Disclaimer: I don't own DP.
Thanks for the following awesome people for reviewing last time: Mrsce, Invader Johnny, NikkieStJohn94, starwater09, hrisi292, SweetestChick, LyricAftershock, Zighana, KraZiiePyrozHavemoreFun, Lady Audentium, Devious Purrloin, Noname, JadeliketheGem, Guest, and Guest! I really appreciate you all and am so thankful for your feedback!
Summary: Dan knows that Valerie is virtually indestructible in her battle suit. Ergo, he realizes all he has to do is get her to willingly take off her battle suit. He desperately tries to seduce her in an attempt to kill her once and for all.
Chapter Warnings: Mild sexuality and language.
Deliverance
Shot 67: Off With the Suit
In the midst of battle, Dan pushed her against a wall. His large hands splayed against the brick just over her shoulders. "Valerie," he said. His breath puffed against her visor. "I've been thinking."
She gazed at him wide-eyed, her lips curled in a grimace. "A dangerous thing with you," she muttered. She pushed her armored hands against his chest.
Her hands suddenly moved through him, and she yelped when she nearly fell against him.
As it were, Dan ended up stabilizing her, and he pressed his forehead against the clear visor of her helmet. "Your eyes are a unique color," he murmured curiously. "Quite beautiful for human eyes."
The odd compliment—and by all things holy, what would he have done without her visor—stopped her in confusion. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What the hell is wrong with you?" she hissed. She jolted to the side to break free from his grasp, and she slipped from his fingers easily this time.
"Apparently, you." He lifted off the ground to sit cross-legged in the air. His heavy cape and flickering hair swayed in the wind, and he tilted his head. "I just can't seem to get you out of my mind."
"Oh, I'm sure." She grabbed her blaster from the ground, leveling it at him. "You've already told me your top five ways I should die."
"But this is a much better path," he pressed, leaning forward a bit. His red eyes roved over her body in a way they hadn't since he'd been sixteen. "Beneficial for the both of us. Pleasurable, even."
Valerie stepped back, feeling uncomfortable. "I don't like the sound of that."
Dan smiled. His perfect fangs shone white in the sun. "The reality is, Valerie, you please my eye. I should very much not like to kill you now."
Her full lips dropped open a small fraction. She did not lower her blaster. "What in the name of—?"
He turned to lie on his stomach in the air, leaning his cheek against his hand. "—It's a terrible affliction, I know. To feel such desire for you."
"Did you…hit your head on something?" she wondered curiously, truly disturbed by his actions. She looked him over for injuries. "Is this amnesia from slamming you into that building?"
He pursed his lips. "I'm lonely, Valerie dear. And you are by far the most beautiful woman I know."
"Okay," she said, holding up a hand. "Either this is a joke that Amorpho's playing, or your brain got hijacked. You are not the Phantom I know."
Dan's irritation began to climb. It seemed his ruse to present legitimate attraction was too sudden and was causing suspicion—these were not his usual battle tactics, for certain. "Can a man not have a change of heart?" he demanded airily, pressing his free hand to chest. "Give me some credit. Even I can admire the woman you've become."
This time, a small blush began to creep across her face.
Yes, he thought. A blush.
That meant he had affected her.
Valerie lowered her blaster. "You don't have a heart," she said, eyes narrowed.
"Of course I do," he argued. "Perhaps it has not beat in some time, but…" His red eyes grew a bit half-lidded as he stared at her. "I feel it when I look at you."
When she didn't respond, his eye twitched. "I'm trying to be romantic. Say something."
Her eyebrow raised, and she put her hand on her hips. "What the hell am I supposed to say to this? You're not romantic at all."
He stared at her in shock. "How am I not being romantic? I am giving you compliments."
Valerie face-palmed. "Oh my god," she muttered under her breath, trying to calculate a way out of this—or determine if there was some kind of weakness he was genuinely portraying. "Look, I don't know what ghost girl you've got hooked around your fingers this week, but I'm not some practice doll. This is just weird. You're crossing lines here. It's interrupting our battle and my daily agenda of kicking your ass back to the Ghost Zone."
"A ghost girl of the week? Valerie," he said patiently, "I have eyes only for you."
She raised her eyebrow. "Don't lie. You're probably like some ghost version of a walking STD."
He frowned. "Now that's just stereotyping me because I'm handsome."
"No, I'm pretty sure it's the truth," she said snidely.
He sat back up, preening. "So, you admit I'm handsome?" he said smugly, raising a brow.
For a second, Valerie looked a bit lost, as if grasping for words. The blush on her face deepened to a new shade of red that made her look like a mix between a school girl and an angry inmate. "Maybe you'd be handsome if you didn't look like a total freak," she snapped. "You were much cuter before you went all bat-shit blue and crazy. I'm sure all your ghost harem is into that."
His fangs bit hard into his lip to keep him from snarling at her. Romantic. Forgiving. Right. "Then what are human girls into?" he asked, voice straining with something darker than curiosity.
Valerie snorted, and she set her blaster into its holster on her thigh. This was not the first time Dan had interrupted a battle mid-fight to express some kind of odd thought. She had a terrible fear that she was the closest thing he had to a confidant. She realized they were in one of those strange impasses again, where neither of them were fighting and instead…talking about love and attraction? Her face twisted. "Most girls," she said with a huff, "like a guy who isn't a psycho-murdering maniac."
He face-faulted. "No, do not jest with me. This is serious. What do I have to do to show you my genuine attraction?"
She tilted her head at him, as if seriously considering his question. Then she began to laugh. "Oh man," she said, peals of laughter ringing from her like bells. It was actually a beautiful, contagious sound. "I just imagined you bringing some poor girl flowers and chocolate. You'd make her heart stop alright. In fear."
Valerie was not making this easy;
"I am asking what you prefer a guy to do," he demanded.
"Me? I'd prefer if people left me alone." She looked irritated for a second, as if thinking of someone beyond just Dan. "Desperation is just freakin' annoying."
His curiosity piqued. "Someone bothering you?"
She eyes slid to him. "You mean more than you are right now? None of your damn business."
"Come on, tell me," he demanded. "I at least deserve to know my competition."
Valerie's eyebrows flew up. "What makes you think you're in the competition?" she said, voice hard.
He smirked lazily. "And what makes you think I'm not?"
A day later, Dan's attempts at seduction brought forth results.
He was floating high in the air and casually blasting away at old metal beams on the ground, watching the green of his power explode into shimmers. The metal whined. It was as close to a scream as he could obtain from a victim with Amity Park's Shield up, but now he could not admit such to Valerie without getting slapped for it. And if he wanted to seduce her, he supposed that incurring her fury would work against him.
It was then she appeared.
Valerie—with her updated battle suit from Technus, the old coot—always tickled his ghost sense. The small ectoplasmic power of the suit's nanoparticles were not enough to register as a true ghost, but it was enough to sense her.
He turned around, and there she was, leisurely flying toward him on her jet sled.
Dan raised a sharp brow in surprise. "What is this?" he called. "No surprise attacks, no shots in the back?"
Valerie did not answer. Instead, she waited until she was only a few feet away before she spoke. "I have to talk to you," she said, voice halted.
"You are doing so now." The ghost tilted his head in amusement.
Her face burned in a small, sudden blush. "No, I mean. Like, actually talk. I'm not here to fight."
His curiosity piqued to all-new levels. Valerie always wanted to fight. "Then what, pray tell, is so worthy of conversation that you would stay your hand against me?"
The sunlight glinted harshly off her armor, giving her the appearance of an angel.
"I'd like to tell you how long I've waited for you to say something," she said, teal eyes trained on him. Her voice was still halted. "That I feel it too—that attraction."
His white eyebrows flew up. A curious smile tilted his lips back. Oh, this was going to get easy. "You do?"
She nodded. Something in her movements made her seem seductive. He couldn't place his finger on what was different about her.
"I'm lonely too," she admitted softly.
"You are?" he said, trying to keep his sadistic excitement from bleeding into his voice.
Valerie watched him closely. "I think about you a lot," she whispered. "At night."
He suddenly flew toward her, bridging the distance between them into a little more than a few inches. "And what do you think of me, when you are alone at night?" he murmured in great curiosity. Some part of him did not want to admit that he found the tone of her voice—this uncertain vulnerability in her—arousing. She was already beautiful, that had been no lie, but like this, she was positively radiating sexual need.
It began to hit him that perhaps he had such needs too.
Valerie tentatively reached out and touched him. In the silence between them, she ran her metal-encased fingers, the edges almost like claws, down his muscled chest and abs. "I've thought about how good you'd make me feel," she whispered. She moved closer to him, her fingers hooking into his belt without shame. "What it would be like."
His eyes widened, and his smirk stretched, mesmerized by her audacity. "Oh, do go on," he breathed, red eyes beginning to dilate with lust.
Then she hummed. "But that would be a lie, now, wouldn't it?" And she patted his face, almost like a slap, and he blinked at her. She blurred backwards, her jet sled engine whining at the strain. Only too late did he realize that she had planted a grenade on his jumpsuit belt and it was blinking red, and his eyes widened as he grabbed onto it and—
Boom!
Dan Phantom flew backwards in a flail of limbs, crashing hard onto the ground. He wheezed for a second, his back broken, his whole front a shredded twist of his jumpsuit and burned skin. High above him, Valerie floated on her jet sled, laughing in genuine amusement. "Oh, that was just too easy," she snickered.
Dan began to regenerate. His red eyes narrowed at her, even as he forced himself up. Muscle and skin began to reknit, as did the tears in his suit. He wrapped an arm around his middle, shocked that she had taken such a low shot.
But by the time he managed to sit up and dial his vision back in, Valerie was gone. Her laughter was trickling somewhere off in the distance.
Dan leaned back on the rubble, groaning. Of course Valerie would play hard to get. She wasn't just some prostitute floozy that he could pick up in the Ghost Zone. No—she was wickedly intelligent and probably already onto his scheme. He would have to try harder. He would have to make it look truly real for her to believe it. He smiled something wicked. And then, just as she would retract her suit and bare unprotected arms and that swan neck—oh, he'd rip her to shreds and laugh and watch the love in her eyes sink to horror. Or perhaps he would get his sexual needs out of the way first if she were willing.
Then death.
It was a beautiful plan. It just had to…er, work.
A/N: Hello, lovelies! I know this is a bit of a shorter upload, but I just wanted to do something (hopefully) entertaining and light-hearted before we drop back into some upcoming angst. (Per popular request, it looks like Aftermath will be next!) As a quick note, I'm back from taking a hiatus on my AO3 story, The Exchange, if you're interested!
Please let me know your thoughts, questions, constructive criticisms, or requests! Thanks for being a part of this ship!
