Chapter Fifteen: Don't Trust the Cinnamon Rolls

A special thanks to CartoonFreakshow (darklandsqueen on Tumblr) for creating the absolutely beautiful cover art for my book!

If there was one thing Danny knew, it was that mornings were never pretty at Fenton Works. Especially when it was the first Monday back after Thanksgiving. For one, Danny had misplaced half of his school things and at this point there was only five minutes left until he had to be in Lancer's class. If he flew really fast today, he could probably scrape by – if there wasn't some ghost ready to ambush him on his way to school like there was at least two days a week.

Danny scrambled down the stairs, backpack with his backpack on one arm and one of his shoes in the other. Somehow in the chaos, his backpack had come unzipped and about three textbooks fell out of his bag as he was running from his room to the kitchen. Backtracking, he grabbed all of them as quickly as possible before stumbling through the kitchen door (he was so frazzled he didn't have time to observe whether he opened the door before crashing through or just phased out of habit).

"Danny!" his father greeted, standing by the stove and wearing a stained apron, "You're just in time for breakfast! I've been messing around with the food again."

Danny gulped, his father was horrible at cooking. It didn't help much that he also liked to experiment with their meals, usually bringing it to life or making it fly around the house as it shot lasers. That's why Danny's Mom did most of the cooking in the house – she was much more practical. It was not a good sign that his dad was back behind the stove.

"Uh, I'd love to stay and sit Dad, but I'm kind of running late and I was planning on just eating a pop-tart."

"Nonsense!" Jack said, "No son of mine is going to start the day with just a pop-tart. Besides, don't tell your mother, but you can be a few minutes late for one day." Little did his Dad know that he was late nearly every day. "I'll plate you up some homemade Fenton cinnamon rolls!"

That piqued Danny's interest, "Cinnamon rolls?"

"Yep! It's a new recipe I'm trying." he put a plate in front of Danny. "You can tell me if it's good or not."

Danny eyed the pastry in front of him suspiciously. Usually he didn't trust any food that his Dad had any part in making, but the plate in front of him seemed overall harmless. It wasn't glowing or shooting lasers at his face, so that was always good. Danny relaxed for a moment and within a minute he had cleared his plate.

"So was it good?" Jack asked.

"Yeah," Danny said, attempting to hide the surprise in his voice, "it was actually pretty good."

"Great!" Jack exclaimed, accidentally throwing his fist down on the table and breaking Danny's empty plate. "It took me a while to get the recipe right, especially with the new compound I'm testing."

Danny's breath hitched. "What do you mean compound?" Then it dawned on him the type of thing his dad might be testing. He looked to Jack frantically, "Did you put some kind of ghost chemical in my food?"

"Well, you could call it's that," Jack shrugged. "It's a new solution that I'm testing that's supposed to increase the viscosity of ectoplasm."

Danny suddenly felt terrified. He had to get this stuff out of his system immediately. He was literally half ectoplasm, so changing the viscosity of it was bound to have disastrous results.

He grabbed his backpack, and started to head out the door, "Well thanks for the food Dad, I'm gonna be late, bye!"

Danny ran out of Fenton Works as fast as he could, and came to a stop in the alley where he normally transformed in. He threw his backpack to the side and rolled up his jacket sleeves, this was going to be so gross. He put his hand in his mouth and attempted to trigger his gag reflex, but to no avail. No matter how much Danny tried, he just wouldn't throw up. Sighing, he picked his backpack off the ground so he could get to school before the end of homeroom. He transformed and hoped that his skin didn't end up glowing green by the end of the day or something equally embarrassing.

Wes's Thanksgiving had been absolute hell. It was the third year in a row where Walter had invited Vlad over to their apartment to eat turkey together. Wes always tried to convince his Dad that he was more comfortable when it was just the two of them, but Walter insisted that it was the least they could do since Vlad had no immediate family left and it would be rude to let him spend the holiday alone. The entire ordeal was incredibly awkward (from Wes's perspective anyway), but there weren't really notable problems other than the fact that Vlad wouldn't stop calling him Wesley. The only good thing about it was that Vlad brought his own desserts, and Wes almost died at the sight of pumpkin crème brulee made by Vlad's personal chefs. At least evil people had good taste.

So on Monday, Wes was back to school as normal and resumed his regular gig of trying to expose Danny. No matter what anyone might try to tell him, the whole Klemper thing was not a setback. If anything, it made Wes more determined to take action.

As usual, Danny walked into first period long after the tardy bell. Today Mr. Lancer wasn't feeling especially lenient, so he issued Danny another detention. Same old, same old. He took his seat by Sam and Tucker, and immediately started whispering something to them. Wes tried to listen in, but he was too far away. Instead, he found himself watching Danny's facial expressions which seemed to range from distressed to downright scared. If there was one thing for sure, it was that something had happened, and that was something Wes could work with. If Danny was afraid of something happening, that was an opportunity for Wes to get proof.

Wes kept a close eye on Danny for the entirety of Mr. Lancer's class. But unfortunately, nothing out of the ordinary happened. In between second and third period, Wes lingered around where Danny, Sam, and Tucker were discreetly having a conversation among themselves. He managed to hear a good bit of what they were talking about without being noticed.

"-nothing may even happen, Danny," Sam said reassuringly. "You could be stressing yourself out over nothing."

"I'm not so sure. You guys know how freaky my anatomy is already, so there's no telling what this ghost chemical my dad made will do to me! It could be killing me from the inside right now!"

"Didn't you say that it's supposed to increase the thickness of ectoplasm?" Tucker asked.

"Yeah, well that's what my dad said it's supposed to do."

"Well, hypothetically wouldn't that make your human side more ghost like?" Sam suggested.

"Maybe, I don't know!" Danny waved his hands frantically.

"Danny," Sam said slowly, "you know your eyes are glowing right now, right?"

"I – uh-" Danny squinted his eyes shut, then opened them. "Are they normal again?"

"Nope," Tucker said. "Still green."

Danny tried again, but his eyes still continued to glow like Phantom's. "Do you think it's the stuff I ate doing it?"

"I don't see what else it could be, unless losing control over your powers today is a complete coincidence," Sam deadpanned.

"Great. What now?" Danny groaned. "Am I supposed to go to class like this?"

"Unfortunately, you don't have a choice," Sam replied.

"Hey, maybe no one will notice," Tucker offered. "I mean, it's just your eyes right now."

"I think you just jinxed it, Tuck," Danny said, before walking off to his next class.

Wes grinned. This was the exact kind of opening he was hoping for. Since Danny didn't currently have control over his powers, all he had to do was catch him in the act!

Once he was in history class, Wes sat directly beside Danny. He subtly propped up his history book, and hid his camera behind it. Taking out a scrap of paper, Wes wrote out, 'Nice eyes, Fenton' and threw it at Danny.

Danny caught it in midair and read it over. Scowling, he clutched the piece of paper in his fist before discreetly burning it with a burst of ecto-energy. Wes only smirked in response.

As history class dragged on, Wes kept looking over at Danny. He began to notice that he wasn't really having trouble with his powers, but more with his appearance. Some of the hairs at the back of Danny's head were starting to turn stark white. It was like Danny's human form was slowly transforming in Phantom. Danny hadn't noticed yet, Sam was on the opposite side of him, and Tucker was in a different class.

Wes slowly moved his arm and pulled out his camera. Making sure that no one was looking, he snapped a picture of Danny. What Wes hadn't considered, was the shutter and flash of the camera going off. The light filled the entire classroom, drawing attention to where Wes stood red-handed with his Polaroid in hand.

"Weston," snapped Mrs. Rosenbalm. "Why are you taking pictures in my classroom, while I'm teaching, when there is a strict rule about no technology in this class?"

Too baffled to come up with a response, that's how Wes's camera got confiscated.

Fortunately, Wes had a back-up camera in his locker. It wasn't as good quality as the other one, but it would have to work for the moment. Danny had finally figured out what was wrong with his hair, and had borrowed Tucker's beret to try and hide it. He looked like a complete retard, but it worked for the most part.

To nobody's surprise, none of the other students had noticed that there was anything wrong with Danny yet. There was a sickening frustration in Wes that wondered how the hell some of them were honor students when they couldn't even figure out that Danny Fenton was Danny fucking Phantom.

During lunch, Justin noticed Wes's obvious agitation. "So what's up with the Weston soap opera today?"

"Fenton," Wes hissed.

"What a surprise," Justin rolled his eyes.

"His fucking eyes are glowing green today, and nobody even looks at him! What the hell?! If that doesn't scream 'ghost', I don't know what will!"

"GHOST!" someone screamed as Phantom crashed into the cafeteria wrestling a ghost tiger. Wes groaned and continued to eat his sandwich as everyone else evacuated.

"Can we wrap this up Fenton?!" Wes called. "I sorta want to eat my lunch without things flying at my head."

Danny punched the tiger right in the gut, "Working... on it... asshole."

Within half a minute, the ghost was contained in the Fenton Thermos, and Danny floated back to the floor and let the rings surround him. Instead of fully transforming, only his clothes changed back. That left a very frustrated white-haired, green eyed boy in Danny Fenton's normal white and red t-shirt and jeans. He groaned, "At least I can do that much."

SNAP!

The sound of a camera going off reverberated throughout the empty cafeteria. Danny had forgotten about Wes being in the room with him. Shit. He'd just gotten a picture of Phantom in Fenton's clothing. In the few seconds Danny spent processing what had just happened, Wes had already made it outside the cafeteria doors. Danny was about to go into a full panic mode, when Sam dragged Wes back into the room and locked the door behind her.

"Give me the camera, now!" she demanded.

"No way in hell," Wes replied. "I finally got my proof, and there's no way you're taking it away from me."

"Wanna bet?" Sam growled. Drawing her foot back, she kicked Wes straight in the balls with her steel toed boots. He let out an undignified yelp before crumpling to the floor. Sam crouched down and frisked his pockets until she found his camera. She threw it to the floor and probably kicked it a good fifteen times before she was satisfied. Danny was pretty sure he heard Wes mutter the words "demon" a few times while she unleashed her rage.

When she had finally calmed down, Sam pulled out a black beanie from her spider backpack and gave it to Danny, "Here's for your hair."

He put it over his head and smiled, "Thanks, Sam. You're a life saver."

"Don't worry about it," she said, "besides you actually look really good in that beanie."

"You'd probably look better in it. Black's your color, not mine."

"Says the boy who flies around in a black jumpsuit all the time," Sam deadpanned.

"Well... you got me there." The two of them laughed.

"Stop... flirting..." Wes called from the floor. "It's making me... sick."

"Then stop being a dramatic little shit," Sam said, "that's Danny's job."

"Hey!" Danny protested.

"And for the record, we weren't flirting," Sam said. She tried to drag Danny with her, out of the cafeteria, but Danny intangibly slipped out of her grasp.

"What're you doing?" she asked.

Ignoring her, Danny walked towards Wes. On instinct, Wes flinched back, afraid that Danny was going to take his turn beating the shit out of him, but instead, the ghost-boy offered a hand towards Wes. It took him a moment to realize what Danny was doing and it didn't make sense to Wes. Why would Danny help him up?

"Are you just going to lay there?" Danny asked.

Cautiously, Wes accepted his hand and Danny used some of his strength to pull him up. Wes still felt a little weak from the groin kick, but managed to remain standing.

Without another word, Danny turned his back on Wes and left him alone, opting to walk away with Sam.

After they walked out of earshot, Sam said, "He didn't deserve your help. You didn't have to do that."

Danny looked at her. "Yeah, I did."

"Mikey, are you sure about this?" Lester said, "I mean, it's kind of controversial – what if we get in trouble?"

"Please," Mikey said, "I've already pitched it to some of the A-Listers, and they're definitely interested. And I doubt anybody's gonna get offended. This is Amity Park we're talking about."

"That's true, but what if it's a waste of time? What if none of them sell?"

"Paulina's already ordered two," Nathan said, reading from a clipboard. "Pretty much all the girls follow her lead when it comes to trends, no matter how vulgar or ridiculous."

"See," Mikey smiled, "we have nothing to worry about."

"What if Phantom gets upset?" Lester asked. "What do we do then?"

"I don't see why he'd get upset," Nathan said. "I mean, we're basically complimenting him."

"Who even came up with it?" Lester wondered. "Where did 'It's not gay if he's dead' even come from?"

Mikey shrugged, "Probably the Internet."