Danny slumped through the door, dropping his overloaded backpack with a thunk and slouching into the kitchen in pursuit of an afterschool snack. To put it oh so eloquently, today had sucked balls. His day hadn't gotten any better after lunch (and all that had entailed), instead spiraling into the epitome of teenage angst. Between one of Lancer's infamous pop quizzes in English, a test he clearly hadn't studied for in Pre-calc, and a lecture in Physics about the importance of homework and attendance (this had followed a break to catch a school of rogue ectopusses), it had been a rough day. At this point, his mind was about the same consistency as the ectoplasmic sludge he regularly had to scrape off the ecto-filtrator. Finally reaching the relative haven that was Fenton Works, all Danny wanted to do was inhale a bowl of his favorite sugary breakfast cereal, and have a nice, uninterrupted, loooooong ass nap. Of course, considering his luck, it was not meant to be.

"Danny, is that you?"

Danny considered not answering for a moment before recognizing it was probably a rhetorical question, what with Jazz off at college and no other siblings (at least that he knew of). Sure there was Dani, but they didn't know about that and she didn't live here anyway; last he'd heard, she was somewhere in New Zealand.

"Yeah, it's me," Danny half responded half groaned. There was a slight pause as his mother took in his less than enthusiastic tone before promptly ignoring it.

"Could you come into the living room, sweetie? Your father and I would like to have a little talk."

He most certainly did not want to participate in any sort of 'little talk' with his parents. The last time he'd heard that phrase had been when his parents deemed him old enough to learn about the 'ectoplasmic embrace' (aka the birds and the bees for normal people). Not the best memory. In fact, he'd thought he'd finally managed to repress that particular piece of trauma.

Traumatic experiences aside, he didn't see many alternatives to this particular confrontation; it was probably better to go ahead and get it over with than let it get any worse. Following this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, Danny dragged his over-taxed body into the living room, feeling better prepared to take on the Fright Night on Halloween than his own parents. He was immediately met with his parents rather patiently sitting on the well-worn sofa, subdued for perhaps the first time in his life. It was at times like this that Danny genuinely missed Jazz's meddling presence; she was so much better at these kinds of things than anyone else in the family it was ridiculous. As it was, Danny felt like he was walking into an intervention, which was decidedly not the best feeling in the world.

Perching rather precariously on the loveseat across from his parents, Danny decided to go ahead and break the anxiety-inducing silence, "So, uh what do you want to talk about?"

"I think you already know that," his mom bit her lip in hesitation, "We want to know more about your… condition."

Danny couldn't help raising his eyebrow at that, "My condition? Is that what we're going to call it?"

"Son, how long have you been a ghost?" his dad finally blurted out, incapable of both silence and subtlety, much less any sort of combination of the two. At least the use of 'son' was a good sign.

"Half-ghost," Danny responded automatically before looking away in discomfort and raising a hand to rub the back of his neck, "I think you already know that, too… since the beginning, really, ever since the portal started working. It… it was an accident. Sam wanted a pic of me in the portal and it was a flop anyway so I figured why not? But I tripped and hit something inside and it turned on and I…."

Danny trailed off, still refusing to meet his parents' combined gazes. Realizing he wasn't going to continue, his mom asked the question that had been bothering her most since their discovery, "Danny… why didn't you tell us? Why did you lie to us for two years?"

Guilt clearly played across Danny's face at the unveiled hurt in his mother's voice, "I'm sorry. At first I was just scared—I mean, you guys hate ghosts, have been talking about 'tearing them apart molecule by molecule' since before I can remember. How could I know you wouldn't want to do the same to me? Later it was more of a, well a safety thing. If my enemies thought you knew, you'd be dragged into my problems, you'd be in danger because of me. I didn't want that for you." Of course, by enemies he really just meant Vlad, but he didn't think he was up for that conversation quite yet.

Emotion warred on the Fenton parents' faces, stuck between hurt at Danny's lack of faith in their abilities, understanding that Danny had only tried to do what he thought was right, and pride at their son's actions. He could have so easily taken advantage and no one would have been the wiser.

"I'm not gonna lie and say I completely understand, because I don't. But I want to, to work towards it together. Baby steps, right?"

Danny's relief was palpable, even from across the room; he hadn't felt this light in years. He smiled up at his parents, ridiculously thankful that they weren't going to attack him or dissect him or anything.

"Yeah, baby steps."


Quick note on the nature of this fic:

This is mostly going to be like a series of drabbles, very short chapters that skip-jump through time. There is a cohesive plot, but it's not going to be nearly as intense as my other story, CoE. I'm mostly writing this for stress relief/a break from other ideas, so updates will be more sporadic than usual.

I know this chapter is kind of fluffy, but I promise I did not mislabel this fic's genre; the higher you start, the farther you can fall.