Just Another Day
Warnings for: some blood and mental self abuse
It only hurts when I breathe
Danny is intimately familiar with rib injuries by this point in his life. Four years of ghost hunting will do that to a person and as he's never been a particularly careful kid, he's been intimately acquainted with nearly every building of significant height- and a few not- that Amity Park has to offer.
This case in particular has seen yet another routine battle that culminated in Skulker being sucked into the Fenton Thermos and Danny taking a spectacular belly flop onto the wrought iron fence that surrounded the cemetery. The irony was not lost on him, not in the slightest, but he is too busy nursing his bruised ribs to particularly care about the poetic twist.
In four years, you run into a lot of poetic twists.
He's learned the difference between a break and a bruise, and he's deemed himself perfectly fine- just a little banged up. Tucker had wanted him to at least give himself a more thorough examination and Danny hadn't missed Sam's hovering, but he ignored both of them in favor of brushing the injury off.
It's easier to do that at home in his bed, though. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, trying to find a position that alleviates the pressure enough so he can at least pretend to pay attention to whatever it is Lancer is talking about. Something poetry-related. Danny is starting to despise poetry.
He can feel Sam's eyes on the back of his neck, and Tucker's gaze doesn't go unnoticed in his periphery. He would shrug them off, make a motion to tell them to pay attention, but he is barely breathing as it was and staying conscious feels like a better use of his energy than engaging in an exercise of futility.
"Mister Foley," Lancer breaths sharply, leveling a knowing gaze at Tucker who snaps into a more upright position. "Can you tell me what we said Whitman wanted to convey in this except?"
"-Er- no, sorry."
"I see."
Lancer marks something in his agenda, and Tucker slumps a little in his seat. One question does not a grade make, but Danny is well aware that Tuck had gained traction in Sophomore year and by now is poised to finish at the top of his class. When he isn't worrying about the injuries his friend is accumulating.
Danny's breath hitches for an entirely different reason.
It only hurts when I try
Jazz is always collected. Her hair is always fixed, every errant strand viciously quashed under her headband. Her books are always neat, and even the post-its sticking out the top and sides line up just so. Her clothes are neatly pressed- never mussed from dorm living. Her bed is precisely made. Her papers are perfect, her tests are aced.
-Text sent Monday 9:15 a.m., Danny: Hey little bro, it's a been a while. Everything good?
"Still pulling a marathon study session?"
Jazz smiles at her roommate, the expression hitting just the right mix of sheepishness and breezy greeting. "Yup. This stuff won't get done on its own."
Melanie laughs and touches up her makeup while peering into the mirror on the inside of her closet. "Gotta hand it to you, I could never do that. You're crazy- but that's great."
"Well you got the crazy right."
"Maybe you should chill a bit." She walks over to the bed and exchanges her backpack for a purse before stopping at the door. "We miss you at dinner, you know. Especially your boyfriend. It's been awhile."
Jazz freezes, pen poised over her notebook. She's caught, her throat tight. But she is spared by Melanie waving goodbye and shutting the door behind her.
-Text received, Monday, 4:29 p.m, Ethan: Hey darling, it's been a few days. Still holed up there? Need me to bring refreshments?
She stands, pushing the chair in and crossing to their bathroom. It isn't much but a private bathroom is rare and she's grateful. Jazz gently hits the switch and waits for the overhead lights to flash and flicker. They always take awhile before the glow evens into something weak and washed out but steady.
The mirror is cracked and dirty. Jazz tried to clean and fix it at the beginning of the year but it was a lost cause and resulted only in a touch of tennis elbow. So instead she ignores the state of it and washes her face, viciously scrubbing her nose and rubbing the skin under her eyes once, twice, a third time before rinsing.
-Text received, Tuesday, 8:36 a.m., Ethan: Just thinking about you. Text me back.
When she looks at herself again, her whole face is red. Rivulets of water pool at her tear ducts and drip from her nose. But even the freshness of her exfoliation can't mask the darkness that haunts the corners of her mouth, the bags under her eyes, the way her forehead looks strained and alien to her. The way the overhead light washes out the healthiness from her cheeks and reveals the sunken contours over her bones.
She turns and slams one hand on the light switch, plunging the room into darkness. Jazz can't look at herself.
-Text sent, Wednesday, 5:22 p.m., Danny: Sam said you weren't doing too well, what's going on with you?
-Text received, Thursday, 12:00 p.m., Ethan: Guess you're not there. I'm going to be away this weekend.
She has to keep going. She has to try.
It only hurts when I think
Tucker's DOOMED account has been inactive for two and a half years.
His collection of video games stopped growing three years ago, and has been gathering dust in the corner of his closet for a little over one.
For eight months, when his television turns on it's already set to Amity Local News.
His homepage on his computer had been GamerUnlimited in freshman year, Wire News in sophomore, Casper High's main site junior year, and now opens to College Daily every time he opens the browser.
He's had a bookcase since he was sixteen and now, at seventeen, it's been filled three quarters of the way up.
The scene has become familiar by now; his shoulders ache and his eyes burn but he barely moves as he sits, hunched over his desk. His computer is on, but he barely glances at it- only to click through whatever database he needs at the moment to complete his outline. It's grown to three pages of yellow legal paper but even when he pauses he taps his pencil nervously against the margin until it's covered in little dashes and errant marks.
When his eyes drift away from the paper, he snaps them violently back. Sometimes it makes his head spin, but that's okay. Tucker doesn't mind it when his spins. It's almost as good as when it's full to bursting.
The other thoughts can't get in.
Thoughts like what college would ever want me? Or how can I pay for it? Or how can I ever leave? I can't leave. I can't ever leave.
And sometimes, sometimes, I want to go.
Then the guilt swallows him and he has to take notes on the Communist Manifesto or Advanced Placement Physics to drive away the blackness that tangles in his gut and makes him nauseous. The solution isn't permanent but Tucker's always been great at pretending. Sometimes he just needs a little help getting started.
When he can't control the twitching, he manically calculates his GPA over and over again. Out of four it would 3.9, 3.9, 3.9? Yes, 3.9 that's right, because of those Bs. He clicks through his portfolio of grades online, tallying each A to soothe the beast that quivers in his chest. And once he's breathing steadily again, he goes back to the outline for his history paper.
I want to go, but I can't. Or I shouldn't.
… Nuclear weapons proliferation in the twentieth century began as...
He's great at pretending. He's even better at lying.
It only hurts when I cry
She looks at herself for so long in the mirror she her face doesn't resemble a face anymore. It's broken into lines and sections and planes- a construct dreamed up by an architect and assembled by an engineer. Without feeling or judgement. When she deconstructs herself, sometimes she can see herself that way too.
There are smudges around her eyes where her makeup hasn't washed away completely. Her nose comes down, straight and unyielding, until it ends in a blunt tip. The way her bangs fall makes her angry- chopped up and the ends tangling with her eyelashes on the right side. Her neck supports a head too heavy to be held up.
Sam stares impassively at the picture looking back at her, nodding as if to say yes, this person exists. It's the most neutral phrase she can conjure. She exists. Her skin is warm and her limbs move. Her organs circulate blood and oxygen and her mind buzzes. As a human being, she exists.
Even that breaks her heart a little bit.
The vestiges of her confidence remain. She wears them like armor, steps into her labels and smiles with the best of them. Vegan, goth, friend, daughter, woman. Definitions that she fits in with little fight or negotiation on her end.
Defender, critic, champion.
Playing her part has been so easy that she's convinced herself she enjoys it. And maybe on some days she does. Laying out in the grass under the sun as a friend, or butting heads with her mother as a daughter. Dressing as a goth, arguing as a defender.
Athlete, reader, artist.
She always liked seeing the beauty in things, and she hopes that isn't something she conjured out of a need to be someone. If she gets to keep one good thing, just one, it'd be that. Artist. It feels warm and soft against her, encases her in something that apologizes for her faults- all of them. Even the darkest and deepest within.
Ally, geek, warrior.
Sam lifts one hand, studies it in the light of her bathroom. The polish on the tips of her fingers is cracked and peeling off. She'll have to redo that soon. But maybe not tonight. Or, at least, not now. Because her reflection is doing that thing where the pull apart sections are coming together again and the whole image is turning back into her reflection and not just an abstract assembly of pieces.
Selfish.
What she wants to say is that she does what she does for the good of her friends. For the good of the city. But it's not like she decided to be the one to pull on the hazmat and walk into a ghost portal, knowing full well what it would do to her; goaded on by her friend only to half die. Twice.
Murderer.
No, she's the just the one that pushed him in- not only once but turned back time to do it again because she wasn't happy with how things turned out otherwise.
Nonentity.
The truth of the matter is that Sam doesn't know who she is without the definitions. If they disappear, she's pretty sure she will too. Even the blood on her hands is necessary to be a real person. To exist.
She stares at the back of her hand while her eyes sting and overflow; she can't look at her reflection as the sobs cut her chest in half because there's one more label that fits snugly around everything that she is.
Coward.
It only hurts when I work
Maddie stands at the threshold of what used to be her daughter's bedroom. Her arms are bundled against her chest, tight enough to hurt and sure enough to drive away the feelings. She can see Jazz now, sitting on her bed, a mountain of books stacked neatly on the nightstand. In her later years, laughing was a foreign sound in the Fenton home but Maddie thinks back to that vague time before, when Jazz's giggles were like bursts of light and clarity.
Before. It stalks her because Maddie simply can't understand when or why this divide happened. She was content at first to ascribe it to her children growing older and drifting away. Danny, once clear eyed and happy became withdrawn and sullen. Jazz, once tenacious and bright, became consumed mind and soul with her future. It was what children did, wasn't it?
But she knows. While the Fenton family has challenged even the idea that normal doesn't exist, whatever had happened to the four of them wasn't some natural process driven by time and social pressure. It was like- some switch had been hit and in one long and steep slope, she had lost her family.
"Momma, don't look yet!" Jazz had demanded frantically from behind her closed door. Maddie had waited, a wry smile on her lips that broadened when her daughter finally emerged, too-big goggles on her head, a large white shirt draped over her shoulders, and boots swimming around her little ankles.
Maddie had cooed appreciatively, bringing her hands together. "You look lovely!"
Jazz had laughed, loud and high, as she explained, "I'm a scientist, just like you!"
And to assist, Maddie had bent down, adjusted the borrowed goggles and ersatz lab coat to facilitate her daughter's pretend scientific work. All the while, Jazz had rattled off all the jargon she had picked up in school and around the house.
She had always known her daughter would grow up but in that moment she'd been blind.
"Hey."
The footsteps behind her alerts her to Danny's presence, and though his greeting is more a syllable than an actual word it is something. She almost turns, but can't bring herself to actually move and see him. The sound of footsteps has slowed and stopped- which is unusual. She had expected the click of his door shutting.
Gingerly, he ventures, "Mom?"
Without turning, Maddie replies, "Yes dear, hello."
"I, uh- I'll be in my room."
Maddie doesn't say anything, and eventually the sound of his door closing greets her ears. She stands stock still by Jazz's room.
Tomorrow, she'll look at him again. She'll see the lies that line his face and the defeated slump of his shoulders that no eighteen year old should possess. She'll see the future that he used to cling to with such optimism and has now given up on. Tomorrow, she'll be able to process all of it the best she can.
Tomorrow, she'll be strong.
But today, she tears herself away from the hole her daughter used to fill and creeps down the stairs, through the kitchen, and to the lab. She has to keep the remnants of her family together, and if she breaks now she'll never pull herself back together.
So today, she works.
It only hurts when I play
"Danny!"
He tumbles down from his position in the sky. The body beside him is a blur as he hurtles away and his mind is singularly focused as he pulls himself up less than a foot above the ground. It's not a sure stance- no midair stance is, but he's losing a little too much vital substance and he's shakier as a result. Danny doesn't need to look at the gash in his side to know that a frothy mix of red and green is bubbling and oozing down his stomach, his hip, his leg. He can feel the tacky substance; it's all the reminder he needs.
Instead, he turns his gaze up until he spots Dani. Her green eyes are wide and her chest heaves in a mix of fear and determination. His own eyes narrow and to reassure her he kicks off and hovers until he's at level with her.
"Danny that was-"
"Later, okay?"
"No, not later-"
They are interrupted by an ecto blast being hurled their way. Dani is fast, now. She dips lithely and zips below Danny's feet while he backpedals and conjures ice shards that rocket towards the ghost. It howls, grabbing its face while Dani takes advantage of the distraction and sends a few slicing disks of ectoplasm its way.
The finishing blow is the Fenton Thermos. It takes the two of them gripping with white knuckles to fight the rage of the beast being sucked within. As soon as it's over, Danny descends. He doesn't collapse- he can't, he has a job to do- but his counterpart doesn't seem to buy the act.
"You shouldn't have done that," she chastises, sharp as her attack as she pushes him to a sitting position on the sidewalk. He allows it, one hand reaching out to grasp her elbow. "That was really stupid, I'm strong enough to handle it and now you're hurt and you made me feel like an idiot."
The last accusation stings because he knows it's true. Playing the white knight isn't something he wants to do- not with anyone. But it's hard to resolve his instincts with logic sometimes and the heat of battle is one of them.
It's not the only reason, though.
"Yeah, well, I couldn't let you have all the fun," he informs her, a teasing lilt coloring his tone. She rolls her eyes.
"God, I can't believe I'm related to you."
"You wound me."
"No- you wound you. Idiot."
Dani's hands are now pressing against the slice and he flinches back. She is unafraid- she is always unafraid and that terrifies him. Instinct pushes him to look at what she's doing. He nearly gags at the sight of green and red foaming around her knuckles and trickling down the valleys of her hands.
Blood, ghostly or otherwise, is nothing new. He gets it- it's part of the superhero shtick and even Tucker, whose gore tolerance was considerably less in real life than in anything animated, had learned to live with it by now. But Danny is seized in a tremor of panic, forgetting for a moment that Danielle has been stabilized and that the mess of green and red is his own.
"Dani-" he starts to say but catches himself. She's concentrating fiercely on the side of his abdomen and the pain doesn't let him forget for long that she's not the one who needs saving.
"Yeah, yeah, stuff your excuses in a sack. Okay, I think it's slowing- that's good. Can you fly? We should get you back to your room with all the first aid stuff."
Unable to find his voice, he nods and pushes himself to stand. The gash is pretty grisly, stretching from the top of his hip and winding its way up to the bottom of his chest. He stares in mute fascination and the thought comes unbidden to him- I'm unraveling.
But Dani pokes him in the head and tugs the arm on his side and he remembers to leave those thoughts- the ones that haunt him at night- behind as they take off for FentonWorks.
She patches him up with clumsy fingers that somehow get the job done and Danny can't send her away. So they lay on his bed for a long while, breathing heavily in the silence of the house- empty save for them. After a while, Dani falls into a nap. Her limbs are sprawled gracelessly over his covers and he lets himself laugh for a brief moment. It doesn't take him by surprise anymore just how much of himself there is in her. It doesn't even take him by surprise when he notices how different they are.
But now his eyes are glued to her. Her head, her back, her cleaned hands. The way her hair frizzes at the ends when she isn't patting it down. The way she's not still, not for a second. Her chest and stomach ebb and flow, her arms twitch, her lips cycle through frowns and smiles.
He lets the image fill him up. Even after three years, there's no other way to get the image of her extremities dissolving from his mind. But there's still no cure for the itchiness that lives in his own skin, and the fevered conjectures of his adrenalin-addled mind.
She's whole, so he has to be too.
"I won't disappear," he promises the ambivalent room. Whether physically or metaphorically he doesn't know, but it's important. There needs to be some trace of him in this world that's not just a stain on the pavement.
He slips into sleep, and in his dreams he melts.
It only hurts when I move
Jack Fenton smiles.
He smiles as he sits down to eat breakfast. Most of his cereal ends up on the floor as he has a habit of gesticulating a little too wildly with his spoon-hand as he talks, so he gets up, gets some more, and kisses his wife on the cheek before she goes out shopping.
He smiles as he goes down to the lab. The results of his tests are coming out exactly like he expected them too, and he couldn't be happier that his new containment weapon is already functioning at full capacity. He's not done with it yet, but it's so promising that he can't help his giddiness.
He smiles as Maddie enters.
"I've got cookies baking upstairs, remind me to check on them in twenty minutes."
"Sure thing!"
"And I need to go to the dry cleaner's this evening."
"No problem!"
"Is that the Fenton Sack? It looks like it's working."
"It sure is, Mads."
"You might want to change the name, though, Jack."
He smiles while he's waiting for his second coffee to finish brewing in the kitchen and he hears the front door open announcing Danny's arrival. Jack doesn't hesitate- he barges into the living room and grabs his son around the shoulders, steering him into the kitchen so he can boast about his work. Danny nods and glances warily around the room, and it's not lost on Jack that the boy wants to be anywhere but there. He squeezes his shoulder and wishes he could prolong the moment before releasing him. Danny practically runs up the stairs.
He smiles over dinner, and it's a little brighter when Danny makes a rare appearance.
He smiles broadly when Jazz calls and he doesn't drop the expression throughout the entirety of the seven minute conversation.
He smiles as he kisses Maddie goodnight and turns off the bedside lamp. Over the past few years he's noticed that the gap between them has widened. Where they had once existed together, wrapped in each other's arms, there's a valley that pushes them to opposite ends of the bed. Maddie is awake and she will be long after he falls asleep, holding her arms against her stomach rigidly, like she might break.
He smiles until he turns on his side and then he finally lets go. His face hurts. He is tired.
It only hurts when I say
Danny can see the tension written across every inch of her skin. He can feel it, the same way he feels it on Tucker and Sam and the way he imagines Jazz feels it too.
"So how is everything?"
His mother's question is not about what happened during school. It's not about his homework or clubs or college applications. It's not about sports or friends or girls.
Or, well, it is. It's about those things, but he understands that it's about the way he stands, favoring his right let. The way he crawls into his window at three in the morning instead of staying home at night. The way his eyes sit on top of ever-present bags.
The way he lies to her. Over and over again until they start to hurt him just as much as they hurt her.
It's about Jazz and Dad and himself. About their family. About him and all the things he refuses to say.
How is everything?
Danny shoots her a grin and it feels like he's stabbing her through the heart.
"Oh, you know. Just another day."
A/N: Hey there! It's been about five or so years since I've written for the Phandom? Over the past few weeks I've taken it up again, posting one shots and ridiculous crossovers on tumblr, so I think it's about time I compile everything in one place.
For my multi-chapter fic(s) I try to stick to a schedule, but for this I'll simply post whenever I write something new. This in particular was written for the 9th DannyVersary and is largely unedited since I was tired after cranking out a ten page behemoth.
Hope you enjoy!
