Disclaimer: I don't own DP.
Thanks to Invader Johnny, KraZiiePyrozHavemoreFun, Zakila, starwater09, Destiny W, Dareeen, Closet lover, JadeliketheGem, Guest, Guest, Crystalmoon39, SweetestChick, soos, Guest, Mychron, Yasz1221, Margot-Eve, Gerren, ZoneRobotnik, Guest, Guest, kikicat, and Domination of the World for reviewing! Aww, our little Dan/Val ship family is expanding! I'm so excited about this, and I'm excited that so many of you continuously review and review each chapter. That means so much to me. Thank you for that level of support. It keeps me writing!
Shot Summary: Alcohol lands Valerie in an uncomfortable situation with Dan Phantom.
Chapter Warning: Overall theme of sexuality, with brief descriptions of sex.
Deliverance
Shot 43: Blackout
Valerie's head pounded as she woke up.
Bright sunlight flickered across her face, which inspired her to burrow deeper into her threadbare covers and pretend nothing was real. The pounding throb in her temples was enough to make her almost nauseated. Every pulled muscle in her body screamed against the slightest movement.
"Ngh," she moaned.
It felt as if she'd been run over, knocked down, and slammed against a wall. It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling after fighting Phantom off from Amity Park boundary lines. But as she lay in her bed, she realized she was not wearing her typical nighttime tank top and shorts.
As a matter of fact, she was not wearing clothes at all.
The sleep in her slowly drained away in confusion. Had she really been so tired she hadn't bothered to dress? She nearly sat up, but then she realized that a heavy weight was slung over her hips. She looked down.
Instead of a pillow or a weapon, she saw a muscled, blue arm. Her heart stopped, and her breath stalled in her lungs. Oh my God.
In horror, she turned over.
No no no no—
A slender, pale-blue face rested on the pillow beside hers, slack in a peaceful sleep. The familiar face was connected to a familiar body, powerful muscles of his shoulder blades and back bare but for the same sheets that covered her.
A naked Dan Phantom was asleep next to her on the bed.
Valerie blinked for a second as reality sunk deep. Then she opened her mouth to scream, only for a shocked breath to escape.
Dan's red eyes snapped open, bleary and confused at first. It did not seem he was even focusing on her as he grimaced in pain—only for his eyes to widen as his hand tightened against the warmth of Valerie's body. He froze.
For a time, the two of stayed that way, staring at each other in utter shock.
And then Valerie found her voice.
His body blurred as he quickly moved on top of her, pinning her down with his powerful limbs. The sheets twisted around them, and he slapped his hand over her mouth, leaning in close. "Don't you dare," he hissed, inches away from her face. He looked absolutely panicked. "Don't you dare scream now."
"Mmft!" She tried to kick him off, heart pounding in terror. She felt almost weak with it. Her muscles screamed as she struggled beneath him and bit down on the hand over her mouth.
His face twitched with the slightest pain, but his fingers steeled even harder against her face. He leaned in close and snarled at her, "They will never trust you again if they find us. Do you understand? They'll think you're a traitor, to find me here in your bed." His hair flickered down his face and shoulders, tickling Valerie's face in the small distance between them.
Her heart dropped out, her lungs heaving for air. Her cries died in her throat with an even great horror than before. She struggled to breathe for several seconds, her breaths a hyperventilating shudder against his hand. She stared up, wide-eyed at him, eyes searching his. His naked body was still pressed against her own.
He looked up and around, apprehensive. His face twitched as if he had a terrible headache. Something about him seemed a bit sluggish. "You're going to tell me what witchcraft is," he demanded shortly. He seemed to realize their full state of undress, his sharp face tinged green with a flush. "Did you drug me?"
When Valerie attempted to recall her battle suit, nothing stormed over her. No sleek metal—no armored plates locking over her skin. "Ngh," she whined against his hand, eyes blurring with sudden tears. She didn't know what he had done. She didn't know what any of this meant, except that her head felt like it was bursting and her body ached like it'd been stretched too far—
He seemed to pick up that she was truly afraid. His large hand softened against her mouth. "You remember nothing as well?" he murmured. A spark of displeasure and disappointment pulled his lips into a frown.
Their struggles had exposed her bare chest to the air, the tangled sheets having scrunched further between them. Her face flushed a deep red, unable to lift her arms from his crushing elbows. For a time, she simply stared up at him, in a terrified awe that she was naked and he was naked and that he was on top of her—
He pulled his hand away and lifted off of her, his fingertips trailing over her gasping lips. "You don't," he murmured in awe. "And here I thought your antics were some attempt to trap me."
Tears burst from her eyes, and in his momentary hesitance, kicked him hard. He tensed and lashed out to grab her again, but she rolled up so that he was beneath her. Her breath hitched as she planted her hands hard on his wrists, digging in her fingernails.
"Where is my suit?" she demanded shakily. It was hard to think with a throbbing headache and five thousand fears. "How did you get in here?"
He stared up at her, his red eyes searching. His irises seemed oddly dilated. "I would ask you the same," he whispered hotly. "I couldn't have gotten through the Shield without your help." Another wave of pain rolled through his head, and willed himself not to grimace.
Valerie flinched, suddenly pulling away and grabbing one of the rumpled sheets. She wrapped herself in it, her face still red and vision blurry with tears. As she did so, she whispered in a cry, "Why the hell are we—?!" His accusation was nonsensical. She couldn't even say it.
"You tell me," he snapped, a tic of irritation raising his hackles. He sat up, his back leaning against the headboard as he pressed his fingers against the ridge of his brow, attempting to relieve the pulse of pain behind his eyes. "Or don't. Noise makes me nauseated." He had not experienced such a level of agony in while.
She felt alien in her body as she clenched the sheet tight, her knuckles bleeding a lighter color. "You drugged me," she sputtered, nearly hyperventilating. "To—to—" The room was beginning to spin. She noticed dark markings on Dan's neck, like love bites.
"—To what?" he demanded shortly. Some kind of knowledge darkened his eyes, his mind slowly working to rebuild the last 24 hours. "Or perhaps you drugged me in some attempt to fulfill your carnal needs, then drugged yourself in shame of what you had done."
Valerie's teal eyes widened. "What the hell?" she hissed, her breath hitching. "That doesn't even make sense."
"Do not think me amused." He roughly pulled on the sheets around him to hide himself further, his hair flickering strangely. "I have been violated."
"You feel violated?" she accused, voice incredulous. Her voice dropped into a tight whisper. "You're naked on my bed, in my room, and—"
That's when she saw it. On the bedside table was a fallen bottle of hard liquor, surrounded by a few other bottles of liquor on the floor. Her protests died in her throat. The pulse in her head suddenly made sense. "Oh no."
Dan followed her frozen gaze, only for comprehension to bleed into him. He held his head as his face twisted in displeasure. "You have got to be joking," he complained, although to whom, he did not know. Fate. Clockwork. Surely, this was all Clockwork's doing.
All ghosts knew to avoid the human delicacy of alcohol, as ectoplasm was a poor filter of such things. It resulted in near-drunkenness almost immediately, with an even longer recovery time than that of a human one. Dan looked nauseated in that moment, unable to reconcile himself with the reality that he, along with Valerie, had somehow managed to down enough alcohol to cow them both into desire.
His memories were muddled and strange. An image of himself grabbing a bottle from Valerie's hand. A feeling of superiority. "You must have tricked me," he accused, voice rough. But she'd stumbled and laughed in his memory—a sign she had already been drunk by the time she'd manipulated him onto it.
Valerie swallowed hard, unable to piece it all together. And then something of a flash hit her. The feeling of skin on skin. His bare fingers tracing her lips, her hips.
She suddenly could not hold his gaze. She looked down, now fully hyperventilating, which made her headache worse and all of her muscles protest—
"Valerie," he gasped in her ear, voice slurred and uninhibited with joy—
The blood began to drain from her face. She'd known all along what had transpired, but her muddy memories meant she could no longer deny it. Her body suddenly felt strange to her, Dan's touches from the previous night like phantom caresses all over her skin.
He'd—he'd—and she'd liked it.
She was breathless, eyes closed tight as cool lips pressed open-mouthed kisses on her neck—
The two fell silent with some awful knowledge of the other. Dan eyed her, as haunted as she was. Their position—nakedness and a debilitating hangover—meant that he would not dare consider destruction at that moment. He was weak now, and if he were truly trapped under the Shield, it meant he had to stay under the radar of Valerie's comrades to survive.
For the first time in his afterlife, he found himself in awe of being completely out of control—of the wild rivers of Valerie's curls and the blurry image he had of staring into her dazed eyes as he pressed his hips against hers. He'd always desired her to some extent. The alcohol must have pushed him over.
He realized now it was not an unreciprocated feeling, for Valerie to have willingly brought him to her bed.
Dan rubbed his forehead a bit, eyeing her with an angled brow. She was heavily disheveled, one dark brown shoulder exposed in the bundle of a white sheet. The silence between them was the heaviest he'd ever known.
"You better not be thinking about attacking anyone," she said, voice strained as she glared. "Don't make me fight you. Not right now."
His lip curled in disgust, but he said slowly, "As much as I love your misery, I do not care for my own. Allow me to rest here until I can think without pain. I will not attack your city in return."
Their truce was strained and uncomfortable. She gave a tight nod, swallowing hard. It seemed she would be harboring a fugitive in her own bed for the time being, but it was far better than Phantom throwing a tantrum, and everyone discovering that she had let him in behind enemy lines.
Her voice was small. "Do you…remember?"
His dilated, red eyes flickered up to hers briefly. For all of his horror, he felt an incredible pull toward her. His body knew her now. At the sight of her bare shoulder, he dared to remember the sight of her fully naked. "Yes," he snapped suddenly, but his voice was more agonized than it was angry. "Damn all that you are and what you have done to me, you devil woman. I should kiss you once more."
Her face twitched in surprise, and she blinked. "…What?"
Despite his headache, he turned his head and eyed her. "I remember great pleasure." His voice was a tired baritone that rattled into her. "I can think of nothing else."
Valerie's dark face began to tinge red. Her knuckles tightened into the white sheet covering her.
"As a matter of fact," the ghost murmured to her, soaking in the sight of her, "I wonder what it would be like fully sober."
Her eyebrows flew up. "…What?"
"You heard me," he said. Then with a bit of a staggered motion, he sat up, the sheets rustling about him. That put him eye-to-eye with Valerie, less than a few feet away.
She began to wonder if he were not somehow still buzzed. His tongue was loose with ideas that she knew were largely against his principles. "You don't want to kiss me," she snapped. "You're just saying that."
He leaned forward, further closing the gap. The sheets about his waist scrunched, revealing the sharp of his muscled hip. "I've a terrible headache," he murmured to her, "and I can heal through your energy. You cannot blame my curiosity."
In the blur of the moment, he grabbed onto the sheet around Valerie and pulled her forward. Her eyes flew wide, and she nearly yelped, only for his lips to smash against hers.
Dan closed his eyes, tightening his fingers into the white sheet about her. Valerie's human energy—something of an electromagnetic frequency—was a reciprocal of ectoplasm. It could affect his power core to some extent, and so as he kissed her, the frequency waves of her electricity melted into him, easing the pain of his hangover. A great relief relaxed him.
To his own surprise, Valerie did not resist him. She'd been stiff at first in shock, but as his mouth softened against hers, she eased against him. To distract him from Amity Park, she convinced herself. To keep him from attacking.
If he were stealing her energy in some way, she could not feel it, but rather felt he was easing her headache as well.
Their kiss deepened. She leaned forward harder, leaning him back against the headboard. His fingers wove into her hair as she stretched his lips opened. Their actions were familiar, as if they'd done all this before in a dream together. The nerves of her mouth lit hot with the cool of his tongue, and she moaned.
The sheet covering her parted open as she moved closer to him to get a better angle. Dan's eyes had closed in a pleasured concentration of her lips, but when his hand slipped against the open sheet, he happened across the hem and swept it back.
His hand touched her bare waist, feeling the muscled curve of her body and the warmth of her skin. He was losing himself to the overwhelming sensation that Valerie was female, and he was male, and he could not get close enough—
Dan grabbed on tight to her hip and pulled her forward, as if to guide her to him. She gasped against his lips, losing her balance against him. She strangled out a moan, heart racing as she toppled against his hips, only a thin sheet between them. Oh my god, she thought, lips dropping open in shock. His touch was a cold fire that pooled between her legs. All of her reasoning left her, except that she wanted to feel him touch her in intimate ways. She desired him. She knew now he desired her.
And then suddenly, there was a knock at the door—a soft, worried rap.
They both froze.
"Chica?" came a muffled, nasal voice. The woman sounded groggy and as if she were half-hungover herself. "Chica, you up? Breakfast line is gonna shut down soon."
Valerie pulled away from Dan in a panic, her heart stopping at the thought of what they were doing. Her breath was unsteady and quick. "Paulina," she recognized.
Another impatient rap. "Valerie Gray. Wake up."
The woman in question flinched. "Get out of here," she whispered to Dan in fright, flailing a sheet about herself. "Go invisible."
Dan narrowed his eyes at her, half out of it in lust. His nostrils flared with displeasure. "No."
"I mean it," she hissed.
"You were relieving my headache," he complained. "Now it is returning."
"…Do you have a guy in there?" Paulina suddenly demanded, her muffled voice sharpening with awareness. She began to knock on the door a little harder. "Oh my god, chica, you didn't—tell me you didn't. It's not Dash, is it?!"
Dan's red eyes suddenly narrowed to slits. "...Dash?" he whispered sharply. "You desire him?"
The incredible possession with which Dan looked at her took her aback for a second. Incredulity seeped into her nearly hysterical whisper. "What? Why the hell would you even—?!"
"—Chica, you wouldn't do this to me," Paulina whined. Tears began to thicken her voice. "Is it Dash? Dash, are you in there too?"
Valerie suddenly shoved Dan hard. "Go invisible," she demanded in a quiet hiss of panic. "Get out of here."
"I'm missing my suit," he hissed right back.
She then pushed a sheet at him until it covered even his face.
"It's just me in here!" Valerie complained loudly to Paulina. "My head hurts. Stop whining."
"Do not think I'll accept your orders without compensation," Dan murmured in her ear, voice hot with irritation. And then he was gone, taking the sheet with him.
The room was still cold with his presence, as if he were still watching from a short distance.
The woman on the other side of the door paused in silence. "…But I could have sworn I heard a—"
"—You sayin' I sound like a dude?" Valerie huffed, desperately attempting to untangle herself from her bed to pull on sleep shorts and a tank top that was on the floor. Her suit was in panels in an odd array on the floor. She didn't have time to think about it. She kicked them and the dark pile that was Dan Phantom's clothes beneath her bed, only for her eyes to widen when his cape, which still flickered, seemed to wrap around her ankle.
"Stop it," she complained under her breath, narrowing her eyes. She looked around in paranoia, knowing that Dan likely was teasing her.
Paulina sniffed, as if she were still crying. "So you didn't sleep with Dash then? He doesn't sleep with me ever, chica—tell me he didn't sleep with you!"
Valerie was still adjusting the hem of her tank top when she finally managed to open up the door, looking frazzled. "What the hell," she greeted Paulina.
The woman before her was wearing disheveled army pants and an old dark top in a way that Paulina never would. Her black hair was frizzed, her eyes red-rimmed.
"Oh," Paulina said, then began to tear up again. "You look so much better with a hangover than I do." Her big tears slipped down her face as she looked over Valerie's shoulder, her baby blue eyes widening in a hurt pout. "Almost like you're glowing. Are you sure you don't have a guy in there?"
Valerie rolled her eyes and opened the door further. "Unless you wanna count a few bottles of rum, no. Now, can you give me like, five minutes?" As almost a second thought, she put a hand to her temple and forced herself to look as if she were in pain. Her mind was racing. "I still don't even remember what happened last night."
Paulina wiped away her tears with a delicate pat, as if to save makeup she wasn't wearing. "Don't you remember any of it?"
"No," Valerie snapped.
"Yesterday was the first-year anniversary of the Shield actually holding up," Paulina said, stumbling a bit on the word anniversary. "Lots of drinks and dancing. Then you were gone." She began to tear up again. "And I thought you went off with Dash." Suddenly, she threw herself against Valerie and cried, "But you were really just being antisocial like always!" She sobbed over her. "I'm sorry, I'm a bad friend!"
Valerie sputtered, desperately attempting to pull herself away. "Jesus—Paulina. Come on."
"I'll buy you breakfast," her friend whined. "Or a makeover, anytime. Hair included."
Valerie tried not to snap at her. Paulina was well-meaning, in her own way. "Fine," she said. "But give me some time to wake up, okay? I'll just…meet you down at the cafeteria in a half hour. I gotta...I gotta wake up."
The Latina gave her a relieved, and then a concerned look. "Okay. You are okay, right?"
"I'm fine. I'll see you soon." And then Valerie quickly disappeared back into her room and shut the door, waiting apprehensively for the sound of Paulina's steps to fade out.
In relief, she turned around and leaned against the door. "Oh my god," she breathed.
A half-naked Dan reappeared with the sunlight behind him, illuminating the white sheet he held around his waist. His hair flickered tiredly. "You call that one your friend?" he huffed. "She is incapable of forming an intelligent thought."
Valerie's teal eyes narrowed up at him, struggling not to look upon his body. "Hey, she is what she is. Don't rag on her."
"And what are we?" he demanded. He allowed himself to gaze down her body. "You celebrate the success of your city by sleeping with the enemy and corrupting him. I cannot look at you without thinking of what has transpired between us."
She swallowed hard, looking away from his face. She caught sight of the love bites on his neck that had not yet faded into the light blue of his skin. "I don't remember much," she whispered.
"That is a lie by now." He moved forward, his voice turning with displeasure. "I see it in your face—and if nothing else, you do remember our desire prior to your friend interrupting us."
Her face burned with the heat of embarrassment. "That's not gonna happen again," she said. "It was a mistake."
The powerful ghost tilted his head. He reached for her, his bare fingertips curling into a lock of her wild hair. "I'm stuck here until you release me to the Wastelands," he murmured. "A fox in the hen house." His hand slipped from her hair to ghost down her shoulder and then the swell of her breast. Her breath hitched. "And I still have a headache, for which your willing energy can heal me."
Her voice was halted, breathless as she leaned harder against the door behind her. "If you're stuck here," she whispered, "it's better to keep you down."
"Or distracted," he murmured. "Take off these clothes. I desire to finish our business here as much as you do."
Her breath hitched again when the pad of his thumb swept up over the swell of her breast, circling her nipple through the fabric of the tank top. The silence between them was heavy.
"I have to—Paulina—" She was losing her ability to think, dazed as she closed her eyes. She wanted him to touch her and for her to touch him. Oh god, did she want it.
"Ten minutes," he bargained, his baritone voice a murmur. "And I shall remain here, without complaint, until such a time that you are able to sneak me out of Amity Park."
Another heavy silence.
"…Deal," she whispered. Her closed eyes squeezed harder shut, and she inhaled sharply as she heard the sheet slip from his body, and suddenly both of his hands were pulling up on the hem of her shirt. An excited fear overwhelmed her. "But you better make it good."
He raised a brow, pausing for a second. "I would rather hope," he murmured to her, "we'd work together to achieve that."
Valerie opened her eyes tentatively, vulnerably searching his own. There was something human about him in that minute. It struck her then that having Dan Phantom beneath her, weak in lust with her name on his lips, was not so terrible a thought. "Challenge accepted," she said.
It was only after her clothes were fallen on the floor, and after she'd found herself lying beneath him on the bed that she whispered shakily, breathing hard, "You can't get me pregnant, right?"
His lips upon her neck paused for a second. "If I can, the damage would be done from last night."
Valerie's heart dropped for a second, eyes widening. Her breath shuddered in realization that this was how babies were made. "What?" she breathed. She froze entirely. "Oh my god. You mean you don't know?"
Dan pulled away, somewhat surprised. "How would I?"
"You're the one who says he knows everything," she complained. A new fear overwhelmed her. "Oh my god." She had a vision of herself pregnant with the baby of Dan Phantom—everyone staring at her in disgust. "Oh my god."
He watched as her eyes suddenly watered up in full realization of the consequence of their affair. He found himself irritated by it. "You're ruining our ten minutes," he complained.
"And you're ruining my life." She suddenly pushed him, feeling cold and wide-eyed in a deep terror. Maybe she was already pregnant—the fruit of their drunk lovemaking sewing itself cell by cell in her womb. She sat up, dazed. "I can't get pregnant. Oh my god, I can't. Especially not from you."
For a time, Phantom did not touch her or speak. He found that Valerie's unhappiness, so long as it persisted, stood in the way of making love to her again. "Is there not a pill or a mechanism by which to…control such things?"
She blinked, and the tears in her eyes began to well harder. "Not anymore," she breathed shakily. "Oh my god, what have I done."
Something about connecting himself to Valerie—being naked with her—had softened him toward her. "You do not even know if you are with child," he said. "You worry for nothing."
"And if I am?" she challenged. Her face was red with fear and shame and embarrassment, feeling as though she had betrayed herself in the name of physical pleasure. She thought of herself swelling large, crying in agony of birth. Staring at a baby with Dan's features. She suddenly became nauseated. "I couldn't hide this."
His red eyes looked away distantly, and he mulled over the thought. "No," he said slowly, "you could not."
The conundrum was a new one for him—a new one for them both, just as the previous night and their morning had been.
As he thought of it, he found himself more unable to separate some protective instinct from Valerie. He knew any sort of open confession to sex with him would mean her death. Dan grabbed onto her chin and tilted her head to eye her straight. "Then, if for some reason you do find yourself pregnant with my child, tell them I forced you," he said casually. "I care not for their opinion of me, and they would believe you."
Valerie's lip quivered. "But you didn't," she whispered, almost feeling indignant at the irreverence of such a lie. "We didn't."
"A fact to which they would remain ignorant." His hand slipped from her chin. "But then, this is all hypothetical. You are likely worrying for nothing."
"You don't know that." Her voice grew stronger in a great worry and an anger. She ran a hand over her lower abdomen, her fingers shaking, as if to will her body not to become pregnant. "You don't know that."
Dan waved a hand. "And what would you have me do now? I cannot reverse time, nor would I particularly want to, even if you did end up carrying my child."
Valerie's watery eyes sharply honed on him. Her breaths were beginning to shudder. "What?"
The powerful ghost fell silent for a time, mulling over their strange circumstances. "I am not…unhappy at the thought." In his muddy memories of the previous night, he had a sense of some odd belonging—an unleashing of long-pent-up emotion that had always burned him when gazing upon Valerie. That she was where he belonged. "I fear I enjoyed last night too much to regret it."
The statement was enough to garner a wide-eyed look from Valerie. It silenced her tongue in shock for a time.
Dan watched another blush creep over her cheeks, spreading up to even the tips of her ears.
He leaned in, his lips inches away from hers. "If you are with my child," he murmured, "I will assist you in any way I can. And if you discover you are not with my child, then you will repay me the ten minutes you have wasted here, with whatever contraception you desire to ease your mind. Deal?"
Valerie blinked, and tears slipped down her face. She felt she were in a daze, her body still aching in want for him, her mind racing with thoughts of the what if what if what if – "What do you mean?" she demanded quietly. "When you say you'll 'assist me,' what the hell does that mean?"
He hummed. "I am not without tricks to have cake and eat it too. I would find a way to make a child beneficial to us both. Now, do we have a deal or not?"
Valerie's mind raced with the possibilities, satisfied that Dan would at least not abandon her. She supposed it made sense, as he was likely fishing for ways to continue their affair, now that his eyes had been opened to the pleasure of human company.
Then, slowly, she nodded her head. And Dan closed the gap between them, pressing his lips against hers to seal the deal.
Against her better judgment, Valerie melted into the kiss, her body beginning to ache for him once more in a tidal wave. She felt his fingers grab onto her shoulders, feeling the lines of her body beneath the white sheet. Although she remained fearful, some traitorous part of her mind said, It wouldn't be all bad, to be pregnant by him. We'd really own his ass then.
It was all they could do to pull away, uneven breaths mixing in the space between them. Dan reached up and silently brushed her tears away, the callouses on his fingers a comforting friction.
And then he kissed her once more. He feared, with great delight, that Valerie was going to be his new favorite addiction.
A/N: And thus concludes my attempt at somewhat risqué content. To the guest reviewer soos, I do hope this can function for you as a "happy birthday" present, as I wasn't sure exactly what you were wanting. But I figured, hey, why not heavy Dan/Val? :P
This one shot was a big experiment for me. Still iffy about super-detailed smut, but I tried to strike a balance.
Also, some good news: Deliverance is being translated into Russian! The translation work is headed by Latin and Russian letters and is being published a chapter at a time at the site "ficbook." Thank you, Latin and Russian letters for all of your hard work!
Anyway, please review with your thoughts, ideas, questions, or constructive criticisms! Thanks!
