A/N: Warnings for existential future angst, underage drinking, and a LOT of swearing.
Clockwork had appeared for Danny's eighteenth birthday, early in the morning—Danny's ghost sense had thundered up his throat and he'd flung himself out of bed, already transformed, to find Clockwork perched elegantly on his dresser, holding a vivid hot pink bottle. Not only did it glow, but it seemed to hum, the air around it taut with energy.
"I thought you might like to celebrate," Clockwork said, amused.
Danny had straightened. "I, uh, hi?"
Clockwork slid off the dresser. "Ironically," he said, "I do not have much time. The Observants do not like that I have come to you, and if I am gone too long… the repercussions will not be pleasing. My congratulations must be quick. At any rate, I come bearing a gift."
Danny looked at the bottle. "That looks like that pink medicine you have to chug when you're sick to your stomach, except, uh, lethal."
"Bonewine," Clockwork said. "A terrible name, truly, given that it is not a wine. It is the fermented bone marrow of the dead, charged with kinetic ectoplasmic energy. It has effects similar to alcohol, on ghosts. I'm sure that you have noticed that your nature deprives you the ability to feel the effects of living alcohol."
Living. It was a strange, ghostly turn of speech—the dead liked to refer to anything used by the living as if it, in and of itself, were alive. Living world; living blood; living bone; living alcohol.
"I," Danny said, stupidly. "I… haven't hit legal drinking age."
Clockwork pressed the bottle in his hands. "It is a gift, so you may celebrate your survival to adulthood. I know it has not been easy."
Danny snorted. "Is this a birthday present?"
Clockwork bowed his head. "Indeed. I believe you may enjoy it. Imbibe it responsibly."
"'Imbibe it responsibly,'" Danny parroted. "Incredible."
Because of Clockwork's early wake-up call, and the fact that no other ghost crawled out of the Zone and reared their ugly head (or heads), Danny made it to school on time, bonewine tucked deep into his backpack for his birthday celebration after school.
Senior year was drawing to a close—it was early April, finals were coming up, teachers were reviewing material, special events were being thrown. It was kind of an insult that Danny's birthday fell on Decision Day, when everyone repped the merchandise of the college they'd chosen to attend. Dash would be heading off to Ohio State, home of the Buckeyes, on a full football scholarship, which he wouldn't shut up about. Kwan was following him, but whether it was his parents' hefty bank account sending him or a sports scholarship, Danny didn't know. Paulina would be heading to Duke University, ostensibly to go into a medical degree as she'd always talked about, and Star wasn't too far away from her at Wake Forest. Valerie's stellar grades and intimate technological knowledge had earned her a one-way ticket to MIT, and Danny knew Tucker—who had gotten an MIT acceptance letter—was chomping at the bit to join her.
Tucker had wanted to go to MIT since freshman year, but after Danny's accident, and the plunge of Danny's grades, Tucker had stopped talking about it. Danny was grateful, but there was also guilt, sharp and hard like needles in his chest, that Tucker had to swallow his dreams for Danny's sake. Tucker hadn't even wanted to apply until Danny had forced him—and Danny had forced him, pestered him about it every day, refused to leave him alone until he gave in. Tucker was whip-smart. Tucker was brilliant, and at MIT he could build a career doing what he loved, and there was nothing more Danny wanted for him. With Danny being capable of supersonic flight—something he'd discovered he could do junior year—he could visit Tucker essentially whenever he wanted, so it wasn't like Tucker should be scared of leaving him behind.
"You're running out of time to accept it," Danny said, conversationally, at lunch.
Tucker punched him in the shoulder. "Shut up, man. So I heard Skulker trashed the arcade?"
That was all the acknowledgement Tucker would allow.
Sam, on the other hand, never talked about college, actively avoided it. The very topic made her brows dip down and her face snarl in anger. Danny knew it probably had something to do with her parents, but whatever it was, she'd never opened up about it. Which was fine with Danny for the longest time—he'd spent all of sophomore and junior year grieving the college experiences he'd never have. When Lancer stopped asking him if he had his homework done, when Lancer stopped caring that he ditched class and didn't come back, when Lancer stopped assigning detentions for tardiness, Danny had known he'd become the kid. That kid, the kid, the one that fell through the cracks of the system, the one that was chewed up and spat out by the jagged broken edges; the infamous bad kid who never left his hometown and never grew up to do anything at all.
Maybe it was unfair, in a way—Danny had been a fine student, a fine person, before his accident. He had never made below an eighty-three in his life. Maybe it was unfair to accuse a system of being broken when Danny was the one gaming the system intentionally; maybe he didn't have the right to be angry about the flaws inherent in a complex if he was actively using those flaws to save lives. Those lives mattered. Maybe it was a stroke of blessed luck, that every supporting structure in Danny's life let him down, because those people needed saving.
But there was an edge of bitterness, that tasted like the iron in living blood, that Lancer had ever given up on him. That his parents had stopped fighting to get him on the right track, after his third suspension; that his truancy officer had waved him off as another bad apple. Danny had done his best to play the role—he became rude, angry, horrifically defensive at even the slightest of prodding. He made a point of throwing every opportunity he was given back into the face of the offerer, he made a point of appearing to abuse his parents' kind natures. But the bitterness lived in him still because even if he had genuinely been a self-absorbed, violent brat, he was still just a kid. The injustice burned, like fire in his lungs.
The Mansons had demanded Sam stop being seen with Danny; the Foleys had followed suit. Danny wasn't allowed at either of their houses, Danny wasn't supposed to be near either of their kids, and only got away with it because Sam and Tuck were still mild-mannered and still made the grades of good kids. Dash stopped wailing on him. Paulina stopped mocking him. People went quiet when he entered a room, when he was walking down the hall people parted to let him by, because they were scared of him. It was like a knife to the chest, every time, but—it was useful. He thought of the people he pulled out of the line of fire; of the kids he'd pulled out of a burning building when the firefighters couldn't enter because of structural collapse, of the people he'd pushed out of the way of ectoblasts that would've reduced them to a crisp, of the people who would've been brutally murdered by a stray blood-thirsty ghost if Phantom hadn't been there in the nick of time. He thought of them, and shouldered on, but it hurt furiously.
It was fine with Danny, that Sam didn't want to talk about it. He'd never make it to college. He didn't exactly want to talk about it, either.
Decision Day was a hard day for all of them. It wasn't exactly made better by it being Danny's birthday, because Danny's birthday was generally a somber occasion. Sam and Tucker tried hard to make it a festive time, but Danny's parents had stopped celebrating it sophomore year as they grew more horrified of what their son was growing into and desperately tried to turn back the clock, and Jazz would break down crying, saying thank God you're still alive, and Sam and Tuck—Sam and Tucker tried. They truly did. But the you could die tonight, can we still celebrate that? still lurked behind their beaming smiles.
Danny skipped the school day after lunch to chase down a ghost who had never revealed his name, and instead flew around desperately trying to gouge out the eyes of everyone he saw. There was a lot of chasing and several close calls involved, but he got the fucker into the Fenton thermos, and flew up to the roof of the highest building in Amity to wait for Jazz's call.
Four thirty, which was the time she always called, since she'd gone off to Stanford for her psychology degree. He answered the phone on the first ring. "Hey, Jazz," he said.
"Little brother!" she shrieked. "How are you?"
Danny kicked a boot out. "Kind of excited. This is dumb, but I saw Clockwork today, and he—well, he gave me a present."
"Oh? You haven't seen him in a while," Jazz said. "It's cute that he gave you a birthday present."
"It's bonewine. Apparently ghosts have alcohol."
Jazz snorted. "No wonder you're excited. Be responsible, okay? No flying, no fighting. Stay safe, and have a designated driver."
"I won't drink it all at once," Danny said. Immediately, he bit his lip, and then amended, "I'll drink most of it at once. Just most."
Jazz chuckled. "Any other birthday plans?"
"Suffer Dad saying something awkward and Mom saying nothing at all."
Jazz was quiet. "Danny," she said.
"Don't. It's my birthday, you can't piss me off on my birthday," Danny said. "C'mon, Jazz, please. I can't tell them. If anything they hate Phantom more than they used to, and now they kind of hate both of me, so it's a moot point."
"They don't hate you!" Jazz said. "They really—trust me, Danny, they could never hate you. And they don't. They just… don't know how to reach you."
Danny snorted. "I'm not having this conversation again."
"I'm just saying," Jazz said, "maybe it's time to think about yourself, for once. You need a future. Financial stability."
"How's finals studying going," Danny asked, thickly.
"Exhausting, but I think I'm pretty much prepared," Jazz said. "Just going to give everything another once-over, is all."
Danny grunted. He couldn't formulate a reply—he was filled, at that moment, with an intense longing. He wanted finals to cram for, finals he had time to cram for.
"I love you," she said, and the waterworks had come earlier in the conversation than expected. "I love you, Danny. You're such… you have such a good heart. Nothing pushed you into this hero thing. You chose this, and I'm—I can't even describe how proud I am that you take on everything you do, just for the sake of people. I love you. I really do."
Danny bowed his head. "T-thanks, Jazz."
"I mean it," she continued. "Don't let anyone make you believe that you aren't good enough. You're good, and then some. Stay safe, okay? I'll be home as soon as classes are over. I miss you."
Danny swallowed against the frog in his throat. "I love you, too, Jazz. You're the best sister I could've asked for. And. I, uh—I couldn't do this without you. I really couldn't. You mean the world to me. And also, fuck you, it's only been ten minutes and I'm already about to cry."
Jazz laughed, but it cut off suddenly. "Oh, fuck," she said. "Oh, fuckity fuck, my roommate is here—we can keep talking, I just have to—"
"It's okay," Danny said. "I'll let you go. I promised to meet Sam and Tuck soon anyway."
"Stay safe! Be responsible. I love you."
"I love you," Danny said, and clicked off his phone.
It was a quick flight just outside the city's bounds, to where Tucker's beat-up flatbed was parked. They'd figured out sometime junior year that everything a ghost was dialed up to eleven around places of death, and graveyards were so heavy with the essence of death that Danny's healing rate practically doubled when he was there. They'd spent a lot of time in this graveyard, after that.
Tucker, sitting behind the wheel, was turned towards Sam, saying something muffled by the glass. Danny knocked on the window and Tucker jumped.
Tucker flung open the truck's door. "I hate you," he said. "Oh my God, Danny Fenton, I could half-kill you. You're the worst."
Danny doubled over, laughing. "Sorry, Tuck, it's never not funny.
Sam hopped out of the other side, holding a massive stack of messily folded blankets and rumpled pillows. "We got your bookbag, by the way," she said. "You're lucky Tucker remembered." She tossed the linens into the bed of the truck.
Tucker unhooked the gate and hopped up, spreading the blankets and pillows out. "We should've left it," he grumbled.
"Oh, I have a surprise," Danny said. "Sam, get your guy to get you guys some beer, or whatever."
She raised a brow. "My guy?"
"C'mon, I know you and Tucker have gotten shitfaced before. You totally have a guy."
Sam crossed her arms. "And how would you know that?"
"Don't you dare," Tucker said. "What was shared with you was shared in confidence, I swear to—"
"Tucker called me once, thinking he had a concussion. He was hungover, it turns out."
Sam pinched the bridge of her nose. "Oh, fuck you, Tuck."
"Confidence!" Tucker shrieked.
Danny shrugged, and propped open the door to the truck's backseat, rooting around for his backpack. "But," he said, "Clockwork gave me a present this morning."
He hauled the bright pink bottle and held it over his head. "It's fucking ghost booze, guys."
Tucker howled with laughter. "Oh my God! Dude, Clockwork's the man. Love that guy. Sam, get us something good, something to contend with fancy ghost booze."
Sam had her phone out. "I'm texting Connor. He works at the Skulk n'Lurk, he's totally cool."
Connor showed up about twenty minutes later. Danny refused to start drinking until Sam and Tucker could, so they'd bundled up in blankets—to ward off Danny's natural chill, graveyards made it go crazy—and huddled around a laptop playing the original Nightmare on Elm Street. Connor showed up on a big black Harley Davidson and flicked the kickstand down.
Sam tapped to pause the movie. "Thanks, Connor."
"Don't mention it," he said. "Four Four Lokos. Don't drink them all, you fuckin' lightweights. If you do, call me, I'll pick you up. I got nothin' better to do."
Sam leaned over the edge of the truck and fist-bumped him, taking the bag out of his hands. "Thanks, dude. See you at the poetry slam tomorrow?"
"Wouldn't miss it," he said, saluting her, and he slid back onto his bike and took off.
"Says a lot about him that he didn't find three teenagers getting drunk in the parking lot of graveyard weird," Danny said.
Tucker snorted. "He's probably done it."
"I heard he and his last girlfriend actually had sex on his mom's grave," Sam said. "I honestly wouldn't put it past him."
Danny shuddered. "God, the people you know."
Sam elbowed him. "You are literally half-dead."
"Sh, he's sensitive," Tucker joked.
About halfway through the second Nightmare on Elm Street Danny hit the bottom of the bonewine. He closed one eye and peered through the glass, using it to look up at the sky, almost like a telescope. The soft light from the moon shone through the bottom of the glass.
"Drank too fast," he announced, words slurred and awkward-sounding.
Tucker patted his shoulder. "It happens to the best of us."
Danny flopped backwards. "Tucker."
"Yeah?"
"I'm drunk," he said. "So, legally, you can't be mad at me. Tell MIT you're accepting their fucking offer."
Tucker flinched. Full-bodied, shuffling flinch. "Danny, shut up," he said, warningly.
"No," Danny said, stick his tongue out at Tucker. "You always wanted—wanted MIT. Go. Do it. I triple dog dare your ass to do it."
"Dude, you're fucked if you think I'm leaving you here," Tucker said. "The three of us are a team. I'm not going anywhere. Maybe I wanted MIT. But guess what, Danny, you're not the only one who knows the value of a sacrifice."
Sam had gone gray.
"What's up," Danny said, nudging her with his elbow.
"I've tried," she said, miserably. "I tried, okay? My parents… they're Yale alumni. They want to—they want me to—uphold the Manson name. I want to stay, but I don't have a choice."
"Of course you have a choice," Tucker said. His voice was high and sharp. "You're already eighteen, they can't make you do anything."
"What, and get kicked out? Disowned? Cut off?" Sam snarled. "Sorry if I don't want that either, Tucker."
"You hate your parents, why would it matter if—"
"This is the part," Danny said, almost lazily, "where both of you shut up, and think about what you've done. Shoo, shoo. To the naughty corner with you."
"She's abandoning us," Tucker said.
Danny reached out and squeezed his knee. "Bro. Dude. Love you, big fan of your work. You're taking out the fact that you think you can't go to your dream school on her. Solution: just fucking go to MIT."
Tucker spluttered. "I am not—"
"Maybe I am being selfish, though," Sam said, quietly.
Danny groaned and clapped his hands over his eyes. "Why are you both being so stupid today, what's in those Four Lokos? Stupid juice? C'mon. What's selfish about wanting to keep a relationship with your parents? Hello, can anyone explain that to me?"
Even Tucker was oddly silent, which was never a good sign. Danny propped himself up on his elbows. "What the fuck's in your stupid juice," he said, flatly.
Sam punched him in the shoulder, more roughly than usual, and then swiped another hand over her mouth. "Danny. You could die."
"Oh, boy, can't wait for this one."
"Shut up," she snapped. "Every day, you walk into something that could kill you. You don't come out unscathed. What are you going to do, if you don't have us, don't have Jazz?"
Danny winked. "Manage just fine," he said.
"Har har," Tucker cut in. "But, be serious, man. You're staying here. We get that. I'm not arguing, Amity Park goes to pieces at least once a week. But… what are you gonna do, when we're not there to stitch you up? When we can't cover a stray ghost for an hour or two while you get some sleep? Not even Val's gonna be here. Her dad's basically forcing her to go out of state. It'll be you, and your parents, and sorry, but your parents aren't the best ghost hunters."
Danny laid back down, folded his arms behind his head. The stars above winked down at him, cruelly—he'd used to love space, the vastness, the possibility. The openness. He'd watched a lot of Star Trek with his dad, as a kid, and space had always been a comforting thought; we are not alone in the universe, and all. But even if they weren't alone in the universe, there were only two people half-alive like Danny, and one of them was absolutely off his rocker insane. It was lonely, the gap between worlds. The stars after his accident seemed to mock him.
"Manage," he bit out, "just fine."
"Stop saying that!" Sam snarled. "Stop it. Just stop it, okay? You won't. You might think you can do it, but you can't. You'll end up maimed, or all the way dead, and God, I—I can't watch that. I can't."
"I'll tell my parents," Danny said, quietly.
"What?" Tucker said.
"I'll tell my parents everything," Danny said. "All of it. And I'll let them help. But Tucker, you have to go to MIT. You have to. Do it… do it for me, okay? Have fun. Learn something."
Tucker swallowed. "What if they don't take it well."
"Then they don't take it well."
"Do you… do you need us there, when you tell them?" Sam asked.
Danny shook his head. "I can do it."
A friend of Connor's drove him out to the graveyard and then Connor got out and dropped Danny off at FentonWorks; both Tucker and Sam wished him a heavy goodbye, and Danny offered them a grin, a grin that felt brittle even if he couldn't see it.
His parents were there, apparently waiting for him at the kitchen table. His mom looked like she'd been crying. His dad looked somber, his hands clasped around a cup of tea.
"Are you drunk!?" his Mom asked, the disgust in her voice lancing through Danny like a sword. "We've been texting you, calling you, trying to get a hold of you, and you're drunk!?"
Danny flashed a sardonic grin. "Just a little."
It was, most definitely, the wrong thing to do, because his mom stood up so quickly the chair she had been sitting in clattered to the floor behind her. "Sit," she said, tightly. "Sit down."
"I'd prefer to stand."
"I don't care what you prefer, you—"
"Mads," his dad said, rising, placing a hand on her arm. "Go upstairs. I'll handle this."
She wilted. "Jack," she said. "Jack, honey, you don't have to—"
"I'll handle it," he said.
She paused for a moment, and after what looked like intense internal deliberation, stormed upstairs. It wasn't until the door of their bedroom slammed shut that his dad gestured to the seat closest to Danny and said, "Danny-boy, take a seat, if you don't mind."
Danny grabbed the chair and flipped it around, straddling it the wrong way. "Why were you waiting on me?" You never wait on me anymore, hung, unsaid, in the air.
"Because we need to talk about your future," his dad said. "It's… Danny. I hope you know how much I love you. You are my son, my flesh and blood. You are my world. If you needed me, for anything, you could just—you could just ask."
"Yeah," Danny said, weakly. "I, uh, love you, too. Dad."
His dad sighed. "You have no idea how much I want to say I'm proud of you. I want to say that more than anything. I want to tell the whole world! That's my son, Danny Fenton! But—I'm not proud. I'm not. The choices you've made—the way you've pushed us out of your lives—I can't be proud of that. I'm sorry that I'm not. But I will always, always love you, no matter what, no matter who you are."
Danny trained his eyes on the floor. Don't cry, he snarled at himself. Don't fucking cry, you little bitch.
"When you graduate," his dad said, "we'll give you the summer with Jazz. When she goes back to school, we're going to ask you to move out."
Danny jerked back. He knew, he knew—he knew that his parents' hospitality would run out, that they'd get sick and tired of their idiot, awful son. He had thought he'd braced himself for it. He hadn't.
"I really am sorry," his dad said. "But I think—I think if you had just a bit more understanding of responsibility, of what it's like to care for yourself, you'd understand that you… you threw away your future, kiddo. I wish I could fix it for you. But I can't. And I'm hoping this—this just might."
"Okay," Danny whispered.
His dad clapped him on the shoulder. "I think maybe your mother and I let you get away with too much, because—it's hard to punish your kid, when your kid shows up to dinner with black eyes. At the time, I was just thinking, God, please cut him a break. But now I'm thinking that maybe we failed you. Maybe you needed the tough love."
His dad leaned back in his chair, scrubbing his hands over his short, thinning hair. "I don't know, Danny-boy. I really don't."
What should have happened was that Danny would murmur, quietly, in freshman year Sam and Tucker dared me to go into the ghost portal. I tripped and turned it on by accident, but I didn't die, I—I got stuck. Between the land of the living and the land of the dead. I'm alive but I have a ghost. And I… I decided to fight ghosts. I've been Phantom this entire time. You have no idea how fucking hard it's been to be two people. You have no idea how much I lost to this, will lose to this.
That was not what happened. All Danny said was, "I appreciate it," tightly, and ascended the stairs to his room. He didn't sleep—he stared at the merciless stars through his window, and cried to himself.
A/N: So... about this one. I have a very clear image in my head about what happens After. It's messy, ugly, and Danny gets hurt a lot, which is my favorite thing, lol. I think that for Danny to keep Phantom a secret, he has to play into a lot of Bad Kid stereotypes, and abuse the fact that his parents are... imho his parents are exceedingly gentle in their parenting style. They're not good at tough love, and Danny kind of uses that against them to hide. Their decision at the end might seem extreme, but honestly, I just think they're at the end of their rope with their mysteriously troubled kid. Parents aren't always perfect.