Author's Note: Cross-posted from AO3. Title comes from Brown Bird's "Behind Your Breath."
Third period English, fifteen minutes into a class discussion on the symbolism found in Edgar Allen Poe's Masque of the Red Death and why anyone should care, Danny Fenton hiccups. The students nearest him freeze. When Danny Fenton makes a sound that perfectly mimics the heavy pneumatic grind of metal against metal, the entire class goes silent.
"Ah crap," Danny says, his eyes beginning to shine a lurid green, and slaps his hands over his mouth.
From behind his desk, Mr. Lancer looks away from his computer and at the strangest boy he has ever had the dubious pleasure of teaching. His lips thin, his eyebrows furrow. "Again, Mr. Fenton?" he asks.
Danny nods, wisely refusing to remove his hands.
"This makes the third time this week," Mr. Lancer adds with an appraising eyebrow. Unsaid, This better not be another attempt at skipping class.
Danny nods again. His eyes have lost all resemblance to a human's, appearing now as twin swirls of green, bright enough to cast flashlight beams across his desk despite the late morning sunlight streaming in through the windows.
"Dismissed," Mr. Lancer says after a pause just long enough to make the boy fidget. "Do try to return to class eventually, if you don't mind-"
But Danny has already vanished, quite literally. Mr. Lancer sighs, unoffended by this apparent rudeness. From any of his other multitude of students, such an abrupt exit would have been cause for a sternly worded reminder on respect. But not Danny Fenton, scarcely fourteen and already going white at the temples.
Danny Fenton, as everyone knew, was a special case.
There is a bare stretch of concrete down in Casper High's basement set aside for Danny's "Phantom Business," as Principal Ishiyama so dubbed it, air quotes and all. It's cold down there, hedged in by frosted towers of wooden crates to keep curious and foolhardy students away. It is accessible only if one doesn't mind performing a rigorous display of physical prowess. Danny doesn't mind usually, but today he just phases down through the ceiling. Puking up ghosts publically is about as pleasant to watch someone do as regular puking is, except more explosive, and whatever just splashed all over the place usually gets up and starts shooting lasers out its eyes. Opening the Portal isn't really something he likes to do around others, and his classmates are happy to get out of his way whenever his eyes start to glow. And any other time really.
Well, it's not like his social life was ever going to be A-list quality, considering his mad scientist parents, his genius sister, and his middle-class income. Turning into a ghost that vomits up other, more malevolent ghosts scared away just about everybody except frothing news reporters and vaguely menacing government agencies, but it also got him his own Wikipedia page. So there's that.
He transforms as he lands on the green-stained concrete, appreciating the momentary relief from the pressure that had built up in his chest. He runs white-gloved fingers through equally white hair, then glances around to see if anyone's camped out to watch the show. It's happened before, more than once, but he's lucky today. He's alone.
It's been a few months since the accident. That doesn't mean this has gotten any easier.
He raises his arms before him, spreads his legs for balance. He breathes out, out, out. When there's no air left in his lungs, his chest compressed to the point of pain, he closes his eyes, and the Portal opens.
Danny is never fully cognizant of what happens. There is light and noise and pain, he knows. There is heat and color and an awful hindbrain awareness of something-someone-passing through what he now knows to be a perfect, permanent hole in the fabric of reality. Sometimes it's more than one. Today, thankfully, it is just the one. Even better, he recognizes the-the taste, is the closest word he's found for it. Makes him sound like a cannibal, but he sort of is so it doesn't bother him much.
It takes a minute to get his bearings, get the smell of wet cardboard out of his nose, the slippery too-sweet taste of rot off his tongue. He coughs, spits up gobs of green until he can breathe again even though breathing is optional when he's Phantom. If he doesn't do it now he'll forget, and it's a lot harder to get ectoplasm out of his system when he's human. He's on his knees, hands gripping his thighs hard enough to hurt. He lets go and looks up at the ghost that just passed through his soul.
"I am the Box Ghost!"
"Oh come on!"