It was nearly sundown when they finished moving all of Dan's stuff into Danny's house. He didn't have much, as he had only been living in a small apartment, so the move was pretty easy.
That didn't stop Danny from being slightly hungry when they were done moving all the boxes upstairs. But looking through his refrigerator for a snack proved that he had been neglecting the grocery store for longer than a father would be unashamed of. At least he had already bought dinner for Dani, so it wasn't as if she went to bed hungry. They had breakfast and lunch at school so he could just go shopping in the morning.
Heaving a big sigh, Danny complained though, "Darn it, we don't have anything to snack on."
Behind him, Phantom turned his head to the fruit basket, "Oh, here, I got apples yesterday." He picked one up as Danny turned, and the raven grabbed it from him and froze.
Time stopped.
Just like Danny's breath.
Phantom didn't pay much mind to how Danny all but malfunctioned with his hand still outreached, the apple resting snuggly in the palm of his hand. The ex-merman had no idea that the human was in crisis right there in the middle of the kitchen as he went to grab himself a cup of water.
"An... an apple?" Danny whispered, his head spinning, his ears ringing, his eyebrows scrunching as he stared at the red fruit. He could almost smell the saltwater, could practically feel the toughness of the rock beneath his anorexic knees. He could almost feel the ravenous hunger and the thirst- oh, the thirst. The sound of those darn birds squawking somewhere above his head and the sound of water pushing and pulling against the sturdy island. Those neon green eyes stared meticulously at him like he was a jewel that they never got tired of looking at.
Slim bony hands grabbed the fruit from the webbed and clawed ones.
That ringing in his ears was so loud, louder than ever. It almost hurt. Hurt like how the rock would rub at his raw skin. Hurt like the brightness of the sun would after being in the dark for days un-end. Hurt like all the times he was fed on by those razor-sharp teeth and the burn from the dirty salt water when he was forced to get back in.
There were figures. Faceless figures that enforced power over him, and Danny didn't know how he knew that they were memories of people that tried to kill him, but somehow the thought made sense to him. He remembered Vlad, and a flash of what he looked like just a moment after he tried to hurt him that day flew across his head before vanishing completely, leaving him nauseated at the amount of blood and screams. Somehow Danny knew he wasn't the one who ripped him apart, though. Something else did. Someone else killed Vlad to protect him, and it wasn't his father... No... his father turned himself in to save them both.
Both?
The other one. There was another.
Deep inside Danny, he knew without a fathomable doubt that the piece of information was important. So important that it was like the planets wouldn't resume spinning until he figured it out. Chills cascaded down his back, and the hair on his neck stood on end as his gut remembered something that his brain hadn't caught up with yet.
The pain in his stomach grew, and looking down at it, he paled at the sight of his white shirt drenched in blood with a knife sticking out of his stomach before the whole thing vanished entirely. There was nothing wrong with his torso.
But that wasn't right.
No.
His eyes were seeing something that his brain didn't want to remember. A sense of Deja vu was glaring him red, right in the face. Every vivid image was crossing his mind and then leaving as fast as it came, so striking, so bold, so familiar. Memories of things he didn't understand hit him all at once, every fiber of his being was reaching out. Still, the only thing his brain latched onto was a boy.
A boy that wasn't a boy-
"Phantom."
The white-haired man spun around, his grip on his fresh cup of water slipped right from his hands, and he stared at the raven in front of him as the water fell, splattering across his bare feet.
What is that name? Why is it so important?
Danny's eyes zeroed in on the water.
Water.
Water... not safe... Phantom.
He kept the kung-fu grip on that one thing, that one memory. Phantom. It was a name he needed to remember. He couldn't continue being until he remembered what his brain was trying to remember- what his heart was trying to tell him.
At that moment, as everything clicked into place like a chiropractic adjustment, Phantom only wordlessly stared at Danny. Watching as recognition registered and brought tears to a pair of blue eyes that he would never get tired of adoring.
Their eye contact held thousands of words passed silently between them, and neither of them needed to speak aloud after Phantom's real name passed between trembling lips for a second time.
Danny didn't move for a moment as memory after memory hit him in a rush of flashbacks that made everything unexplained in his life fall into place. To have everything make sense after so many years of going unaware of precisely what happened when he was a teenager was the most liberating thing he had ever gone through.
"'I love you, precious,'" Danny finally repeated, "That was the last thing you said just before you were taken from me," he all but choked on the reality of what was happening. It wasn't at all unwanted though, no, this unbelievable pain couldn't be more wanted. It hurt so much to remember and to realize how much Phantom had to love him. He had to love him so much. Phantom loved him so much, and Danny couldn't fathom...
His tears started pouring down.
He almost couldn't handle how overwhelming the knowledge was. To have someone in the world that cared that much about him, to do everything that Phantom did for Danny. Abandon his home. Defy his god, or father, or whatever the Hell Hades was to Phantom. Kill his own people. Put himself in mortal and fatal danger, over and over again. Until all he could do was make himself a slave just so Danny could be where he was right now.
Danny knew that Phantom loved him before, but now as he remembered all the merman's sacrifices just to be with him- just to protect him. Then come back a humble survivor from literal Hell and slowly make Danny fall in love with him all over again...
Phantom was so patient, and Danny didn't think he ever felt so special as he did right then. Phantom was taken from his life completely, and even when he came back, he didn't give up. He found Danny. Found him and patiently waited despite his own suffering for him to fall in love, even unknowing of everything in their past. The raven didn't think he would ever be capable of showing Phantom just how much that meant to him.
Phantom felt a heavyweight slip off of his shoulders, taking a lone tear off his face with it as it all fell. The arms that crashed around him only seconds later felt like the last piece of the puzzle that he was missing, and his core was finally found.
"I love you, Phantom," Danny said as he held tightly to him, knowing simple words would never be able to express how his heart felt. He finally remembered what home was. "I always have. Even when I had no idea who you were, I never stopped loving you. Hades could not take that away." All those years, he thought he was alone, but he never was. He just had his heart taken down to Hell, where he couldn't get to it. All those nights feeling like he would never be able to fall in love, now he knew that he already was. The whole time, he was. He just couldn't remember the face that his very soul screamed for.
Phantom nodded, "I know, Precious, I know. I was with you the whole time. Watching. I was never really gone."
A quiet sob left Danny's throat again, wondering how Phantom could forgive him for forgetting, for daring to try and lighten the burden of losing him with all those guys. He thought about all those nights he almost broke and slept with someone. Phantom was watching? He didn't even realize he was begging for forgiveness until Phantom was quietly shushing him. That was when he also realized he was being carried up the stairs.
"Don't worry about all that, Precious. I never blamed you, not even a little."
A slight fractured sound left as the last of his memory returned to him, and suddenly-
...
Blue eyes opened.
They ached, caked with the evidence of his exhaustion, and he groaned, reaching up a hand to rub the pain away.
Danny recalled the amount of coffee he had consumed the last three days, and he was surprised he hadn't had a heart attack. He rubbed his face, trying to massage away the soreness around his eyes. Still, the dark circles that decorated his face with sleep deprivation wouldn't be that easy to get rid of.
Danny's hand brushed up against some paper, and when his eyes focused a little more, he was able to lift his head off his arm and glance down at the mess he had left his desk in. His computer was left on as if he hadn't even had the energy to turn it off last night, let alone make it back to bed either, apparently. Papers were scattered around the expanse of his desk, scribbled notes and messy plot circles triggering the memories of the night before, right before he went into a deep coma-like sleep for what appeared to be 14 and a half hours.
14 hours.
Reality bitch slapped him, and he spun around so fast that he got whiplash and a spike in the severe headache he had.
Phantom was lying in his bed, right where he was supposed to be. All his memories of him still intact.
His jaw dropped, and he couldn't believe that this was real. Not only did Hades not take away his memory, but he also gave Phantom back. He was lying right there in his bed like nothing ever happened, like Danny didn't just spend the last three days giving Hades the biggest "fuck you" in the form of creative writing.
Danny looked himself over. There was no stab wound, nothing had changed, and he was still alive. However, Danny couldn't be bothered to think about the debt that he thought Phantom was supposed to be paying, and he all but lept out of the desk chair and threw himself on the bed.
Phantom let out a loud "humph" as the weight of the human awoke him, but when green eyes met teary blue ones, the ex-merman sat up in worry.
"Danny? What's wrong-"
He didn't get a chance to answer before the raven was smothering him in hugs, and Phantom looked at his watch.
"Danny, it's after 2pm. Why didn't you wake me? I would have gone with you to the school." He was massively confused, especially when he looked around and recognized his surroundings immediately. "What are we doing in your Dad's old house?"
It didn't register what Phantom said at first. He just kept crying, burying his face in the familiar chest he thought he would never feel again. He was so worried that this was a dream, and if he let go for even a second, then it would be taken away from him, and he'd open his eyes, and Phantom would be gone again.
"Where's Danielle?" Phantom asked, and Danny finally responded through his tears.
"Huh?" sniffle, "What did you say?"
Phantom's eyes narrowed at the marked calendar on the other side of the room.
"Danielle?" He finally repeated.
Another sniffle, "Danielle?" Danny finally looked up at Phantom, and the ex-merman finally got a good look at Danny's face. Youthful. Slender. 17. "Who is that?"
...
No glass cups were harmed in the making of this series.