(warning: Gore)

The morning sun sat low over the horizon, gold-pink light throwing shuttered shadows across the desks of Casper High. Students trickled into their classrooms, flowing like a living river to settle into their assigned seats. A low hum and hiss of voices all blending together washed past his ears, the pitch just low enough that it didn't irritate.

His leg was bouncing.

Danny swallowed past a dry throat, tongue making a faint clicking noise in the back of it. His bones still buzzed with leftover adrenaline, thermos sitting cold and static in the bag between his feet. The echoes of flight sat restless in his dark hair, cheeks still cold from racing across the sky.

An easy ghost, relatively speaking. Some strange cross between a shark and a ferret, who left rows of deep furrows on the back of his calf when it lashed out in fear. He could feel flesh knit together on his unmoving leg, and with every beat his heart struggled to make, he prayed that blood wouldn't soak through the denim.

The warm tickle down the back of his ankle said his sock had already been stained.

Blue eyes flicked up to watch Lancer enter the room, and Danny quickly leveled his gaze at his own desk again, carefully avoiding drawing attention.

He wished he could say it was agonizing, but every new hole and bruise in his body was becoming less and less urgent with each passing day. His body was becoming accustomed to this, his pain levels shifting to accommodate.

Last week he had been eviscerated.

It was hard to forget that kind of agony blazing through his nerves.

Scooped his own ( redgreenwhatcolorwasthat? ) intestines off the grass, choking on gore and ectoplasm as his ribs and muscles and skin squirmed and grasped to help pull it all back in. He could feel the coils squish like rotten peaches between his fingers, ( pleasebegreen).. Scars like ropey vines squeezed around his torso, egged on into cancerous growth by sheer panic and screaming of his hindbrain. Bu- no, it was fine..

He was fine.

He was alive.

He got up, and continued the fight, organs all mashed back into place, ectoplasm evaporating away with each hacking, misting cough as the lightning splay of scar tissue squirmed into his flesh.

He won.

It had been hard to stand upright that week, the thick scars unyielding as his body repaired itself with inhuman speed. They had pulled, threatened to open again, until he woke up one morning with only the faint pink line to show where any human would have died.

When was the last time he ate?
He couldn't remember.

The pain of hunger was nothing compared to the feeling of fighting through a broken arm, snarling like an animal to struggle tooth and nail for your own survival.

It was hard to feel thirst when you were swallowing your own blood.

Broken teeth grew back, but each iteration made them a little bit sharper and the insides of his cheeks just a little more numb. His smiles a little more strained, until he grinned with his eyes more than his mouth, lips careful to keep the lines of fangs tucked away.

If you're not bleeding then you're not injured, right? Supernatural healing took the significance away from injuries. There was no excuse to not keep fighting.

Danny rested his head on his closed fist, vision jiggling as his restless knee refused to stop. He flexed his calf, felt the scars pull, and drying blood tugged on the fine hairs. Something on the back of his neck prickled, and he glanced to the side to find Tucker staring intently at him. Dark eyes turned down to his leg, and Danny frowned, shifting slightly to try to hide it a bit more.

Not from his friend, but…. If Tucker could see it, then the blood really had soaked through. The wounds were already closed - barely an hour had passed, and his muscles had reformed. He gave his friend a wane smile, leaning back when Lancer passed by to drop down an overview of upcoming reading assignments.

This was his normal.

And when the first class ended and they all filed out of class, he didn't complain when Tucker herded him into the 'Family' bathroom instead of the boy's. They probably got Looks , but his friend was pulling the door shut and pressing him back to sit on the yellow-lit sink.

Quick fingers hitched up his pant leg, running water and paper towel pulling redgreenbrown blood off his skin. Danny leaned his head back against the mirror, staring up at flickering fluorescent lights, letting himself breathe. He was alive..

"When was the last time you ate or slept? You look like a wreck."

He tilted his head, dragging his gaze back down to look at his friend. Tucker didn't even look up, scowling where he knelt and prodding the still-red gouges that hadn't quite sealed up. He could see the concern written in the hunch of his shoulders, and while fingers might dig in a bit harder than necessary around his ankle, the touches around the wound were always feather-light.

"Dunno."

Tuck huffed something under his breath, tugging the pant leg back down and unzipping his own backpack.

Danny found himself fumbling a half-squished muffin and a shiny green apple, quailing under the challenging brown glare. He bit into the apple obediently, looking away so he wouldn't have to see the slight wince his friend gave, whenever fangs flashed a bit too obviously.

He caught his own gaze in the mirror, dark smudges and pale skin that had become almost translucent. He tracked the delicate web of veins across his own cheek, and wondered why no one else commented.

Maybe they were used to it.

He finished the apple, listening to Tucker click away on his PDA and fumbled open the muffin.

"...Raisin?"

Tucker didn't even look up at the whining note, leaning against the sink beside him.

"That's your punishment."

Danny still ate it, careful to keep the crumbs contained to his lap. He was probably hungry, though his nerves couldn't quite keep up nowadays. It was better to be safe than sorry. He didn't ask why he was being 'punished' - probably something like needing to take better care of himself.

Anyway, the weird texture of raisins was worth the way his spirit seemed to settle back into place, grounding inside his body as if he hadn't been drifting apart at the seams. The mirror on his back and the cold sink under his thighs felt real , in a way they hadn't a few minutes earlier.

He squashed a few errant crumbs into his thumb, delicately biting them off again.

Not carefully enough, and a moment later he was sucking the small bead of red off the corner of his thumb. If Tucker noticed, he didn't say anything, just standing as a warm presence. Comforting. Steady.

Reassuring.

His arm brushed Tuck's shoulder as he crinkled up the muffin's wrapper, and quick fingers grabbed and threw away his trash without looking up from the PDA.

"I could have gotten that."

"I know. We've got 2 minutes."

Danny hummed, closing his eyes and taking a slow, deep breath. He leaned his head back against the mirror again, letting the seconds tick by as his self settled a bit deeper, heartbeat steadying just a bit more. The skin no longer pulled when he flexed his calf, and if his friend leaned against his side with a bit more familiarity than was perfectly normal for friends , he didn't comment. It made him feel more human , so it was enough.

"40 seconds."

"Yeah, yeah."

He hopped off the sink and checked the back of his pant leg for blood. He found nothing, and wondered how Tucker could even tell that he'd been injured in the first place.

"You always fidget when you're bleeding."

"I didn't even say anything."

Tucker rolled his eyes, making a sweeping invitation with his hand. The door was already opened for him, and Danny gave him a smile that was more eyes than mouth, ruffling his own hair as he slunk back into the hallway.

It was enough.