Long Flights (Complementary Drinks Not Provided)

Written for Phanniemay '16, Day 3: Road Trip

Danny loved the feeling of the wind on his face. He always had in a casual sense, as did many people, but ever since he'd been zapped by that ghost portal there was much more to it than that. Flying through the air, he truly felt alive. Strange that it had taken half-dying to feel that way. He closed his eyes for a few moments and enjoyed the breeze's caress of his hair. Well, it was less of a breeze and more of a gust. And unfortunately, for his friends the flight wasn't nearly so enjoyable.

It was dark and it was cold. There was no way around that fact. Luckily, the southern summer air around them was warm, but it did little to keep off the wind whipping by their faces at 140 miles per hour. The skies were blessedly clear, but they were flying just high enough that the heat rising up from the ground below didn't quite reach. Any lower, and they risked being spotted by anyone from local police to Guys in White.

Danny had shown them the clever little compartments his parents had built underneath the seats of the hovercraft they rode that contained goggles and gloves, but aside from those and the windshields, their human bodies had no real protection from the elements. Tucker's long-sleeved shirt kept him from being windburned, but Sam's crop top offered no such protection. A few hours into their journey, seeing that Sam's lips were turning blue – she would never complain, too much was at stake – Danny signaled to the other two to land. Quickly turning invisible, he changed into his human form, stripped to his boxers, and changed back to a ghost. He offered his t-shirt and jeans to Sam to put on over her crop top and shirt and after a strange look when she realized where they'd come from, she took them gratefully.

Soon after they'd taken back to the air, Danny was lost in his thoughts again. This leg of their journey was a lot quieter than that first mad dash to Cape Canaveral. It was late and they were tired, stressed, and else besides. What small talk any of the three had tried to make hadn't made it passed the first hour and a half.

Based on a quick Google Maps search on one of Tucker's tablets – 4G capabilities and an unlimited data plan had very much come in handy the past day or so – Gothapalooza, located several miles outside Las Vegas, was a little over 2,300 miles via major roads. If they used those as their guide, factoring in the hovercraft not being able to follow Danny's maximum speed, it would take them over sixteen hours to get there. They weren't travelling at the maximum speed of the hovercraft, either, but after a little bit of experimentation they determined that 140 miles per hour was about as fast as Sam and Tucker could stand without their faces feeling like they were peeling off.

Danny was feeling pretty guilty by hour six. He was maintaining speed behind the two hovercraft, partially to make sure he didn't accidentally pull away and leave them behind in his haste and partially to keep an eye on Sam and Tucker. They'd had to leave the diner without more than a new mouthfuls each of food and it was early in the morning of the following day. He'd seen several head nods and three times the yawns from both of his human companions and he was trying to figure out a way so that Sam and Tucker could each get at least a few hours of sleep.

He wasn't tired or hungry at all, really. The longer he stayed in his ghost form, the less human things liked that seemed to concern him. So long as he avoided using powers like his ectoblasts, he could maintain twice this speed easily for days. The cold certainly didn't bother him given his core temperature, nor the wind. The only things that wore on him were the knowledge that Freakshow had his family hostage and his worry for his friends.

He was torn out of his reverie, worries proving true when he noticed Tucker starting to lean sideways. "Sam," he said urgently over the Fenton Phones. "Tucker."

She glanced over at Tucker and, seeing him start to fall, moved her hovercraft over in time for him to fall against her side while Danny slipped in to sit in front of Tucker, setting the controls of the hovercraft to a descent. He glanced over the side of the hovercraft to look for a spot to land. They were in luck – isolated clusters of lights glimmered below them. There wasn't a major city in sight. Asking Sam to follow his lead, he led them to land just outside one of the smaller clusters of lights on the side of a long strip of lights that disappeared into the distance – a stop off of the highway.

"I'm going to sneak into a convenience store and grab a few snacks," Danny whispered. "Be right back."

Sam nodded and pulled her wallet out of the pocket of Danny's jeans. She flipped through a few bills until she found what she was looking for, then held out a twenty-dollar bill. "For the counter," she said.

He was back ten minutes later with an armful of jerky for Tucker and a variety of dried vegetable chips for Sam. The teen working the convenience store's register would find his count to be twenty dollars high the next morning. Hopefully it would be enough to compensate for the missing merchandise that would show up on the next inventory count.

They shook Tucker awake from his position sprawled out on the Texan dirt. Sam held an open package of jerky under his nose with one hand while pinching her own nose shut with her other. Tucker jerked awake with a cry of "Bacon!" and looked up at the other two sheepishly when he realized what had happened. Sam and Danny rolled their eyes and helped him to his feet.

A few minutes later, they were back in the skies racing towards Vegas, Danny riding double on Tucker's hovercraft. Every two hours for the rest of the trip, Danny switched hovercraft, allowing the other rider to have a few hours of blessed sleep. Thanks to his negligible weight as a ghost, the hovercraft didn't have to go any slower. Sam and Tucker were so tired that they slept through the morning hours into the afternoon.

By mid-afternoon, they'd crossed the state border into Nevada. After nudging Sam awake behind him, Danny let himself drift above the hovercraft to fly in formation behind the other two.

Reapplying her purple lipstick, Sam smiled. "Get ready for the darkest celebration of all things grim and ghastly," her voice echoed over the Fenton Phones. Setting her hovercraft to fly straight ahead, she pulled Danny's shirt over her head and kicked off his jeans and stowed them in the compartment beneath her seat.

"Gentlemen, I present to you…" Her voice trailed off as sunshine and rainbows appeared over the horizon. "You have got to be kidding me," she sputtered as Danny and Tucker dissolved into giggles behind her.

A/N:

I know Gothapalooza's in Nevada but I figured it'd be somewhere near a major city for logistical reasons, so I went with Vegas. Also did a little estimating on how long it'd take them to get there and how fast they'd be able to go. Skydivers experience speeds of roughly 120 mph, so I hoped a little faster would still be manageable for Sam and Tucker without any protective gear. If anyone has knowledge on the subject, I welcome fixes (:

-attu