I hope everyone is having a good Wednesday!

The previous chapter was honestly one of my favorite chapters to write. We saw Sam lose complete control and stress complied-the stress of trying to be the best Mom she can be, the best partner she can be, the best writer and independent minded and strong woman she can be. But that's a lot of pressure to put on herself, and as little accidents happened throughout the day with dishes breaking and dinner burning, Sam allows her dependence on pain pills to overcome her typically sound judgement. Danny comes home to find Sam high on pain pills and drunk from wine, forcing him to act now and reflect later.

Author's Note: I was re-reading through my story on my phone and saw that my line breaks were not translating and I was HORRIFIED! I will be going to back and hopefully solving that issue. So as you've been reading, I'm sure a few of the chapters seemed strangely written and it's because they are missing line breaks!

Chapter 25: The Next Morning

Home

April 17th

8:43 am

Sam rolled over once, twice, thrice before giving in to the feeling of waking up. She frowned as the early sunlight irritated her, rolling over once more so as to face the clock. She was surprised to find that she had slept through the night without remembering how she'd gotten here or when she'd gone to bed. She wasn't too concerned though, resolving to figure it out at breakfast. Sitting up in bed she noticed the irritation in her wrist and leg but remembered getting hurt and therefore thought nothing of reaching over into her nightstand drawer to take a couple pills to help with the pain.

Except no pills were to be found after searching the drawer for a quick minute. Now more awake, Sam slid out of bed to bend down and look inside the cabinet, seeing that it was in fact empty of her need. Confused, she searched her dresser next, moved on to the shoe box in her closet afterwards, and frantically checked the end corner of her mattress after that only to find everything—pills, Advil, Ibuprofen, cigarettes—missing. The only medication she had left was her birth control, and she took the one pill while finishing her glass of water from the night before.

With her nerves strung, Sam peeked out the door and tiptoed down to the bathroom only to find everything missing in there as well. Now she knew something was up and her anxiety was enough to distract her from the pain of her headache and yesterday's injuries. Checking in on Dani she found her daughter wasn't there, and therefore concluded she did not stay the night as Dani loved sleeping in just as much as her parents and it was much too silent.

Moving further down the hallway found that Danny wasn't to be found in his room either, but his room was in disarray and his bed was unmade leaving Sam to believe Danny had been here last night and was probably still in the house. So traveling further into the hall's opening found movement in the kitchen, and Sam stood dumbly in the entryway watching Danny pour the remaining liquor into the kitchen sink. From the looks of it he had found every last bottle of alcohol stored in the kitchen, empty ones standing eerily on the kitchen island for him to wash out and recycle once his task was done.

Danny noticed Sam's presence but did not say anything, waiting for her to speak first. He'd hardly slept last night after finding and throwing away every single pain pill and cancer stick hidden in their home, remembering with a jolt that alcohol had to go when his parents called a half hour ago to let them know Dani was up and ready to come home. She would be back by nine and he was glad to see he and Sam would be able to talk a little before their daughter returned.

After a few minutes of silence Sam finally asked, "What are you doing?"

Danny answered instead, "Sam, do you remember what happened last night?" He wasn't mad, but he wasn't necessarily relaxed. His tone was strained and muscles tense but he wanted to be as direct and unemotional as he could be.

Sam racked her brain for the events that must have transpired for Danny's dramatic behavior but could not recall them, though she was sure she could wager a good guess. "No, not really," she quietly answered, glancing around as Danny turned to face her while collecting the bottles to clean and dispose of.

"When I came home last night I found dinner burning in the oven and you drunk in the bathroom, struggling to open another pill container where you revealed to me your slight addiction and possible obsession with pain medication." Sam's eyes were wide, her cheeks quickly blushing in embarrassment as she tried to vehemently deny what Danny was telling her. She didn't have an addiction! She was fine! It was only a one-time thing! But Danny wouldn't hear any of it as he said, "Sam, it's okay now. I'm going to help you get through this."

"There's nothing to get through Danny! I'm fine!" Sam said, voice rising as she began to panic. Nothing was wrong with her!

"No you aren't Sam!" Danny finally snapped after listening to her throw out excuse after desperate excuse. "Last night I came home and you were practically killing yourself! And when I tried to stop you, you reacted violently. What if Danielle had been here? What if she had seen you like that? What if she had gotten hurt?"

The reality of what Danny said struck Sam so hard she forgot how to breathe. What about her daughter? What could have happened to Dani? What could Sam have done to her? She didn't want to acknowledge that she had lost it, that she was struggling, that she was sick but in a moment of clarity Sam realized she could no longer deny these things. She had to think of her family. "What am I going to do?" she whispered, afraid of the answer she would hear. Sam was so sure she never would have lost control while caring for Danielle, but she had proved herself wrong and there was no denying that. Even though she couldn't remember, that only served as further proof.

Seeing that Sam was struggling, Danny slowly walked towards the love of his life and offered her a hug which she hesitantly took. She leaned on him in a moment of weakness but Danny was more than happy to supply her with strength. "I want you to start individual sessions with Jazz, or a colleague if you'd rather."

Slowly nodding Sam agreed, "I think Jazz would be best."

"I'm sure she'll have an opening for tomorrow or no later than the end of this week, but until then I need you to do a couple things for me, okay?" He took her silence as agreement and continued, "I need you to stay hydrated, and if something happens I need you to come to me right away. And I'm going to be cooking dinner for the next couple of nights." He had hoped to garner a laugh at that last one, but Sam was serious with her silent nod of understanding. "We've got a few minutes to clean up those bandages before Dani should be home. Do you want me to help?"

"No, I've got it," Sam promised, opting to use the first aid kit from the kitchen instead of traveling all the way down the hall to retrieve the kit from the bathroom, or even the small emergency one in her room. She was able to take care of herself quickly as Danny flew the bottles down to the apartment's recycling bin in the back parking lot. They were silent and Sam was lost in her own thoughts. Not long after found Dani home and worried about her mother.

"Mom! Are you feeling better?" Dani asked as she flew—literally—through the door and into her mother's arms.

"I'm fine honey. I just…didn't feel very well last night." She would have to tell Dani eventually, as she didn't want her daughter to feel left out on something as important as her health, but now was not the time. Not with Danny's parents looking on worriedly and definitely not with Danny feeling as exhausted as she could tell he was. She'd caused enough trouble and the day was just starting to begin, but she hoped it would get better, and soon.

Line Break

Home

April 19th

1:14 am

Sam lay awake staring at her ceiling, unblinkingly and unable to fall asleep. She had decided to go to bed early tonight as she had been so tired throughout the day, but as soon as she hit the pillow her head began to swim. What would she say to Jazz when she asked the redhead for help? How long should she wait before telling Dani? Sam felt awfully guilty today whenever she looked at Dani, feeling the weight of her secret each time. And what of her relationship with Danny? Would he distance himself? He hadn't as of yet, but he's also got that hero-complex. She was sure he would want to talk about it at their next couple's session too.

Rolling around in her sheets did little to comfort the swirl of her mind and she huffed at the injustice of it all. Normally she took a pill to help her fall asleep, but Danny had gotten rid of all nonessential medication and other harmful stress coping mechanisms. She had nothing but her overactive imagination, tired eyelids that wouldn't stay shut, and sheets that stuck to her and heated the room. She couldn't get comfortable, physical or otherwise.

Without consent her mind began to wonder if Danny had fallen asleep easier than she, and what it might be like to lay beside him instead of the flat body pillow she now clung too. He would definitely be cooler with his cold core. And if she had him to look at maybe she could distract herself until she passed out from exhaustion.

No, she shouldn't be thinking like that. Should she? She and Danny needed their own privacy, and the couple had yet to breach the decency line. Well, he had offered her his room to share earlier in their relationship, but how would she explain that to Danielle? And if anyone else found out they would assume things. Would Danny assume things too? She's not ready for that! It's not that she didn't trust Danny—she did!—but it was herself that worried her more. Would spending more time with Danny ruin the fun they'd been having? What if Danny didn't like sharing a room with her? What if they were moving too fast and she ended up breaking them up?

A small part of her knew she was overreacting and throwing her fears out of proportion, but in the dead of the night it was easy to delude herself into thinking about the 'what ifs.' When it became too much and she began to feel claustrophobic, she decided to get up and stretch. First she went to the kitchen and downed a glass of water. Didn't she read somewhere that dehydration kept people up? She walked through the apartment and checked all the windows and locks as an excuse to wander, but eventually became bored once her sight adjusted to the lack of lighting.

She then headed back down the hallway and stuck her head in her daughter's room, since the door was left open tonight. Checking in on Dani found her daughter snuggled up to a panda plushy and sleeping as though she had nothing but sweet dreams. She hoped it was true and desperately held herself back from jumping onto her daughter's bed to slip in beside the younger halfa. Sam loved to hold her baby and nap together, but she didn't want to risk waking her. Besides, Dani shouldn't be bothered just because Mom wasn't sleeping well.

Sighing silently, Sam had just decided to doom herself to a night of restless resting when her feet carried her unconsciously to Danny's half-opened door. Checking on the older halfa found him knocked out too, but she hadn't expected anything less. Danny had always slept like a rock, his ghost sense only able to wake him because it literally came from inside his core.

Come to think of it, she could probably slip in beside him without waking him up if she gave a little effort. Glancing back at her lonely, hot room Sam suddenly felt desperation to stay. She desperately wanted to stay with Danny. And fall asleep with Danny.

So she did.

Maybe it was because her mind and body were so exhausted from the lack of sleep that she didn't think about the very plausible consequences of her breach in privacy. Maybe it was Danny's colder presence that felt so nice against her heated skin. Maybe it was her inner teenager that would have killed to have this chance; to cuddle up to her good looking best friend. Whatever the reason, Sam found herself slipping completely into Danny's room and slowly curling up beside his sleeping form. She waited a few silent moments before moving even closer, ducking beneath the one arm that was haphazardly lying across his body so she could use his chest as a pillow. It was so much more relaxing hearing Danny's heartbeat than the thrum of her brain pounding against her skull. Within minutes she felt sleep take its toll and she drifted off without a single regret.

Danny, for his part, finally peaked open one eye upon waiting a few minutes for Sam to stop moving. He had heard her walking about but when she appeared at his door decided to play dead to the world, curious about what she might do on her own. Would she wake him up to talk? How long would she stand there? Was she hoping to find him awake or satisfied at finding him seemingly asleep? He was happily surprised to find that she slipped into his bed all on her own, falling asleep within minutes of cuddling up beside him. He felt her muscles relax further each second she lay beside him and strengthened his hold on her before falling asleep himself.

Line Break

Dining Room

5:00 pm

Dani was starving, but apparently she was the only one as her parents pushed their food from side to side. She wondered if they had had a fight and were trying to hide it from her. She hoped not. Really though, it wouldn't make sense with how the two had been acting around each other for the past two days.

When the two fight, her mom tends to be irritated at everything and ignore her dad, walking into a room he occupies without acknowledging his presence while also making sure he knows she's ignoring him on purpose. It drives Danny crazy and Danielle can admit, it's amusing to see the lengths her dad will go for a simple glance of acknowledgment. Yet currently Sam isn't doing any of that; rather, she seems to be acting more like Danny's shadow. Her mom tried to make it less obvious by waiting a minute or so before following when her dad moved from room to room, but Dani had taken notice when Sam had almost followed Danny into the bathroom on accident. Not to mention how often her dad would glance up to just check on her mom whenever she made any type of movement. The two had been offly quiet too.

Dani set her fork down, unable to take the weirdness any longer. She did her best to ask politely, "What's going on? You two have been acting weird since I came home from staying with Grandma and Grandpa."

The two adults shared a wide eyed glance—suspicious, Dani thought—and it was Danny that sighed and spoke first. His daughter was way more observational than he had ever been. "You're right sweetie," he began, "but we were just waiting until after dinner to discuss it with you."

"Discuss what?" Curious, Dani tilted her head to the left at the acknowledgment that something was going on and apparently it was going to impact the whole family if they felt the need to have a serious after-dinner discussion.

Danny looked to Sam who nodded, getting up from her seat across the table to join the empty chair beside Dani. This made their daughter anxious. Why was everyone so serious? She could see her mom wringing her hands like she always did when she was given bad news. Did something happen between her parents? Were they fighting after all? Was the fight so bad that Sam was about to say she was moving out? That was always a small fear Dani carried with her as she knew her mom was prone to separating herself from things that made her stressed out or nervous. "Mom is everything alright?"

"Honey," Sam began, her throat thick as she wondered how she could say what needed to be said. She could tell she was causing Dani to feel anxious as her leg bounced up and down under the table. She didn't want her daughter to worry so she did the best she could to explain everything; to describe how she was still sick and that it would take a little while to feel all the way better. She approached it like she would any health lesson in her homeschooling. "Do you remember what it's like to feel lonely?"

Dani nodded her head. What did this have to do with anything? Her mom should know that she didn't need to feel lonely now that she had Dani, and not to mention Danny too! And the whole Fenton family! She also knew her mom had gone out earlier to spend time with Auntie Jazz, and Dad had told her they would be spending more time together too. Her mom had so many people to spend time with! "Well, sometimes when people feel lonely they try to find things to distract them, especially when they don't have friends and family like we do now. And-and sometimes those things do a good job at...pretending to make the lonely feeling go away. And the person who takes them just, you know, gets used to them so much so they forget why they started using them in the first place. And sometimes that means that even when they aren't lonely anymore they've just become so used to using them that they, uh, keep using them.

"And sometimes the things people use are not the, uh, safest or healthiest things. So they can have side effects and sometimes the person who uses them can be prone to becoming dependent on them. Have you ever heard about an 'addiction' Dani?" Sam asked, desperate to keep her voice low and neutral. She feared that she would be disappointing her daughter. She didn't want Dani to think that she hadn't been enough for Sam to be happy—in fact Dani was the reason Sam's addiction hadn't continued to grow exponentially and unchecked. Really, if Sam were to think about it, Dani probably saved her life.

"Isn't that kind of like a ghost's obsession?" Dani asked, glancing at the other halfa in the room for confirmation.

"Sort of, yes," Sam began but defaulted to Danny to see if he could explain the differences between the two. She typically deferred the ghostly questions to the older halfa who almost always had a personal experience to help boost his explanations.

"They are very similar Dani, but a human's addiction is not necessarily life long nor does it bring joy and liveliness to a human like an obsession can bring to a ghost. Does that make sense?" Danny asked, eyebrows pulled down when Dani slowly nodded, still seemingly unsure. He clasped his hands together on top of the table as he continued, "Take for example the Box Ghost. The Box Ghost is obsessed with boxes to the point that when he sees them it makes him feel happy and he is energized to do everything he can to protect them. Although an obsession may keep a ghost from passing on, it isn't necessarily a bad thing whereas a human typically starts an addiction to avoid sad feelings and can feel even more tired and stressed out in pursuit of it."

"So an obsession can give good feelings but an addiction is used to cover bad feelings, even though it sometimes brings more bad feelings?" Dani asked, not sure if that made any sense to her. If addictions brought bad feelings then why did humans use them? "Why don't they just stop using the addiction then?"

This is where Sam picked back up, being the resident fully-human. "An addiction isn't just one thing sweetie," she said. "An addiction can be to many different things and sometimes those things can be dangerous to our health and disrupt our, uh, bodily chemistry. An addictive substance might make our body crave it to the point where even if we might want to stop and find something else to help us feel better or less lonely, we may also miss the bad addictive thing we first used."

Sam could tell Dani was following along the best she could but Sam also knew her daughter was still confused. She took a deep breath and reached for her daughter's hands as she shared, "When I was growing up I would take a pain relieving pill to help with growing pains. This is quite common for teenagers, but I am also prone to headaches caused by stress. As I continued to grow up I didn't know any better that the stress headaches weren't actually going away from the pain pill itself, but from the confidence I had in the pain pill. So when life was harder than just me feeling stressed, like when my grandmother Ida passed away, I was confused why one pill didn't help me feel better so I would take another one thinking that would help.

"Now, the pill still did it's job of telling my body there was pain somewhere and to release the proper response to it, so that often left me feeling...weightless? If that can make sense? Like I was flying up above and my stress and pain was staying on the ground." The flying metaphor seemed to help Dani better understand as she actually knew what flying felt like. In fact, Dani often went for a flight when she was feeling unease and it always helped to clear her mind.

"As I continued to grow up and face stress and sad times...and feeling lonely...I continued to turn to my pain relieving pills as the solution. However, I also began to build a tolerance which meant that one pill often didn't produce the same intensity of relief as it used to because my body was used to it. So I continued to up my dosage on my own. I thought that by spacing out the medication throughout the day instead of taking them all at once that I was saving my body from bad side effects, but it doesn't work like that.

"And, sometimes, since I'm an adult, I would have a glass of wine with dinner or as a treat but because I was self-medicating, that alcohol in my system would clash with the pill and often have me feeling dizzy. The weird thing about drugs and alcohol is sometimes the dizzy feeling feels better than the, uh, numb or sad feeling that I was trying to avoid. And even though I knew how dangerous different drugs can be and that I should have been avoiding alcohol too, an addiction can sometimes make logic unimportant. Or even twist the logic in your own head.

"Now the good news is," Sam started, smiling at her daughter even as both their eyes grew misty. Dani was fast to catch on that her mom had an addiction and that it obviously wasn't good for her health. What could possibly be good news in this story? "I was ignoring the problem I had until one night there came a knock at my door. And luckily for me it was someone who helped me feel less lonely, so much so that I was able to cut back on the amount of pills I took all on my own...as well as some of the other things that I would sometimes pair with them, like a cigarette or a glass of wine. Do you know who that person was?"

Dani was surprised to hear that it must have been her. It was her! She had unknowingly helped her mom during a dark time. Her throat was dry so she instead pointed to herself, wide eyes never straying from her mother's. "Yes, it was you. You came into my life and we became the best of friends and I grew to love you very much. If you didn't come along when you did, I don't know where I would be today...but that's the other important thing to know about an addiction. Even though you came into my life and brought happiness and love—and then you brought me back to your father and to our family and friends—my chemistry was still messed up from the years of abuse. So I don't want you to think you weren't enough because you most certainly are," Sam declared, hugging her daughter tight as if to ward off any of those terrible thoughts. Their tears were silently falling down their cheeks and Danny had reached out to rub circles on their daughter's back to help keep her calm.

"The tolerance I had built up a long time ago went away because I wasn't taking as much as I used to," Sam continued, allowing herself to pull away so she could continue to watch her daughter take in the information. She was grateful that Dani seemed more hopeful than she was scared, and not at all disappointed in her baby blue eyes. "I had a really bad day—just super unlucky. I burnt myself while cooking dinner and dropped a plate and I've been stressed out about the shower and so many little things. But I never learned how to cope without a pain pill and since yesterday was so overwhelming I took a few too many.

"Luckily your father came home because I had lost control. Without my tolerance I was making rash decisions and was playing loosely with my health. I was sick that night, it just wasn't from the flu or anything. And since your father didn't know anything about this either that's why you had to stay with your grandparents. I had some explaining to do and needed some, uh, help to finally realize what I had been doing to myself. I know your father told you that I would be hanging out with Aunt Jazz more, and it's not just going to be for fun. You know that she helped your father and I restart our friendship, right?" At Dani's nod Sam continued, "Well, now she's also going to help me get better. And it's going to take a little bit of time and I'm going to try my very best, but I know that I'm going to have some hard days so I didn't want to keep this a secret from you. You deserve to know about my health too."

Dani hugged her mom again, frightened that her mom was sick and that it was a dangerous sickness, but also thankful that they had found each other when they did. Thankful that Dani's hardship with Maci that first night had happened so that her mom didn't have to feel lonely anymore. Thankful that her mom had people who cared for her and that were going to help her get better. And Dani knew she would get better because her mom was strong and smart—one of the strongest and smartest people she knew! Dani felt her mom return the hug just as fiercely and soon after she also felt her dad's warmth on her back. They lost track of time huddled together but that was alright.

Yes, her mom would be better in no time.