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stardustbarbarians · 2 months

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Enchanted

A Daniel Wagner / Samuel Kiszka fic

Summary: Sometimes it takes some meddling to see what is right in front of you.

Tags: fluff, love spell au, very light angst, low-key funny

Words: 10.8 k

Author's Note: Happy (late) Valentine's Day!! I literally got the idea for this one the day of the holiday and proceeded to write this, thinking it would be at max like 2,000 words. So, yeah, this one kinda got away from me. Anyway, this is dedicated to @ofthecaravel for being more enthusiastic about this idea than I was (she also made the cover pic so everyone say thank you, Karou). Title taken from Enchanted by Taylor Swift. Please enjoy!! <3

+++

When Danny had the idea to go to the art fair near his house, he hadn’t thought he’d be walking away with an honest to god love potion. I mean, those aren’t real, right?? It’s all just made up for awful rom-coms and Disney movies. So, when that witchy woman had stopped him and gave it to him for free, he thought nothing of it.

He had been weaving through the various booths, eyes catching on all the colorful and sometimes gaudy wares these artists were trying to pedal. Some of them were honestly good, others were just clearly trying to make a quick buck. Danny bought a few things; a few jewelry pieces he thought were cute and a fresh squeezed lemonade.

“Danny?” a woman had spoken up, catching the drummer’s attention. He tensed up at being called out, hoping he wouldn’t be recognized but knowing it was always a possibility every time he left his house.

Schooling his features to be warm and inviting, Daniel turned on his heel to face the woman. She was what Danny could only describe as a “contemporary witch”, complete with long, black hair and a revealing yet classy black dress and a wide-brimmed black hat. Danny had to suppress his scoff at how on the nose she looked, glancing around her clearly witch-themed, yet populated, booth. But, it clearly worked to help sell her goods, so who was he to judge.

“Hey!” he responded, abandoning his wandering and making his way over to her. She smiled widely at him, her eyes lighting up as he approached.

“Oh, my god. My friends are never gonna believe me,” she rushed, her tattooed hands fluttering to her chest.

“How about we get a picture to prove it to them?” he offered, having gone through this enough times over the years to know that that was what most people were after when they spotted him.

She nodded, searching frantically for her phone. When she pulled it out from behind the register, Daniel noticed two things. One; her hands were shaking. Two; her lock screen was a picture of him and Sam posed together. It was a picture of them on stage, embracing and beaming at one another and - wow, is that really what he looks like when he smiles at Sam?

They took their picture, her asking for a hug from him which he happily gave her.

“So, what brings you over this way?” the woman - ironically named Greta - asked, leaning against the table she had set her register up on. Danny worried for a second as her long hair passed over a candle, only for him to realize it wasn’t real.

“Had a free afternoon to myself, thought I’d check the art fair out,” he answered honestly, a shrug of his shoulders tacked on at the end.

She nodded acceptingly. “Find anything interesting?”

Danny held up his fingers, wiggling them to show off the rings he purchased as well as shook his cup of lemonade in front of her, smiling. She laughed, her head tipping back a bit to show off a moth tattoo that rested under her clavicles.

“That’s all, huh? You must be pretty picky.” She looked him up and down, her eyes feeling strangely like they were able to see past his physical form. Danny blamed that on the witch-themed booth she ran.

Danny shrugged again. He didn’t think he was, but then again maybe he was.

“Here,” she blurted out, jumping up from her perch to brush past him to go deeper into her booth. Daniel watched as she stopped in front of a display of bowls that held vials of various shapes and sizes. Each one was sorted by color, some of them even seeming to glow which made Daniel do a double take. There was probably just a light fixed at the base of the bowl to give them that effect.

“On the house,” Greta chirped before tossing something at Daniel. He instinctively caught it, letting out a breath of relief that he had. When he got a proper look at it, Danny realized that she had thrown him a vial of baby pink liquid that had been sealed in a teardrop shaped glass vial. The top was a gradient into Barbie pink and formed to a point, sharp enough to probably kill a man. Daniel turned it over in his hand, the liquid sparkling in the light of the sun streaming in through an opening in the tent he was in.

“What is this?” he dumbly asked, already knowing what the hell it was.

“A love potion,” Greta flippantly answered. When Danny snapped his head up to look at the woman, he saw the mischievous glint in her eye that never reached her soft smile.

Daniel coughed on his own spit as he swallowed wrong. He covered it up by taking a few sips of his lemonade. He had no idea how to react to that.

“Uhh… that’s really kind of you, but I can’t take this.”

“Nonsense. I insist,” she pressed, waving off his concerns with a wave of her hand.

Daniel looked back and forth between the woman and the vial in his hand, weighing the pros and cons. Then he realized how ridiculous he was being. It was a kind gesture and love potions weren’t real.

He tucked the vial into his pocket of his jean jacket and smiled. “Thanks!”

“My pleasure,” she answered, that devilish gleam back in her eye as well as that feeling that she was seeing through him rather than at him, “and trust me, you will be thanking me later.”

That made Daniel chuckle a bit nervously. She was starting to creep him out a bit; time to make a quick exit.

“Right, well. Maybe I’ll see you at one of our upcoming shows!” Danny politely suggested, already backing out the way he had come in.

“Of course! Talk to you later!” Greta’s last sentence sent a shiver up Danny’s spine. It felt like a promise rather than a send off.

With one last quick smile, Danny got his ass out of there and trotted down the booths to get away. He definitely wanted to toss that so-called “love potion” away now. There was no telling what was actually in it. He’d just throw it into the next trash can he saw.

+++

Daniel did not toss it away. Instead, he forgot about it completely and left it in his jacket pocket. It stayed there for a month, silently waiting for the next time someone would wear that jacket and find it.

“Hey, Dan!” Danny was in his kitchen taking some ibuprofen for the headache he was fighting when he heard Sam call out for him.

With a big gulp and a gag he didn’t even try to suppress as he felt the pills catch on the side of his throat, Danny responded with a shout of his own. “Yeah?!”

“Can I borrow a jacket?! It’s cold as balls out and I don’t have one!”

Setting his empty glass of water in the sink, Daniel ran a hand through his curls. Sam had stopped over at Danny’s before the band’s scheduled studio time so the two of them could carpool.

“Yeah!” he shouted back. He went through a mental checklist to make sure he had everything he needed before he left, adding Sam to the bottom of that list.

“What the fuck is this in your pocket?!” Sam called out again, breaking through Danny’s concentration.

“I don’t know! I’m not over there!”

It was quiet again for a moment, Danny quickly going through his checklist again as he passed by his laundry room to grab some socks from the pile.

“Can I drink it?!”

Daniel, starting to get a little frustrated by Sam’s antics already, huffed out in exasperation.

“Go ahead!” he screamed harsher than he had meant to. But, really, how the hell was Daniel meant to know what the fuck Sam was talking about. It probably was a shot of fireball or something he never drank. And if Sam wanted to be tipsy while they recorded… Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

“It tastes like bubblegum!” Sam excitedly exclaimed, his voice louder as Danny was just around the corner from where he was stationed by the front door.

“That’s great, buddy,” Daniel dismissed, walking past him briefly as he went to grab his sticks from the living room. Doing the pat down on his pockets to make sure he had his keys and wallet, Daniel finally rounded the corner to his front door only to see Sam sprawled out on the ground.

“Sam?” Danny cautiously asked, hoping Sam was just being theatrical over how long Danny was taking to leave.

But then he didn’t answer. Or move, for that matter.

“Sammy?!” Daniel was distraught now, tossing his sticks to the side as he kneeled down next to Sam to shake him.

He still wasn’t stirring, but at least his chest was moving. Daniel frantically searched for a pulse, lifting up his hand to check his wrist. That was when he spotted the nearly empty teardrop shaped vial in Sam’s hand and Danny’s heart sank even further.

“No no no no-” Danny chanted under his breath, pressing his fingers into Sam’s wrist. His heart rate slowed a bit when he was able to feel Sam’s pulse in his fingertips. He sighed deeply, feeling his shoulders sag in relief.

“C’mon, Sammy,” Danny implored, grabbing his friend by the shoulders and began to shake him. It wasn’t hard, but it was enough to make his head loll around his shoulders.

When that didn’t work, Danny bit his lip as his brow knit together. He had an idea, but he’d feel awful for going through with it. With another sigh, Daniel resigned himself to it.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” he murmured, pulling his right hand off the bassist’s shoulder. He reared it back and smacked it smartly against his friend’s cheek. Cringing at how loud the slap resounded in the echo-y chamber of his vestibule, Daniel smoothed his hand back over the pink mark blossoming on Sam’s face.

It worked, to Danny’s utter relief.

Sam’s eyes fluttered open as Daniel caressed his fingers across the angry outline of his hand, groaning as he lifted his hand to his forehead.

“What the hell happened?” Sam grumbled out, sitting up on his own. Danny sat back onto his heels, raking his eyes over Sam to check for any signs of danger.

“You drank the vial in my jacket and passed out, I guess,” Daniel tried to explain, the concern leaking through his tone. Sam still had yet to look at Danny, his eyes having shut once more as he sat fully upright.

Huffing out a laugh, Sam looked at the vial in his hand, a drop of that baby pink liquid slipping out of the opening and splattering onto the floor. He turned it over in his fingers a few times before he spoke again. “Hell of a rush.”

Daniel couldn’t help but snort, his worries easing significantly at the joke. Sam was going to be ok. Maybe a little groggy, but ok. That Greta girl should count herself lucky nothing worse had happened to Sam or else he’d bring down hell around her ears for hurting his best friend.

“Alright, Sam. Let’s get you up or else we’ll be late for studio time,” Danny grunted out as he hauled Sam up to his feet by his arm.

“Right, right,” Sam quietly answered, his hair flying out around him as he shook his head to presumably clear it.

And that was when Sam looked at Danny for the first time since he fell.

“I’m so fucking in love with you.”

+++

“Hey, guys, we might want to reschedule.”

“Yeah? And why is that?” Jake was the first one to look over at Daniel. And when he did, Danny watched as his entire body went rigid as his eyes flew wide open.

“Something wrong- oh my god.” That was Josh, this time. And just like Jake, Josh’s eyes got comically wide as he took in the sight of Danny and Sam.

And Daniel really couldn’t blame them. He’d have the same reaction if he saw his little brother clinging onto his best friend as if his life depended on it.

Sam had long since jumped into Danny’s arms, his arms and legs wrapped around Daniel as if he were a monkey and Daniel his favorite tree. He had refused to get down, Danny having tried to fight him in the parking lot before entering the studio to get him to walk on his own, but Sam was having none of it. Even on the drive over, Sam had tried to climb into Danny’s lap a few times all while gushing about how pretty he thought Danny was. He finally got Sam to stay in his seat after promising to hold his hand as he drove. But as soon as they stepped out of the car, it was no holds barred.

“What the hell is he doing?” Jake asked, his eyes still locked onto his baby brother’s strange behavior.

“I’m holding the love of my life!” Sam answered for Daniel. And if Daniel’s face wasn’t burning before, he was certain it was set ablaze by that. And the worst part was Daniel could tell Sam was using a genuine tone.

He watched the twins look between the two rhythm section members, their lips pursing as they took in the sight. Daniel wanted to hide his face in his hands, but they were currently holding his obnoxious best friend so he couldn’t.

“Oooooooooo-k. Umm, what the fuck is going on?” Josh had abandoned his station at his microphone, setting the equipment down on a chair to his left before he joined Jake at his side.

Danny sighed, his eyes closing in shame. He wanted to look everywhere else but at the twins and their calculating and bewildered gazes.

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you.” Daniel let out a squeak after he spoke, Sam surprising him with kisses he placed on the side of Danny’s neck where his head was nuzzled. He tried to pull away, but Sam just chased after him with his lips.

“Try us,” Josh answered, his arms crossing over his chest as his hip popped out. Jake was idly fiddling with his guitar, probably not even aware that he was playing at all, but his eyes never left Danny.

With a deep sigh, Daniel launched into the story of Greta and her stupid fucking love potion. While he was explaining, he knew his story sounded made up. I mean, for god’s sake, the titular character shared the name of their band. It just sounded like he was caught in a lie. The only thing he knew would work in his favor was the potion vial that he had the foresight of bringing with him.

It was a fight, but Daniel was able to wrangle Sam off of him and set his feet on the floor. However, the man still refused to let go of him completely. So Daniel had to live with Sam resting his head on his shoulder and wrapping his arms around Danny’s torso. With his hands finally free, Daniel was able to fish that vial out of his pocket and toss it over to the twins.

Josh caught it, Jake watching it sail over towards his twin with his eyes. Daniel watched as they inspected it, the baby pink liquid still shimmering in the light. He pointedly ignored Sam and his embarrassing antics. Or, at least he tried to. It was very hard when he kept peppering kisses all over Danny’s cheek and neck as he spoke sweet nothings into his ear. Danny felt shivers dance their way across his skin, his veins warming at all the contact and compliments. But he refused to indulge in them. Sam was not himself right now and he would be damned if he was going to take advantage of him. But, they still felt nice.

After a few seconds of turning over the evil liquid, Josh tossed it back over to Daniel.

“Alright,” Jake started, pulling the cord out of his guitar, “we believe you.”

“Really?” Danny was truly bewildered. He thought the twins were going to think it was some kind of stupid prank they were trying to pull on them. He was actually relieved they did.

“Yeah. We’ve never seen Sam act this way before. Plus he’s a dog shit actor,” Josh answered, a laugh escaping his lips after the last sentence. Danny had to agree; he’d seen the movies Josh had made where Sam was the lead. There weren’t that many.

“Oh, thank god. Because I need help.” Daniel’s tone was desperate, his hands trying to pull Sam’s off his waist. But every time he tried, Sam would just slide them back into place. He eventually gave up, huffing in resignation as Sam giggled in his ear. “Yeah, I’m gonna be honest with you on this one. I don’t know where we’ll even start,” Jake bluntly pointed out, placing his guitar on its stand.

“What if you two try to contact the people who organized the fair and see if you can find the woman who sold me the…” God help him, “...the potion.”

“Yeah, alright. What are you going to do?” Josh was already pulling out his phone, not looking at Danny as he spoke.

“I’m going to see if maybe she posted that picture and contact her that way,” Daniel explained, having to shove Sam’s hips away from his own in order to get his phone from his back pocket.

“Sounds like a plan. But how about we don’t do this here,” Jake posited, his eyes sliding over to where their producer and mixer were watching raptly as Sammy placed yet another series of kisses onto Danny.

They all agreed. They wanted to spare both men as much embarrassment as possible and also minimize the possibility of this leaking and sending the wrong message to their fan base.

Daniel offered up his house considering it was the closest.

“And I’ll drive lovebug here, too.” Danny hooked his thumb towards where Sammy’s face was pressed into the side of Danny’s, a dopey smile on his face as he nuzzled deeper into Danny.

“I don’t think you have a choice,” Josh so helpfully pointed out, trying poorly to suppress a laugh.

“Yeah, ha ha. Let’s go,” Daniel sharply ordered, trying once more to rip Sam’s arms off of him and failing.

“No, no, wait. Let us get one video for blackmail,” Jake quickly requested, already having his phone out and pointed at the two.

Danny, knowing that there was no way they’d relent, groaned and let Jake record his misery.

“Alright, Sammy. Tell us how you feel about Daniel,” Jake prompted, the laugh in his voice barely contained. The youngest perked up at the question, his smile getting brighter.

“Well, where do I even begin! There’s so much I feel about him,” Sam cooed, resting his chin against Danny’s shoulder as he spoke. Danny felt Sam’s hair slip off his own shoulder as Sam tilted his head to get a better look at Danny.

“Why don’t you start with the physical,” Josh, that bastard, piped up. Danny shot him a glare, Josh only responding with an “innocent” smile.

“Oh! That’s easy! He’s got these beautiful dark eyes that you can easily get lost in. They’re this gorgeous shade of amber brown that have this nice green in them that remind me of moss in the forest. Oh! And when they catch the light just right they’re so bright and I get butterflies. And speaking of butterflies, when he smiles at me I can’t help but feel like I’m going to pass out from how beautifully warm and overwhelming it is-”

“Alright,” Danny squeaked out, his voice cracking as his face began to heat up, “that’s enough.”

“No, no, we’re just getting to the good part. Sam, what else about Danny do you like?” Danny bared his teeth at Jake. He knew it was ineffective, what, with his face burning as bright as a stop light.

“Oh, his arms are really nice. I love it when he picks me up because then I can feel them flexing and it makes me all dizzy.” Sam’s voice was dripping in honey. It was so sweet it made Danny’s stomach ache.

“Really? And what about his freckles?”

“One of his best features, definitely. They get all dark and prominent in the summer when he gets more sun. He’s got 137 of them!”

“Alright that’s-”

“And what about Danny’s personality?”

“He’s the sweetest guy ever! I swear, he’s so sweet he gives me cavities. Like this one time, I was feeling really down in the dumps and then Danny went out of his way to get me a case of my favorite beer and made me laugh so hard I nearly pissed myself. He just knows me sooooo well. And also he takes care of Rose the best and he is always so gentle and loving with her… what isn’t there to love?”

“Ok, show’s over. We’re done here,” Daniel firmly decided, reaching out to yank Jake’s phone away from him and end the recording, holding it out of Jake’s reach as he tried to grab it back from him.

Danny tossed it back at him when he was done, watching the guitarist nearly fumble the device to the ground. He shot Danny a confused look at his shift in mood, but he didn’t respond. He simply held onto Sam’s arms as he turned the two of them around and made for the door.

As they walked to the car, Daniel pointedly did not think about the fact that Sam apparently just seemed to know how many freckles Danny had off the top of his head. Or how that made his heart flutter within his chest.

+++

The car ride back was considerably less dangerous than the drive over; Sam hadn’t tried to climb into Danny’s lap since he preemptively laced their fingers together. However, Sammy hadn’t stopped talking. And it wasn’t his usual babbling, no. It was much worse.

“I love you.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I know.” The shock of it had worn off at the thirtieth time Sammy had confessed it to Danny, that first time making the drummer jump out of his skin. Now it was just getting annoying, like the beep of a smoke detector.

“You’re really hot,” Sam giggled, leaning his head across the consul and bumping it into Danny’s shoulder.

Danny just groaned, throwing his head into the headrest behind him and asking god what he did wrong to deserve this cruel and unusual punishment. It was one thing to toy with his destiny, it was another entirely to play around with his emotions.

“I hope we fucking crash,” he whined, the light turning green and taking his foot off the brake.

“I hope we fuck.”

Daniel felt his foot involuntarily slam down on the gas, forcing the both of them to jerk back in their seats as the engine loudly revved like an animal letting out a warning growl. Danny whipped his head over to Sam briefly, taking in his lashes batting flirtatiously and his wolfish grin. The driver felt his heart pounding in his chest, ripping his eyes away from his distracting passenger and forcing himself to look at the road.

“What?” he croaked out, not really wanting to hear it again but also wanting to know if he heard Sam right.

“You heard me,” was all Sam spoke in response, a dangerously flirtatious edge to his words that made Danny’s heart lurch in his chest.

“Just… Just keep those thoughts to yourself, ok?”

“Ok!” Sam cheerfully agreed, settling back down onto Danny’s shoulder. That was another thing about this that was driving Daniel slowly insane: Sam did almost everything Danny asked of him.

He was so, utterly fucked.

+++

“Ok, so Greta must be a popular name among artists or something because the fair organizer said there were about thirty booths registered under that name,” Jake explained after hanging up the phone. He tapped his pen on the pad of paper he’d been writing on idly, turned towards Danny’s spot on his couch. Sammy had tackled him onto it, curling up right against his chest like an oversized dog and refused to move.

“Did she give you the list of businesses, too?” Danny asked, having to crane his neck to look over at Jake.

“Yeah, and I was able to cross off a few of them already,” Jake answered, swiping away at his phone again.

“Nice work,” Danny praised, his eyes darting back to his phone. He and Josh had taken on scrolling through Danny’s instagram mentions in order to try and find the famed Greta. And, Jesus, people really loved tagging him in shit. They had been at it for hours and were still only finding posts from about two weeks ago.

“Is this her?” Josh hoisted his phone up into Danny’s field of view. Danny squinted as he analyzed the woman’s face.

“No,” he groaned, his frustration mounting as they had zero luck.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Sam like this, it was just… It was too much. Yeah, maybe Danny had been dreaming about this exact scenario for years, but this wasn’t how he wanted to get it. He’d felt guilt slam into him with every touch Sam bestowed upon him as he remembered that Sam wasn’t in control of his actions. It was that stupid fucking potion that was making Sam all cuddly and cute; the normal Sam would never do that. The normal Sam wouldn’t repeatedly confess his love for Danny in a myriad of ways, or kiss his neck and cheeks, or cling to him every second of the day. No matter how badly Danny wanted it to be true, Sam just wasn’t in love with Danny like the drummer was in love with the bassist.

And that was the time that Sam decided to stir just enough to burrow deeper into his embrace with Daniel, grumbling something under his breath that was reminiscent of a cat purring. And just like it never happened, Sam fell back asleep again. Danny watched for a bit too long as Sam’s chest rose and fell with each even breath he took, his face held in a content smile as he dreamed away.

“Man, I haven’t seen him curled up with someone like that since we were kids,” Josh commented, taking a break from his endless scrolling to crack his neck and stretch. He had watched the whole thing, Sam’s stirring and Daniel’s flush creeping onto his face as he gazed down at the cozy bass player.

“What do you mean?” Danny had moved his own phone out of the way to properly look at Josh. The man had taken to sitting on the floor with his back against the couch that Sam and Danny were laying on.

“The last time he looked that content while sleeping was probably when he was about eight-ish; that was when he stopped taking naps with mom,” the singer explained, his eyes cast upwards as if searching the farthest reaches of his mind.

“What, are you calling me his mother?” Daniel felt his face pinch into one of disgust as he remembered what Sam had sprung on him during the ride over.

“No, what he’s saying is Sam has always liked to cuddle, but only feels comfortable doing it with certain people,” Jake clarified, not even bothering to look up from his notepad.

“Yeah, he’s never done that with us. And, now that I think about it, he’s never done that with his girlfriends, either. At least, from what I’ve seen, anyway,” Josh added, rambling just a tad at the end. He even brought his hand up to his chin as he thought, his fingers stroking the hair on it absently.

Daniel had no idea what to do with that particular bit of information, so he elected to shove it into his mental box labeled “The Sam Incident” to be ignored until further notice. It was starting to become alarmingly full.

He went back to his scrolling, his eyes beginning to burn with how long he’d been staring at the screen. He wasn’t aware that he’d taken to running his fingers through Sam’s hair and absently playing with it as he focused on finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Right when he was about to take a break and grab something to eat, he spotted her.

“AHA!” he exclaimed, bolting upright and rudely jolting Sam out of his peaceful slumber. The bassist even grumbled, rubbing at his eyes and shooting a grumpy look at his personal pillow for the violent awakening. Danny felt the sympathy ache in his chest for Sam, rubbing a soothing and apologetic hand over Sam’s arm. Though, with how frizzy and staticky his hair looked, Daniel had to bite his lip to keep from laughing at Sam.

“You found her?” the twins asked simultaneously, Danny feeling briefly like he was in The Shining as they both gave him the same expression as he looked between them.

Daniel nodded his head, turning his phone around to show the others. Sam took the opportunity to sleepily and unceremoniously flop himself down against the drummer’s chest face first, wrapping his arms around his waist. Danny instinctively placed his hand onto his back to steady him, rubbing it as Sam mumbled something into his chest that Danny could not understand.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Jake, ever the impatient one, urged Daniel. He pushed away from the table he was stationed at, making his way over to lean over the back of the couch to watch the drummer’s screen.

danielrwagner: Hey, so uhhh

danielrwagner: This is going to be a strange question but

danielrwagner: Are you the woman who gave me a vial at an art show a month or so back?

Daniel had set his phone down onto the couch, figuring he’d have to wait a while for a response - if he ever got one, that is. What he didn’t expect was for his phone to buzz almost immediately afterwards.

StarshineGreta: Hi Danny!

StarshineGreta: Yes, that was me

StarshineGreta: Why did someone drink it?

danielrwagner: Yeah

StarshineGreta: Who was it?

Daniel swallowed nervously, glancing down at Sammy who was still wedged into his chest and showing no signs that he was moving anytime soon.

danielrwagner: …Sam

Call from StarshineGreta

“Guys, what should I do?” Daniel panicked, his heart rate kicking up in speed inside his chest as his ringtone started to cheerfully chirp in his hand. He frantically looked back and forth between the twins, looking for their help.

“Answer it!” Josh screeched, his thunderous voice that Daniel normally heard echoing through stadium speakers just as loud and commanding in his living room.

With a nervous bite of his lip, Danny did as he was told.

“Hey, Greta. Just so you know, you're on speaker with… with the whole band,” Daniel greeted, making sure to give her the courtesy of knowing that everyone could hear her. But, it seemed that she didn’t even register what he had said. Instead, she launched right into it.

“Alright, how long ago did he drink it and what are his symptoms?” Her voice was nearly clinical if it weren’t for the clear enthusiasm dripping off her words.

“He drank it at about ten this morning-”

“And he’s acting like a lovesick puppy and won’t leave Daniel alone,” Josh interjected, leaning over so that he was closer to the phone to be heard. Though that wasn’t really necessary since the man had shouted, anyway.

“Yeah, Sam won’t stop touching and cuddling him and if he tells him to quit it he gets all mopey and sad,” Jake added, flashing Danny a grin that Daniel merely glared at. She really didn’t need to know all that.

The beat of silence that followed made Danny’s nerves spike into the stratosphere. What he didn’t know was that Greta had merely muted her own mic so that she could laugh as boisterously as she wanted to without being heard.

“Interesting. And how much did he drink?”

“Pretty much the whole thing. There’s about an eighth or so left in the bottle, I’d guess,” Daniel informed, feeling as if the vial in his pocket got heavier as he thought about it.

“Wow. Ok, wow. No wonder he’s so clingy,” Greta replied, her surprise seeping into her tone.

“I wouldn’t call him that-”

“Dan. Try standing up.”

Giving Jake a disgruntled look, Daniel tried exactly as suggested. As he did, Sam’s arms tightened around Sam and pulled him back down towards him. “Nooooooooo,” he had whined out in protest, his brow knitting together in a grumpy frown once more as he looked up at Danny through his lashes.

“No,” he said again, this time more firm and accented by Sam’s grip readjusting around Danny’s ribs to pull himself even tighter against Danny’s chest.

When Daniel looked over at the younger twin, he was met with a small yet smug smile of victory.

“Shut up,” he lamely shot back, wanting to cross his arms over his chest but being prevented by a certain bass player. Instead, he just settled his free arm back onto Sam’s back right below where his hair stopped in the middle of his spine.

“Is it a problem that he drank so much?” Josh asked, completely ignoring the exchange that happened between Jake and Daniel.

“Not really, no. The effects will just be stronger than if he had just drank the recommended amount,” Greta explained.

“Will it last longer?” Daniel quickly interjected, the horrifying thought of having to deal with Sam acting like this for a month causing panic to lance through his heart.

“I don’t think so. Maybe a few extra hours, but it should be worn off by tomorrow evening.”

“And how come your potion actually works? Like, why isn’t yours bullshit like the other ‘love potions’ out there?” Jake so delicately questioned.

“Normally, most of mine are but… well…” Daniel did not like how her tone shifted from confident to apprehensive, “I won’t sugar coat it. The potions I make are meant to amplify what emotions are already inside someone. They can’t manufacture love or hate or happiness if they don’t already exist in the person who drank it.”

After she finished her explanation, the room went silent. Daniel felt as if his mind was beginning to overheat inside his skull as he tried to process the information she had just dropped onto them.

“I don’t get it,” Daniel croaked out, feeling as if his mind was halting all function as he stared blankly down at his phone.

“Do you have that potion on you?” Greta’s voice wasn’t scheming, per say, but it was clear she had a plan.

Daniel dug into his front pocket, fishing out the aforementioned vial. He held it up into the air, looking at it and wondering how something so unassuming could flip his world on its axis.

Before the drummer could even respond to Greta, Jake had swiped it out of his hand so quickly Danny could only blink dumbly at the man.

“Josh!” he called before tossing it towards the man.

“Wait-” was all Daniel could get out before the singer had uncapped the vial and tossed it back like it was a shot.

“Ooh, bubblegum flavored,” Josh cooed after he swallowed, flipping the vial in his hand after he replaced the cap.

Daniel just sat frozen in place. Great, now he was going to have to deal with two Kiszkas attached to his hip at all times and he wasn’t going to be able to do anything-

“How ya feeling, Josh?” Jake had asked in a voice reminiscent of a gameshow host from the 70s.

“Honestly, Jake, I feel no different. Daniel, I love you, man, but not like that,” Josh answered, pointing at his little brother curled up into Danny’s chest like an overgrown cat to prove his point.

“So, that means…” Jake prompted, holding out his hand as if to cue Daniel to understand. It didn’t work.

“I still don’t get it. And now I’ll have two of you on top of me-”

“Oh my god,” Josh impatiently groaned, tossing his head back in frustration as he scrubbed a hand down his face.

“Jesus, you’re dumb, Dan,” Jake added, exasperation of his own causing him to pinch the bridge of his nose as he shook his head.

“I’m sure he’ll figure it out eventually,” Greta optimistically offered, her voice cutting through the groaning from the twins.

“But, wait, what should I do? Is there anything I can do to help Sam? Or, like, cure him?” Danny inquired, electing to ignore the twins and their antics.

“You’re just going to have to wait it out,” Greta answered, her voice not even remotely sympathetic to Danny’s plight.

“Thanks for the insight, Greta.” Jake leaned in towards the phone again, giving it a two fingered salute.

“Yeah, and thank you for the free blackmail!” Josh was smiling as he waved at the phone, his tone chipper and not at all matching the devious words he spoke.

“Any time, boys!”

And with that, the call had ended.

“Well, we best get going,” Josh sighed as he got to his feet, stretching his arms over his head.

“Yep. Seems like you and Sam need some time to yourselves.” Jake had playfully nudged his baby brother on the shoulder with his hand, Sam only responding with a half-hearted grunt of annoyance at being jostled.

“Wait, hold on-”

“Goodbye, lovebirds!”

With a slam of the door that carried with it a sense of finality, Daniel was left alone with a love-drugged Sam. In his house. Alone.

“I thought they’d never leave,” Sam yawned, mimicking his older brother from earlier as he stretched his arms above his head, his face pinching together as he did so. Daniel pointedly did not look at the sliver of tan skin the bassist exposed above his waistband as he stretched, a playful teasing of his happy trail poking out briefly.

“Uh, what?”

“The twins! I thought they wouldn’t take the hint,” Sam playfully implied, his hands tracing up from their perch on Daniel’s stomach to his pecs. And that was when he realized that Sammy was straddling his hips and looming above him with a look in his eye and a smirk on his lips that was anything but innocent.

Danny was stuck in his position on the couch, feeling like those butterflies they displayed in glass with those pins that pierced through their wings stabbing through his own limbs. He felt frozen, caught between his own animalistic desire and his morality; the angel and devil on his shoulders waging a war.

“Are you hungry?” Daniel squeaked out, his voice breaking as he shoved Sam off of him and bolted off the couch. He felt like his face was on fire as the rest of his skin prickled with its own heat. He stood himself on the opposite side of the room, all but pressing his back to the wall. He didn’t care what that witch or the twins said; Sammy would never do that.

He’s not himself.

Once Sam recovered from Danny tossing him into the couch, Sam turned those sultry eyes back onto the drummer. “Yeah. For you.”

Daniel gulped. Sam’s voice had purred out of his lips, matching the very clear bedroom eyes he was shooting Daniel. And Danny was not liking how his body was reacting to that.

“I’ll order sushi,” Daniel quickly stated before bolting out of the room and away from Sam as fast as he could.

+++

Dinner was an ordeal. Daniel had to essentially manipulate Sammy into eating, which made him feel like garbage. But, he tried to reassure himself by saying it was for Sam’s own good. And if Danny had to use his powers of suggestion over Sam to do it, then it was just a means to an end. To be fair, it wasn’t like he was forcing Sam to do something like make out with Danny or anything like that. It was just getting him to eat his goddamn sushi.

It also didn’t help that Sam had scooched his chair right up beside Danny’s and would move closer to him each time Danny had tried to move away. And then Sam had tried to feed Danny his food. Which was… an experience.

“C’moooooooooon Danny! It’ll be cute like Lady and the Tramp!” Sam whined, waving his chopsticks in the air.

Daniel, knowing his willpower against Sam was weakening, relented. He huffed out a “fine” and half-heartedly opened his mouth. Sam squealed excitedly before gently picking up a roll with his chopsticks and placing it between Danny’s lips. Daniel figured the pain of Sam’s nagging was worth the pleasure of seeing his brilliantly excited smile as Daniel chewed his sushi.

“Ok, ok, now me!” Sam exclaimed, setting down his chopsticks before opening his mouth wide and sticking out his tongue like he was about to get his tonsils checked.

With an exasperated yet fond sigh, Daniel selected a sushi roll and brought it up to Sam, cupping a hand underneath it to catch it if it fell. As he placed the sushi on Sam’s tongue, Daniel made the mistake of looking his friend in the eyes. When he did, his breath hitched inside his throat. Daniel could feel as the air around them crackled with a charged energy that sparked to life as their gazes met. And Daniel felt himself unable to tear his eyes away from Sam as he slowly pulled his chopsticks away.

When Sam slipped the food into his mouth and began to chew, that was when Daniel was able to look away.

That was a few hours ago. The two of them were once again cuddled up on Danny’s couch, Sam trying his absolute best to get every part of his body touching every part of Daniel’s. They had thrown on a crime procedural show; Bones or Law & Order, Daniel didn’t know. He was far too distracted by how Sam kept attempting to get Danny to kiss him or let him blow him or an assortment of other things that made his face glow bright red.

He’s not in his right mind, Daniel had to keep reminding himself. And he would not break to love-drugged Sam no matter how many times he would flash Danny those puppy eyes that would normally make him fold like a house of cards under a slight breeze.

“Daaaaaaaanyyyyyyyyyy,” Sam sang, wiggling himself onto Danny’s lap in order to plant himself right in front of Daniel’s field of view. He would no longer be ignored, despite the fact that Sam had always had Danny’s full attention; he just was acting as though he hadn’t.

“Sam, I’m trying to watch this,” Daniel weakly protested. He had no idea what the plot of the episode was, much less the actual name of the show.

“Watch me instead,” Sam whined, his shoulders slouching as he theatrically threw his head back in frustration, “you’ve been ignoring me all day.”

“That’s not true-”

“It’s like you don’t love me.” And that was what finally caused Daniel to break his facade. He looked Sam right in the eyes, taking in the pout of his lips and the dejected nature of his eyes. Daniel isn’t ashamed to admit that he felt his chest ache at the sight. There was genuine heartbreak in Sammy’s eyes that did nothing to quell the guilt that had been thrumming through Daniel’s veins all day.

Sam could not have been further from the truth, really. Daniel did love Sam. Like, embarrassingly so. He felt it swelling in his chest every second that he spent with Sam, even when he wasn’t with him. Actually, that was when he felt it the most, when Sam wasn’t with him. Those were the moments when he found himself wishing for the man to be near, feeling his heart long for his calming and wonderful presence.

But, he knew Sam didn’t feel that way about Daniel. Danny knew Sam the best out of everyone on earth; he’d be able to tell who Sam was in love with. It wasn’t Daniel.

“That-That’s not…” Danny didn’t know how to answer that. He really didn’t. He had no idea if Sam would remember anything from this after the potion wore off. He really did not want to risk the most precious thing in his life.

Instead, Daniel just gently lowered Sam’s head down into the crook of his neck, wrapping his arms around Sam in order to pull him as tightly against his chest as he could. If he couldn’t say it, he’d show it.

Sam calmed down after that, apparently perfectly content to just exist inside of Danny’s personal space. It wasn’t long after that Daniel felt drowsiness creep up on him. Despite not doing much moving around considering the human ball and chain known as Samuel Kiszka was attached to him all day prevented that, he was still exhausted. Emotionally, that is. Who knew having the love of your life falsely confessing his love for you would be so draining? Danny sure didn’t.

“Alright,” Danny yawned, reaching for the remote to turn off the tv, “time for bed.”

“Carry me,” Sam murmured, already half asleep against Danny.

“Sam…” Daniel protested with a sigh, knowing that he was going to anyway but hoping Sam would change his mind.

“Please, baby,” the bassist whined, moving his head so that one eye poked out from his curtain of hair to give Danny that wretched Puppy Look.

Like the whipped man that he was, Danny just sighed as his shoulders sagged in defeat. After shuffling around Sam’s limbs to better fit around Danny as he stood, Daniel walked the two of them up to his bedroom. Danny decidedly did not think about what this would look like to an outsider.

“When did you get so heavy,” Danny grunted halfway up the stairs.

“It’s not nice to comment on a lady’s weight,” Sam shot back, his face still completely nuzzled into Danny’s neck. The breath of his words made Daniel have to suppress a shiver.

“Oh, I didn’t know I was talking to a lady.”

Sam giggled, the vibrant and gorgeous sound making Danny’s heart soar.

Jesus, he was so doomed.

+++

It had taken some master level bargaining on Daniel’s part, but he was able to convince Sam to leave him alone long enough so that they could each finish their nighttime routines. Daniel had just loaned Sam a pair of his sleep shorts and a shirt to use as pajamas; the shorts were just a bit too big on Sam and caused the waistband to sit dangerously low on his hips. Daniel found himself having to force his eyes to focus on anything other than that sliver of skin on Sam’s abdomen, which was an incredibly hard task.

Daniel was far from surprised when Sam had climbed into the bed next to him and proceeded to wrap all of his limbs around Danny. It was like the man had managed to find the exact places where he would fit perfectly against Danny like he was meant to be there. Frankly, it was driving Daniel mad.

“Don’t I get a kiss goodnight?” Sam hummed directly into the drummer’s ear, able to feel the vibrations in his best friend’s chest that was pressed into his side.

The question made Danny sigh. He knew what would happen if he said no.

“You’re going to keep going until I snap or give in, won’t you?” Daniel addressed the ceiling, unsure if he was speaking to Sam or god at this point.

“Yep,” Sam replied, popping the P in the word. Daniel could hear the mischievous smile in his words.

Now, it was just a matter of weighing Daniel’s conscience against his desire to get some goddamn rest. And, well, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want to kiss Sam. But, once again, not like this. But… well, it wasn’t like they hadn’t kissed before. It happened a few years ago when they were both drunk; the both of them had laughed it off afterwards, but neither of them spoke of it again. Danny was sure that if he had explained to Sam that he was only doing it to get him to relent so that he could sleep, Sam would understand. Hell, this would be far from the first time Danny had done something Sam had asked of him to get him to shut up so he could sleep.

“Fine,” Daniel had begrudgingly agreed, the word sighed out. But, before he could tell Sam that he was only going to get a quick peck and nothing else, Sam had pounced.

Danny’s cries of protest had been drowned out by the press of Sam’s unfairly soft lips, his facial hair not an unpleasant bristle against his skin. But, no matter how good it felt, Danny couldn’t allow this to continue. There was just one small problem: Sam had managed to snake his hands from where they had wrapped around Danny’s torso to his head. He felt those lithe fingers weave their way into his curls, locking him in place like a boa constrictor did with their prey. No matter how… how hot that was, Daniel was the one in his right mind. He was the one responsible for his own action, so that meant he had to… to… oh, dear lord, Sam’s tongue was soft; feeling like the finest velvet money could buy. It beckoned Daniel’s own tongue, gently pleading with it to slip inside Sam’s mouth. And, truly, who was Danny to argue? And, god forgive him, Sam’s mouth was so warm and inviting, it should be a sin.

Daniel blames his fixation on Sam’s mouth for the reason he failed to notice just how long their kiss had lasted. What finally broke him out of his trance was when Sam’s thigh slipped its way between Daniel’s own, brushing against his interested dick and pulling a surprised yelp from his lips.

Fighting against Sam’s, admittedly strong, grip on his hair, Daniel pulled away from Sam. He made sure to physically push away Sam’s thigh from its spot between Danny’s legs, knowing that should have been his first act. He was out of breath; another indicator for just how he had failed to be responsible. And looking into Sam’s confused and hurt eyes did nothing to help the guilt mushrooming within his chest.

“You’ll thank me later,” Daniel explained, even sounding out of breath as he tried to put as much distance between himself and Sam as the love-drugged man would allow. Or you’ll hate me later.

“But what about here and now?” Sam whined, closing the precious distance Danny had built up.

“You got what you wanted-” and fucking then some, “-just go to sleep.”

“Daaaaaaaan-”

“Go to sleep, Sam.” Daniel snapped, immediately regretting his tone as soon as he saw the genuine hurt in those amber eyes.

With a scowl, Sam settled down into the sheets. What hurt the most, though, was when Sam had retracted all of his limbs from where they intertwined with Daniel’s, flipping on his side to face away from his best friend. Despite having wished for it all day, Danny had no idea it would hurt so fucking much.

Even though he wanted to so fucking badly, Daniel did not reconcile the situation. It was for the best, he had to tell himself. This way, Daniel would be able to actually sleep and Sam wouldn’t be as weirded out towards Danny when he inevitably snapped out of this spell.

It was for the best.

Then why does it feel so wrong?

+++

Daniel had gotten no sleep.

Despite how much he tried, it seemed that every time he closed his eyes he was met by the image of Sammy’s disappointed face. He knew, deep down, that it was the right thing for him to do, to push Sam away like that. But that really was a thin comfort when the hurt in Sam’s eyes before he disentangled himself from Danny was still playing on loop in his head. Isn’t that what he had been trying to avoid this whole time? Hurting Sam? And, somehow, he had managed to do just that. It was frustrating and exhausting and Danny just wanted to get some fucking sleep.

Through the night, however, Sam had managed to intertwine himself once more with Danny. It felt like a hollow victory. And when he eventually, slowly, woke up, Sam had seemed to be completely over their spat from the night prior.

He had simply stretched his arms over his head, his hair a mess of tangles and static, and asked Daniel about breakfast. How Danny had wished that he could just brush off what happened the night prior.

The rest of the day had happened much like the day before; Sam refusing to let Danny stray too far from his touch. It had been inconvenient as Danny tried to go about his day with another person attached to him at the hip. However, he was able to adapt by lunch time. Sammy was still whispering things in his ear that made his blood simmer in his veins and did nothing to suppress his guilt at what images and scenarios his brain supplied him with.

Daniel had resigned himself to the fact that his day now would revolve around Sam entirely. He had wanted to go to the grocery store to restock his fridge that was becoming barren, but he knew there was the possibility that someone would recognize the two of them and their… compromising position.

So, instead of going out and being productive like he had wanted to, he sequestered the two of them to his house. They settled on a Harry Potter marathon, Daniel once again unable to focus on the screen whatsoever with Sam pawing at him continuously. Daniel had ordered food and plopped the two of them on the couch.

By the fourth movie, Sam had fallen asleep in Danny’s lap. Daniel, now with those doe eyes off of him, felt that he was finally able to end his guise of watching the screen. It had reached the late afternoon, that golden light sun streaming in through the windows of his living room and highlighting the lazy dust mites floating in the air. Most devastatingly, however, was how that sun had focused on Sammy’s profile. The man looked angelic, ethereal in a way that should not be feasible for a mortal. His hair glowed a golden hue, making it look like a halo was crowned onto his head. It made Danny’s heart ache within his chest.

Daniel had been so distracted by how gorgeous his best friend looked that he failed to really notice that Sammy was beginning to wake up.

“Daniel?” Sam’s voice was gravelly again. Danny felt his eyes focus on Sam’s, snapping him back into his own mind.

“Sam?”

“Wh… What happened?” Sam had lifted himself off of Danny’s chest, sliding a hand from where it rested on the small of Danny’s back to grab at his head. He blinked rapidly, sweeping his eyes around the room as if it was foreign to him with a grimace on his face.

“How much do you remember?”

There was a pause before Sam responded, his eyes sliding their focus in on Danny’s. “Remember? Dan, I’m not missing any time.”

And if that didn’t make Daniel’s blood run cold.

“So… So…” Danny couldn’t spit it out. No matter how much he wanted to, he just couldn’t say that Sam knew everything. That would make it real.

“So… what happened?” Sam prompted again, seeming to be more lucid with each passing second.

Danny involuntarily gulped, feeling a cold sweat breaking out across his skin. Why was he so nervous? It wasn’t that hard to say what happened; he already told the twins. So why the hell was it so difficult to look Sam in the eye.

“You… You remember that vial from my jacket that you drank?”

“Mhm, tasted like bubblegum.”

“...Yeah. Well, that uhh…”

Oh, for fucks sake! Just say it!

“It was a love potion,” Daniel rushed out, the words all mushing together to sound like one long word.

Another beat of silence passed between the two, Sam staring down at Daniel from his perch in his lap and Daniel looking everywhere he could that wasn’t Sam’s eyes. He really wished Sam would move, it would at least help the raging blush on his cheeks. At least slightly.

“Oh, sick!!”

Finally, Daniel looked Sam in the eye. Of all the ways he had forecasted that Sam would react to that information, enthusiasm and whimsy was not even on the list. He had expected Sam to get awkward, to politely remove himself from Danny’s touch and make an exit as quickly as possible. He had far from expected Sam to link his hands behind Danny’s neck and eagerly inquire about the potion.

“Dude, that’s so cool! You know what this means, don’t you??”

“...No?”

“Magic is real! And we just proved it!!” Sam’s smile was huge, bright enough to outshine the sun.

“Sam-”

“So, like, how does it actually work? Like, I remember that conversation we had with the witch about it only affecting those who already are in love, or whatever, but did she say the actual mechanics of how it worked? Like, is there a special ingredient that it needs to work?” Sam reminded Danny of a puppy in that moment. His eyes were bright and full of enthusiasm, his entire body buzzing with an energy that made it impossible for him to sit still.

This time, it was Daniel who failed to give a timely response. His mind was too busy reeling over what Sam had glossed over during his rambling to properly process the man’s question. Realizing that the reason Sam was looking at him so expectantly was due to him waiting on the drummer, Danny shook his head to force it to work.

“H-Hold on,” he began, taking a hand that had rested on Sam’s waist and bringing it up to his forehead, “you… you remember that conversation?? You were asleep!!”

Danny hadn’t meant for his voice to come out like a screech, however he was just so damn confused that he really couldn’t focus the brain power on proper speech etiquette.

“What?” Now it was Sam’s turn to knit his brow in confusion. “Oh, yeah! No, I was just faking it. It’s an old trick I pull out sometimes to get out of work; I started doing it so that Jake, Josh, and Ronnie were stuck doing chores instead of me.”

Daniel felt like he was losing his mind. How was Sam so goddamn chipper about this??

“Ok. Ok. Oh my god.” Daniel forced himself to take a breath. It felt as if his entire world was crumbling beneath his feet and his brain was struggling to keep up with the rapidly shifting terrain.

“So, you remember that whole conversation.” It wasn’t a question, though Danny had intended it to be.

“Yep!” Danny felt a piece of his soul die at the chipper tone Sam used. He elected to ignore it.

“And… that means you understand how it actually works…”

“Apparently better than you did, Danny Boy,” Sam snarked, a playful grin that bordered on flirtatious spreading across his lips.

Danny could only stare incredulously at Sam.

“And you’re ok with it??”

“...Yeah,” Sam answered slowly, “I already knew I was in love with you.”

And that, right there, was how Daniel Wagner died. In retrospect, he had a good go of it. He was able to follow his dreams, be a rockstar. If he had to pick one, he’d say his one regret in life was ever befriending Samuel fucking Kiszka. It would have saved his life, after all.

“Danny?”

Sammy’s voice snapped him out of his cardiac arrest, pulling him back to the present.

“Y-You… You…” Once again, Daniel felt like his brain was melting out of his head and pouring out of his ears. This can’t be real. Like, it just can’t. “You already… me??”

“Yeah…” Sammy was looking at him strangely, as if Danny were the one acting weird.

“You realize what you just told me, right??”

“I don’t understand why you’re acting so surprised. You already knew this.”

Danny tried to follow Sam’s logic in his head, he really did. He was still under the spell. He had to be. It was the only way Sam’s behavior made any sense to him.

“Sam… you were drugged, ok? I don’t know exactly how, but those… your… actions were not your own,” Danny tried to explain, careful and gentle as possible.

Then, it was as if a lightbulb went off inside Sam’s head. Daniel felt relief hit him; finally Sam got it. They could move past this and save their friendship.

“Daniel, look at me,” Sammy slid his hands from behind Daniel’s neck to rest them on the sides of his face, positioning it so that Danny had to look at him, “I am not under any spell right now. I am in my sane mind, do you get me?”

Danny opened his mouth to speak, but Sam cut him off before he had the ability to protest.

“I am so fucking in love with you. Like, so fucking in love it’s probably illegal. And that was why the potion worked. Because I am in love with you. If I wasn’t, it wouldn’t have worked at all… do you understand what I am telling you in very clear, not-able-to-be-misinterpreted words?” Sam had said every sentence slowly and with a gravity to it that left no room for debate. They were spoken as fact; as law. Just how energy cannot be created nor destroyed, Sam Kiszka was in love with Daniel Wagner.

Yet Daniel still had a hard time grasping the concept.

“But… all that… that cuddling and-and kissing and all that… you’ve never acted that way before,” Daniel reasoned, believing this to be the work of the potion and hard evidence to support that belief.

Sam just laughed, the noise warming up the ice that had frozen in Danny’s veins.

“I always wanna kiss you, Daniel. The only reason I hadn’t yet was because I didn’t think you wanted me that way. And before you try and say it was the potion forcing me, it just never occurred to me to not act upon my feelings.”

Danny was still apprehensive, unable to fully grapple with the concept that Sam wanted to kiss him at all times. But, he was beginning to see what everyone had been telling him the past 24 hours.

“...Prove it.”

With nothing but a quick “ok” spoken under his breath, Sam wasted no time launching forward and locking his lips with Danny’s. His hands slid from Danny’s cheeks to the back of his head, manipulating it so that Sam could tip it back and deepen the kiss. Once again, Danny felt dizzy. But, unlike the other kiss the two of them shared last night, this one was quick and urgent. Sam had something to prove and he was not about to let Daniel walk away from this without getting his point through Danny’s thick skull.

It was Sam who eventually pulled away, having to gasp for air.

“Holy shit,” Danny panted, his head feeling woozy as he took in the sight of his best friend looking absolutely ruined, yet giddy just from his lips.

“Yeah,” Sam breathed in response, his smile turning dopey as he laughed.

“You… You love me…”

Danny watched in real time the excitement and shock that flooded Sam’s eyes.

“Oh, thank fucking god,” Sam quickly uttered, throwing his head back, “YOU FINALLY GET IT!” Sam had taken to shaking Danny by the shoulders.

“That’s actually great news because I’m also in love with you,” Daniel admitted, a giddiness of his own flooding his veins at finally being able to say those words out loud to Sam.

“I would fucking hope so, you dense idiot.” There was no malice in Sam’s words. Quite the opposite, really. He had leaned back down onto Danny’s chest, burying his face into Danny’s neck as they embraced.

“Wait… when did you-”

“Truthfully? When we graduated.”

Daniel started to process what that meant. Since we graduated…

“YOU MEAN WE ACTUALLY COULD’VE FUCKED THIS WHOLE TIME??”

+++

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#greta van fleet #greta van fic #danny wagner #sam kiszka #jake kiszka #josh kiszka #daniel robert wagner #samuel francis kiszka #danny gvf #sammy gvf #jake gvf #josh gvf #samuel kiszka x daniel wagner #sanny gvf #sam x danny #greta van fluff

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five-rivers · 1 year

Text

Buried in the Woods

@snops Hello! I'm your Truce gifter this year! I went after your 1st and 3rd prompts. Cryptid vibes and Corpse AU. Enjoy! >:)

They’re waiting for him, this time.

They don’t, always. Usually, he’s faster than they are, and sometimes they can’t make it at all. A few, very harrowing times, he couldn’t make it.

But here, now, they’re waiting, each one leaning against a tree trunk. The hillside below then is dotted with charred and broken tree stumps that rise straight from the ground like monuments. The moon is high, white, and sharp, cut from the sky with a razor. Everything is cold, still, quiet.

Sam raises cupped hands to her mouth and blows through them, ignoring the dirt on her fingers and under her nails. It’s not any worse than digging in her garden. The shovels are a bit bigger, that’s all.

Tucker has taken out his PDA again. He shouldn’t. Not here. The screen is bright, and someone might see it. But he can’t help but check the time, again, squinting through the fog of his breath to see the numbers. It’s late. But that’s not going to change in a hurry.

Almost as one, they look down the hill, their attention drawn taught. Something is moving down there.

Surreptitiously, Sam puts a boot on the blade of her shovel, levering it up and into her hand. Tucker reaches out for his, fingers brushing the smooth wooden handle, not yet pulling it free of the ground.

They wait, still and cautious. No matter how many times they do this, they’re never entirely at ease.

Then two spots of green, bright and alien, flare up at them from the dark. If either of them had been carrying a flashlight, the green could have been mistaken for an animal’s eyeshine.

They weren’t. It wasn’t.

Slowly, the thing in the dark comes up the hill. It walks slowly, ponderously, its gait uneven. Every once in a while, that green flashes again.

The clear cold light of the moon provides a silhouette, eventually. A black hole in the night. A human-like figure, a body thrown over one of its shoulders, a shovel propped on the other. It is stooped, slightly, under the weight, but the way it moves could tell anyone it had done this before. Its eyes are flat, green coins.

Sam blinks once, twice, three times. Tucker just waits, still as stone. Reality shifts. No longer is the thing in front of them a shadow cut from nightmare, but their friend, Danny. Normal, human, puny, blue-eyed Danny, who, for some reason, thinks it’s acceptable to wear a t-shirt in this weather and at this time of night. He looks exhausted, and perhaps a little embarrassed. Nothing frightening here.

Other than the fact he’s carrying his own corpse over his shoulder.

“You didn’t need to bring your own shovel, man,” says Tucker, compulsively pulling his PDA out again. “We already got everything dug.” He sounds worried.

Danny cringes. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you wait that long.” He drums his fingers on the shaft of his shovel and adjusts his grip on the body.

“It’s fine. Let’s just get under cover.” Sam turns and walks back, into the less-burned part of the forest. She can hear Tucker following her. Danny is, as always, silent.

“Oof,” says Danny.

“Huh? Something wrong?” asks Tucker.

“Just walked over my own grave, that’s all.” Danny offers them a smile that could have been made from the same fabric as the moon – although with a far less steady hand.

The response is a groan, as loud as they dare.

“We’re going to have to change locations, soon.”

And isn’t that the truth? Accidentally digging up one grave was one grave too many, and it isn’t as if they could mark them. What they are doing is illegal, both in the ‘this is literally against state, federal, county, and municipal law’ sense, and the more metaphorical ‘this is an affront to the laws of nature’ sense.

They reach their handiwork of the night before much longer. The grave isn’t nice and rectangular, but they gave up on that early on. It’s deep, and big enough to take what Danny’s been carrying. That’s enough.

Danny promptly drops his corpse into the hole. The sound of a corpse hitting the ground like that—It isn’t exactly indescribable, and it isn’t exactly unique, but…

It sure is a sound.

They stare at it, for a long moment. It feels, even after all this time, that they should say something, do something, to commemorate the moment, to lay the body to rest.

But they don’t.

Danny hefts his shovel and starts the work of pushing the dirt back in. Shovelful by shovelful, the body is hidden from view. Covered up. Tucked in.

“Well,” says Danny. “That’s that for tonight.”

They go back, down through the trees. Sometimes, when he steps into the shadows of the trees, Danny goes dark again, his eyes green and glowing, but those moments become fewer and further between as they leave the fresh grave behind. As they leave Danny’s latest death behind. As Danny becomes more alive.

“Who was it tonight?” asks Tucker. “Or was it more of a what this time?”

“Ember,” says Danny.

“That was fast, for her.”

“She wasn’t here for a fight, this time.” Danny shrugs. “Convinced her to ride my death back across the line pretty easy. It’s almost as if—”

He stops, tilts his head to one side. Shadows strobe across him.

“Danny?” asks Sam.

“Something’s here,” says Danny, his voice flat and empty, and then he's gone.

If there is one thing that is impossible for Sam and Tucker to get used to, it is the sight of their friend dropping dead.

Sam hisses through her teeth and crouches down. “He couldn’t even tell us who it is first?”

“It can’t be anyone too strong,” says Tucker. “He wouldn’t risk wasting a death.” He thumbs open the timer on his PDA. Six minutes. On average, a human death held a viable door open for six minutes.

Sam shoots him a skeptical look and he winces. There is, on occasion, a wildness in Danny's eyes beyond the green.

But it’s too late to talk about that now. The moon-cast shadows undulate across the ground, twitching and fluttering like living things. It's ink and blackness and the trees bending away from the sky to reveal stars that were both too close and too green.

The dark isn’t the only thing there. There's something artificial, a presence the forest resists. An intruder. An outsider. A predator, stalking, hunting, not looking for them, but it doesn’t care about collateral damage.

Sam curses under her breath. “Skulker.”

The two ghosts clash and writhe, dead, unmade things in a place they should not exist. They give the body, the corpse, a wide berth, Skulker not willing to get close enough to the body and the door for Danny to push him through, and Danny clearly not wanting Skulker to get too close to Sam and Tucker.

The problem with Skulker is that he’s always been out for blood. Danny is his current prey, but that isn’t a good thing to count on.

“Do you think Vlad let him through again?” whispers Tucker, his words standing stark against the silence.

It’s probable. There aren’t enough human deaths in Amity Park to justify how often certain ghosts return. Any death can make a door, even a plant’s, even an animal’s, but those doors are usually too small and too brief for ghosts like Skulker to get through, if they aren’t called to them specifically. But someone like Vlad or Danny can die again and again, as many times as needed.

Tucker sees Danny’s body twitch and he yelps, putting a tree between him and it. Sam is more proactive. She brings the flat of her shovel down on its head. The ghosts that leak out are stripes of neon against dark grass. The light is swallowed by the empty places between the trees.

“How much time?” she asks Tucker breathlessly.

“Three minutes,” he says, holding up his PDA.

“We need to get out of here.”

“What? But—”

She grabs his wrist and hauls him into the dark.

It isn’t only black in there. Star-flashes and moonlight twinkle and strobe as they run. There are eyes, green and uncountable. There is sound – gunfire swallowed by snow, the twang of bowstrings, the last gasp of prey, devoured. The trees slide by them, studiously avoiding their path. Soft mounds of earth flicker with gentle stars, the ground beneath them a mirror of the sky above. It is like running between two mirrors.

This landscape, Sam realizes, a little late, does not favor Skulker very much at all. Not here, in Danny’s own personal graveyard.

And the shadows retreat, pulled away like ink being absorbed by a napkin.

Sam and Tucker look back, over their shoulders. Two green eyes stare at them from what isn’t, in retrospect, very far away at all. Danny’s body lies on the ground below, barely visible. The eyes do not leave them, even as the shadow they are in stoops to pluck the shovel from the limp hand of Danny’s body and start digging.

The shadows beneath the trees don’t seem very dark anymore. The moonlight is almost blinding.

The timer on Tucker’s PDA goes off, loudly. He hisses at it, annoyed that, somewhere along the way, he’d turned the volume on.

“Heck,” says Sam.

“Yeah,” agrees Tucker, vehemently. “Where’d my shovel go?”

They find it before too long. There aren’t too many places it could have gone. They join Danny in digging. Two graves in one night are really too much, but they’ve done more, and they’ve done worse. They aren’t like Vlad, can’t just let them build up until it’s efficient to dispose of them, or whatever he does. Something tells them that whatever is probably worse than they’re imagining.

Between blinks, Danny is himself again, and the grave is finished before the moon starts to set.

It is late. It is early. It is time to go home.

The thing about three teenagers with shovels walking the city streets at night is that they’re noticed. Amity Park isn’t New York, but any city worth its name stirs in its sleep. Midnight flights to the airport, inadvisably long bachelor parties, late movies, insomnia, homelessness.

Tucker’s been monitoring the ghost hunting and cryptid forums for a while, and he’s emailed Danny links to each one that mentions him. Sam has clippings from the paper about calls to animal control about something with green eyes, about something that couldn’t possibly be human. Then, of course, there are the calls to the police about something dragging or carrying bodies from all sorts of places.

There had been an investigation at one point. There had to be. But nothing had been found. There hadn’t been anything to find. No missing bodies, no mysterious disappearances, no deaths. Just a green-eyed shadow and its mysterious companions.

Sam knows her parents, at least, think the whole thing is a prank. Tucker’s think it is people seeing things when there was nothing there, like bigfoot. The less said about what Danny’s parents think about it, the better.

Sam’s house is furthest from the center of town, and they drop her off first, the shadows on the trellis giving her a boost when she climbed. Tucker and Danny then have the typical argument about whether it’s better to bring Tucker or Danny home first. Danny, Tucker argues, has just fought not one, but two ghosts. Tucker, Danny argues, cannot come back from the dead. Danny wins, as usual.

That leaves Danny, real and not, alive and not, to wander home. He waves cheerfully at a drunk who watches him pass with wide eyes and turns onto his street. He breathes in, deeply, tasting the ash that still flavors the air all these months later. He opens his eyes just in time for the winter sun to beam through the skeleton of one of the buildings that bracket the crater that was once Fentonworks.

No one lives here anymore.

No one is waiting for him.

Danny walks down into the darkness and disappears.

#danny phantom #winter truce #snops #prompt fill #corpse au #cryptid vibes

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theerurishipper · 4 months

Note

Hi~ Hope you have a lovely day. I want to get your opinions on my rant lol and ask.

Marinette is such a disappointment of a lead female character in a western magical girl cartoon. She isn't a good leader and all her team consist of yes men and women and sidekick Chat Noir where her real partner Alya is standing over to the side. I liked her in the first two season and maybe some in s3 but the s4 and onward just got to me ngl. It's her world and we're all just living in it. Miraculous is so weird when it comes to team dynamics because I get she's guardian but I really wished it were someone else and not her because she chooses people she already get along great with. It fun for team dynamics to add be different and broader.

The whole she's just 14 the fandom spouts only goes so far how many messes do you do until you realise you need to own up to them even at that age when you should know better on your conduct ?

I get it hard to communicate but onwards I always thought the bigger of the two in the conflict was her because of her secrecy and her controlling tendencies. I disliked it so much in the ephemeral episode and her betraying her partner disgusted me. Sorry to those who like or defend her character this much but I can't stan or like a character that does this much crap to a friend let alone a love interest and then gloss over or minimize it and not be called out for it. Like, are people standards that low they think she's a good leader or a good proper representation on feminism when this show reeks of misogyny and misandry. She's the ultimatum voice for Astruc.

A communication issue with her Chat was fine a long time ago but now in s5 she crossed it hell nah how do people still support a ship with her knowing she followed Hawkmoth command for Adrien. I literally can't anymore with this show. Every guy she likes gotta be so 100 percent in effort and like in the Shadybug special him always comforting her makes me so jaded whenever she cries what about a change in dynamics had we ever seen her comfort him in turn how are people invested in this ship? Like that time in the bench and she just thought of ways to woo or give presents instead of just comforting him is so sad to watch.

She really followed in Master Fu steps. The bar is in hell and she crossed it in the finale. There is no excuse no handwaving it away and i know in my heart they gonna minimize it for Adrien own good. Everything is for his own good huh? What good is it rooting for a ship that just reeks of pity points. Like, she was never my favorite but who knew 8 years ago she'd pull a stunt like this and people bending over and doing mental gymnastics to rationalise this insanity. She really is a good foil to Gabriel ironically to bad she has no sway in this family drama we call the Agreste.

I know she has good intentions and it's not wrong for her to wish to save her prince but like thats all that is intention. Her actions are also important and the effects she's done is so bad that if she weren't the Main character and we haven't spent the chunk of the majority in her pov alone she'd be disliked.

I feel like compared to other respective series Winx Club s1-3 Bloom, Danny Phantom, Ben 10, Totally Spies they have it much more harder and so many more all show the consequences of your actions and how you do them right and they're her age. I feel like whenever someone bring up consequences it's like people in this particular fandom think we do it to punish Marinette but no I just never ever saw it properly done in this show because she's very coddled in the narrative. I don't see other MC as coddled as her before in a show where when they MESS UP it's actually integral and important.

Rant over.

You encapsulated all my thoughts perfectly, anon. I've said so many times before that I loved Marinette from Season 1-3 and even during Season 4 as it aired. What made me fall out of love with her character post Season 4 was the utter lack of acknowledgement of her actions and the insistence in portraying her as in the right at all times. Like you said, it's not just your intentions that matter. Your actions and the effects that they have on the people around you also matter. The writers don't seem to understand this, and it hits Marinette's character worst of all. She had so much potential to be such a great character, which is why I feel so sad seeing just how badly the writing failed her. Marinette deserved better.

Thank you for your ask!

#MLB #ML Salt #ML Writing Salt #ML Writers Salt #Marinette Salt #Meta #Asks

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nat-space-obsessed · 24 days

Text

"I'm 23." "No, You're Not."

Crossposted on AO3!

It turns out to be very hard to get a tattoo when you look eternally 14.

Prompt by @charcoalhawk

"Kid, You're like twelve. That's a fake ID. I'll get in trouble if I let you get a tattoo here."

"As I said, I am literally 23. I've been 23 for five months now. It is on my ID. I swear to you that my ID is real." Danny repeated for the third time that hour.

Danny had been going to get a tattoo, his second, actually, and both times so far he had come across one issue:

His eternally 14 year old face.

"I told you, this can't be a real ID, you look twelve."

"I look fourteen, thank you very much."

"You realize that doesn't help, don't you?" The girl behind the counter retorted.

No, it doesn't.

One thing about being immortal is that you forget that you are immortal. Danny's ID has his birth date and his current photo. It's not his fault that he looks fourteen!

Actually it is. He's the one who died.

"If I told you it's a health condition, would you believe me?"

"Not without a doctor's note. Either way, kid, even if you are somehow older than 16, you can't get a tattoo even with parental consent. We live in Illinois."

Danny hated being locked out of things due to his perceived age. Even when he was in college, and all of his classmates thought he skipped a bunch of grades to get where he was. Every time he met someone new he had to go through the same spiel.

'I'm nineteen, yes I look young, it's a medical condition, yes I am in my second year of college' yadda yadda yadda. It had been four years and it only got worse.

It was worse when he was going to different age restricted places, such as bars and tattoo parlors, which thought that he was a literal kid.

"Look. I already have a tattoo, isn't that enough??"

"How do I know you didn't have a friend do that for you, huh? I remember middle school with all of the stick-n-pokes."

"Does this look like a stick-n-poke???" No, it doesn't. It was a full color three quarter arm in a neo-traditional style. It was a ghost, because he loves his irony.

Danny kept staring at the girl behind the counter, not blinking the whole time, as she stared at him incredulously.

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave if you keep being a problem."

"I'm not being a problem! You're the one who isn't listening as I try to explain my situation!"

"Kid, you aren't going to get a tattoo from this place." She sighed. "Look, I can call my boss and she can make the final call on it."

"Yes! Please! Do!"

The girl in front of him walked into the back room and called a name that Danny hadn't heard since high school. "Hey! Star!"

Wait, Star?

"What is it now, Kay?" A familiar voice rang out, in an exasperated voice.

"Look, there's this kid at the front who says he's 23, he has an ID that looks like it checks out, but he looks twelve. Literally twelve."

"God, Kay. Just tell him no!" A woman walked out from the back room, and looked at Kay, then made eye contact with Danny.

"Wait, FENTON? Damn, you literally haven't changed since freshman year!" The blonde girl laughed.

"Star! It's been so long, I can't believe you recognize me!" Danny smiled. "You started a tattoo parlor?"

"Yeah, after high school, I decided to apprentice at that one parlor down the road from school? Yeah you know the one, right?"

"I got my first tattoo there! this one," Danny pointed to his three quarter.

"Was it James? I apprenticed under him." Star smiled at Danny.

"Wait, Star, you know this kid?"

"We went to high school together. I was a bit of an asshole, but we made up at the end of senior year! We'd all been through a lot together, you know what they say about trauma bringing people together!"

Danny smirked at Star. "You still in contact with Paulina?" He started, "Have you heard about her new girlfriend?"

"Oh yeah! We had a double date not too long ago, you know, me and Kwan."

"I always thought you and Kwan would get together! You guys were always pretty good with each other."

"WAIT, wait wait, so Star, he's not lying about his age??" The girl behind the counter said.

"Yeah, he's looked that way since freshman year, some sort of medical condition, right?"

"It was a whole thing in senior year, we were comparing yearbook photos, it was so funny to see Dash freak out like that."

Danny and Star laughed at the memory.

"So, can I get my tattoo now?"

"Oh for sure! I'd love to get you started on that, do a quick consultation." Star led Danny to her office in the back.

The girl at the front counter grasped her head in frustration.

#phic phight 2024 #phic phight #danny fenton #danny phantom #fanfiction #ao3 fanfic

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lexosaurus · 5 months

Text

Twelve Hours: Chapter 5

Part 5 of 5 of my fic for Ecto Implosion, the DP reverse mini-bang (artists go first, writers go second)

This chapter is accompanied by art from @tytach AND IT'S SO SO COOL literally screaming crying throwing up I love GIW art so much. Do yourself a solid and check it out!

read on: [ao3]

[see all chapters]

Characters: Danny Fenton, Harriet Chin, GIW Tags: Identity Reveal, Flashbacks, Runaway Danny Fenton, Angst Chapter WC: 4453 Summary: When the GIW revealed Danny to the world, the only thing he could do was run. Run and run and run until he escaped to Chicago, trying desperately to disappear. Too bad it didn’t work.

****

“The day of your arrest, you’d been on the run,” Harriet Chin stated.

“I had,” Danny responded. Even though it’d been years, talking about the actual captivity—or as they’d put it in legal terms, arrest—still made his heart stutter.

Well, most things still made his heart rate pick up.

“They found you in Chicago,” Harriet continued. “And they arrested you at approximately two in the morning in Albany Park. Reports say you’d been in the city all day. First, I just need to ask, why? Why go to Chicago of all places?”

Danny steeled himself. He’d been expecting this. “I thought I could blend in there. I figured there were so many people in the city that everyone would look past another homeless kid. Obviously, that didn’t work. People recognized me.”

“What happened during the arrest? I think most people would have expected you to turn invisible and fly away, but that didn’t happen.”

“It’s not that easy with the Ghost Investigation Ward. Their glasses can see through invisibility, and they had me surrounded.” Danny pressed his lips together, fighting the imagery of him diving into his only chance of escape. It hadn’t worked. “It was futile, anyway.”

Harriet leaned back, a slight awe seeping into her tone as she said, “Three years, huh? That’s a long time.”

It had been. Oh god, it had been an agonizing time. And it probably would have gone on longer if not for Vlad’s incredible legal team.

Of course, that didn’t make Vlad suddenly his best friend. The asshole only really did it to try to make Maddie fall in love with him, that bastard. Well, that and the underlying terror of the government figuring out how to create a halfa, which would have been disastrous.

Thankfully, Danny managed to avoid both potential outcomes there. He’d gotten out, spent a year in and out of surgery, rehab, and PT, and then tried his best to restart his life. He got his GED, signed up for some community college courses, attained an associate degree, then transferred and finished his bachelor's.

It hadn’t been easy or smooth. In between associate and undergraduate degrees, he’d suffered a breakdown and had to take a gap year…or two. Then, after he finished his undergraduate, the soul-crushing reality that he was Danny Phantom and also job hunting so he could move out and really start his life hit him again, and he faltered.

But somehow, he made it. He was still figuring it out, but he was here. Alive.

“I survived,” he decided, setting his jaw.

****

01:00:00

Danny had no idea where he was anymore. He’d run till he found a train stop, then he took that further into the city and switched once. He’d gotten off and walked around—invisibly—his heart pounding in his chest the whole time because even a meager amount of invisibility was enough to ping any agent nearby of his ectosignature. Thankfully, there were no GIW sirens, no white fans, no tall men in white suits ambushing him from the street corners or jumping at him from the alleyways.

Still, just to be extra safe, he got back on the train and rode it for another hour till he’d reached a residential neighborhood, peering out the window before he got off the train to check and double-check for any sign that the Guys in White were waiting for him.

But there was nothing. He was safe. At least, for now, though he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. But when he glanced over his shoulder again and again, he saw no one behind him.

It seemed like the three thugs hadn’t followed the instructions from those horrific billboard signs watching block, they hadn’t dialed 449 to contact the emergency ghost-sighting number, they hadn’t tattled that Danny Fenton Phantom himself was in front of their home, that they’d nearly kicked the shit out of him.

Which, ouch. He touched his cheek, hissing as it whined in return. It was likely thanks to his frayed nerves, growling stomach, and lack of sleep that allowed the bruises to blossom on his skin instead of dwindling to nothing like they typically would with his advanced healing.

By morning, they would probably be gone. So long as he survived the night first, that was.

“If you don’t leave, I’m calling the cops,” a voice behind him growled.

Danny whipped around, his heart suddenly racing in his chest. He nearly forgot to double-check that his hood was tugged safely over his head.

Peering out of a house window was a pudgy, balding man in a wifebeater. His raised eyebrows created rivets in his shiny scalp. He looked to Danny not with recognition, but aggravation, as if Danny were a cockroach trying to sneak into his pantry.

Some strange, queasy filling filled Danny’s stomach. He almost preferred the fear people gave him when they recognized his ghost form to whatever this was.

A raindrop hit his eye, and he cursed, reeling back to wipe his face. “Sorry,” Danny said, glancing around. He was safe from the storm under this banister, but outside it was pouring. “I’m just trying to figure out where to go.”

“You’ve been here for a half fucking hour. Either go home or find a fucking shelter.”

Danny’s silence must have spoken for him.

“Or, don’t,” the man huffed. “I don’t give a shit, just get the fuck off my fucking porch!”

Danny felt like he’d been punched in the face all over again, but he tried to let it go. He tried to not let his head hang so far down as he stepped into the cosmos of rain, which didn’t hesitate to cling onto his hoodie, seeping through the fibers until water kissed his skin.

If the rain’s gentle touch was supposed to be a comfort, it failed miserably. Instead, Danny’s throat tightened, and he failed to block out the gruff, “See? Was that so fucking hard?” from behind him as he made his way to the sidewalk.

Despite his cold core, he shivered. If he didn’t find shelter soon, he was going to be soaked to the bone, and then he would have to have to sleep like that.

“Goddamnit,” he muttered, wrapping his arms around his stomach as he pressed into the night. He had no idea what time it was, but it was late. Most of the city had long since gone to sleep, and yet here he was, still awake, shuffling down the road while water squelched into his converse.

Hairs prickled the back of his neck. He glanced behind him, but no one was there. Not even the man in the window.

He was just being paranoid. That was all.

He walked down the road and passed a half-decrepit brick wall with the GIW logo spray painted on in green. Under it was the DP logo, which someone else embellished with red devil horns.

Don’t look, don’t look…

His bangs were sticking to his forehead now. He could just turn intangible, but if anyone saw him turn transparent, then they’d definitely report him for being a ghost, if not the Phantom.

He would just have to be wet until the air decided he could begin to dry, however long that took.

That ever-present lump in his throat grew like a tumor as he tried to ward away thoughts of his family who were probably home, maybe sleeping, maybe huddled in the living room with bleary eyes glued to the television as they waited to see any news about him.

But he’d made it this far, hadn’t he? Soon he’ll have survived the streets overnight on his own, soon he’ll become adept at blending into the city, and soon no one will give him a second glance. Especially not some busy-body white-suited government employee.

And then maybe his family could go to sleep.

The rain continued, unrelenting, but with his newfound determination, Danny refused to let it weigh him down. Even though his paranoia was telling him to panic, and nausea was at his throat, he wouldn’t turn around, wouldn’t back down.

He would survive.

The houses blurred into each other, and every light out of the corner of his eye seemed to glow green. Every siren in the distance was the unmistakable chirp of the Guys in White vans, and every pattering on the pavement was a clicky black shoe. It was a hell loop that expanded with each step, burning into his eyes, ears, fingers, and core. But it was just his anxiety at play. It was nothing, Danny, it was nothing.

He was fine, of course. Soaked down to his intestines, but fine. And now, he stood below a street lamp facing a tan townhouse with an iron fence outlining its entrance. To its left was a larger, sleeping blue townhouse, and to its right was a short, red-bricked apartment with the anti-ecto billboard hovering over it.

Seriously, how much fucking money had the US Government wasted on advertising their stupid new GIW emergency number?

He turned around, choosing to walk across the street where another row of brick townhouses and apartments stood at his wake.

“Fuck you too,” he hissed, failing to resist tossing a middle finger up to the sign behind him.

As predicted, the sign had little to say in return. Though, perhaps smugly, Danny just pretended it was because he’d won. He’d found an alley, a place to call home—for now. And unless the stupid Guys in White had followed him here—which they hadn’t—then they had lost him. Officially. And Danny would lay low here until the world abated, and then…who knew. He’d figure it out.

He settled onto the wet pavement, not caring that his soaked shoe was edging on a puddle. The rain probably wouldn’t let up for hours anyway. He was just glad Tucker had thought to add that emergency waterproof bag in his backpack for his phone and charger.

If he peered out of the alley, he could still see that odious sign trying its best to get under his skin. He could see the way the sign’s Phantom glared down at passersby with contorted, grisly eyes that promised nothing but agony for anyone who happened to cross his path.

“That’s not true,” Danny whispered to himself, or the sign. “You’ll see. Someday.”

He dropped his head to his knees, fatigue hitting him like a cannonball. Someday…perhaps. But not today.

It was still raining.

****

Harriet leaned forward, the soft glow of the lights against her skin now matching her tone as she asked, “And the people who protested against your release? What would you say to them if they were here?”

“I don’t have anything to say to them. Not anymore,” Danny said truthfully.

“Why is that?” she pressed.

“Because,” he started, cocking his head. Then, his eyes flickered to hers, and he wondered if maybe the outer rings of his pupils were hinting at a green glow. “I don’t have anything to say to a person who thinks that because of who I am, what I am, I should be destined to a life as a science experiment, torn apart and put back together over and over, beaten to the point of collapse and punished for not standing back up. Someone who thinks that when my hands were bound behind my back and I was forced to eat off the floor, or when I was locked for days or weeks in a dark cell, chained to the wall with no one to talk to except myself, that I deserved all this just because some of my blood cells were replaced with ectoplasm. And if that sounds blunt, I don’t care. Anyone who thinks a teenager they’d never met should live that sort of life isn’t a person I wish to try to reason with.”

****

00:00:00

Whomp, whomp, whomp.

Something was beating overhead. A large…bird? Maybe?

Whatever it was, it wasn’t important.

Lethargy wrapped his consciousness back in its warm blanket again, shielding him from the pouring rain that had soaked through every molecule of his body, and his mind…went…

Whomp, whomp, whomp.

It was louder now. Closer. He peeked out from the mental box he’d locked himself into, cracking the lid just enough to notice that the whomp, whomp, whomp didn’t really sound like a bird. And wow, it was really close.

Was that…an issue? It was weird, wasn’t it?

He tried to separate what was normal from what wasn’t, but it was hard, and he was exhausted. Why was he so tired? And wait…why was he wet? Why wasn’t he home in his bed?

Maybe he’d just forgotten to change after patrol that night. Yeah, that had to be it.

But the—wow, that noise was pretty weird.

He craned his neck further out of the box, but his exhaustion protested. If he went much further, he’d never be able to go back to sleep. He was already beginning to notice the crick in his neck, the aching in his back, and the green tint of what was supposed to be only noir behind his eyelids…

Wait.

Green?

He mentally patted his core, but it was completely dormant.

Green…why was…

He wasn’t in his bedroom, was he?

No.

Green! His consciousness yelled, cleaving him from his little mental box. His core spiked, and he ripped his head from his arms to see green lights reflecting off every surface, strobing into the rainy night air.

Adrenaline impaled his pores and snapped him upright, his hands high and glowing before he even knew what to aim at.

The lights flashed more aggressively, and Danny’s heart plummeted. They had him surrounded. Whoever was here, they had him surrounded.

He could have screamed in frustration and sorrow for being so stupid as to get his hopes up that he wasn’t in the streets of Chicago, homeless because the government exposed him and was determined to hunt him down and turn him into their little plaything.

Fucking hell, fuck, it hurt so bad, so fucking bad. It was only a few moments where he believed with every fiber of his being that he was safe and home but he wasn’t and he might as well have let the GIW drive a pike through his heart.

“Freeze,” a deep voice said to his left.

He tried to look up, right, everywhere, everywhere. The helicopter lit a spotlight down on him, and he winced, shielding his sensitive eyes from the glaring supernova of bright, hot light spearing him.

He tried to step away, but the light followed him, and he realized with horror as he turned invisible that the light was still casting a shadow where he stood.

Fuck.

FUCK.

“Stand down!” the voice repeated, deep and throaty.

Operative O, Danny realized, and the shadow mimicked his movements as he backed away from the two prowling figures at the alley entrance.

Lights began flicking on in the surrounding houses, further lighting up the scene around him.

His invisibility flickered in and out. It was useless, either way. All the Operatives were wearing their sunglasses, and Danny knew the only reason they’d be wearing them at two in the morning was if they did more than just block the sunlight.

He turned, and more operatives with more glowing guns stood at the other end of the alley.

Above them, a glowing dome shot out of the helicopter, plunging into the pavement where Danny knew it connected.

Shit. He was trapped.

He dove into the building to his right, stumbling into a hallway with a woman in a bathrobe and a satin hair wrap frozen on the staircase before him. She screamed as if Danny had stabbed her, throwing her body into the wall. Her head hit a picture frame, and it fell, cracking against the wooden planks on the stairs.

“No, no!” Danny raised his arms in a plea, but they were still glowing, and the woman screamed further.

A man appeared at the top of the staircase, a gun in his hand. He didn’t hesitate, shooting Danny at once.

Although human bullets had little effect on an intangible body, he still cried out, “Stop!”

Bullets whizzed through his chest, shoulder, and stomach, and he flinched as holes indented the wall behind him. “I don’t want to hurt you!”

“Oh god, oh god!” the woman wailed. “HELP! HELP, GERALD!”

“GET OUT!” The man, presumably Gerald, bellowed, shooting Danny square in the face. “LEAVE MY WIFE ALONE!”

Danny’s vision blurred, and he stumbled as though he’d actually been shot, “Please, stop! I’m–they’re—”

“Danny Fenton Phantom, we have you surrounded. Please come outside with your hands in the air.”

The woman sank to the floor. “Don’t hurt me. Oh god, don’t hurt me.”

The man was out of bullets now, but he wasn’t finished. He tossed his gun to the side and rolled up his sleeves. Storming down the stairs with fists clenched, he hollered, “You don’t fucking touch my family, you zombie freak!”

Danny stumbled into their kitchen, and green lights flashed into their windows. He tried to put his hands down to steady himself, but his intangibility nearly sent his body careening through a stack of magazines sitting on the table. His hands were shaking—badly—and lightheadedness was encompassing all of his senses and skin with a relentlessness that would surely drive the strongest man insane.

This is it, he thought. Behind him, Gerald’s footsteps had reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Please, stop,” Danny croaked. Though, he had no idea who he was talking to. His hands flew up to his scalp, and he tried to right his head as his throat narrowed into a coffee straw. Before him, green light blinded his vision, pulsing off the beige wallpaper and setting fire to Danny’s entire life.

He felt the man’s fist sail through his head and hit the wall, and he heard the slew of curse words that followed.

“Face me like a man!” Gerald snapped.

“I can’t,” Danny whispered. “I can’t do it. I can’t win.”

“Come out with your hands in the air,” the voice outside repeated.

Danny walked through the man and faced the woman crumbled on the staircase, clutching the picture frame to her heart and weeping gut-wrenching sobs that stabbed through all the layers of panic and adrenaline until he too was crouching down in the hall with Gerald still hovering over him, his intangible hands gripping intangible strands of his hair as he fought the urge to throw up bile all over their weathered wooden hallway.

“Oh god, oh god!” the woman howled.

“I can’t win,” Danny repeated. If he dove underground, the helicopter would just pull him up. If he stayed here, the GIW agents and SWAT would just capture him. But if he went outside, he would be walking straight into the lion’s den.

There was no winning. No way of escape. They knew he was Phantom—they must have been following him—and Danny didn’t have to test it to know that the shield was keyed to his ectosignature, able to affect him no matter which form he took. He could feel it more clearly than any shield-static he’d experienced as a ghost.

He’d been so fucking arrogant before to think he’d escaped them. This was the government, and he was just a kid. Just a goddamn kid from Amity Park with two weird parents and a nerdy sister and oh god, he’d never see them again, and he never got to say goodbye.

Gerald’s footsteps disappeared in front of Danny, and he almost breathed relief before he blinked, realizing what the man was doing.

“No!” Danny yelled, jumping up and tripping over his feet. His intangibility slipped from his skin, and he crashed into a side table, knocking an urn to the floor. It shattered, permeating the floor in gray powder, and Danny reeled, colliding into the bullet-ridden drywall.

“Oh my god,” he gasped, stricken, then turned to face them but it was too late. Gerald was yanking his wife into the foyer and reaching for the door.

“NO!” Danny shot forward, his hand brushing the door handle simultaneously with Gerald. Danny turned them both intangible, and the woman slipped through her husband’s grip with a shriek.

“June!” Gerald cried out, reaching for an arm that was no longer there.

Danny let go, stepping back. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

Gerald turned to him once more, his face setting in fierce determination. “June, get out! I’ll hold him off!”

“No, Gerald!” June scrambled upright.

“GO!” Gerald commanded.

Danny looked into June’s grief and terror-stricken eyes as she pleaded, “Please don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him, please.” And for the first time in his life, Danny felt like every bit the grotesque monster whose eyes bore down from the GIW billboards across every city in America.

He took a step back, and nausea crept further up his throat. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The green light pulsed brighter, faster. The helicopter’s whomp, whomp, whomp swelled to a deafening pressure. The orchestra of dozens of boots arranging themselves in position, sirens wailing in the distance, commanding voices from the street, and the click of the megaphone that Danny could no longer understand blended together until he was sure he couldn’t discern reality from the madness of his mind anymore.

“Please don’t open the door. I’ll die.” Danny’s voice crackled. With dawning horror, he realized this was his final attempt at survival.

“Go, June,” Gerald said, ignoring him.

“I’ll die. They’ll kill me.”

June sobbed, reaching for her husband instead.

He batted her hand away. “I said, go!”

“Please,” Danny begged, his voice weak, but it was useless. This random couple wasn’t listening to him.

They didn’t think he was human enough to deserve a voice in the first place.

June hesitated, her amber eyes crashing into Danny’s one last time before she finally reached for the door.

Danny didn’t stop her.

She slipped out as Gerald made one last valiant attempt at charging Danny, his voice hollering a war cry that echoed down the block.

But Danny stood still, only barely caring enough to turn his body intangible for the man to pass through him before returning to his solid form.

There was the sound of a door opening and closing behind him, and Danny vaguely registered that they must have had a backdoor entrance in their kitchen, but he didn’t move. He could have, probably. He could have stopped Gerald from unlocking the deadbolt and dragged him back into the foyer to use his body like a shield against the GIW agents.

But he could see the billboard taunting him through the open door high above the white vans, green sirens, and teams of men and women dressed in GIW white, SWAT black, and police blue. That damn billboard with those damn eyes that ridiculed him with the warbling, “Is this what you really are?”

A second later, men poured into the foyer to slam Danny to the ground. They turned him over and cuffed his hands behind him. Another set of hands snapped an inhibitor around his neck, there was a shout, and then all touch left his body just before his world was overtaken by electricity. Hot, blazing lightning traveled through his skin, arteries, into the tendrils that connected his core from his body, severing each thread one by one.

It was the portal all over again. Blinding, catastrophic, screaming in his mind before some part of Danny realized it was his voice, it was his screams of pain and torment ripping his lungs from his body and spilling them onto the aged floor.

Then, it stopped, and the only thing left was the smell of burnt hair and his wavering vision.

“Clear!” a man shouted, and hands grabbed him again, this time hauling him up and dragging him across the floor.

“No,” Danny wheezed, but no one heard him. They lugged him down the front steps where dozens of guns were waiting to welcome him.

Suddenly, a hand gripped his scalp, and Danny cried out as his head was forced upright. He blinked, and once his eyes focused, he wished they hadn’t because before him was a lording, square-shouldered figure clothed in white.

“Daniel Fenon Phantom,” Operative O began. “You are in violation of Article 1, Section 1, Sub-section A of the federal Anti-Ecto Control Act and are hereby under arrest. As you are not considered human by federal law, you are not protected under the Fifth Amendment. You do not have Miranda Rights, nor do you have the right to due process. Do I make myself clear?”

Danny didn’t respond, but it didn’t seem to matter. He wasn’t human, so the GIW didn’t need something as silly as his confirmation before they began towing him to a white van that seemed to glow brighter by the second.

“Don’t worry,” Operative O continued, his voice a hiss. “After the last few years of terror you’ve put this country under, I’m going to make sure our time together is special. And you, you, you…”

Operative O threw Danny onto the cushioned GIW van. A click of a button later, and the walls of the car and cage separating the back of the van from the front were lined in an excruciating green light. It sizzled, lapping at Danny’s skin and hair. He squirmed, and it seemed to chortle in response, whispering to not even try, there’s no escape, Danny, no escape at all.

Not that he had the energy to try. His limbs felt like lead, and his head pounded in his ears.

Operative O’s hands were back on him, forcing him upright while another operative strapped his body and legs into the seat.

This was it. He was going to die. Painfully, and slowly, but he was going to die. He would never see his family again. He would never hear Sam and Tucker bicker about food, he’d never laugh at Mr. Lancer trying his hand at teen slang, and he’d never feel the warm, and sometimes crushing embrace of his parents wrapping him in a hug.

He was going to die.

“Let’s see if your nervous system is really as human-like as the reports say. And if it is? Well.” Operative O chuckled, propping an arm over the door. “Well, you’ll be in for a world of pain.”

He shut the door, the bang rattling Danny’s skull. Outside of the van, inaudible chatter of the officers filled the neighborhood, but inside, only the static whispers of the ghost shield spoke to him.

It’s over, they reminded him. You lost.

The end.

****

Thanks for reading!

[read more of my stuff here]

#danny phantom #ectoimplosion2023 #my writing #twelve hours #dp fanfic #angst #cw violence

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oliverreedmasterass · 11 months

Note

GVF going to a liquor store before a party they are throwing may be a bit of a disaster.

I am SO SORRY it's taken me so long to write this!! But I absolutely love this idea, thank you for the prompt!

Booze Run

Words: 3k

Warnings: language, drinking, mentions of hallucinations

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“How much time do we have before people start coming over?” Sam asked from the couch, placing his oversized sunglasses on his face upside down as he studied the cracks in the ceiling.

“A couple hours, maybe two or three?” Josh guessed from his spot on the carpet beneath the glass living room table.

“We still need to go out and grab drinks,” Danny realized.

Jake let out a huff. “Fuck,” he grumbled.

Slowly, the four men leaned forward from their spots around Sam’s living room and studied each other, none looking all too enthusiastic to get up. Taking charge as the oldest (and most mature, in his opinion) of the four, Josh cleared his throat.

“Let’s make a game out of our drink run,” he suggested. He scanned his bandmates’ faces and was pleased to see that he had their attention. Sam was the first to take the bait.

“What kind of game?” he squinted his eyes. Josh’s idea of a good time was usually a hit or miss. Josh rubbed his hands together and tried to think on his feet.

“It’ll be like Secret Santa,” he planned. “We draw names and then buy a bottle of something for that person, and that’ll be their drink for the evening.”

“That seems like it could be fun,” Danny commented.

“We can call it Incognito Intoxicants,” Jake muttered.

“That’s the spirit!” Josh called out in joy.

“Literally, the spirit,” Jake whispered to himself, cracking a smile at his play on words.

With a grunt Josh rolled himself out from underneath the coffee table and sprung to his feet while clapping his hands, which made Danny jump in shock. “We need a hat to put the names in,” Josh announced.

Sam slowly looked across the couch at Jake and tracked his eyes up to the straw hat that was tugged over Jake’s ears. Jake cautiously looked back at Sam with his eyebrow arched and gave his head a shake, warning Sam to stay back. Seemingly unbothered by his glare, Sam lurched across the middle sofa cushion between them and tore the hat off his head, causing Jake to let out a surprised squeak.

“My hair is greasy,” Jake complained as he retracted his hands up to cover his head.

“Josh asked for a hat, and you’ve got a hat. Get over it.”

Jake continued to cover his roots in sheer embarrassment, but he didn’t argue with Sam any further. While they had an intense stare-off, Josh hurried back to Sam’s kitchen and retrieved a pen and a stack of post-it notes so he could scribble out everyone’s names. Still maintaining eye contact with Jake, Sam handed Josh the hat so he could toss the papers inside.

“Who should pick first?” Danny asked after gazing at Jake and Sam with worry.

Sam averted his attention from Jake and cleared his throat. “I say youngest first.”

“Just because you said that, we’re starting with the oldest first,” Josh countered.

“Nope,” Jake stepped in, holding a throw pillow over his head to replace his hat. “I started this band, so you all have me to thank for your success. It’s only right that I go first.”

While the brothers bickered amongst themselves, Danny slid a paper out from Jake’s straw hat, which was left unattended on the coffee table. He read the name and made a soft “huh” sound which caught the Kiszkas’ attention, as they turned around to face him.

“Josh can go next since this was his idea,” Danny delegated. “And then Jake, and then Sam.”

“Why am I last?” Sam whined. Danny chose to ignore his friend and passed the hat to Josh, who methodically selected a paper. Jake grabbed the hat from Josh, pulled out a paper, and threw the remaining one at Sam so he could secure his hat back on his head.

“Happy with your results?” Danny asked around. Josh, Jake, and Sam were all staring down at their post-it notes, looking deep in thought. Finally Josh snapped his head up and gave Danny a large thumbs up.

“I got exactly who I wanted.”

“Me too,” Sam agreed.

“Same,” Jake’s smile was wide. Danny was glad that he had dodged a full-fledged Kiszka fight and, since he was feeling good, he offered to drive them all down to the local liquor store, which was about ten minutes away.

“I call shotgun,” Josh hollered before his brothers could call dibs.

“I can drive us there,” Jake frowned at Danny.

“No you can’t, dude,” Sam put a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Your license is fucking suspended.”

“Is it?” Jake turned around to face his brother.

“You still have four months to go,” Sam looked at him with concern. “Please don’t tell me you’ve been driving around.”

“How the hell do you think I got here?” Jake stared back at his brother.

“Oh lord,” Sam pinched at the bridge of his nose.

Danny retrieved his car keys from his shorts pocket and rattled them around to get everyone’s attention. With their eyes all on him, Danny nodded towards the door.

“The sooner we leave, the sooner we can get this run over with.”

“Amen to that,” Sam agreed.

On the drive to the liquor store, Sam leaned in Jake’s direction, which caused him to instinctually fling his hand up to hold his hat in place so Sam wouldn’t steal it. Sam rolled his eyes at this and tried to whisper at Jake so Danny and Josh wouldn’t hear from the front seats.

“Whose name did you draw?” he asked. Jake looked at Sam out of the corner of his eye, pursed his lips together, and then shook his head, earning a huff from Sam. “I knew you wouldn’t talk,” Sam’s tone was bitter.

“It’ll spoil the surprise,” Jake whispered back.

In the driver’s seat, Danny’s mind was racing as they sped along the highway. He had picked Sam’s name and, in a state of panic, was trying to remember what kind of booze Sam liked best. Secret Santa was one of Danny’s favorite games because he loved treating those closest to him to a nice surprise and seeing if they could guess that he was the one who had gone out of his way to get them something especially heartfelt. He hoped that he could find something that would brighten Sam’s day.

On the flip side, Josh watched the trees pass by out the window and grinned. He had chosen Danny’s name and, while the man was about as kind as they come, Josh couldn’t resist the temptation to find him a bottle that was sure to make groan in dread. Otherwise, what was the point of the game?

“Can you at least give me a hint?” Sam tried to whisper to Jake again. Once more Jake shook his head, which Sam responded to by sticking out his tongue.

“And…we’re here,” Danny announced as he put the car in park. “Thank god,” he added under his breath. It was a miracle that no mayhem broke loose on their drive over. The guys unbuckled their seatbelts and, in a line, moved to the entrance of the liquor store. With Josh in the lead, he pulled the glass door open and they entered the cramped shop, the bell ringing sharply over their heads.

“I’ll give us ten minutes to get our drinks,” Josh shared with his friends as they stood in the front entrance of the store. “If you don’t check out by 6:10, you’re disqualified.”

“Let’s sync our watches,” Jake looked around at everyone. “Oh wait,” he realized, “I don’t have a watch.”

Josh ignored his brother’s comment and nodded around at the group. “I’ll grab the other drinks for the party as well,” he said. “I already know what drink I’m getting for the Incognito Intoxicant, I don’t need ten minutes.”

“Ooh, cocky,” Sam poked fun. “Look at this guy.”

Once again, Josh let that comment pass without any acknowledgment.

“Ready?” he looked around for confirmation. After being met with nods, Josh waved his hand down with a swoosh and called out, “go!”

Immediately Sam, Jake, and Danny tore for separate parts of the liquor store: Jake to the spirits section, Sam to the aisle filled to the brim with wine, and Danny to the beer. Josh chuckled as he watched them disappear and strolled to the register where a middle aged man was watching Josh and his friends with interest.

“Your usual?” he asked as Josh folded his arms on the sticky counter.

“Yup, and a little extra something,” Josh said with a quick wink. The cashier rolled a couple of kegs out from the back and then retrieved a set of keys to unlock the glass case behind him. “Oscar Wilde me,” Josh called to him. “I want some hard stuff.”

“What’s the occasion?” the cashier conversed with Josh.

“Just introducing one of my pals to something out of this world,” Josh grinned. The cashier slid an especially old looking bottle to Josh, who inspected it. “This is perfect,” he blew out.

In the beer section, Danny looked up and down the rows of bottles with a deep frown. He knew that Sam really didn’t care too much about beer, as long as it went down without a fight, but he wanted to find something that Sam was sure to love. The problem was, Danny’s understanding of beer was about the same as Sam’s. If the first taste didn’t make his face scrunch up in disgust, he usually considered it to be a winner.

“I should find something imported,” Danny whispered to himself. “Sam is into that kinda shit.”

He moved past the Bud Light and Coors bottles and perked up when he found a case of German beers that advertised a light and fruity flavor. It was a relatively hot day in Nashville, so Danny knew that, after letting the beers chill in the fridge for a few hours, Sam would be in for a real treat. He grabbed the case, inspected it to make sure there was no damage on the cardboard casing, and carried the booze up to the front register.

Sam was having a field day in the wine section, finding a bottle for his Incognito Intoxicant, Josh. Josh was known for his salty dogs, but the guy also enjoyed a good glass of wine from time to time. It only felt right that Sam would choose the most rank bottle of wine on the shelf to make up for all the snooty comments he had to endure from Josh on their many winery outings. It was easy to single out the really bad bottles since they were at the very edge of the aisle and all listed for under $10 per bottle. Sam considered grabbing some two buck chuck to burn a hole through Josh’s intestines, but then gaped at a bottle tucked on the bottom row.

“Oh shit,” Sam whispered, grabbing the drink and then cradling it in his arms. “Josh is in for a rough night.”

Jake gazed at the fancy bottles of hard liquor around him and felt entirely in his element. He didn’t have a firm idea what he wanted to buy, so he decided to let fate call the shots and spun around in ten quick circles, to the point where he couldn’t tell left from right. With his vision blurred beyond belief, Jake stumbled around the aisle and eventually grasped onto one of the metal bars securing the bottles of booze in place. He held himself steady and tried to regain his composure before taking in the bottle in front of his face.

“Oh ho ho,” he chuckled at his selection.

Everyone eventually met back at Danny’s car, all making it in time before their ten minutes were up. Jake nearly didn’t make it because it took him a while to find the cashier due to his spinning head, but he still had a few minutes to spare.

“Feeling good?” Josh asked around.

“Hell fuckin yeah,” Sam replied. Danny nodded with a wide grin.

“Ay,” Jake added.

“Let’s do the grand reveal then,” Josh announced. He pulled a pen out of his back pocket and quickly scrawled out a name on the paper bag that was concealing his bottle. Taking his lead, Danny, Sam, and Jake proceeded to do the same and then, all filled with anticipation, they placed their bottles in the middle of the circle.

“Should we have at it?” Danny could hardly contain his excitement. Josh nodded and the four tore for the pile of booze, trying to seek out their designated drink.

“Get your grimey fingers off my bottle,” Sam scolded Josh, who was holding Sam’s bag and trying to find the name on it. While Sam, Josh, and Danny struggled to retrieve their respective beverages, Jake was quick to snatch his bag and stand off to the side, watching them in interest.

“How hard is it to find your goddamn name?” he had to ask. This kicked Sam, Josh, and Danny into gear and, within seconds, everything was sorted out.

“We’ll go one at a time and guess who got us our drink,” Josh shared, then turning on his heel to face Danny. “You go first.”

“I think I can guess who drew my name,” Danny murmured with a laugh as he stuck his hand into the bag and slowly pulled out an aged bottle of absinthe. “Huh?” he stared down at the label. Jake and Sam started to howl with laughter.

“I thought you could change it up tonight,” Josh explained to Danny, entirely forgetting that Danny was supposed to guess who his Incognito Intoxicant was. “Live a little in the past, you know, let it take you back in time.”

“Thank you?” Danny guessed. He wasn’t looking forward to drinking the greenish liquid, but he didn’t want Josh to know he was feeling disappointed. He tried to find the silver lining, reasoning to himself that it was an opportunity to try something new. Josh watched Danny’s face travel through a wide range of emotions as he studied the bottle, which was more than enough payoff for his prank.

“I’ll go next,” Sam decided, growing impatient waiting for his turn. Before Jake or Josh could argue that they wanted to go next, Sam tore open the bag and let it drop to the paved ground so he could focus his attention on the label. “Hofbrau Munchen Hefeweizen?” He read aloud. “Did I pronounce that right?” Sam inspected the label closer and then retrieved his phone from his back pocket to translate the writing on the package. “Oh, light and fruity tones, I like the sound of that!” his face lit up. Danny attempted to maintain a poker face, but it was impossible for him not to grin a little. Sam scanned around at his brothers and, with a chuckle, pointed at Danny. “Thank you, Daniel.”

With his cover blown, Danny finally let his smile fully stretch across his face. “How did you know it was me?”

“Jake would have pissed in a bottle and given it to me,” Sam explained, “and I’m afraid of what Josh would have done.”

“That’s an accurate assumption,” Jake nodded.

“I thought the whole point of this was to get something the person would enjoy,” Danny tried to gain some clarity.

“Oh no, that’s definitely not what I had in mind,” Josh shook his head with a laugh. He studied the paper bag in his hands and tugged it open, reaching his hand in to grab his bottle. “Oh Jesus,” he murmured as he studied the Stella Rosa Watermelon-flavored wine. Turning to Danny, he motioned at the bottle. “This is the kind of shit I’d expect to get. My Incognito Intoxicant obviously wants me to suffer.” He looked closer at the light pink liquid and gave it a small shake. “This is going to be sweet as a motherfucker. What am I supposed to pair this with?”

“Watermelon, of course,” Jake deadpanned. Josh shook his head at his brother with a scowl, and then pointed at him.

“You did this,” he accused. Jake’s hands retracted up in a defensive position and he was quick to shake his head.

“My dignity couldn’t handle buying a bottle like that in public, even if it was for you.”

“Sam?” Josh turned to face his younger brother.

“Guilty,” Sam gave a mischievous grin.

“You sick fuck,” Josh spat out, though he also had to give a chuckle. For what it was worth, Sam’s choice was especially sinister, which Josh did respect.

“That leaves me then,” Jake grunted. The other three watched as he rolled down the paper bag to reveal only the top of the bottle and flicked the lid off. “Ahh,” he grunted out after taking a long, thoughtful chug from the mysterious liquid. “That’s the good shit.”

“Hold on a second,” Danny thought hard. “I had Sam, Sam had Josh, and Josh had me. So that means…?”

“Yup,” Jake finished Danny’s thought for him, “I treated myself to a nice drink for the evening.”

“That’s not fair!” Sam protested.

“Josh didn’t set any rules about it,” Jake shrugged. “Get over it.”

Josh tried to get a better look at Jake’s drink. “What did you go with?”

“Cognac,” Jake replied after another drink. “I thought I’d switch it up tonight.”

“Interesting,” Josh nodded.

Danny checked the time on his phone and then motioned back at his car.

“We’d better get a move on before people start showing up.”

“Oh shit, right,” Sam said, turning on his heel to retreat to Danny’s car.

“Great, I can’t wait to see what watermelon-flavored wine tastes like,” Josh sarcastically retorted while he and Jake walked in line behind Sam and Danny.

“It’s gonna taste bad, I can tell you that,” Jake assured him. “But it should go down easy. Just chug it in the beginning and then it’ll be over.”

“Nah, I think I’ll nurse it,” Josh decided. “I don’t want to be beyond inebriated and miss Danny’s reaction to the absinthe.”

“Do you think he’s gonna hallucinate?”

“You can hallucinate on absinthe?” Danny turned around to ask Jake and Josh, his eyes wide.

“Oh boy,” Sam laughed. “We’re in for an interesting night.”

#gvf #greta van fleet #josh kiszka #sam kiszka #danny wagner #jake kiszka #greta van fleet fanfiction #greta van fleet fanfic #greta van fleet fic #gvf fanfiction #gvf fanfic #gvf fic #the guys go on a booze run #what could go wrong?#the answer is a lot

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mousebetterhavemymoney · 5 months

Text

Gangnam Style (Chapter 3)

~Trigger warnings~

Language, depictions of domestic abuse

Seoul, March 8, 1999.

Jang-Mi tossed and turned in a fitful sleep as the horrors of her past flooded her mind again.

So much time had passed, but it felt like none at all. It was as if she lived in every moment of trauma she suffered.

Especially at night.

The moment her head hit the pillow each night, the nightmare began anew, and the images of terror and pain ran amok in her mind.

The blood that pooled over the beautiful rug.

The shards of glass embedded deeply into her skin.

And the voices... Always, the voices.

"I don't know what i did wrong, Danny! I am sorry! I want to be good wife to you, I do! Just tell me what i did! Why can't i please you?

"You'll always be my little pet. Nothing more."

She shot out of bed, sweat pouring down her forehead as she took in deep breaths.

Ugh, that dream again. 씨발.

Jang-Mi tossed the sheets away and began her descent downstairs, where she knew she'd find solace in her music room.

And a bottle of Soju, of course.

______________________________________________________________

"And all the people say You can't wake up, this is not a dream You're part of a machine, you are not a human being With your face all made up, living on a screen Low on self-esteem, so you run on gasoline"

Jang-Mi ran her hands through her inky dark hair as she lifted her hands from the piano, letting out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding.

Things had been... difficult since the accident.

The scars along her back were healing up nicely, but the mental ones were going nowhere fast. Jang-Mi's good friend Britney had been more than considerate during this time of suffering, and she knew she was lucky to have her in her life.

Maybe going to that Clueless premiere wasn't such a mistake after all.

Jang-Mi placed a hand under her chin, which allowed her to go deeper into thought, and ignored the discordant notes that played on the piano as she her elbow hit the keys.

Her new album would drop tomorrow. She didn't know if anyone would like it.

And If she was being honest with herself, she didn't give two s**ts.

The people on the news rarely talked about her anymore, and when they did, it was either in pity, or mockery.

No more.

Jang-Mi wasn't the fragile flower she'd once been. And she was going to make sure the world would never again see her as a weakling. Jang-Mi had grown a lot since the accident, and she was going to prove that to everyone.

If they didn't like it, they could f**k off.

Jang-Mi shook herself out of her moody thoughts and snatched the bottle off the windowsill beside her. It was time for another shot.

Or two.

______________________________________________________________

Detroit, March 12, 1999.

Marshall found himself transfixed by the radio as he sat in the dark parking lot. Before long, he was tapping his foot to the beat as the song played on the radio. The singer sounded familiar, but he couldn't place where the hell he'd heard her voice before.

"And that was "Gasoline" by Jamie-Ann, who is shaking up the music world with a new album, and a new name!"

"Jamie-Ann, huh? interesting."

The song was bold.

Harsh.

Provocative.

And there wasn't a damn line in it that he didn't relate to.

Whoever this girl was, she knew what she was doing. As Em began to start his car, he made himself a promise.

"If i ever see this girl in person... i gotta meet her."

______________________________________________________________

A/n

Whew! that was a doozy. i literally busted my hump to write this before thanksgiving so you guys could read it while stuffing your faces, as i promised i would do. That being said, i hope it dosen't feel rushed. Anyway, disclaimer, all rights for "Gasoline" belong to Halsey, of course. Enjoy! ❤

#eminem x reader #eminem #marshall mathers #slim shady #y2k #happy holidays!#My chapters are usually so short #i unintentionally made this one much longer #your'e welcome i guess?#eminem fanfiction

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deadsetobsessions · 5 months

Text

Summonings

Ever since Danny Phantom became the Ghost King, he’s had to deal with an endless amount of crap. An eternity of it, actually, and it was constantly causing him unending amount of existential crises and stress.

First, there was the paperwork. Pariah Dark, the incompetent asshole, had left him decades worth of bureaucracy to painfully sift through. He ended up hiring some ghosts with paperwork obsessions to sort some of that out. Who knew ruling the infinite realms would require this much paperwork? He’s lucky each section of the underworld had their own systems to report to their own rulers who, in turn, report to him.

Secondly, there were the Observers. And other ghosts, like his own rogues, but they were the main issues. Eyeball menaces. They protested his appointment, something he actually agreed with. Putting a fifteen year old on the throne is rarely a smart decision. But the Infinite Realm values strength, the only type of currency that matters in the land of the gods and the dead. Danny? Phantom? He’s got strength in spades. With only a few months of being a ghost, Danny had managed to defeat Pariah Dark, who had cowered gods and struck fear into the hearts of ghost heroes.

But Danny hasn’t quite realized the significance of that yet, too focused on the realization that he was about to be in charge of the infinite realms. The Observants, since his reluctant and extremely limited coronation, has been up his ass about doing things the “proper way.”

Danny’s main problem lies with the ridiculous amount of paperwork though. It’s fine. Tedious. But fine.

But if he gets one more fifteen page essay style complaint form about some guy named Constantine, Danny might seriously reconsider donning Dan’s ruthlessness and offing the guy himself. Perhaps grab the man by his shoulders and shake him like a rag doll and ask who the fuck told him it was a good idea to sell his soul out like that? Danny eventually just sent out Skulker to hunt down the contracts and trade minor services for them. He owns most of the soul now, and perhaps he’ll hunt this guy down and force him to do paperwork.

Regardless, paperwork was just often tedious. He’s worked out a system for himself. The halfa, true to his teenage form, had better things to be doing. His homework, for one. Hanging out with his friends and logging in hours for Doomed 2 would be another. But no, he’s here, twirling a pen as he glared down at a stack of forms for a zone expansion. What the fuck does Zeus want to expand his zone for? The current share space of the sky domain is literally a perfect balance with respect towards the other gods. For the love of- Danny slams down a red ‘REJECTED’ stamp on top of the stack. His hair flickers wildly in annoyance, the iced over Crown floating above his head emitting concerning levels of frost. To anyone else but himself, of course.

He then feels a soft tug on his core.

Right. The third most annoying thing about becoming King: the fucking summoning. Danny taps his pen against his lips, clicking it against his fangs, as he considers the summoning circle that calls him. Huh. Desperation. Mildly bloody. Fear. Resignation- ah, fuck it, it’s not like he’s too enthusiastic about staying to do work with the Observers poking around. He takes the summoning, allowing his regalia to overtake his normal hazmat-clad form, and approves the summoning.

Oh hey, Danny thinks he recognizes that ugly ass trenchcoat.

—-

John Constantine has had more than enough practice summoning things that would give people nightmares. But there are things he normally refuses to touch, refuses to even entertain the idea of trying. As usual, desperation made John its bitch and the Justice League’s battered and bruised faces tugged on his shriveled heart.

He’s going to summon something from the Infinite Realms. Oh, but he wasn’t just summoning any old ghost. No, he thought, I’m just going to summon the one being that’s guaranteed to be able to crush our universe without breaking a sweat. Bollocks.

“Is it ready?”

“Untwist your pants, spooky,” John snaps, wishing he had a crate of whiskey he could down. “We’re trying to summon the Ghost King, not your average demon.”

“What do we know about him?” Batman’s gravelly voice demanded.

“Powerful enough to take us all out without even breaking a sweat. Defeated the bloody tyrant who ruled over the Realms last I heard.”

“That’s it?”

“You could ask Deadman, but I heard he’s on the outs with the Infinite Realms on the fact that he’s made of pure magic, not ectoplasm.”

“There’s no guarantee the king will work with us.” Zatanna says, pressing her fingertips together tiredly. She had been at the forefront of the battle and had paid the price for it. “But he’s supposedly more benevolent than his predecessor… and we’re out of options.”

“Hm.”

“Just make sure to shut up and let me do the talking.”

“Hn.”

John rolls his eyes and takes a fortifying breath, something that does not go unnoticed by the League. They all tense up, preparing themselves for a battle. Another one, seeing as they all got their ass kicked by a ghost only ten hours ago. The League is spread thin, running interference to distract the ghost in question and evacuating civilians.

John Constantine started chanting, the glow of his magic lighting up the circle as he spills his blood into the circle.

He waits, heart in his throat, for the summoning to work.

“Is it supposed to take-” Red Robin asks, only to cut himself off as the circle flares once more. Power pulsates outwards from the circle. Frost crackles on the frost resistant floors, spreading outwards as a green portal rips open the fabric of time and space. Long, spindly imitations of a hand grabs the edges of space and pulls, heaving the rest of his celestial body out of the tear in reality. John does not look away. He can not look away, not from the eerie green pallor of the King, not from his torrential white wisps of hair, not from the black-hole like material of his outfit, not from the nebulas and beginnings and endings tailored onto the King’s cape. John could not look away from the ice crown that floated like a bastion of power above the king’s head.

His mouth is dry. What price will he have to pay to save the world? What price will this being demand of him, of the Justice League, to save the world?

John desperately needs that drink.

—-

Oh! He’s in his home dimension! His core purrs at coming home, at the close proximity to his first haunt.

He was expecting cultists, or even the Winchesters again, but this is nice.

The Justice League- summoning him. Sam and Tucker are going to flip when they hear about this.

They’ve been staring at him in silence for a bit now. It was getting awkward.

“Why have you summoned me?” He asks, softening his tone. By their winces, he didn’t get it as well as he thought. Danny grimaces. At the first sign of discomfort though, the man in the trenchcoat- is that fucking Constantine?!- launches into a nerve filled tirade.

“Your, uh, Majesty.” He starts. “One of… One of your subjects is wreaking havoc on the world. We would be extremely grateful if… if you could reign him in?”

Danny’s face sours, only to quickly clear his expression as he realized how much even a small hint of displeasure causes the jumpiness in Constantine and the others.

“To do that, I will have to make a contract with you, seeing as you’ve summoned me.” Danny drawls, letting his overly long digits wave at the summoning circle in question. He could break it, of course, but Danny’s bored and trying to draw this out. He’s not saying he’d take a batch of cookies as payment but that’s exactly what he’s saying.

“The price… you could always have my soul?”

Danny pauses. “Your… soul?”

Oh, he did not say what he just said.

“Yes. My soul.”

Oh, he did.

Fuck it. Danny’s flashbacks of suffering through the reports pushes green into his irises and urgency to his action.

He breaks out of the circle, hands lunging and gripping Constantine’s jaw tightly. Danny ignores the shouts of alarm as he allows the thrown weapons to pass through him.

John Constantine is panicking now, struggling in the air as Danny lifts him an inch off the floor in agitation.

Good.

“Your soul, little wizard? The one you’ve split eight ways till the thirtieth of February? The one that caused,” he tightens his grip, no doubt bruising the man. “An insane amount of paperwork that I’ve had to suffer through. Your soul, John Constantine?”

Danny hisses his name. The man makes a warbling noise that Danny takes as acknowledgement. Danny bats away the weak spell Zatanna sends at him with a hand.

“You’ll find that I am in the possession of most of your soul contracts. To simply put,” he grins, teeth made of dying stars on display. “I own your soul. My soul, now.”

He drops the wizard who collapses onto his knees to stare up at him in horror, eyes flicking between the circle that was meant to contain him and Danny, who is very much not contained. He crouches down- something necessary but disjointed as he’s not used to this taller form- and speaks to Constantine in a slow, dead serious, drawl.

“If you ever sell your soul again, you and I are going to have issues. Is that clear, John Constantine?”

“Uh- yeah, yes, yes, your majesty.”

Patting his cheek condescendingly, Danny gets up and sighs, stress relieved. He’s starting to feel bad, though, so he allows his form to ripple back to his normal teenage Phantom self.

“Well, it’s not like anyone will buy it, since they know they’ll have to go against me.” He chirps, flipping 180 from his terror inducing eldritch voice. “So, what’ll you pay me to get rid of whatever ghost you’ve got?”

“…. Nothing?”

Red Robin holds out a bag, eyebags betraying his exhaustion. “I’ve got fifty dollars and a bag of cookies.”

Phantom beams at him. “Throw in a couple of autographs and you’ve got a deal.”

“That’s- yeah, okay.” Red Robin says, inching forward cautiously to hand him the bag.

“Great. I’ll be back for them later. You can call me Phantom. ‘Your Majesty’ gets annoying after a while.”

“Thank- thank you for your mercy, Your- Phantom.” Wonder Woman says.

“Sure. Make sure this idiot doesn’t make any more deals with demons while I’m out, yeah?”

With that, Danny Phantom grabs the bag of cookies and fifty dollars and flies through the wall to do his job.

John slams his head onto the space station floor.

“Fuck.”

—-

Danny: lol I’ll do it for the shits and giggles

Constantine and the League: he’s terrifying, a bastion of pure power and authority

Red Robin, Young “we commit war crimes bc it gets shit done” Justice leader and fellow gremlin: he’d probably do it for cookies. I would.

#dc x dp #danny phantom #john constantine #batman #Bruce Wayne being tired af #ghostly shenanigans #bamf Danny phantom #ghost king danny

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imekitty · 2 years

Text

Star Error VII

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Star investigates Danny’s glowing freckles.

-----

"Star, where have you been?" asked Kwan.

Star took her normal seat at the A-List table in the cafeteria. "Nowhere. Sorry. Just had a thing I needed to take care of."

"Aren't you going to eat?" asked Paulina, taking a bite of her chicken salad.

Star looked down at the empty table space in front of her. "Oh. Uh, actually, I already ate."

"What did you eat?" Dash grinned, chewing his food as he spoke. "Fenton's face?"

Star balked. "What kind of a question is that?"

"He walked in literally a minute before you did," said Dash, looking over in Fenton's direction where he was sitting with Manson and Foley a few tables away. "His loser friends were here on time as usual, so that means he was also 'taking care of something.' That 'something' probably being you, right?"

"So you and Danny are really hitting it off, huh?" Paulina playfully elbowed her in the side.

"No!" shrieked Star. "You guys have got it all wrong."

"Star, you don't need to keep denying it." Dash took a huge bite of his burger, a glob of ketchup smearing above his lip. "Paulina's dated him, too. Clearly that nerd's got something going on you girls like."

Paulina made a face. "I don't know what you're talking about, but could you please use a napkin, Dash?"

Dash wiped his mouth with his hand. "Paulina, we all remember that week when you were attached to Fenton's hip and we had to temporarily kick Kwan out of the A-List to make room for him."

"I could never forget," sighed Kwan with a pout.

"You're all crazy," said Paulina. "That never happened."

"Come on, Paulina." Dash took another bite, even more ketchup dribbling down his chin. "Just tell me what that nerd's secret is already. I mean, why would you date him of all people before me?"

Paulina pursed her lips. "Well, for one, he's not gross."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Stop talking with your mouth full, Dash! See, Danny's not a pig like you are."

"That's because Fenton barely eats at all. He's a twig."

"He's not a twig." Paulina looked in Fenton's direction and twirled a lock of her hair. "He's put on some muscle this past year. Don't you agree, Star?"

Star rolled her eyes. "Who's keeping track of that?"

"Look, all I'm saying is, I could kick his ass from one end of this school to the other." Dash sighed. "God, I actually kind of miss whaling on him. Coach said I had to knock it off or I'd get kicked off the team."

"Does Fenton know that?" asked Kwan.

"No, and I'm not gonna tell him." Dash smirked. "I'd rather him live in fear that I could pound him any day now."

"He's not afraid of you, you know," said Star with a shrug.

Dash furrowed his brow. "What did you say?"

"Fenton's not afraid of you," said Star more slowly.

"And just how do you know that?"

"He told me."

"Oh, did he tell you yesterday on your little date?"

"It wasn't a date, as I keep trying to tell you, but yes, it was yesterday at the cafe."

"He was probably just trying to impress you." Dash laughed. "You know, act like he's tough for his new girlfriend. But I think it's real cute that you two are starting to get to know each other so well."

Star wrinkled her nose and pouted.

"So how is he?" Paulina nudged her.

"What? How is who? What do you mean?" asked Star irritably.

"Danny," said Paulina. "I mean, is he a good kisser?"

"Shouldn't you know, Paulina?" asked Dash. "Surely you sucked face with him at least once when you were dating him."

"Shut it, Dash." Paulina glared at him. "I'm asking Star a question."

Dash rolled his eyes and stuffed the last bite of his burger into his mouth. "Yes, Star, please tell us what it's like to kiss one of the biggest geeks in school. We're all dying to know."

"I just want to know if he's better than me," said Kwan anxiously. "He's not, right?"

Everyone looked at her expectantly, waiting. Star chewed the inside of her cheek as her eyes darted between them.

And a few tables over, Fenton was chatting it up with his friends, all smiley because he had the upper hand again.

And then Star got an idea.

"Well, actually…" She put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. "We haven't kissed yet. Fenton—I mean, Danny says he wants to practice a little more first. You know, to make sure our first kiss is perfect."

"Practice?" Paulina tilted her head.

"Yeah," said Star, grinning. "He has all these dolls and pillows in his room that he likes to practice on. They all have pictures of girls at our school taped to them. He says it makes it feel more authentic."

"Ew, are you serious?" Paulina crossed her hands over her chest and shuddered.

"No way, he doesn't do that, does he?" Kwan's eyes were wide.

"He's got at least a dozen of them," said Star. "He mostly uses pictures of cheerleaders."

"Oh, I have to tell everyone right now." Dash whipped out his phone and began furiously typing out a text message.

"Cheerleaders, so does that mean he has a doll or pillow with my picture on it?" asked Paulina.

"Oh, yeah." Star nodded. "I think he might practice with yours the most."

"Ugh, gross." Paulina stuck out her tongue. "But is it at least a good picture of me?"

Star's smile dropped. "Is it—what?"

"Just tell me it's not that picture of me after I ran that marathon last semester, is it? Where I'm all sweaty and my eyeliner is running?"

"Uh—"

"I know it's been circulating between all the boys, so please just tell me he's not using that one because I really hate it."

Star rolled her eyes. "He's using a great picture of you, don't worry."

Paulina sighed. "Okay, good." She also pulled out her phone. "The other cheerleaders are going to want to know about this, though."

Star smirked triumphantly as Dash and Paulina busily typed away on their phones, then she turned to look at Fenton across the way, catching his eye after just a few moments. She waved at him and flashed her most dazzling smile. Fenton's brow furrowed, his bottom lip sticking out slightly in a puzzled frown.

Star flipped her hair over her shoulder as she turned away. The game was back on.

Part 8

#danny phantom #star error #imekitty writes #star rainsdon #danny fenton #paulina sanchez #dash baxter #atticus kwan

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babeyvenus · 2 years

Text

My Future

Derek Hale x OC

Samantha, Stiles and Scott are always joking about the impossible. Who wouldn't when your best friend's dad is the sheriff of Beacon Hills? All jokes stop when they realize the impossible is indeed possible.

Chapter 9: Tests

After a week, Sam's mom chewed her out for sneaking to the school without telling her. She was more shocked to see the Camaro parked in the driveway. "I hope you know this isn't staying here. You can't have someone else's car.", she says.

Sam frowned. "I know. I don't wanna keep it as much as you do." Sam couldn't look her mother in the eyes, but the woman frowned at her out of pity. She was afraid that Sam started keeping important secrets from her and it worried her. She wasn't angry but scared.

She walked up to hug Sam. "I don't know what you saw that night. I don't really think I wanna know. I can't imagine going through what you went through. I'm sorry I didn't stop you."

Sam hugged her back, tearing up. "I'm sorry.", she apologized, tearfully. More to her and even to Derek. Although he wasn't there.

They stayed like that for a while until her mother pulled away to cup her cheek, tearing up herself as a tear dropped over her thumb. Sam didn't know what she was sad for the most. The fact that Scott has to bear all of this, lying to her mom or the fact that almost losing his life, time and time again, Derek still helped them. Everything was frustrating.

She eventually went back to school, dreadfully. Just going back to the locker room was almost too much for her. She sat between Stiles and Scott in the locker room as she put on her gear.

Coach came out of his office and blew his whistle. "All right, geniuses, listen up.", he announced. "Due to the recent pinkeye epidemic, thank you, Greenberg, the following people have made first line on probationary basis, emphasis on the probationary. Rodriguez. Welcome to first line. Taylor and uh… Oh for the love of crap. I can't even read my own writing. What is that, an S?" She felt Stiles squirm beside her, watching him get nervous and anticipated. "No, no, that's not an S."

Stiles' shoulders shrunk out of either disappointment or relief. "That's a... That's a... That's a b. That's a b. That's definitely a b. Uh, Rodriguez, Taylor and uh. . . Bilinski."

Stiles shot up and he started jumping for joy and cheering. "Bilinski?", coach asked. "Yes?", Stiles answered. "Shut up!" The trio heard Jackson, Greenberg and Danny snigger in the corner. Sam rolled her eyes. "Yes, Sir." Stiles sat back down.

"Stiles.", Sam called. "It's Biles.", Stiles said, looking at her. Sam raised an eyebrow as Stiles lightly threatened her. "Call me Biles or I swear to God, I'll kill you."

"One more thing," Coach said. "From here on out, immediately, we're switching to co-captains. Congratulations, McCall. McCall, it's you and Jackson now. Everybody else," He blew his whistle. "Asses on the field! Asses on the field!"

Scott, Stiles and Sam got up and began to walk to the field. "Dude, can you believe this?", Stiles asked. "You're a captain. I'm first line. I'm first freaking line! Are you not freaking out? I'm freaking out."

"What's the point? It's literally just a title.", Sam stated. "And I could practically smell the jealousy in there.", Scott muttered. "Wait," Stiles stopped and so did Scott and Sam. "You smelled jealousy?"

"Yeah," Scott said. "It's like the full moon turned everything up to ten."

"Huh.", Stiles said. "Can you pick up on stuff like, I don't know, desire?"

"What do you mean desire?", Sam asked. "Like sexual desire.", Stiles said.

Sam gave him a grossed look. "Dude."

"Sexual desire?" Scott questioned Stiles. "Yeah, sexual desire.", Stiles said. "Lust, passion, arousal."

"From Lydia?", Sam asked with raised eyebrow. "What? No, like in general, broad sense, can you determine sexual desire?", Stiles clarified.

"From Lydia to you?", Scott asked. "Yes, fine, from Lydia to me. Look, I need to know if I have a chance with this girl. I've been obsessing over this girl since third freaking grade.", Stiles pleaded.

"Why don't you just ask her?", Sam asked. "Well, to save myself from utterly crushing humiliation. Thank you, Sam.", Stiles expressed with wide eyes then turned to Scott. "So, could you just please, go up to her and ask her if she likes me. See if her heartbeat rises or pheromones comes out?", he asked.

"Fine.", Scott said and began to walk over to Lydia. "I don't believe this.", Sam rolled her eyes. "I love you." Stiles called after him. "I love you. You're my best friend in the whole world."

Stiles and Sam lined up in the middle of the field when Scott finally joined them. Sam was first in line. "Let's go!" Coach yelled and he blew the whistle. She rushed forward to the two attack men and each one of them rammed her in the shoulders.

She flew to the ground on her back, landing with a groan. She was really off her game today...

Everybody started to laugh at her, calling her out. Sam huffed in frustration, quickly getting up. "Guess the team is starting to not like a girl on the team. Who's next?", Coach quips. Scott moved to the line and pushed Stiles back to take first place again. "That's the spirit, McCall!" Sam picked up another ball and raced forward when Coach blew the whistle. She passed the ball to Scott and watched him slam the end of his stick into the first guy's stomach and shoved the second attack man.

He then raced forward to Danny and whammed the end of his stick up into his mask and started groaning, throwing off his helmet. "Dude, what the hell are you doing?", Stiles asked, as he and Sam walked up to him. Sam glared at him. "What the hell was that?", she fussed.

"He's like three times the size of me.", Scott growled. "Yeah, but everybody likes Danny.", Stiles said. "Now everybody's gonna hate you." Sam looked at Danny who had a nosebleed. "I don't care.", Scott said and stormed off. Sam sighed.

On the ride home, Sam was the last that Stiles dropped off and he stopped her before she left his jeep. "You still have it, huh?", he says, gesturing to Derek's Camaro. She looked at the car and nod. "Yeah. I don't know how long I'll have it.", she says, looking at her lap.

Stiles nudged her. "Hey." She looked at him. His face seemed sad. "How're you holding up?"

Sam bit her lip, fighting off unshed, oncoming tears. She shrugged in response.

"I don't know how to deal with this.", he says, looking at his hands, holding the steering wheel. "I don't wanna give up on Scott. Y'know? He's our best friend. And with all this shit… it was supposed to be fairy tale type things. The supernatural. Superstitions. Myths."

"And now he's not. I'm down with helping him. I always am. I just don't know how he's gonna control all of this. This is new. It's not a movie.", Sam says. "This isn't something to just solve with a kiss or a cure from a curse. This shit is real."

He nods. "I'm still trying to process it all too."

She rubs her eyes. "I'm just frustrated. Not at the fact that we almost died but because it's difficult. I'm not in his shoes so I wouldn't know how to help him or how he feels."

She felt Stiles pull her in a hug. "I'm always gonna be here for you guys. I've made that my responsibility. I don't wanna lose you guys.", he whispered, with a crack in his voice. Sam's bottom lip wobbled as she hugged him back.

"You won't lose us. I won't let that happen.", she reassures. It was an empty promise because at this point, who knows what would happen next?

The next day only proved her point. "Let me drive." Scott said. Sam snapped her attention to him as she drove Derek's camaro. "You wanna die that bad? If Derek knew I let you drive, he'd kill us on the spot. I got lucky to even get to drive it."

On the way to drop it off, she noticed a car had been trailing them for minutes in the rear view mirror. Her heart dropped in realization. It was the hunters. This was Derek's car. They think the trio is Derek.

Shit.

Derek ended up getting spotted by the police so now he's on the run and now they were luring the hunters away from him, so he didn't have to deal with the cops and the hunters. Stiles looked behind them, his eyes widening at the bright headlights. "Uh…"

"Faster?", Sam asked. "Much faster, please.", Stiles answered. Sam shifted to fifth gear and the car bolted forward. "Sam, I don't think you're grasping the concept of the car chase here.", Stiles emphasized with wide eyes.

"If I go faster, I'll kill us.", Sam warned, glancing back at the rearview mirror. "If you don't go faster, they're gonna kill us.", Scott said. Sam sighed and shifted to sixth gear and turned left onto the back roads. Stiles turned on the police radio. "All units, suspect is on foot headed into the iron works.", Sheriff's voice boomed from the radio.

Sam sighed harshly. "Fuck, Derek.", she complained. That meant they'd have to turn around and get him. "Turn right here.", Stiles said. She did as she was told and it led them right into the iron works. She stopped the car once she saw Derek.

Stiles opened the door and climbed into the back seat with Scott. Derek ran to them and climbed in, shutting the door as Sam sped away with gunshots firing at them from the hunters still behind them. "You don't know what laying low means!?", Sam yelled at Derek.

"Damn it, I had him!", Derek growled, banging his fist against the dashboard. "Who, the alpha?", Stiles asked. "Yes! He was right in front of me, and the freaking police showed up."

"Oh, hey, they're just doing their jobs.", Stiles said. Derek glared at him. "Yeah, thanks to someone who decided to make him the most wanted fugitive in the entire state.", Sam slandered, glaring at Scott in the rearview mirror.

"Can we seriously get past that, please!?", Scott asked. "I made a dumbass mistake. I get it."

"I'll get past it once you clear his fucking name!!", Sam yelled. "All right!" Stiles yelled. "Sam, you might want to go faster."

"Stiles, shut up and sit back.", she retorted. She shifted into fourth gear and that got them some distance between them and the hunters. "How did you find him?", Stiles asked. Derek just looked at him and scoffed. "Sam, go faster.", Stiles say.

"Stiles, hush and sit back." She looked in the rearview mirror and saw the car getting closer. "Can you try to trust us for at least half a second?", Scott asked. "Yeah, all of us.", Stiles said. Derek glared at him again. "Or just him." Stiles finally sat back.

"Ok, Sam, there should be a road coming up, turn left.", Stiles said. "Left?", she asked.

"Left."

"Left?"

"Yes, am I speaking in some kind of language that you don't understand?"

"Stiles, if I turn left, it'll take us back to the iron works so I think you mean right."

"No, I mean left."

"No, you mean right."

"Left, Sam, left."

"Stiles, if we end up back at the Iron works, I'm slapping the crap out of you. Choose wisely, please."

"Maybe you should go right."

"I thought so." Sam turned right onto the next road. "Ok, now back to this issue?", Stiles asked.

"Look, the last time I talked to my sister, she was close to figuring something out.", Derek said.

"Left, Sam, left.", Stiles said. "Why is everything left with you?", Sam asked him, glancing in the rear view mirror. "Just do it. I swear this is right.", Stiles said.

"What?"

"Now, go left. Now!" Sam slammed the car to the left and the car camouflaged with the darkness of the forest. "The forest, Stiles?! Really?!", Sam exclaimed. "This literally leads to a dead end!"

"No, it doesn't."

"Yes, it does.", she argued. "She found two things.", Derek continued. "The first was a guy named Harris."

"Our chemistry teacher?", Sam asked, confused. "Why him?"

"I don't know yet.", Derek said. "What's the second?", Stiles asked. Sam looked ahead and saw a metal bar closing off the road. "Stiles?"

"Yeah?"

They heard a screeching sound from the back as the back bumper slid across the metal strip as Sam took off, passing the hunters.

"I'm about to come back there and slap the shit out of you.", she threatened and looked in the rear view mirror to see the hunters close in on them. Sam placed her hand on the stick shift.

"What are you going to do?", Derek asked. "Everybody got their seatbelts on?", she asked. "No?", Derek, Stiles and Scott all said in unison. "Hold on to something then." Sam shifted the car in reverse and punched the gas, yanking to the steering wheel all the way to the left and turned the car around.

Derek's green eyes widened as he gave Sam a crazy look for peeling the bumper off of his car. "Oops." she said, giving Derek a sheepish grin as he glared at her. She looked in the mirror and saw the hunters crash into the metal strip. "We're safe. For now."

"What was the second?", Stiles repeated. Derek pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. "What is it?", Scott asked, taking the paper. "Some kind of symbol.", Derek asked. They heard Scott groan from the back. "What? You know what this is?"

"I've seen it on a necklace.", Scott said, frowning. "Allison's necklace."

After dropping Scott and Stiles off, Sam finally drove back to her house, letting Derek have his car back.

"Thanks.", he says as he walks over to the driver's side. She gave him a small smile. "Yeah."

He started up the car after getting in and rolled down the passenger window. "Hey."

She raised her eyebrows in response. "Don't worry so much.", he says. She smiled. "A lot has been happening, Derek. Kinda hard not to."

His lips quirked into a somewhat smile. "You'll get wrinkles if you frown so much.", he says, and rolls up the window before she could retort and sped off.

Jackass.

The next day, Sam walked with Scott and Stiles to a lunch table and sat down across from them.

"Did you at least get her to give you the necklace?", Stiles asked Scott.

"Not exactly.", Scott said.

"What happened?", she asked.

"She told me not to talk to her.", Scott said. "At all."

"So, she's not giving you…", Stiles tried to ask with a mouthful of food.

"She's not giving me the necklace." Scott growled and sighed.

"Well, did you find anything else out?", Sam asked.

"Just that I know nothing about girls and that they're totally psychotic.", Scott asked.

"Scott," Sam raised her eyebrows at him before getting cut off. "Except for you, Sam.", Scott said.

"I thought so.", she said, eating her food.

"Ok, I came up with plan b just in case anything like this happened.", Stiles said. Scott sighed. "What's plan b?"

"Just steal the stupid thing.", Stiles said. Sam pinched the bridge of her nose. "Just how the hell is he gonna do that?"

"Couldn't we try at least getting to Harris?", Scott whined.

"My dad put him under a twenty-four-hour protective detail.", Stiles said. "The necklace is all we got."

"So, stealing it is the only option.", Sam sighed.

"Stiles, Sam, he's watching us." Scott said, looking past Sam. Stiles and Sam looked behind them and saw Jackson staring at them blankly.

It was creepy.

They turned around and looked down at their food. Sam noticed Scott winced and looked up frantically.

"What's wrong?", Stiles asked.

"Jackson's talking to me. He knows I can hear him.", Scott said, not looking up. Sam's eyes widened at this. What the hell did he think he was doing?

Stiles started to look at Jackson but Sam smacked him across the arm. "Stop. Act normal. Pretend nothing's happening."

"Say something! Talk to me!", Scott growled at them.

"I-I can't think of anything. My mind's a complete blank.", Stiles said.

"Your mind's blank?", Sam asked. "Wow, there is a god."

Stiles frowned. "I can't think of anything under this kind of pressure.", Stiles whined. "FYI, he's not even sitting with them anymore."

Scott and Sam looked and saw Jackson had disappeared.

"Where the hell is he?", Scott asked, looking around.

His eyes seemed to spot something to the side of Stiles.

"Yes.", Scott growled under his breath. Stiles and Sam exchanged confused glances as Scott gripped his tray tightly.

What Jackson was saying was slowly pissing Scott off. Scott squeezed his water bottle, making it crackle.

Sam placed her hand over Scott's. "Hey, what's he saying?"

"Whatever it is, you have to calm down.", Stiles said, noticing Scott's flickering eyes.

He seemed to ignore his friends as his tray began to shake in his hands. Suddenly, Scott's tray clashed against the table and everybody in the room looked at him. Sam looked at Jackson to see him smirking at them.

She glared at the jackass before getting up and walking over to him. Fuck being on the same team. They saved his life. They saved Allison's life. Even Lydia if she knew now.

Stiles tried to pull her away but Sam quickly stormed up to him. "Fucking prickazoid.", she sneered as Jackson smirked at Scott. He looked down at Sam.

"Well, well. Wilson. You're looking a little worse for wear. Not something new.", he says.

"What the fuck is your problem, Jackson?", Sam asked, shaking her head. He stepped closer to her. "Your friend is a fucking freak. And you know about it too, don't you?"

She glared at his smug expression. "You have no idea what you're talking about. Much less what you're trying to start. Let's say Scott is a "freak", what does that do for you? Make you afraid? Lower your ego? You have to taunt him to compensate for whatever shitty shortcomings you have?", she asked, raising her eyebrows.

His frown quickly appeared. "You're protecting that little freak. And he's gonna drag you down with him."

"Rich. This is coming from the same person who steps on people and uses his popularity to get his way. If Scott has a little advantage, it's wrong?", Sam countered.

He didn't say anything but passed his glare behind her then back at her. "Both of you stay out of my way."

With that he walks off. Dickhead.

Sam turned around to see Scott silently fuming in his seat and frowned sadly.

This called for serious planning.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Mr. Stillinski happily let Sam in and walk up to Stiles' room.

"Did you find anything out yet?", Sam asked, walking in. He jumped and glanced to the side as she closed the door.

Once her eyes caught a glaring Derek, her heart stopped. "Hey...you.", she says.

Their heads looked at the door as they heard footsteps outside of the door. Derek quickly yanks Sam back behind the door as it opens.

Stiles keeps a stoic face as his dad peeks into his room. "Make sure you get back before 10 if you're gonna be leaving."

Stiles nodded. "Yeah, sure." Mr. Stillinski paused. He looked around the room, noticing no sight of the Wilson girl.

"Where's Sam?", he asked. Sam's eyes squeezed shut.

Stiles quickly spoke up. "She's having girl problems right now, so she's in the bathroom."

His dad responded awkwardly. "Okay… remember what I said.", he said before finally leaving.

Sam and Stiles sighed softly in relief and Sam quickly locked Stiles' door.

Sam turned to Derek. "How the hell did you get in here without alerting him?"

Stiles turned to them. "That's what I wanna know." Derek glared at him and Stiles sighed, turning back to his computer.

"Scott didn't get the necklace?", Derek asked.

"No, he's still working on it. But there's something else we can try. The night we were trapped at the school, Scott sent a text to Allison asking her to meet him there."

"So?"

"So, it wasn't him."

"Well, can you find out who sent it?"

"I can see.", Stiles responded. "If not, we're gonna have to get someone who can.", Sam said.

Proudly, she was right. They had to get Danny to help.

Sam sat on Stiles' bed, scrolling on her phone while Derek sat in a chair, reading a book. She didn't know he was such a bookworm…

"I came here to do lab work, that's what lab partners do.", Danny complained.

"And we will, once you trace the text", Stiles reassured him.

"And what makes you think I know how?", Danny asked him.

"I...I looked up your arrest report, so…", Stiles said, looking guilty. Sam gaped at Stiles.

"I-I was 13, they dropped the charges", Danny defended.

"Whatever."

"No, we're doing lab work...", Danny protested.

"Oh my...", Stiles groaned and threw his head back in frustration.

Danny sat down beside him then looked behind him at Sam and Derek.

"Who's he again?", Danny asked, glancing at Derek. Stiles looked back at them with widened eyes.

"That's my cousin...Miguel.", he lied. Sam fought off a smile as Derek raised an eyebrow, glaring at Stiles.

"Is that blood on his shirt?", Danny asked. Stiles and Sam widened their eyes at Derek and looked down at the hem of his gray shirt. There were indeed specks of blood on it.

Shit.

"Yeah.", Stiles said, sitting up. "He gets really bad nose bleeds."

Stiles turned away. "Hey Miguel," Stiles said then nodded his head to his dresser. "I thought I told you, you could borrow one of my shirts."

Derek let out a silent, annoyed sigh through his nose and annoyingly shut the book with a snap. He threw the book on the bed then went over to Stiles' drawers rummaging through his shirts.

Sam looked back down at her phone as Derek got dressed.

"Uh, Stiles?", Derek asked, catching the teens attention.

"Yes?", Stiles asked, turning back to him.

"This," Derek tugged at the shirt in emphasis. "No fit."

"Then try something else on.", Stiles grounded out.

Derek rolled his eyes as he turned back to find something else. Sam looked over at Danny who was staring at Derek.

Stiles seemed to notice to and glanced between Derek and Danny. "Hey, that one looks pretty good", Stiles said as Derek pulled on a tight-fitting orange and blue striped shirt.

Sam snickered, earning a glare from Derek, immediately quieting down and hiding her smile in her phone.

"What do you think, Danny?", Stiles asked, tapping Danny.

"It's...It's not really his colour.", Danny replied. Derek looked like he was gonna pop a vessel as he yanked off the previous shirt.

"You're a horrible person.", they heard Danny tell Stiles as Sam grinned at Derek.

"I know it keeps me awake at night, anyway about that text.", Stiles said.

"Stiles, none of these fit.", Derek huffed, shirtless.

Sam sighed, getting up and picking up the thrown shirts, placing them on the bed before pushing Derek out the way of the dresser.

"What are you doing?", Derek asked in a whisper as Sam rummaged through the dresser. "Finding you a shirt?", Sam shrugged. "I don't how comfortable you are with being shirtless around strangers but y'know.", she says and found a black graphic shirt she gave to Stiles. It was hers, but she figured he could have it.

Derek's frown softened as Sam handed it to him. "Might be a little less tight but it's a shirt.", she says. He takes it from her, grateful.

"There.", Danny said, catching their attention. "The text was sent from a computer…this one." They walked over and looked at the screen in shock.

"Registered to that account name?", Derek asked him.

It was so confusing. How did Scott's mom have anything to do with this? How was she linked up to all of this…?

"No, no, no, no that can't be right...", Stiles shook his head. Sam ran her fingers through her coils as she stared at the name in shock. The account belonged to Scott's mom, Melissa McCall.

After Stiles and Danny finished their lab work and Danny left, the trio piled into the jeep and drove to find out the truth.

Just as they made it to the hospital, Stiles' phone rang. "Hey Scott…yeah I did and it looks just like the drawing…", Stiles said into his phone then Derek grabbed Stiles' wrist pulling the phone closer to him.

"Hey, is there something on the back of it? There's gotta be something an inscription, an opening…something?", Derek asked before Stiles snatched his phone back to his ear.

"I know.", Stiles responded. "Look if you see my Dad, can you tell him- tell him I'll be there, I'll just be a little bit late, ok alright…thanks." Stiles hung up his phone and put it in his pocket.

"You're not going to make it.", Derek told him.

"I know."

"You didn't tell him about his mom either.", Sam said, unclicking her seat belt.

"Not until we find out the truth.", Stiles said. They looked outside at the Beacon Hills Long Term home sign.

"By the way, one more thing?", Derek spoke up suddenly, glancing at Stiles.

"Yeah?", Stiles replied, looking over at him. Derek grabbed his head and slammed it into the steering wheel of the jeep. "Oh, god what the hell was--"

"You know what that was for, now go!", he said, pointing to the building, Stiles looked at him in disbelief and didn't move.

Derek pointed again, ordering, "GO!" Stiles groaned and the teens quickly scrambled out of the jeep.

"God, all this is so complicated," Sam said, walking into the home. "Look, maybe his mom isn't even involved. Maybe she was just doing her job and didn't think anything of it."

"I hope so. She's smart, but hell…", Sam trailed off, looking around the home. It seemed kinda empty. It was quiet. Eerily quiet.

Stiles spoke up. "Well she's nowhere to be found." They looked around some more and Sam could only feel a sense of dread as they explored.

It felt off. No one's here? Not one nurse in sight? It bothered her. This feeling… wrath? No… She couldn't put her finger on it. This presence definitely wanted destruction, though.

"Stiles.", Sam called. He turns to her. "Hm?"

"Call Derek.", Sam says, looking around.

He dialed Derek's number, immediately getting an answer and finally tells Derek that Scott's mom isn't here.

"Then ask for Jennifer, she's been looking after my uncle.", Derek says.

Stiles led Sam into Peter Hale's room, but they found it empty. The wheelchair was parked at the edge of the completely made bed.

Not a single wrinkle was on the bed.

"He's not here either.", Stiles said. Sam frowned. The wheelchair was parked. This was definitely his room, so where the hell was comatose Peter Hale?

Her hands started sweating. There's no way a comatose man is just gonna walk around. And without supervision…?

She had a bad feeling.

"What?", she heard Derek through Stiles' phone.

"He's not here. The room's empty, Derek."

"He's comatose, how could he be gone?", Sam muttered. He shouldn't be gone. If she's not here and he's definitely not here....

Sam looked at the door. He's definitely here. Awake and kicking.

Sam pushed Stiles out of the room, "We need to go. Now." As she made it out of the room, the presence was heavier than before.

"Smarter than you look, you know." The teens turned to their right to see a fully awake and functioning Peter.

"Holy shit."

"You must be Stiles.", Peter smiled to him before turning to Sam. "and you must be Samantha. Such a pleasure to finally meet you two for real this time."

"What are you doing here?" They jumped in fright and turned around to see Jennifer standing there with her arms crossed over her chest, "Visiting hours are over.", she growled.

"You…" Stiles pointed at Jennifer, then at Peter. "and him? You're the ones who- oh, and he's the…oh my God, we're gonna die.", Stiles whimpered before Derek came out of nowhere and elbowed Jennifer unconscious.

"That's not nice, she's my nurse.", Peter playfully scolded.

"She's a psychotic bitch helping you kill people. Get out of the way.", he ordered the two in front of him.

"Ah, damn." Stiles wrapped his hand around Sam's wrist and pulled her down to the ground with him. Stiles and Sam pressed their backs up against the wall.

"You think I killed Laura on purpose? One of my own family?", Peter stalked his nephew.

Immediately, Derek's eyes turned icy blue and his fangs protruded from behind his lips. He let out a loud growl and jumped off of the wall opposite of Stiles and Sam, kicking off towards his uncle.

Peter caught him and slammed him into the wall before tossing him into another wall. The railings fell to the floor with Derek. Stiles and Sam began crawling away.

Stiles hid himself underneath the reception desk and Sam was hiding on the other side. Sam inched herself towards the edge of the wooden desk and peeked out. Peter grabbed Derek by his neck, picking him up and dragging him effortlessly.

Derek was struggling, and it didn't make it any better that Peter was probably his only family.

"My mind and personality were literally burned out of me. It's being driven by pure instinct.", Peter dropped Derek down next to Jennifer's body.

He painfully glanced at Sam who hid under a desk. "Get out of here.", Derek demanded in a hoarse whisper.

"We're not leaving you.", Sam whispered back. Peter squatted down to get a key out of Jennifer's blood-stained nurse's dress. Derek weakly stood up.

"You want forgiveness?", Derek threw a punch and it hit Peter square in the jaw. Peter grabbed him by his jacket and head butted him, causing him to stumble backwards.

"I want understanding.", the older man corrected, kicking Derek in the stomach. He tumbled backwards and landed face first in the small waiting area.

Sam watched as Peter stalked towards Derek and she rushed behind a desk, rummaging for something to distract Peter with. She looked to her side and saw some type of steel rod. Stiles looked at her, bewildered. He shook his head, harshly whispering, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Do you have any idea what it was like for me during those years? Slowly healing cell by cell. Even more slowly coming back to consciousness.", they heard Peter drone. Sam peeked over the desk to see what was going on. Derek tried getting up, he spat out blood, glaring at his uncle.

"Yes, becoming the Alpha, taking that from Laura, pushed me over the plateau in the healing process." Derek got up and they began fighting again. All of Derek's punches, Peter was able to dodge them all.

The next punch, Peter caught and he began crushing the bones in Derek's hand, making him groan out in pain.

"I tried to tell you what was happening. You wouldn't listen.", Peter sneered as Sam snuck up behind him and swung the rod at the man, hitting him in the back.

"Piss off already.", she growled. Peter let go of his grasp on Derek's hand and he kicked him down.

He turned around, glaring at the girl. She swung the rod at him again, but he caught it and simply threw it across the room.

Before Sam could react, Peter grabbed her by the throat and pinned her to a wall. Sam gasped for air, swinging at his face and kicking at his stomach but Peter's hand closed around her throat tighter.

"How could you be so reckless and stupid to hit an Alpha, who can easily rip your throat out with one finger?", Peter asked.

Sam tried to take some sort of breath but could only see her vision blackening. In what vision she had, she could see Derek grab Peter away from her. Sam fell and started coughing up a storm. Just as she was able to focus once again, she could see Derek being thrown through the glass window of the private nurse's station.

"No!", Sam rasped, hearing Derek fall to the floor. She looked up as Peter came towards her, pinning her to the wall again. "Such a shame you've been dragged into this.", Peter said, unapologetically.

"If you're going to turn me, just do it.", Sam growled.

Peter smiled. "I have other uses for you."

He threw her to the floor next to Derek. They were in an operating room. Sam caught her breath as she turned on her back.

Derek turned to her, weakly. "I told you to leave."

Peter looked towards a mirror and then spun it. They watched in shock as the burns and scars that had littered the older man's skin had disappeared, completely healing his face.

"You're well in your right mind to be afraid.", Peter smiled and looked back to himself in the mirror, admiring his new handsome image.

"When you look this good, why wait?", he said, conceitedly. He turned his attention back to them, "Derek, you have to give me a chance to explain."

"He doesn't have to give you shit.", Sam defied.

"Stop it.", Derek scolded, grabbing her arm and pulling her away.

"What're you, her babysitter?", Peter teased as took a few steps towards them. Sam could feel little tremors in Derek's hand as he pulled her back. She wasn't expecting to see him so afraid. It made sense, though. His once comatose uncle was now seconds away of killing them if he wanted to.

He looked so tired, stumbling over his feet as he stared at Peter with fear.

"Samantha, what a powerful name. Our name is a symbol of who we are, did you know that?", Peter smiled.

He continued walking toward them. "Yours, however... flower… blossom. Purposeful meanings."

"Meaning what?", Sam asked, confused. "Where are you going with this?"

Before she could get an answer, she was quickly pulled out of Derek's hold.

"Stop!", Derek yelled.

"Oh, relax, Derek. I just want to have a little fun. Come on, don't you think that having another werewolf would be a little bit more fun? You know how boring humans could be.", Peter grinned.

"Why me?", Sam asked the Alpha.

"Why not?", Peter scoffed. "You'd be so much stronger than you are now. You could help Scott, even."

Her eyes widened a bit and he caught on. Sam glared at him. "Using my friend as bribery. You're fucked.", she growled.

He frowned, quickly choking her again. "And you're tediously annoying." She could feel his claws poke at her skin, teasingly.

He knew she would be afraid. He almost had her at Scott. He knows. Everything. He was there. He was at the school. If he really wanted to, he'd change her now, but he was playing with his food at this point.

"Don't you understand how much of an inconvenience you are for Derek? Being human?", he says.

SHe turned her head away from Peter, frowning. She knew that. She knows being human and being involved in all this werewolf stuff worries him. She don't want him to have any of her blood on his hands.

"I know that.", she muttered. Peter's hold loosened up just a bit. "Hm?"

She looked at Peter with hateful, glossy eyes. "I know I'm an inconvenience. That's all we've done since we met him was make things worse. But I still had fun, despite almost losing my life over and over. Helping Scott, dealing with all of this, I put up with it because they're my friends.", she said, tearing up. Derek and Peter looked at her with furrowed eyebrows.

Especially, Derek. She had...fun? Almost losing her life...she had fun?? What- What's wrong with her...?

"I don't need to be a werewolf to understand the responsibilities and stress behind it. Regardless, they're still human. They're not indestructible and neither are you! So, you can take that superiority complex and shove it up your-"

Before Sam could finish, Peter reeled the arm he held her with and threw her back across the room, making her slam into wall.

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