Danny was pacing the floor of his room, talking with Sam and Tucker on his cellphone. Normally he would have went with them to the Nasty Burger after classes were over, and filled them in on any ghost fights they'd missed out on or interesting developments in his relationship with Valerie. But he'd had to come straight home today.

He was supposed to be working on his essay on the Renaissance right now. He'd been grounded for getting a 0 on it—what, he'd totally forgotten it existed! Let alone when it was due—but his mother had sweet-talked Mr. Moore into giving him an extension. If she caught him talking to his friends when his essay wasn't done, he was going to be in deep shit. But he HAD to talk to his Sam and Tucker about this.

"I slept with Valerie last night." Danny said, his voice low.

"WHAT?!" that was Sam, who sounded like she'd spit out whatever she was drinking.

"Oh man, congratulations!" Tucker, overjoyed at the news.

"It's not like that." Danny said. "She didn't sleep with Danny Fenton, she slept with Danny Phantom."

"Bro, you even got laid as a ghost. That's still amazing." Tucker said, totally missing the point.

Sam got it though.

"I am so sorry Danny. Was that where you were at lunch? Confronting her?" Sam's voice was sympathetic, but Danny thought she sounded a little too upbeat.

"There was nothing to confront. She sought me out and confessed to me." Danny defended his girlfriend.

"That's good." Sam said cautiously. "Why did you sleep with her as Phantom anyway? Testing her loyalty?"

"No!" Danny shouted. He glanced around, remembering he needed to keep his voice low. "It wasn't like that at all. So Skulker hit us with this weird chemical weapon..."

He explained everything that happened between him and Valerie in the Ghost Zone. Well, not all the graphic details, but enough for them to understand.

"That sounds a lot like a heat." Sam observed.

"Well yeah, but it was just caused by Skulker's stupid weapon." Danny said.

"How do you know?" she asked.

Danny faltered. "Heats always last a couple days, right? And it was over when I woke up this morning. I mean, you're an alpha and you sat next to me in class. Did I smell like an omega in heat?" he asked.

"I didn't smell a thing." Tucker chimed in.

Tucker was a beta though, he had almost no ability to smell pheremones. But Sam agreed with him.

"No, there wasn't anyone in the classroom in heat." she said.

Danny breathed out a small sigh of relief. She was just confirming what he already knew. After all, if he had been in heat the teachers would have sent him to the nurse's office, and Dash would've pummelled him.

"But," Sam continued, "First heats can be irregular. And there are other things that can make a heat end early."

Danny's heart skipped a beat. "Like what?" he demanded.

"Like extreme stress." Sam said. "Or successful conception."

"What?! Successful concep— " Danny sputtered.

"Ooooooh." Tucker said.

"Did you two idiots pay any attention in sex ed? A heat can end once the mated omega is pregnant."

"Well, that's definitely not the case. Don't even joke about that Sam." Danny said.

"I wasn't joking, it could— "

"LALALA, not listening, we are not talking about that!" Danny said.

Sam made a noise of frustration. "Fine."

Silence echoed between the three for a minute.

Tucker picked the conversation back up. "So, what did you say to Valerie anyway?"

"I just let her know it was alright and didn't make a big deal about it. I mean, what, am I going to get on her case for doing the same thing I did? Especially since it was with me. It's not like it was even really cheating."

"So the Valdanny ship sails on." Tucker said.

"Please stop calling it that." Sam begged.

"I don't see you coming up with anything better." Tucker said.

Danny let their cheerful bickering fade into the background, and flipped open his History notebook. He really wanted to nap. He'd been weighed down with the need to sleep all day. Sure, he'd only gotten four hours of sleep last night, but that was practically luxurious by his usual standards. Why was he this tired? Maybe he'd skip patrol tonight, let Sam and Tucker go out and only head out if they messaged him.

He interrupted some kind of spiel from Sam about feminist metaphors in Doomed. Tucker had just been going "Nuh-uh" every five seconds. It seemed like a good point to break in.

"Hey, can you guys handle patrol tonight? I really need to finish this essay." a yawn escaped him.

"And sleep." Sam said wryly.

"And sleep." he agreed.

"Sure man, you know we got it." Tucker said.

"Alright. Call me if you need me." Danny said.

They said their goodbyes, and Danny ended the call.

Finish the essay? He needed to start the essay. But he was so tired. There was no way he could focus on the boring antics of Machiavelli without a power nap to keep him from drooling into the textbook. Yep, he'd lie down for a little nap, then finish the essay.

.

.

.

The bedside alarm blaring woke him up, his hand slapping at the clock clumsily as he tried to force his eyelids open. The blurry, glowing green numbers of the clock shone at him. It was definitely morning, the weak early morning sun was shining through his curtains and—

"7:30?! Fuck!" he shouted, jumping out of bed and grabbing at the history homework piled up on his desk.

If he skipped breakfast, and all basic hygeine tasks like brushing his teeth, combing his hair, and changing out of yesterday's clothes (which he'd conveniently fallen asleep in) and worked on the essay before he had to head to school, he might be able to cobble enough words together during lunch. He could practically see the red ink scrawled on his paper, a "54" or maybe a "62" if he was really lucky and Mr. Moore pitied him. His mom was going to be so pissed.

Later that evening, Danny was sprawled out on his bed, phone up against his ear, idly shoving chips into his mouth in between weighing in on Tucker and Sam's latest debate.

He was still grounded, since he'd gotten a 48 on that Renaissance paper. That had been a rather generous 48, considering even he could barely read the hastily scrawled chicken scratch on the loose pieces of printer paper. It was supposed to be typed up and single-spaced too...

"Ember could totally take Pandora." Tucker said.

Sam's laugh through the phone was harsh. "You must still be a little hypnotized Tucker. Pandora is a Greek goddess. Also, she has four arms. She would STOMP Ember."

Privately, Danny agreed with Sam. Pandora seemed like a powerhouse that few ghosts could hold a candle to. But he'd never actually fought her, so he couldn't say for sure. Ember was tricky, and her danger was more than just her raw strength level.

It seemed like they had this conversation at least once a week, but it was kind of fun, picturing the outcomes of various ghosts they knew getting into brawls.

Danny turned the chip bag upside down, shaking the last crumbs out into his palm and swallowing them. He was still hungry, so he headed downstairs to raid the kitchen as Tucker countered Sam's logic with the probable team-up of Ember with Youngblood or Skulker, versus Pandora.

"What? She's good at making alliances." Tucker protested.

"You can't just add in random ghosts." Sam scoffed. "If Ember gets a team-up, then Pandora should too."

"I'm with Tucker on this one. Ember does tend to have other ghosts on her side." Danny said, as he pulled a box of cookies from the kitchen cabinet.

"Are you kids talking about his ghosts?" Maddie's voice sounded a few feet behind him. Alarmed, he whirled around.

Shit, his mother was down here. Maddie had one hand on her hip, looking over at him from the stove, where something boiled in a large silver cooking pot. The green vapor floating from it did nothing to make it smell more appetizing.

"Uhh, just some ghosts we saw on Ghost Watch a few days ago." Danny said. He had to be more careful about what he said around his parents. His mother at least, was too sharp to look past too many slip-ups. Her piercing violet eyes alighted on the cookies under his arm.

"Don't fill up on too many snacks, Danny, dinner will be done soon." Maddie said.

"Sure, Mom." he started to walk past her.

"Wait a sec." she said.

Danny froze.

"What is that?" she asked. "That scent..."

Danny had no clue what she was talking about, but his parents noticing something odd was never a good thing when you were a half-ghost and trying to keep it a secret.

Surely he didn't have a ghostly scent in his human form, that alphas would be able to pick up on? There was no way Valerie wouldn't have noticed and commented on it, right? He'd have to ask Sam. As weird as it was to ask an alpha you had a crush on to give you a good deep scenting.

Right now it seemed like his mother was going to do it for him. She leaned over his shoulder, breathing in deeply.

"Just like I thought." she said.

Danny's heart thudded in his chest.

"W-hat is it?" he asked. If something about his smell was giving his ghostly side away, he needed to get the hell out of the kitchen, now. And stay away from his parents until he found a way to cover the scent.

"You smell different." Maddie said, her brows knitted together. Every muscle in Danny's body tensed.

A smile broke across Maddie's face. "I bet you're going to have your first heat soon!" she teased.

"Mom!" Danny spluttered, his face turning red. "That's totally not cool to say!"

"Aw, there's nothing wrong with maturing Danny. It's about time. Your father and I already have a collar picked out for you— " his mother was saying.

"Eww! Gross. Stop talking!" Danny said.

He covered his left ear with one hand, pushing his other ear harder against the phone. Cookie box under his arm, he ran out of the kitchen.

The phone had gone silent, all talk of ghost brawls halted. Had Sam and Tucker heard all of that? How mortifying.

"Pretend you didn't hear that." Danny moaned.

"Gladly." Tucker said, faking a shudder. "It's gonna be so weird seeing you have a collar on all the time."

"Tuck, shut up." Danny said. "I don't want to think about that. I seriously hope it never happens."

Sam snorted at that. "It happens to basically ever omega ever. Why would you be an exception?"

Danny stuffed a cookie in his mouth, while trying to think of some defense against the pin Sam was poking into the balloon that was his vain hope of having a somewhat normal life (half-ghost powers aside).

"Maybe being a half-ghost put a stop to that whole process. I dunno." he finally came up with.

"Uh, I doubt that. And if it did, you know your parents would get concerned and have you see a doctor for it. You're already kind of a late bloomer as it is." Sam said.

Damn her and her logic. He definitely didn't want doctors taking his blood and running tests and finding out things they shouldn't.

"Can we drop this? I don't know what part of 'I don't want to talk about this, ever' means 'Let's talk about this.'" Danny snarked.

Before Sam could respond, Tucker chimed in, always eager to keep the peace. "Doctors? I'm with Danny. We're getting seriously close to the H-word. Let's move on and talk about something MUCH more interesting: Ember."

"Pffft." Sam said.

"Now listen: Ember, versus Dora— "

"Leave us out of your masturbation fantasies Tucker." Sam said.

"I didn't even tell you they'd be mud-wrestling yet!" Tucker said.

Danny laughed so hard he almost choked on his cookie.