Chapter 21

if
the ocean
can calm itself,
so can you.
we
are both
salt water
mixed with
air.

- Nayyirah Waheed

"I don't believe it," said Danny, gawping at the other side of the cafeteria. "Mikey. He replaced me… with Mikey."

Using his dual citizenship status as a nerd, Tucker had, seemingly overnight, incorporated himself into the ranks of Mikey, Nathan, and the rest. They currently appeared to be having a blast discussing battle tactics – i.e. how to brace your wrist for the most advantageous dice throw - in Dungeons and Dragons.

"He doesn't even play D&D. Who would he play it with? I'm the only person he hangs out with!"

For a moment, Tucker's eyes met Danny's from across the room, and his good cheer faltered. But only for a moment.

"To be fair," said Sam, "he probably feels like you replaced him with me. Not that I'm taking his side!" she tacked on, when Danny's glower fell on her.

"I didn't replace him! What's wrong with me wanting to have more than one friend?" Immediately seeing the hypocrisy in his words, Danny flinched and slumped in his seat.

"Which is why you kept me a secret from him," Sam drawled. She rolled her eyes and laughed once, a puff of air through her nose. "I can't help but feel like I'm witnessing a failing marriage here. Except I'm not sure if that makes me the child in that scenario or the hidden mistress." Glancing between them, she decided, "No, definitely the mistress."

"I apologized," said Danny. "But he won't answer any of my texts, and every time I try to approach him, he runs away from me!"

"Just give him some time. He'll forgive you eventually."

"I guess." The thing was, Danny had never seen Tucker angry before. Irritated, sure, exasperated occasionally, but never angry. They'd never had a fight like this. Or were they even fighting? Danny just felt like he was on the receiving end of a very cold shoulder.

And really, so what that he had kept his meetings with Sam secret? Sure, he had lied to Tucker to do it, but in the end Sam was not even a threat. Danny couldn't see what the big deal was.

It's more than that, and you know it, a voice in the back of his mind niggled. He tried to ignore it.

"So, uh, Danny," said Sam, after an awkward stretch of silence between them. "What are you… doing after school today?"

Danny's eyes flicked up to her from the tabletop, and all of a sudden he felt nervous. It struck him that, for the first time, Sam was hanging out with him, with Fenton. They were eating lunch together, exactly like real friends would. "I, uh, thought I should start training. You know, for the next time Vlad tries to kill me. I was probably going to go to the pool," he added, hoping that Sam would want to join him.

"I've been thinking about that," said Sam. "You seriously need a better place to practice."

He shrugged. "Eh. It's fine."

"It's the high school pool, Danny. It's not fine."

She was right. The pool was terrible. "The thing is, I don't really know anywhere else to go."

"Why don't you just use the beach near your house? Not the Fentonworks Beach, but that stretch where you washed up on Saturday?" Sam winced at the memory but went ahead with her suggestion. "There aren't any public beaches around for at least a mile, and I realize I don't know how your parents' equipment works, but it seems like you'd be far enough away from their buoys to avoid getting caught. Plus fresh air, fresh water, room to swim. What's not to like?"

"I mean, that's true… " Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "It just feels like every time I go near the ocean, something tries to kill me."

"That's even better!" exclaimed Sam. At Danny's appalled expression, she continued, "You wanted to train, right? What better way to train than having to beat up whatever attacks you? Call it 'learning on the job'. Besides, if what you said about the mutant mudpuppy's right, not even the pool can be guaranteed monster-free anymore." Leaning in close and smiling way too much for Danny's liking, she pointed a finger at his chest and said, "You could be attacked anywhere. You've got to be ready for it."

Danny gulped. "You sure know how to comfort a guy."

"Okay," said Sam, nodding cheerfully, "it's settled. After school today – you and me, on a beach, in the middle of nowhere. Let's make it happen."

"Uh… you got it."

It was at about that point that a dark shadow gathered above their table, blocking out the white fluorescents on the ceiling. Looking up, they found Paulina Sanchez standing over them, flanked by Star and Valerie. None appeared very happy. Considering Paulina's face, Danny would go so far as to use the word 'menacing'.

"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded, and at first Danny wasn't sure if she was talking to him or Sam. Her next words clarified it: "Why are you eating with this loser?"

Sam scowled and crossed her arms. "Danny's not a 'loser'. Anyway, it's none of your business who I eat lunch with."

Danny felt like he should help out somehow, but the only words that came out of his mouth were a remarkably unhelpful, "Yeah... what she said."

"It is my business," argued the Latina girl, "because when you go around letting losers talk to you, you make everyone think they can talk to us. Look," she said, gesturing to one of the tuba players in the school band, who was patting down his hair as he approached them.

As soon as the tubaist opened his mouth, Valerie said, "No," and he dragged himself dejectedly away.

"People have been asking us out all day," said Paulina with a distasteful sniff. "All because of you and your loser boyfriend. It's been completely exhausting!"

"Wait, he's not my boyfriend!" exclaimed Sam, at about the same time Danny protested, "She's not my girlfriend!"

"Then unless he's doing your homework for you, I want this," Paulina pointed one manicured nail between them, "to stop. Now."

Sam stood up, her hands clenched at her sides. "Maybe I don't want it to stop."

"Samantha, what are you doing?" hissed Star. "Don't you know that is like, so totally social suicide?!"

"It's Sam," said Sam. "Not Samantha. Sam."

Paulina rolled her eyes. "Whatever."

"No, not whatever," said Sam. "I've put up with you for years to make our parents happy. But you know what? I'm through with it. I'm through with you. You're shallow, and you're mean, and I can't believe I ever let people think we were friends."

"Shallow?" echoed Paulina. "Nuh-uh, you did not just call me shallow."

"I just did. And you know what else? I've never once thought you were pretty," Sam finished with a smirk.

Danny thought Paulina was about to slap her – either that or claw her eyes out. He swore he'd never seen a person turn that color before.

"Why you… you… you… Ugh!" She spun around like she was about to storm off, but then she whirled back. She was seething. "Well, I've never liked you either, sweetheart. You're creepy and totally depressing, and I know you never used the hair products I gave you for Christmas last year because if you had your hair wouldn't be so frizzy and dull and ugly. So you can keep your loser, but don't come crying to us when you want back into civilization. We're through. Let's go, girls." Flipping her hair, the queen of the A-listers led her group away. Star looked a little put out by the whole thing, but Valerie was smirking with some hint of satisfaction, like a victor's pride.

Tucker was right, thought Danny, speechless. Girls are scary.

"Well," said Sam, sitting back down. She clapped her hands together like she was brushing dirt off of them. "That was easier than I expected it to be."

"What you did just now – are you sure that's okay?" Danny watched Paulina and the others walk all the way back to their table, just to make sure they didn't decide to return and spork them to death.

"What? Oh, yeah. I've been saving that for years. Although it wasn't quite how I'd rehearsed it, it was still completely satisfying. I have no regrets."

Danny was baffled. "You had that ready for years? So… why now?"

"I was waiting for the right occasion." When Danny did nothing but stare uncomprehendingly at her, she said, "You, Danny. Meeting you, becoming your friend, and then seeing you stand up to Plasmius without even flinching? It made me think I should start being a bit braver, too."

"You're giving me way more credit than I deserve," said Danny, rubbing the back of his neck, his face growing hot. He had too many problems in his life and way too many flaws to start being a good influence on anyone. "Besides, that was almost scarier than Plasmius."

"Then great! I feel braver already."

Danny led Sam up to the Fentonworks Beach from the south. It was a roundabout way to go, but with the staircase still in shambles and his parents probably occupying the lab, it was by far the safest route.

The Beach was a mess. While Vlad had supposedly hired crews to rebuild the stairs and Dock and to haul the rest of the wreckage away, none of the crews had started their work and the majority of the trash from that day continued to lie scattered across the sand.

Seeing it, Danny's ire resurfaced. "Look at that," he said, throwing his arms out toward the debris. "Not only did Vlad destroy all this stuff, he was the one who put it there in the first place! Now he's too petty or spiteful to even clean it up. For some reason, I'm the only one who seems to care."

"Why are your parents friends with him again?"

Danny clasped his hands next to his cheek and swooned mockingly. "Because 'dear old Vladdy' is such a 'precious friend' who would do anything for them."

"Gag."

"I know. Even before I knew he was literally evil, I knew he wasn't any good."

"How is it parents can be so thick?"

"Beats me."

They continued up the beach, past even where Sam had found Danny the other night, to the small cave in the side of the cliff that had formed under an overhang of rock. It was far enough from Amity Beach that the only hint of the city was the rush of cars on the highway somewhere far above their heads, almost inaudible over the crashing of the waves.

"This was my favorite spot as a kid," Danny explained. "I knew I could come here to get away from my parents, Jazz, literally everyone. Tuck and I even used it as a secret hide-out for a few years." It was a fond memory, but he grimaced at the part his absent best friend played in it.

"Nice," said Sam. "This is perfect."

Danny turned to look out at the Atlantic Ocean, the same scene he had seen his entire life. The water was deep turquoise under the afternoon sun, and lines of waves tumbled, white with foam. He inhaled, and the air was crisp, sharp with the smell of the sea.

He could feel the familiar ache deep within his chest. Despite knowing what lurked under the surface, and furthermore the risks that floated above it, Danny was struck once again by the overwhelming urge to run out into the surf and swim for as far as his fins would take him.

He swallowed heavily and squashed that desire. He needed to focus.

"So, what's our plan for today?" asked Sam, appearing at his side. She placed her hands on her hips and surveyed the ocean like a pioneer.

"I want to practice my aquapa- my hydrokinesis," he corrected himself, remembering the word Vlad had used for it. "Just being able to move water isn't enough. I need to be able to attack with it."

"You've fought things before. What can you do with it so far?"

Danny frowned, considering. He counted off the skills he had discovered on his fingers: "I've made a spear with it, but only once. I can push a bunch of water in a wave, which is kind of strong but takes a lot of energy. I think I made a shield with it once, too. Besides that, the most I can do is practice geometry. What I want to do is make those water tentacles Vlad was using, or like a water whip or something."

"Alright." Sam clapped her hands together. "Let's get started. What do you need to do first?"

"First, I should get into 'water mode'," he said. At her raised eyebrows, he explained, "It's like this state of mind where I feel hypersensitive to water – well, more than I already do. The better I can feel the water, the better I can control it."

Danny kicked off his shoes, pulled his socks off, and rolled up his pant-legs. He walked across to where the sand was damp enough to be well-packed but far enough from the onrush of the waves. He had no intention of transforming today – not in front of Sam; that would just feel too weird – but something told him that having the beach under his feet was a good idea.

Taking a deep breath, Danny closed his eyes and let his attention fan away from him, across and into the sea. At first he forgot to check himself, and he was staggered beneath the massive amount of water out there, teeming with organisms. He rapidly reined his mind back in, until the most he could feel was the little patch of sand and water surrounding him and Sam. Their heartbeats thudded loudly in his ears. Sam's was faster than normal, and Danny figured she was anticipating seeing his powers; 'Triton' had hardly ever used them around her. When he opened his eyes again, the waves were sharp in his sight, and he knew before it happened to step back when a larger than average wave swept over the sand.

"Okay," he said softly. "Water mode – check." Experimentally, he raised a hand and a tendril of seawater leaped eagerly toward it. It orbited his outstretched hand in a loosely formed ring, small globules drifting off of it and attaching again a second later.

Danny took this and willed it into the air above his head. He guided it with two hands and stretched it into an arch. Glittering in the sunlight, it looked as if someone had swept a paintbrush across the air. This he led through a series of motions, commanding it to twist and turn like some living creature, spiraling and unwinding.

Sam, who had been silently observing until now, suddenly spoke up. "I have an idea! Hang on."

Danny, half his attention on keeping the water suspended, watched her kneel and pull a huge steel water bottle from her backpack. She dumped out its contents and then filled it to the brim with sand. Then she grabbed a flat slab of rock from over by the cave, plopped it into the sand about ten feet from Danny, and placed the weighted-down bottle on top of it.

"See if you can knock this over using your powers," she said, grinning. Her eyes seemed to be twinkling with enthusiasm.

Danny nodded. He focused on condensing the water so bits of it would stop drifting away. Then he dragged it to the left and swiped his arm sharply to the right. The water crashed against the bottle – and did nothing except drench Sam, who was still standing nearby it.

He lowered his arms and smiled sheepishly. "Oops."

"Don't worry about it!" said Sam, even though her jeans from the knee down were thoroughly soaked. "Just let me get out of the way next time." She backed up to a safe distance and bent to unlace her wet boots.

Danny pulled more water from the sea and tried again. The bottle didn't even budge.

"Maybe you need more water?" Sam suggested.

So, Danny tried again, with about twice as much water as before. This time, the bottle scooted about a centimeter to the right. He tried three more times, and the result was never better, until on the seventh try he was clawing his hand through the air and growling with frustration, and still nothing happened.

"I don't get it!" he said. "Why isn't this working?"

"Hey, chill! Getting mad's not going to magically make it start."

He sighed. "Yeah, I know…"

Sam appeared in front of him and grabbed his hands. "Let's sit down for a second."

"Um, okay?" Danny let the girl pull him down to the sand, where they sat cross-legged and barefoot across from each other.

Sam peered into his face with her lilac eyes and a steady expression. "We're going to try meditation."

Danny raised an incredulous brow. "You mean like saying 'om'?"

She rolled her eyes. "Not unless you want to. Otherwise, it's not necessary. Right now, just close your eyes." Still feeling doubtful, Danny did as she instructed. "Now, focus on breathing. Take deep breaths through your nose, into your stomach, and then out through your mouth."

For a moment, they sat there facing each other and breathing. Danny finally cracked open an eye and said, "Is this supposed to be doing something?"

"We're calming your mind – trust me, you need it. Keep breathing, and just think about your breaths. Don't think about Vlad, don't think about your powers, don't think about me. Just breathe."

Danny shifted a little, laying his hands loosely in his lap, and returned to breathing. He kept expecting something to happen, and for a while he felt as frustrated and as impatient as he did while trying to knock over the bottle. But then, against her instructions, he thought about Sam sitting across from him, sacrificing her own time to help him. He could hear her heart, calm and constant, and her breaths steady, in through her nose and out through her mouth. The water pushed at his back and pulled away, and pushed, and pulled.

Somehow, before he realized it happening not only Danny's breaths but also his own heartbeat had synced up to Sam's.

After a few minutes had passed, Sam said, "Now, think about your powers. What exactly do you want the water to do?"

He thought about it. He needed it to knock the bottle over. The question was, how? So far, just hitting the bottle with the water wasn't enough. The water needed to be harder, more solid. But water wasn't solid. That was why it was water. The very idea of solid water was too contradictory to make sense, but the merfolk and Vlad had done it anyway. Heck, even Danny had made a shield strong enough to block a rampaging mud monster.

Danny peeked open his eyes. He pulled a small amount of water into his hand and formed a globe. Then he closed his fingers around it.

At first, the water slid between his fingers; seeing this, Danny had the beginnings of a hunch. Maybe the only reason the water was moving when it hit things – or things hit it – was because he was expecting it to behave like water and flow around. He opened his hand again and reformed the sphere. When he closed his fingers the next time, he focused on not letting the water budge. And his fingers met resistance. He squeezed harder, and it was like gripping a ball.

That was it.

"Hey, Sam," he said.

Without opening her eyes, Sam said, "Yeah?"

"Watch this." As soon as she looked up, Danny opened his hand and the ball of water unwound. It swam through the air and crashed into the bottle, knocking it clean off of the rock. There was no splash this time, and Danny was even able to pull the water back to him, where it spiraled again into a sphere.

"Yes! You did it!" cheered Sam. "See? And that's the power of good breathing."

Another thirty minutes later, Danny was exhausted but overall pleased. He had gotten to where he could not only knock the bottle over every time but had also managed to wrap the water around it and lift it into the air. And he couldn't have done it without Sam.

As they rounded the corner of the cliff back onto Fentonworks Beach, Danny halted in his tracks and groaned.

His family, all three of them, were on the beach with trash bags, cleaning. His parents spotted him immediately and began waving energetically in his direction. Swapping a glance with Sam, Danny decided to get it over with. He trudged up to his parents, hoping they wouldn't say anything to totally embarrass him.

"Danny!" exclaimed his dad, holding out a plastic garbage bag. "There you are, kiddo. Here, grab a bag and start putting something in it. We're going to make this Beach so clean you could eat off of it! Well, as long as you like the taste of sand. Guess it has lots of calcium, but-"

"Jack," said his mom, elbowing her husband and looking very pointedly at Sam.

"Oh! I see you have a girl with you!" He thrust another plastic bag toward Sam. "Good. She can help, too!"

"Hi, sweetie," said Danny's mom, reaching a hand out to shake Sam's. "I didn't know Danny was dating anyone!"

"Mom!" Danny cried, turning bright red. "We're not dating! She's just – she's just my friend, okay?"

Sam smiled through her own blush and took his mom's hand. "Hi, I'm Sam. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Fenton."

"You don't really have to help us if you don't want to," his mom assured Sam. "It's just Vlad's cleaning crew is dragging their feet and the food's starting to rot… So we decided to make a family event out of it!"

"Am I supposed to be enjoying this?" grumbled Jazz, stabbing a plastic cup with a repurposed Fenton Harpoon and stuffing it into a garbage bag.

"It's a bonding experience!" said her mom. "We're taking a bad situation and making the most of it, but most importantly we're doing it together."

"I don't mind helping," said Sam, before Danny could take his mom's out.

"You – you don't?" said Danny, with altogether less enthusiasm.

"It's like volunteer work. Right now, this beach is a complete hazard to the environment." She patted Danny on the shoulder and smiled. "Let's do a good thing." To his parents, "Can I get a harpoon, too?"

"Yeah, we've got plenty!" said Danny's dad, before leading her away to have her choice of Fenton stabbing utensil.

Danny's mom winked obviously at him. "She's a keeper, hon."

"Please don't do that."

Chuckling, his mom passed her own Harpoon to Danny and indicated that he should start working.

Reluctantly, Danny began to spear some of the errant hors d'oeuvres, which were soggy and looking a bit greener than he remembered them being on Saturday. He gagged and pressed a fist over his mouth. He hadn't realized how bad this had gotten.

Sam rejoined him a couple of minutes later, with her own extra-sharp Fenton Harpoon. "Your family seems nice," she said and stabbed some garbage with no small amount of pleasure. "Do they always let you guys handle weapons?"

Danny shrugged. "Welcome to Fentonworks."

It hadn't been 'fun', per se, but having Sam there to help clean up the Beach made the time pass a lot more quickly. They had finished the worst of it by the time the sun set, and Sam's chauffeur – "You have a chauffeur?" – had been able to pick her up at the front of the house above. That made Sam the second outsider to ever step inside the Fentonworks lab, having had to cross through it to get to the elevator.

To say she was impressed would have been putting it lightly. "Your parents built all of this?" she exclaimed upon seeing the high-tech gadgetry, aquariums, computers, and so on that crowded the space, all themed with the signature silver and green colors of the Fentonworks brand.

"Basically. DALV Corp supplies all of their materials, but everything else they designed and built themselves. Everything a person could need to hunt merfolk. Like this gun that shoots razor-sharp harpoons. Or this gun that electrocutes merpeople. And this net that they supposedly can't break out of. That in the middle is a merperson holding tank. Oh yeah, and who could forget the Fenton Bazooka?"

"I get the feeling you're not very comfortable in here."

"How could you tell?"

"Come on, Danny!" called his dad, already near the elevator. "This lab is top secret, and the less your friend sees of it the better!"

Danny was more than happy to usher Sam out of there.

His family's interference aside, Danny had had a really good day.

Even without Tucker.

And there goes that happy feeling. Upstairs in his bedroom, he checked his phone – new, since he and a bunch of other people had either lost their phones or had gotten irreparable water damage that weekend – and, no surprise, there were no new messages.

He frowned at the little device and considered calling Tuck, again. He had already left several voicemail and dozens of texts, and Tucker hadn't responded to a single one of them. Some of the messages even showed 'unread' next to them. Tucker was ignoring him.

Frustrated, Danny decided to go take a shower and try to get that lingering feeling of 'just having picked up a beach's worth of garbage' off of him.

He was no longer doing secretive sponge baths in the middle of the night, not since he had figured out how to dry himself off with his powers and gotten over his fear of his family walking in on him. He still couldn't take a normal shower, but it was much better than before.

Danny stripped out of his clothes and stood at the side of the tub. After the water heated up, he grabbed the shower nozzle off of its hanger on the wall and, holding his head over the basin, wetted and shampooed it. That done, he switched from the shower nozzle to the faucet and used a scrub sponge to clean the rest of his body.

As he was wrapping up, something caught his eye in the bottom of the bathtub. There was some small, dark… thing… wriggling around on the porcelain and struggling to not be washed away into the drain. He narrowed his eyes at it and leaned down to get a better look.

It looked kind of like a worm, except it was black, white, and stripy, not much longer than the first joint of his finger. The body was thin, the middle slightly fatter, and it had a sucker on each end that it was attempting to use to attach itself to the tub.

Danny made a disgusted face. He recognized this. It was a leech - a zebra leech to be precise. The species had its own little habitat down in the lab, and he had thought a parasite that ate only zebras was awesome when he was a kid, back before he learned that wasn't what the name meant.

Just what it was doing in the upstairs bathtub, he had no idea. He decided to use his hydrokinesis to help it on its way. With a distressed jerk, it popped off of the bathtub and disappeared down the drain.

If that never happened again, it would be too soon. Danny hated leeches. He did a quick check of his skin and hair to make sure the creature had been alone. Just the idea of one attaching to him, feasting on his blood, made him shudder. It didn't matter if they were tiny. That was just sick.

Satisfied, Danny dried off and headed back to his room for homework and finally bed. Lying down, his eyes fell on his phone again, that unpleasant reminder. He would have to talk to Tuck tomorrow, make Tucker listen to his apology and accept it. And if he didn't, well… Danny would just keep trying, because Fentons were stubborn, and he'd had enough. He'd make Tucker see reason, and he wouldn't stop until he did.

A/N: So... if you want to feel creeped out really quick, look up 'leeches' in a Google image search.

Not a lot actually happened in this chapter, but I had a heck of a good time exploring Danny's powers a bit more. Hope that wasn't boring! Also, I think Sam's having more fun than she's had in years - calling Paulina 'shallow', helping Danny with his powers, and getting to play with a harpoon. She's having a blast. :D

Out of curiosity, I counted how many times Danny is on record in this story as having said 'thank you' to Tucker. In over 100,000 words of text, Danny has used the words 3 times with Tuck. Five, if you count when he was being sarcastic, which I don't.

Anyway! Thanks to: Specter14, ImpudentMiscegenation, Jokul Frosti The Winter Child, Crescental, Meet-the-Far, Kiomori, TabbiCC, Invader Johnny, Unlucky Alis, RoseAnna1177, ElenaPhantom, Glowing Loudly, ChangelingRin, Marvel-Fanatic, TimeZone13, MidnightMemory2939, Foxprints, fleurelise21, RevyCaitEll, Spectre Kid, Krista Perry, Losing Midnight, dragondancer123, and Guest for all of your lovely reviews!

Special thanks to: Meet-the-Far, whose fanart for this story has blown my mind. Since last chapter, they have drawn three more awesome pieces, which you can see on their Tumblr or at their DeviantArt under the name Hintojin - "Timeless", "Chapter 20 in a Nutshell" and "So Sad".

Until next chapter - in which we'll get to see some action again. Promise. ;D

T.F.C~