, but it also stayed the same for hours upon hours. There was nothing to stop or to start time when you were dead, it simply existed as it was, and as it was, was stilted, stalled, not moving but still creeping forward, occasionally creeping backward. Not too much to be done about an abstract concept that only becomes more abstract once you become abstract yourself. Death, as it turned out, was a funny thing when you were part dead, too. Like time, it wasn’t the same - there was no mourning, except by yourself for yourself. When you walk around looking alive, people aren’t really given the chance to mourn what they lost, what they half-lost, partly-lost. Acknowledging this, as it turns out, doesn’t help much.

Danny knew, logically, that it was hard to mourn something you didn’t really lose. His parents, for example: no mourning, they didn’t even know he was dead - well, part dead, anyway. Jazz, before she knew, didn’t mourn either. Sam and Tucker mourned the loss of their collective innocence, previously untainted by things like death and burying bodies and ghosts. Danny mourned the loss of his body, of the life he had hardly a grasp on and then lost forever. Keeping grades up was hard when you were protecting your high school from ghost attacks every day. Being an astronaut was probably hard, too, when half your matter wasn’t scientifically accounted for.

Dash, though, and Kwan, for that matter, had seen his body. Fourteen and bones and a tattered t-shirt and a toy rocket and a shallow grave. Danny didn’t know if they were mourning, if Dash specifically was mourning, or why, in fact, he would mourn. Kwan had always had a kind enough heart, and he never bullied Danny or his friends too much, and often seemed put off by Dash’s bullying before Dash had grown out of the bully persona. Danny wondered if Dash had gotten therapy or something, since the end of his bullying era was abrupt and confusing. And now Dash was following him around, or at least it seemed like he was. Danny knew Kwan had tried to stop Dash from, at the very least, blatantly stalking him, but that didn’t deter Dash much. And anyway, Jazz still tutored him, he was welcome at the Fenton house, and he used that welcome often, even when he wasn’t there for strictly tutoring. Hell, Dash had had dinner with them a few times once he’d stopped bullying Danny and before he had found his body. If anything, Dash was more fascinated by his parents’ work than anybody else Danny had ever met, though he made a mental promise to himself not to tell anybody or to bring it up to Dash, either. There was also Dash’s tiny schoolboy crush on Jazz that lasted all of the first three days of her tutoring him, which Danny also had mentally promised not to tell anyone or to bring it up. Danny wondered, suddenly, if Dash had disclosed any of this to his friends - did he tell Kwan about the Fenton lab? Did he tell Star or Paulina? Danny thinks they might like the lipstick blaster if nothing else. He wondered if any of them knew Dash had had dinner with him and his family more than once, or if he hid this information from them, like some sort of secret. Danny felt that at least Kwan knew, given his best-friend status, but he wasn’t so sure about Paulina or Star. Danny shared everything with Sam and Tucker, but he didn’t know what it was like for less codependent (though Danny hated to say that he, Sam, and Tucker had a codependent relationship) friendships.

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In a shocking turn of events, Sam won a bet against Tucker. The terms were simple, and, anyway, they both knew she would win - they just liked the fanfare of a bet, win or lose. Dash had continued to tag along after Danny, asking questions, telling Danny facts he probably already knew from the books Jazz had lent him, and, eventually, they settled into a tentative friendship. What was weird was that neither Sam or Tucker really minded much, even when Dash was sort of crashing their trio dates at the mall every weekend. Sam knew Dash would find out about Phantom sooner rather than later, and Tucker had bet later, just for the fun of it. It was a symbolic bet, no money exchanged, but Tucker did relent one of the t-shirts the three of them shared, one of Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Honestly, Dash was pretty alright. He was a bit slow on the uptake, but who wasn’t? And, anyway, 

“Right, so anyway. As I was saying, Jazz’s books don’t have a whole lotta info on halfas or on relics, so, I was thinking, maybe we could write a book? Maybe not about halfas since that might be dangerous for you, but I think relics deserve more information.” Dash was pretty enthusiastically talking about relics. The four of them were at Nasty Burger, pouring over menus they had memorized years ago and trying to decide if they should get a pitcher or just individual drinks. 

“I really think Jazz is the one to go to with this, Dash. I only know like four extra things.”

“Well, duh. But we all have to do it. Even Kwan and Star and Paulina want in on it.”

Freeze frame, record scratch. “Wait what?” Danny said, his voice cracking at the end of the sentence. 

“Well, yeah. You think I don’t talk to them about this stuff? They’re my best friends.”

Sam watched as Danny faltered, spluttered, took a drink of his water through the straw, hissed as the ice-cold of it hit his teeth. “Well,” Danny said, “Yeah, that makes sense.” He sighed as if resigned but Sam knew it was just that the idea of Dash caring enough about the ghost business, especially involving Danny, was absurd to him. She knew that Danny, for whatever reason, didn’t think people cared too much about ghosts or, in fact, about him. Her and Tucker were working on that, though, and so was Jazz. Now that they weren’t fourteen anymore, it was easier to see how much Jazz just wanted to be a good older sister rather than exist purely to annoy the three of them. 

“Is that… is that okay?” Dash asked, suddenly seeming unsure. Sam waited for Danny to respond but he only nodded his head, a bit too vigorously. “Of course it is, Dash. Danny has no issue with it and neither do me or Tucker. Actually, it will be nice to have more people on our side apart from just Jazz.” Sam took a sip of her drink through the straw, no ice to make it too cold on her teeth. They had ordered a pitcher, after all.

“Oh, okay. Cool!” 

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It was hot as hell in Amity Park. Tucker had long ago discarded his shirt in favor of wetting it in the lake and placing the now cool, wet fabric on his neck. He, Sam, Danny, Jazz, Dash, and even Kwan, Paulina, and Star were at the beach - one of the perks of bordering the Great Lakes, Tucker mused to himself. He watched Danny and Sam, Danny still in his tank binder, Sam in a black bikini and a black sun hat, reminiscent of their younger days. Tucker could see the spattering of dark hair on her stomach and admired her for it, knew Danny admired her for it too. Tucker was sorely lacking in the hair department everywhere except his head, and so was Danny, so they were envious of Sam’s simultaneous ability to grow it and to show it off, especially in public, especially because they both knew she was often side-eyed for it. Tucker loved it, loved her, loved Danny. In that moment he was so full of love for his friends that he felt his heart swell in his chest, as if it were to burst with love. He wasn’t quite there yet with Dash and the rest of the A-listers, but he admired them much the same way he admired Sam. They were confident, almost effortlessly so. 

When Dash had told Jazz about his plans for the research and the book, she had been so excited that she hugged Dash without asking first. She apologized profusely, which was kind of funny to watch, especially since Dash was a tiny bit flustered and desperately trying to tell her it was okay. Jazz ended up deciding they should have a launch celebration, which Tucker had jumped on immediately. So they were at the beach, the sand was hot enough to hurt his feet, and he was surrounded by people he loved and admired, and his heart was full, and nothing was wrong. He thought something was wrong for a bit when he overheard Paulina talking to Sam about her stomach hair, but Paulina was only praising Sam for being so confident since Paulina herself had hers waxed and bleached regularly, and it was starting to get on her nerves, so maybe she could try to let her own grow. She complained that Star, blonde as she was, didn’t have to deal with hair on her tummy or her back or her upper lip, but Star overheard and told Paulina she was jealous of her mustache, since she had wanted to be able to grow one since she was a little girl and saw a Charlie Chaplin film and a Salvador Dali photograph. Paulina let out a laugh and Tucker watched as Star watched as Paulina threw her head back, mouth open and carefree. Sam shot Tucker a small, private smile, and he knew she was feeling victorious in helping another girl be comfortable with her body hair.

He watched Danny and Jazz talking to Dash, who was shirtless and wearing some kind of speedo shorts and holding a volleyball. Tucker knew they were talking about the ghost stuff, relics. He was content to lay on his towel next to Sam and her umbrella - Paulina and Star had left to go swimming in the lake. He saw that Kwan was waiting impatiently for Dash to come back with the volleyball. Tucker wondered if he should try to play with Kwan, but thought better of it before he let himself get too far - he wasn’t good at sports, and he for sure wasn’t good at sports that left bruises just from contact with the ball. Really, Tucker would have preferred it if they’d gone to the water park - less sand to get into his PDA, more slides and rides for him to entertain himself with. But the beach was cool, he liked watching the waves crash - he remembered Sam telling him and Danny that the Great Lakes behaved more like an ocean than a lake - against the shore. Maybe he should pick up shells or rocks, he thought. He nudged Sam with his foot and laughed when she shot him a half-hearted glare.

“You wanna walk the shore?” he asked. He knew Sam liked looking for hagstones on beaches. She nodded, he grinned as if he had achieved some startling feat. They walked the shore, talking, heads down, looking only at the ground and not at each other or any of the rest of their friends. Danny eventually ran to catch up with them, falling into pace and immediately bending to pick up a hagstone, handing it to Sam with a flourish and a cheesy bow. They laughed. It was good.

Chapter Text

It was not good. Danny never thought he’d have to go ghost in front of the A-listers, or even in front of just Dash, but there he was. Going ghost in front of all of them. On the beach, where they were supposed to be having fun and not fighting ghosts. They were especially not supposed to be fighting fucking Vlad, of all the ghosts. Danny did not want to get into why Vlad wanted him as an adopted son with the popular kids.

They fought, they exchanged quips. Vlad made allusions to how terrible Danny’s parents were and how much better off Danny would be with Vlad. Danny was glad they were in the air because he didn’t want anybody getting hurt. They exchanged blows and what might have been considered psychological warfare if a sane person were to hear it, but Danny was only paying enough attention to respond and dodge, not to remember what they were saying. He did remember that it was almost night, that the sun was setting heavy beneath the waves of the lake, orange and pink and light, light, light. He also remembers getting knocked out of the air and, for some reason, transforming back to his human form. He guessed that Vlad had a weapon that messed with his powers, but he would never know for sure. He heard his friends scream his name and he heard his body hit the water and he heard Jazz curse Vlad out. And he heard rushing water. And then, for a while, he heard nothing much at all. 

Rushing water, still water, a ringing in his ears. He opened his eyes to the moon and coughed - he wondered why he was coughing. He felt as if he had been wrapped in slimy algae, in the weeds at the bottom of a dirt lake, he felt as if he had swallowed a million tiny minnows. He coughed. His ribs felt sore. Why were his ribs sore, he wondered? The stars were speckled in the sky like the freckles and moles on his own back. His neck felt unnatural. His chest felt exposed. He felt the start of panic settle in his stomach like the so many minnows he felt he swallowed. He opened his eyes. Jazz was standing over him, towel wrapped around her shoulders, hair dripping wet and dripping onto Danny’s forehead. Tucker and Sam were on either side of him. Dash and Kwan and Star and Paulina were standing at his feet, eyes wide and astonished. Danny lifted a hand to his chest, felt the lack of fabric, opened his mouth. Nobody said anything. Tucker gave him his shirt. The stars twinkled at him in the sky, like so many minnows. 

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Dash had seen Phantom fight; they all had. But it was different now that he knew Phantom was Fenton. That Danny was, well, Danny. In hindsight, he thought sometimes, he should have known. That they all should have known. That, if they had known, somehow, someway, this wouldn’t have happened. And sometimes he thought that this wasn’t true, that if they had known it would still end up the same, that Danny would be lying in the sand, in the dark, illuminated by the green glow of a lipstick blaster that somehow functioned doubly as a flashlight. Jazz had her hand on Danny’s forehead, on his cheeks, beneath his nose, on his pulse. She checked his breathing. Danny looked up at the sky. Dash, for a moment, looked too, saw the moon, waning, and the stars, more than he’d ever seen before. He understood, with sudden clarity, why Danny had always wanted to be an astronaut. 

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Jazz was cool, calm, collected, panicking with a capital ‘p’ that presented itself to her peers as a lowercase. She was glad she knew CPR, glad she could help her little brother, half her life and a quarter of each of her parents’. She was overcome with the knowledge that Danny had died in one world and transformed in the next, that he could very likely still die, again or for the first time. She remembered, quite suddenly and with a startling force, when she and Danny were little kids, before school and adolescence had taken over their respective lives, when they seemed to be one being separated only by time and connected by its seeming absence in the lives of children. She remembered the rocket Danny used to have, and her bear, and their adventures through space and their adventures through the water, their fights with the Leviathan, the Whale, with the Ship that traversed the cosmos. She hoped she hadn’t broken Danny’s ribs, felt bad about having to tear his binder. She promised herself she would buy him a new one. She wondered, briefly and then obsessively, how she could press charges against Vlad. She saw Danny looking up at the sky and looked at it herself, at the exit wounds of dying stars, at the waning moon like a bullet forever lodged inside the atmosphere.

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  Sam knew, in theory, that Danny was safe. This did not change the racing of her heart or the strength of her grip on his shoulder, solid. As far as they knew, Danny couldn’t die again. He hadn’t died again yet, and he hadn’t died then. Theoretically, Sam knew this. But theory never really bonded well with emotion. She watched Danny’s eyes flutter open, watched them close again and open again. She watched as Jazz checked for breathing, for a concussion, for whatever else Jazz knew how to check for. She watched Jazz’s hand go to the side of Danny’s neck to take his pulse. She watched as Dash and the rest of them watched. She held Tucker’s hand with the hand that wasn’t gripping Danny’s shoulder. Sam wished, as she sometimes did, that the three of them had just left the lab alone that day. But she knew, too, that Danny would’ve explored the portal without either of them to goad him on. She looked at the stars with Danny and she knew the rest of them were looking, too. She tried to calm her breathing as she looked at the sky, tried to find new patterns in the stars, mentally said hello to the moon. 

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Tucker watched with wide eyes as Jazz had desperately put all her weight on Danny’s ribs - and it was a decent amount of weight, the Fenton family was large, and Jazz was at least six feet or more, and was even slightly taller than Danny if his hair were laid flat - and take it off, and put it on again. He wondered if she was chanting “Ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive” in her head as she did this. He watched as Danny coughed up a pathetically little amount of water. Tucker gripped Sam’s hand in his own. He gave Danny his shirt, covered his chest with it since Danny wasn’t getting up anytime soon. He saw the moon reflected in Danny’s eyes and he looked up at the sky with the rest of them. It was vast, indifferent. Tucker knew simultaneously too much and too little about it, about the stars and their deaths, their dying light explosion reflecting back at them from thousands upon thousands of years away. He heard Danny cough, looked down and saw a smirk playing on his lips. 

“You know,” Danny said, “this might be nice if I hadn’t almost died.”

Sam groaned. Tucker laughed. Jazz hit Danny in the stomach. Dash, Kwan, Paulina, and Star collectively gasped. Tucker guessed that maybe they weren’t used to their brand of humor yet. Dash, to his surprise, let out a snort, and it seemed to break some kind of dam for the rest of the popular crew because suddenly they were laughing too.

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It was eight days later that Star talked to Danny. If Danny was being honest with himself, which he sometimes was, he was surprised. She came up to him after school, looked him in the eye, and said: "I didn’t know you were Phantom. It kinda sucks that you’ve been doing this for so long. Sorry we made fun of you for falling asleep in class freshman year.”

If Danny was being honest with himself, which he sometimes was, he had forgotten about that. He shrugged, looked at her, too. “It’s alright, Star,” he said. She walked with him until the end of the street where he turned and she went straight. 

“I just wish we - I had been kinder. I just wish it didn’t suck so much. I wish you didn’t have to go through this and I wish I could feel justified for how terrible I feel all the time.”

“We’re in high school, we’re supposed to feel terrible all the time. Fighting ghosts or not.”

“You know, when me and Dash were kids we used to play together, under that tree. I guess everybody used to play together under that tree.”

“It’s where my parents had their first kiss. It’s where I busted my knee falling from one of the branches. Jazz lost one of her baby teeth there.”

“It’s a good tree for memories, Danny.”

And, with sudden, stark clarity, Danny realized that Star knew, somehow, what this whole business was like. How his body was a memory more than it was a body. She was halfway down the street, though, when Danny had found his voice again. He watched as her body got smaller and smaller as she walked away, presumably toward her own house, watched as her hair swung wildly in the wind and then lay flat again as soon as it died down.

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The tree, a conifer, a type of yew, old and gnarled, not necessarily native to the area but growing well just the same. It was not its blooming season yet, there were no red berries hanging from the branches, and because of this, it was poisonous through and through. Deeply shaded beneath the leaves was an area tall enough for an average sized person to stand beneath with a slight bend to their neck or for an above average sized person to crouch beneath with a bend in their knees or their back. It was a good place for memories, and it remembered. 

There was a time, many years ago, that the tree, the conifer, the yew, did not remember. There was a time when it was not a good place for memories. But that was a long time ago, and, as far as the tree was concerned, last Tuesday. In all reality, it became a place for memories when the kids found it and began to seek it out. Something about children warrants remembering, at least for a tree, who does not see very many of them. It could have been the child buried in its dirt that was the beginning of the memories, or the child’s parents, or their parents, the tree didn’t quite know. It was before the buried child, it thinks - it remembered when the child buried itself. Mostly the tree remembers tragedies.

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When Jazz told Dash to take an anthropological approach to the relic research, he didn’t quite understand what that meant. Nobody was going to dig Danny up again, and wasn’t that what anthropology was? Or was that archeology? Dash thought it was archeology. Jazz told him that he had to insert himself into the culture. How was he supposed to insert himself into the culture of ghosts? She said start with Danny. She would help, but she had her own thesis and dissertation to work on. Dash knew she had only just started undergrad last year.

He started with Danny. It wasn’t difficult, really, but Dash couldn’t help but feel that starting with Danny was contradictory. Danny knew as much as he did about relics and Jazz knew more than both of them. Sam said Danny should ask around in the ghost realm. Dash didn’t want to think about what that meant even though he already knew about it. Really, what Dash is most surprised about is when Danny fishes a pack of cigarettes out of his bag and offers one to Sam. Tucker, apparently, sticks to weed. Danny looked at Dash as if he were going to offer one to him, too, but Dash saw him think better of it - his face twisted in on itself a little, eyebrows furrowed, nose scrunched. Dash wouldn’t have taken one, but he thinks the fact that Danny thought to ask was kind of nice. He wondered if Jazz knew; he doubted it.

He watched Danny cup his hand over the cigarette and bring the lighter to it. He wondered what that did. He guessed it shielded it from the wind, but there wasn’t any. He watched Danny’s cheeks hollow slightly as he took a drag, watched him hand the lit cigarette to Sam and watched him put an unlit one in his mouth and do the process over again. Sam seemed to find this normal. So did Tucker. Dash wondered just how much they did for each other, how much they shared. He assumed it was about as much as he shared with Kwan and Paulina shared with Star and they shared with each other, but there was something about the trio that made him think maybe they shared more. They were in the cemetery, because of course they were. Dash knew that he wouldn’t have been invited had he not started with Danny that day, which happened to be the trio’s picnic day. Picnic day, as Dash found out, was just the three of them sitting in the cemetery against the wall of a mausoleum. It was kind of creepy. Dash figured he should start asking questions. 

“How’d you know what your relic was?”

“I didn’t until I had to. Tucker was going through my shit with me one day, this was after I had buried my body, I was feeling weird and we were gonna give some stuff to a thrift shop or something, and he found the rocket. And it burned him. And I couldn’t touch it at all, so he wrapped it in a blanket. And then I took it and I buried it with the rest of me. I used my old shirt to bury it again, the second time.”

Dash thought about this. It was too hot and too cold when Dash had held it in his hands, but it hadn’t burned him, necessarily. He looked at his hands, at the knuckles of them; they were kind of red from the cold, though it wasn’t nearly cold enough to warrant gloves, and it had just been eighty-five degrees, like, a week ago. There was a small mark on them, though, and he wondered if that might have been from the rocket. It was kind of funny to him, that of all things that would leave a mark on him, a rocket was one of them. Dash didn’t know what else to ask, so he sat with them against the limestone wall of the mausoleum. 

“Star said something to me the other day,” Danny said. Dash turned his head to look at him. “She said that you guys used to play under that tree. And that it was a good tree for memories. And she said that she wished she felt justified for how terrible she feels all the time.”

Dash was kind of uncomfortable that Danny was talking so plainly about one of his best friends around Sam and Tucker, but he guessed that Danny had already told them, anyway, because neither of them reacted. They were playing a game on Tucker’s DSi. Dash thought it sounded like Mario Bros, but he could have been wrong. “Huh,” Dash said.

“It’s just that she sounded like she knew, sort of, what I had gone through - or am going through, I guess.”

“Yeah.” Dash didn’t think it was really his place to lay Star’s business out like that, so he didn’t. He watched Danny shrug.

“Well, anyway. Tell her thanks. She left before I could say anything back, and I haven’t seen her since.”

Dash nodded. He would tell her. He heard something like tin dropping against the floor.

“Ah, shit,” Tucker said, and he picked it up. Dash thought it might have been an Altoids tin, but instead it had an image of the Sleepytime tea bear on it. Tucker opened it and revealed a tightly rolled joint with a flourish and a grin. Danny gave Tucker his lighter and Tucker lit up, took a hit, and handed it to Sam. She took a hit and handed it to Danny. Danny took a hit and, just like when he was going to offer Dash a cigarette, thought about offering it to Dash and, instead of stopping himself, did. Dash took a hit. They went on like that until the joint was too small for them to hold without a roach clip, which Tucker either did not have or did not bring. Dash had tried weed before, but never to the point that he was actually high. He felt a little floaty and a little like he was going to throw up and a little like he needed something to eat.

Dash wondered where Tucker even got the weed from and considered that maybe he grew it. Or maybe Sam grew it. Dash didn’t think Tucker had a job, so he didn’t know how Tucker would buy it. Dash considered that maybe he was spending too much time on the subject and tried to force himself to stop. Somewhere along the way, he heard Sam say that she used to buy them weed but Danny had had a reaction to one of the batches she had bought so she and Tucker had started growing their own instead. Dash wondered how he even came across this information or how Sam had offered it. He didn’t remember asking, but maybe he had. He heard Danny laugh and they all four got up and headed back out of the cemetery. Dash knew they were going to get food but he was anxious about who would see him. They ended up at Sam’s house, so he guessed that he had let his anxiety be known. Sam ordered them pizzas and Dr. Pepper and Dash swore to himself that he would pay her back at school. He thought maybe he’d been thinking out loud because Sam told him, very gently, that he didn’t have to pay her back. He heard Danny laugh. 

Chapter Text

Even though Sam said not to pay her back, Dash went up to her in the hallway with a single twenty dollar bill and a sheepish smile. She smiled back at him and shook her head, and she closed his fingers around the bill so that he was making a fist.

“I want to pay you back,” Dash said. 

“I told you not to.” Sam laughed. Danny was beside her suddenly and smiling at him. Tucker was behind Danny, catching up. He was holding three brown paper bags. He handed one to Sam and she beamed. He handed one to Danny and he ruffled his hair. Dash watched their ease and he felt something tug at his stomach. 

“Tofu marinated in my mom’s ‘secret sauce’” Tucker said, putting air quotes around the phrase ‘secret sauce’ and scrunching his nose. “A peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with the peanut butter on both sides of the bread so the jelly doesn’t make it soggy. And, le piece de resistance! My perfect, scrumptious, homemade brownies!”

“Thanks, Tuck,” Danny said. Dash saw Danny’s eyes light up and widen slightly when Tucker explained what Danny’s lunch contained; as if he was still surprised that his friends catered to his needs. 

“Oh, hey Dash! You want a brownie for lunch? I brought the whole batch!” Tucker said, as if just noticing Dash. Dash shook his head and Tucker gave him a brownie anyway. “Don’t worry,” he said, “they’re just normal brownies. Double chocolate, though.” 

Dash nodded and took the brownie.

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Danny, Tucker, and Sam were sitting outside for lunch. The air was warm in the way it only was during the school year. Star saw them at their table and she went to sit with them. She didn’t know if Paulina, or Dash, or Kwan would join, but that didn’t matter. She wanted to sit with Danny. She wanted to let him know that she knew, in a way, how it felt to be a memory more than a body; a body less than a memory. When Danny looked up at her and smiled, she knew he understood why she was there. They didn’t talk. She watched Danny swap an end brownie for a middle brownie with Tucker. Tucker swapped with him with an ease that was almost unknown to Star, that she only experienced with Paulina and sometimes with Kwan and Dash. She wondered, desperately, how the three of them were so open.

Paulina found her outside and sat next to her, smiled and squeezed her hand before tucking into her hot lunch from the cafeteria. She gave Star an extra juicebox that the lunch lady had given her because she had paid extra for lunch last week. Star knew Paulina didn’t want anybody to know that she was kind, but it felt cruel that Star was the only one who knew that Paulina often paid for other kids’ lunches. The five of them do not talk until Kwan shows up with Dash in tow, both sporting trays of hot lunch. 

“Hey guys!” Kwan greeted them. Danny waved and Tucker said “Hey,” with his mouth stuffed full of some sort of chicken with sauce. Sam waved with a small smile as she stabbed a piece of tofu with her fork. Paulina nodded her head and Star smiled.

“Boy, it’s hot as hell out right now, don’t you think? Why is the weather always so weird? Isn’t it weird?” Kwan talked while opening his chocolate milk carton. Star saw Danny wince a little and wondered if anything was wrong. She watched him paw at Tucker’s arm and she watched as Tucker passed over a pair of headphones. Kwan either didn’t notice or didn’t care; or he knew why Danny needed the headphones. Danny seemed to be able to hear just fine with them on, so maybe he was just sensitive to noise right now. Star wondered if Tucker made them specially for Danny or if they were something she could buy for herself. 

“Ugh, I know! It was so cold last night, too!” Paulina exclaimed while aiming her forkful of food to her mouth. Dash nodded along with her. 

Star shook her head and took her hair out of its ponytail. It was sitting too heavily on the top of her scalp; she massaged her scalp for a few minutes before putting her hair back up into a less tight bun. Paulina tutted beside her and motioned for her to turn around. Star did and relaxed as Paulina began to finger-brush and then loosely braid her hair.

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Danny was not having the best time. He liked being around his friends, but he had to get used to four extra people before he could participate meaningfully in any conversation. He thanked the stars and whatever gods above that Tucker always had headphones on his person, whether they were for Danny or not. He noticed that, when Tucker got up to throw his sack lunch away, he sat on the other side of Danny. Now Danny was in the middle and Sam and Tucker acted as a buffer for him. 

The weather was good for him but not for his clothing decisions today. He was wearing two sports bras as a makeshift binder and two shirts to hide the fact. Jazz told him his new binder would be at their house this weekend, and that was three whole days away, so Danny was making due with what he had. He used to bind this way before he told his parents and they bought him his first binder. 

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat as sweat began to bead its way down his back. He stood and motioned with his head for them to head inside for the rest of lunch. 

“Great idea, Danny! It’s getting way too hot out here, I’m sweating already.” Kwan beamed at him. Danny had always liked Kwan, even when he was in his ‘bullying’ phase with Dash. 

The seven of them headed inside and Danny welcomed the cool air conditioning of the school hall with a sigh of relief. Tucker groaned and Sam laughed at him. Paulina tugged at her shirt a few times to let some air hit her stomach and Star fanned at her face. Kwan and Dash leaned against each other in dramatics, as if trying to make the rest of them laugh. Danny snorted and Sam smiled at him. Tucker laughed loudly and asked if anybody wanted another brownie. 

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Jazz arrived back home from her college campus with a sigh that turned itself into a small smile when she saw the package leaned up against the doorway. Thankfully she got back before Danny did, so he wouldn’t know until she surprised him. She took the package and went to her room; she made a stop at the hallway closet to retrieve some wrapping paper. In her room she opened the package. It was a space themed binder in Danny’s size: despite the fact that their parents had bought Danny a new binder already, she wanted to give him a special one from herself. She hoped he appreciated it. 

The door opened and closed and she heard Danny call out to the house that he would be in his room. She knew this meant he had had an overstimulating day at school, so she wouldn’t be too excited when she gave him his gift. She tiptoed out of her room and held the gift carefully so the wrapping wouldn’t crumple. The wrapping was from one of their birthdays, covered in smiling suns and moons. 

She knocked softly on Danny’s door and opened it when she heard him groan in response. Danny was laying on his bed, still in his school clothes. She sat next to him, toed off her shoes, and got into the bed with him. 

“Hey,” she said, “I got a gift for you.”

Danny hummed in response and sat up. Jazz sat up with him and handed him the wrapped gift; she watched Danny’s lips quirk into a small smile when he saw the wrapping paper. 

“What is it?” he asked.

“Well, open it, why don’t you?” Jazz told him and rolled her eyes. 

He opened it carefully, running his finger along the edges where the tape was. He stopped when he had it a quarter of the way open and looked up at Jazz in disbelief. 

“Jazz…” he said. He opened the gift all the way and held the binder up to his chest, almost hugging it. Tears pricked at his eyes. “Thank you, Jazz.” 

“No problem, Danny.” Jazz said. And they sat together in silence, Danny holding the space themed binder to his chest and smiling and Jazz grinning at the fact that Danny liked her gift.