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Summary: Valerie just wants to relax. Dan arrives to interrupt her…and to steal her food.

Chapter warnings: This one's pretty tame, with only some language and Dan being Dan.


Deliverance

Shot 70: Sun and Strawberries


"What sort of mischief is this?" The ghost's voice thundered over the beach, petulant, haughty—carrying with it an infuriating self-assumed superiority, as always.

Valerie did not move from her position of laying on her stomach, nor did she open her eyes. She knew she had a blaster near her hip, and if she did not lash out in violence first, Phantom often tended to only verbally irritate her.

"I," she retorted lightly, "am sun tanning."

Dan Phantom drew closer, the sand kicking up at his presence as he floated above the beach. "Sun tanning."

"Yep."

He crossed his arms in confusion, and he deadpanned, "Out here. In my lands, where you usually threaten to destroy me, and I toss you into cliffsides."

Her voice was a bit muffled against the blanket she was laying on. "Well, I was hoping you'd be busy on the other side of the world today."

Dan huffed. "The other side of the world is dull." His red eyes trailed down Valerie's messy bun of ringlet hair, down her sharp shoulder blades, down to her red bikini-clad body and her long legs. "Far duller in comparison to this side."

"Why, just couldn't stay away from me?" she muttered sarcastically. She turned her head so that she could face him. A few of her curls were in the way, so she blew them to the side with a strong breath. It made her hair flare out against her shoulders.

"You know I cannot stay away," Dan's voice brightened with something sultry and playful, his red eyes track her. "You are the highlight of my day. Every day."

His black boots lightly landed on the sand, his black cape fluttering about him.

Valerie groaned, planting her face into the blanket. "Can't you give me a day of peace? Just one?"

"No. Because one day of peace for you is one day of boredom for me." His smile was dangerous, stretching a bit too wide on his lips. His sharp fangs glittered in the sunlight. "And the last time I was bored, the Amazon forest somewhat…disappeared. When I think about it, I can still hear the sound of those biologists sobbing and holding a memorial for each extinct species. It gives me such…life."

Valerie groaned again, and it was a pitiful sound. "Don't remind me—I'm still banned from the Life Sciences building because of you."

"Hn. I did you a favor." He waved his hand airily. "You grow bored as well when I do not attack."

"I do not," she said petulantly.

"You do. Our battles are everything you desire."

"I just get anxious if I don't know where you are. And I don't wanna be anxious right now, because I really wanna enjoy the merits of laying on this beach."

"What merits are those?" he asked, voice dry, a white brow quirked.

The woman closed her eyes and breathed in deep. "Relaxation," she said, a strain of irritation in her voice. "You don't relax. And because you don't relax, I can't relax."

He realized her dark skin shined with the sheen of suntan lotion. "You are not relaxing. You are giving yourself skin cancer," he said flatly. "Stop it."

"I'm using sun tan lotion. And at least I'm not incapable of relaxing," she said, narrowing her eyes. If there was one thing she knew Dan could not stand, it was to be accused of inadequacy. She threw out her hook. "You just can't do it. It's impossible for you."

"Nothing is impossible for me," he said, a hiss rising in his voice. He took the bait.

Valerie began to reel him in. "Oh, yeah?" she said lightly. "You can't go one day without destroying something, much less one hour. You'd probably explode."

"No, I would not," he said, red eyes darkening. "I am simply not a lazy creature like you."

She scoffed. "Lazy? I'm the only person in two dimensions who can kick your butt to the moon and back." Refusing to be baited herself, she simply gave him a smile. "I'm just on vacation. Because I know how to relax, and you don't." She laid back down on the blanket, reveling in the feeling of the hot sun on her back and the soft of the sand cradling her form. She felt wondrously rebellious, refusing to fight him.

His lips curled into a snarl. "I do know how to relax."

She eyed him. "Yeah, no. You're standing there looking constipated in your crazy spandex."

A semblance of Daniel Fenton twisted across his face. It was a shadow of uncertainty. "I see what you are trying to do," he said. "You are trying to pride me into not fighting you."

Her teal eyes laughed at him as she stared at his twisted face, feeling a bit devious that she had made the great Dan Phantom uncomfortable. "Now tell me it's not working," she retorted with a tease in her voice.

Dan stared at her, nose scrunched. Then he growled, and he raised his chin with aristocratic distain. "You do realize I could vaporize you right now."

"And if you vaporize me, then I'll really get to relax," she said lightly, turning her face away. "Still doesn't hide the fact that you're a hopeless failure at relaxing."

The ghost grew more irritated. "I am not a failure," he seethed. Red bikini or not, Valerie was working her way towards a slit throat. "Do not ever call me a failure."

She watched him. "Then prove you're not," she said casually, waving a hand. "It's not that hard."

The handsome ghost snarled at her, even as he unsnapped his cape from his broad shoulder. "Your strange manipulations are detestable. I despise you. Sometimes, I truly do." The thick, heavy material of his cape slipped down to the sand, folding over. Even detached from him, its ends still flickered like his hair.

A part of it fell within reach of her.

Valerie, with no fear, lazily reached out her scarred fingertips. The ragged edges of the cape slipped around her fingers, dancing like flames, kissing her skin. Her teal eyes raised up to him knowingly. "Your cape likes me," she said, a sculpted brow raising. She curled her fingers around the soft, cool material. It felt like silk against her—a little reprieve from the warmth of the sun.

She knew that Dan's mind and senses were attached to his cape, which was an extension of his own power and consciousness.

His eyes darkened in an odd way, his face shadowing with want. "You dare to touch my cape?" he warned her.

"Get down here, and I'll touch something else," she said, her rough voice growing playful.

Dan's lips dropped open, and his sharp, handsome face began to tinge with a green blush of—indignancy? Attraction? "What?"

Valerie's full lips stretched open, and she slipped her fingers away from the flickers of his cape, letting out a bright, cheery giggle. "Oh my god, you are so easy to freak out." She turned onto her back, folding her hands behind her wild curls of hair.

Like this, she appeared vulnerable, her neck and stomach bared to him. The lines of her body were taut with muscle, expanding and contracting in solid, steady breath, the sun shining against the feminine curves of her waist and hips. "I like messing with you sometimes," she confessed merrily. "You're kinda cute when you're caught off guard. Your face does this deer-caught-in-the-headlights look."

It took him some time before he could manage to demand, "How long have you been beneath this sun? Truly, Valerie, I believe you might have heat stroke. You are saying and doing things most unlike you."

With his boot, he lightly kicked some sand onto her legs.

Her eyes narrowed, and in a blur, her dark hand shot out and grabbed hard onto his ankle. Before he could move, she jerked him back.

The ghost made a noise of surprise as his leg flew out beneath him—and he crashed to the ground beside Valerie in a spray of sand.

She closed her eyes, wrinkling her nose at the grit of sand now not only across her legs but also down her stomach and her top. "I told you," she said petulantly. "I'm on vacation. So you should be on vacation too."

Dan was still flat on his back in the sand, shocked. His baritone voice was halted. "I've killed for less than this."

Valerie delighted in the surprise widening his red, inhuman eyes. An unnatural thrill worked into her at the sight that she could in fact twist Dan around like any other human male. That beneath his ghostly exterior, some part of him was terribly human.

She huffed in amusement as she leaned over him, her dark curls slipping down her bare shoulder. "Killed, yes," she murmured, eyes dancing. "But you know we have so much fun together."

And from her wrist, a circlet of her armor configured, shuttering into a small, ghost-proof dagger. Its edge glimmered near his throat. "Don't mess this day up for me," she said lightly, then tapped the flat of the dagger against his nose.

His aristocratic nose wrinkled, his eyes lighting hot with…irritation? Attraction? "How indulgent I've become," he murmured, voice dangerous as his fingers raised up to slid over hers. Despite the darkness in his words, his touch against her bare skin was particularly gentle for him. "To allow you to dishonor me like this."

Her full lips stretched. "Consider it an honor," she retaliated lightly, "that I haven't already gutted you like a fish."

The handsome ghost's face split wide with a dark smile. His instinctive need for destruction made his eyes glimmer. "Why don't you try to gut me, Valerie dear. The attempt would at least amuse me."

"Maybe I will," she challenged, pulling her blade away, its metal de-configuring back down into her armored circlet, which then soon retracted and slipped back down beneath her skin. "On another day, when I'm not trying to relax."

His red eyes followed her. "How magnanimous of you." His voice trailed off dryly, but his body relaxed into the sand beside her, his strong muscles untensing. He felt a renewed vindication that Valerie, despite her casual behavior, was still in full control of her armor and intentionally choosing not to use it. Now, he felt he could truly relax. "Then I suppose…I am still in need of proving that I can take a day off as well." He folded his arms behind his head, and his strong elbow brushed lightly against her own.

It sent chills down her spine, but she didn't move away.

The two enemies laid nearly side by side in the warm sun, Dan's body leeching out an unnatural coldness that buffered the heat against Valerie's skin.

She dared to close her eyes for the first time, sinking against her warm blanket, feeling the minor stress in her seep away, even as Dan remained at her side. Without thinking, she sighed in delight of the sun and the way Dan's body seemed to transform the hot sun into merely a warm spring day.

The sound was not lost upon him.

"…Valerie dear," he murmured. "I have to ask. Does this constitute as a date?"

"No, it doesn't," Valerie's voice immediately rose. "This is me laying on the beach and you interrupting me."

"It is a date," Dan pressed, a lazy smile lifting his thin lips up, fangs glimmering. "I knew it."

She lightly shoved her elbow against his. "It's not. And don't call me Valerie dear, it's weird."

He huffed. "Here we are, alone on a beach, and you are attempting to flirt with me—"

"—I'm not flirting, I'm just laying here," she retorted, her dark brows angling in surprise. She raised up on her elbows. "You're the one who's cozying up to me."

"You're certainly not pushing me away," the ghost murmured, turning his face to eye her.

Like this, their faces were only inches apart. Valerie's eyes searched his, then dared to sweep across the handsome, sharp lines of his cheeks and his jaw, seeing in him an image of a grown Daniel Fenton, for whom she had once felt great affection.

And a desire to protect.

Her dark fingers bunched into her blanket subconsciously, her heart squeezing in a strange way. "I'm supposed to be relaxing, remember?"

His eyes danced. This close, the red of his eyes was a soft wine color, the sunlight catching his irises in a way that made him seem far less terrifying and more simply a mysterious creature from another world. A fairytale creature. "Ah, yes. Relaxing upon my land, away from your people."

"This isn't your land at all," she murmured, raising a brow. "It never belonged to you."

Dan reached up, lazily catching her chin, his gloved fingers the slightest pressure against her skin. He could have wrenched her neck sideways to snap it, but he knew she would activate her armor, and the action would result in a combination of war and further snide remarks that he was a failure at relaxing. "It does belong to me, by right of combat. You should be grateful, you know. I've pushed out all the other ghosts who would accost your precious city."

"I'd prefer them over you."

"I think you prefer me," he said, his lips stretching. He released her chin, his long fingers slipping against her warm neck.

The action made Valerie's cheeks flush for a time, and she slipped back down to lay on the sand in a huff. "If I do, it's only because you're at the top of my hit list."

"Precisely where I desire to be, which makes this date with you all the more intriguing when I think about it."

"It's not a date."

Dan turned a bit, craning his neck to eye the jet sled floating silently nearby. "And I bet you even brought yourself a lunch. Perhaps you would want to share with me, hmm?"

She snapped up from her blanket, teal eyes wild. "Oh, not you don't!" she cried. But it was too late. Dan had reached forward and pushed a button to activate the small subspace unit on the jet sled's side, as he had seen her do so many times before. The metal plating retracted to reveal a brown paper bag.

"Well, well," he murmured triumphantly, grabbing onto it. He held the bag high up in the air as Valerie tried to reach for it. "Smuggling human food into my territory yet again, I see."

"Give it back," Valerie hissed.

She didn't realize that she was giving Dan quite the eyeful down her bikini top. His red eyes widened a bit, and his grip on the paper bag slacked. She lunged and grabbed it triumphantly, only to realize she'd lunged too far, too high to fall back. She cried out in surprise when she suddenly fell hard onto him, knocking him down with her in a whoosh of breath.

The paper bag slipped from her fingers onto the sand as she desperately attempted to gain some leverage, panicked. Her other hand ended up pushing against the broad expanse of Dan's chest.

Large hands locked over her waist. "Oh dear, how unfortunate you've fallen on top of me," Dan's voice echoed gleefully in her ear. His fingers looped into the beaded elastic of her bikini bottoms, and she gasped, freezing suddenly, eyes widening in horror.

"Now this," he whispered playfully, "is a date."

Valerie swallowed hard, eyes wide as she stared into his. "In your dreams," she said. She tried to glare at him, but it was weak. "Let me go." She realized in that second that her hips were cradling his—and that it didn't feel bad at all. He was cold but strong, corded muscle beneath her.

Dan eyed her, waggling his brows. "Are you sure you do not wish to stay right here?"

"Pretty damn," she said.

"That was not very convincing."

"You're not very convincing."

The ghost raised a brow. "Oh, no?" His hands un-looped from the elastic string of her bikini bottoms, only to rest upon her hips in a lazy way. "I think we could have fun, you and I."

She inhaled sharply, quickly slipping off of him in a sudden flip. Sand flew onto her and on her blanket. She instinctively reached for the lunch bag, only for Dan to blur for it first, his long fingers clawing into its sides and pulling it away from her. "Okay, that's enough," she said, voice unsettled. She inched away from him. "Now give me back my lunch, and don't try anything funny."

Dan gave her an amused look, albeit one that was distorted with an emotion she could not quite place. "You always take the enjoyment out of everything," he mourned, voice light, his hair flickering happily at the minor skirmish between them. He peered inside the lunch bag, curious. "Now what do we have today. No turkey sandwich, I see. How sad."

"We ran out," Valerie deadpanned.

He pulled out a small container of strawberries. "Your lunches are becoming quite a deal smaller," he hummed, pulling out a peanut butter sandwich. "And meatless."

"The joys of rationing," she said dryly. "No thanks to you."

He looked her over again and noticed that her ribs were a little more prominent, her knees a bit bonier than he would have assumed for a seasoned soldier.

Dan handed her the peanut butter sandwich. "You need this," he declared airily, his brows angling at her in a sudden awareness as to her fragile humanity. Then he eyed the strawberries, mouth watering. "And I shall take these."

She grumbled, "I'll have you know I had to fight to get those this morning."

"Then fight me for them, Valerie dear." His fangs sunk into the sweet, juicy fruit, his eyes closing to savor it. A noise of delight thrummed his deep voice. "Oh, but wait. You are relaxing today."

Her eyes narrowed. She reached forward and grabbed one of the strawberries from the container. "How come you like stealing my food, huh? I thought ghosts didn't have to eat."

The handsome ghost swallowed and stared at the leafy remains between his fingers before airily tossing it aside. "I do not have to eat, as I am a superior being. But it is occasionally pleasing to do so."

Valerie quirked a brow and teased dryly, "So you lower yourself to eat like the rest of us, that makes sense."

"That is not what I said."

"That's definitely what you mean."

Dan wrinkled his nose in dislike. "On the contrary." He snapped another strawberry between his teeth, looking a bit more predatory in doing so. "I am above your paltry standards, human."

Valerie set down her sandwich, eyes flashing in righteous irritation. "You just don't wanna admit you're a hypocrite."

The ghost shrugged. "As are you, for sitting here with me as you have chosen to do."

She munched on one half of the sandwich in a grumble, eyeing him. He eyed her back with a little knowing smile, even as he reveled in eating food again. A silence hung between them both as the distant waves of a large lake lapped against the beach. It was not the first halfway amicable silence between them, but this particular silence gave Valerie pause.

It was so rare to see Phantom so unguarded, his handsome face lit with emotions that were not hatred or pain. She knew that Phantom had perhaps missed certain things about being alive, but that he simply could not express them, given what he was and the reputation he had accrued for himself.

Stealing from her in privacy was one of the few ways to indulge the loves he still had.

Valerie found herself caught between glaring daggers at him and huffing in amusement as he inspected another ripe strawberry with near-reverence, cradling it against the love line of his hand. "You're the most annoying ghost ever," she murmured. "You know that?"

His eyes snapped up to hers and searched her amused gaze. The distant delight in him sharpened his tongue, and he realized he wanted to make her angry, because it was fun. "And you, my dear, are the most annoying and yet useful human I know." He munched on the strawberry, leaning back on his elbow. He could feel Valerie's eyes trail the muscled lines of his body—that she appreciated his form, if nothing else. "If only you had thought to bring chocolate to dip these strawberries into."

The woman hummed, moving to sit cross-legged while eyeing him. With every sentence they spoke, they invited more and more vulnerable positions. Vulnerable conversations. "Maybe I would have brought chocolate if you hadn't destroyed all the fields for it."

He tilted his head, his white hair brushing against his cheek. "Maybe I would not have destroyed them if I had known you would bring me offerings from it." His lips stretched. "Perhaps I would not mind Amity Park if it worshipped me as a god. And you, Valerie dear, if you were the priestess of my temple."

She damned herself for taking a big bite of her peanut butter sandwich in that second, nearly choking on it as she glared at him.

Dan's face lit with an even brighter smile. "You would be an acceptable priestess, I think."

"Keep dreaming," she snapped, voice muffled and cheeks puffed with bread as she narrowed her eyes at him. She intentionally licked her thumb of peanut butter in the most unattractive way she could, munching loudly on her sandwich.

But despite her best efforts, there was an attraction with him as he stared at her, allowing himself to appreciate the lines of her body and the spirit in her eyes. "I would reward you for your loyalty to me," he murmured.

"I don't need anything. And I sure as hell ain't gonna worship you or be a priestess or whatever else kind of shit you got rolling around in that brain of yours."

The ghost leaned forward, his broad shoulders slipping closer to her, eyes searched her own. "But if you worshipped me," he tempted, "I would worship you in kind." He raised the last strawberry and held it to his mouth, sliding his long tongue against it as he eyed her.

Valerie felt her face and the whole front of her body heat up. She stuffed the rest of her peanut butter sandwich in her mouth to hide the noise that wanted to escape from her throat. She reached out and whacked the strawberry out of Dan's hand.

He twisted his wrist and grabbed onto her fingers, his touch firm but gentle.

Lightly, he intertwined his fingers with hers, noting the curious scars upon her knuckles. "Though perhaps you need more convincing before you accepted such a position. I forget that this is only our first true date."

"This isn't a date," she deadpanned, mouth still muffled with peanut butter. But she was staring at their intertwined hands, eyes wide at the realization that his touch not only didn't scare her but also aroused several strange emotions.

His hands had enforced havoc and insanity across two worlds, and yet like this, she found herself feeling almost protected.

"We should go on a second date sometime," he murmured, almost earnestly. "Another day off, perhaps."

Valerie stuttered for a time, her full lips dropping open.

His demonic eyes gleamed as he delightedly clicked her mouth shut. "Should I take this as a yes?"

She batted his hand away and then shoved him back. She struggled to swallow down her peanut sandwich before she complained, "You'd be a terrible date. I bet you don't even know how to show somebody a good time."

Dan's hand slid into the sand from the force of her shove. "Oh, Valerie," he murmured. Then a dark smile stretched his lips. "…I accept your challenge."


A/N: So this one-shot is a response to cookieplzandthnx's one-shot request from a long time ago, which was that I write about Dan asking Valerie on a date. Hope you liked it!

I've been generally still pretty quiet with the DP fandom lately, but I'm hoping that since it's DannyMay, I can get myself back into gear and maybe finish a few of my older stories that have been haunting me during my few moments of relaxation lately, haha. As for Deliverance, I have some one-shots planned, a continuation of the Blooper Reel, and an all-new mini-thread in mind. Still not sure if I will ever return to Aftermath (it's pretty unlikely at this point, tbh), but I do intend to finish Karma at some point if you are all still interested in that.

Thanks for reading! Please review with your thoughts, questions, or requests!