Disclaimer: I don't own DP.
Understandings
Danny leaned against the wall and stared out the living room window, eyes glazing over as he tuned out yet another of his dad's endless ghost-related blathering lectures. Jazz stood ramrod straight inches away, carefully disinterested, ready to make her excuses and leave as soon as their father paused to breathe.
"Kids, Jack! Dinner's ready," Maddie called from the kitchen.
Predictably, Jack immediately ran off to the kitchen chanting "Oh, boy, oh, boy, food!"
Jazz relaxed minutely, rolled her eyes and followed. Danny just sighed and trailed after her, feet dragging on the much-stained carpet. They took their seats and discreetly palmed their knives, ready to re-kill whatever freakish monstrosity their mother's so-called cooking had created this time.
"I made spaghetti and meatballs," Maddie said cheerfully, setting down a massive bowl of noodles topped with brown lumps and bright red tomato sauce. This raised suspiciously few warning flags until Danny and Jazz realized that the spaghetti was still shaking and moving around after she'd put the bowl down. Jack spooned a massive portion onto his plate and dug in, oblivious to their apprehension, while Maddie doled out more reasonable portions to herself and the kids.
Jazz eyed it warily, poking at it with a fork to see if it did anything, or worse, ate the fork. Danny gulped audibly and asked her under his breath, "Hey, Jazz? You think it'll be eyes or teeth this time?"
Narrowing her eyes, she poked a meatball and the outer layer split in half, revealing what looked like a bloodshot red eye. "Eyes."
"Great," he muttered. Pushing the meatballs to the side, he twirled a few strands of spaghetti around the fork and pulled it up. As soon as it got close enough to his face, it leaped off of the fork and attempted to strangle him.
Jazz shrieked and jumped out of her seat, away from the evil undead wheat products. Maddie simply reached over and peeled it off, leaving nothing more than a few streaks of sauce standing out starkly against Danny's pale panicked face.
"It's pasta, sweetie. It isn't that strong," she said reasonably, wrapping the errant noodles in a napkin and tucking it under her plate for study. It was interesting how the kids' dinners were always so much more active than hers or Jack's, and she'd been meaning to look into that for a while now.
Still looking a bit green, Danny pushed his chair out and got up. "You know what, Mom? I just remembered, I was supposed to meet Sam and Tucker at the Nasty Burger tonight. It just totally slipped my mind. Silly me, huh?" he laughed weakly.
Not missing a beat, Jazz pitched in, "Yes, that's right. Oh, and I have a paper due next week. I wanted to verify some of my sources myself, and I'll need the public library's microfiche to do that. Is it all right if I go out before the library closes?"
Concerned, Maddie asked, "But then what will you eat?"
Danny and Jazz wasted no time assuring her that they would eat something, and that yes, they would be home before curfew; no, Danny couldn't break a prior engagement, and yes, the research really couldn't wait.
Maddie sighed, disappointed. "Well, if you're sure, kids."
"We're sure, Mom," they chorused, for once in complete agreement, and not-quite-ran out of the kitchen.
Between Danny needing to wash up and change his shirt and Jazz gathering her notes, because she would never waste a legitimate opportunity to learn something, they made it outside just before the oven timer went off on the lemon chicken.
Danny hung up, having secured his friends' company for the evening. Even if they hadn't technically arranged a meeting, Danny hadn't gotten to eat lunch and eating alone at the Nasty Burger was kind of depressing. Maybe it was because Valerie kept staring at him when she thought he wasn't looking. That was just weird.
Checking over his shoulder, he noticed that Jazz was following him, calmly climbing over a patch of sidewalk broken by tree roots. "Wait, why are you following me?"
"I'm not," she replied, amused. "It just so happens that we're headed the same direction until Third Street."
"Third Street?" Danny mused. Then he stopped and turned around, pointing at Jazz accusingly. "That's where that coffee place is, the one with the lame poetry and that waiter that keeps," he grimaced "-hitting on you!"
Jazz stared at him, feeling more than a bit discomforted. "Danny, how do you even know about that?" She was sure she hadn't told anyone.
He mumbled a reply.
"What was that?"
He sucked in a breath and spilled, "I follow you around town sometimes, okay?"
There was silence for a moment, broken by the roar of a passing car. "What?" she shrieked.
"I-it's not just you," he blurted. "I do the same thing with Sam and Tucker, and even Valerie sometimes. Not our parents, they've got too many inventions that hate me, but it's just – aagh. There is no way I can say this without sounding crazy, is there?"
Jazz turned this over in her head a few times, examining from all the angles she could find on such short notice. "Ah. So, this is part of your usual routine?"
He nodded, shame-faced. "Like I said, it's not just you. I have a lot of enemies, and ghost sense or no, I can't be everywhere at once. Never mind that some of my enemies are human and wouldn't show up anyway."
Jazz relaxed. "All right, but why the, ah…"
"Stalking?" Danny admitted. "Partly because I get worried, but mostly because if I don't see concrete proof that you're alright, it goes right past 'worried' and into 'terrified'. I've had my loved ones targeted before, and even one time was one too many."
Jazz winced and cast about for a change in subject. "So, ah, how long has this been going on?"
"You mean in general, or you specifically?"
"Both," she replied in a tone that left no room for argument.
He swallowed, hoping for a convenient distraction. When none appeared, he began, "Well, I started following you way back during the Johnny 13 incident. You know, that one?"
She shuddered slightly, despite the balmy summer evening. "Yes, I know," she said in a clipped tone. "What I don't know is why you're holding that over my head."
"What?" Danny yelped. "No, I'm not – ugh. Just, give me a second, okay?"
He took a deep breath and let it out, deflating. "It's not like you're the only one in this family who's done stupid things when, uh, relationships are involved-"
Jazz lit up, ready to leap on the admission and start in on a lecture that would effectively be a prettied-up "You admitted you were wrong, ha-ha!"
"-and if you take that opening, I'll tell Mom how you nearly got possessed."
"Not fair," Jazz responded. And it wasn't. Danny could tell people about ghost-related weirdness that happened to her, and the worst she'd get would be a glowing net or a faceful of goop. She simply couldn't allow any ghostly occurrences to be linked to Danny, because there was always the off chance that someone else would see through his façade and realize that he really wasn't human. Jazz was optimistic, not an idiot. She'd heard all of the dinner-table conversations in which their parents enthusiastically discussed destroying (murdering) and dissecting (vivisecting) Phantom in increasingly creative ways while Danny turned paler and paler until he was ready to pick a fight with Vlad just to avoid developing a phobia of his own parents. And that didn't even get into the GIW, the damned GIW with their complete disregard for human life, let alone ectoplasmic "life". She shuddered.
Suddenly Danny was in front of her, a chilled hand on her shoulder. "Jazz," he asked. "What's wrong?"
"Wrong?" she smiled brightly. "Nothing's wrong, little brother, I'm fine. I was just thinking. You know how I get sometimes."
For once, Danny was justified in shooting Jazz the don't-BS-me look.
She just laughed weakly, pushed Danny's hand off of her shoulder and walked around him. "Well, come on," she chirped. "Let's get to the Nasty Burger! You can hang out with your friends, and I'll pick up a salad." With that, she whirled around and speeded up, walking just short of breaking into a run.
Danny just stared, wondering what the heck had brought that on. Okay, yeah, maybe he was a little paranoid sometimes, but there really were monsters out to get him and his loved ones. And frankly, he was more worried about the ones that didn't look the part. "Jazz," he started, trying to explain.
"What are you standing there for, silly? You don't want to keep Sam and Tucker waiting, right?" she said with a gleaming smile.
Danny just smacked his forehead and gave up. "Whatever, Jazz. Lead the way."
Humming, Jazz all but skipped off to the local fast-food establishment as Danny berated himself for somehow screwing up again. It wasn't his fault he couldn't speak girl-ese.
It was only hours later, as Jazz stretched the kinks out of her spine from crouching over a microfiche reader for almost two hours, that she realized that Danny had only answered one of her questions. What's more, he hadn't explained why he was still following her and the others, years after the Johnny 13 thing. That whole mess with Valerie and Technus and the carnival had happened nearly a whole month ago, and – oh. Oh.
Did it still count as paranoid anxiety when they really were out to get you?
