Ectoplasmic Secrets

What You Want

Summary: Tucker Makes a wish.

"Where were you?" Tucker asks.

He and Danny had been at a Casper football game. Sam had left early due to the flu she was suffering through. Due to the game being against their rival school, it had been hyped up on the campus for two weeks prior. It was no surprise that everyone was pretty disheartened when Casper started to lose bad. At the end of the third quarter they were losing 7 to 45 when suddenly the quarterback started playing really well, and even gained a few points for the team before the end of the quarter.

Then the weird thing happened, and the quarterback full on Hulked-out, big green muscles and all. It was only one of many extra bizarre things that were happening in Amity that week, Tucker thought. There were reports of flying cars, living giant Sayonara Pussycats, and raining cotton candy, and that was just the start of the list.

Tucker hadn't known quite what to make of it, and eventually wrote it off to just more Amity Park weirdness.

Speaking of weirdness, he thought, staring at the dark circles under his best friend's eyes and the subtly bruised spot by his jaw.

Danny had started to rattle off some long and winded explanation about where he supposedly went for the entire fourth quarter of the game, but Tucker knew it wasn't the real one. It hardly ever was anymore. For one tiny moment he'd actually almost believed Danny this time, but he couldn't be fooled for long. There was some minuscule thing that always gave away his lies, something that no one else would be likely to pick up on besides him, Sam, and maybe Jazz.

"-and then b-because of that it took a long time to get back." Danny finished and looked at Tucker hopefully. No, not this time, I'm not just gonna go along with it, he thought.

"Yeah, alright, then where'd that bruise come from?" Tucker asked. Oddly, his eyes had a bit more trouble finding the mark than minutes earlier when he'd first seen it. Must be because the last of the daylight's finally gone away.

"What? I don't-"

"Right there" Tucker said, gesturing to the spot.

"Oh...right...that! Yeah, you know I'm super clumsy, and lampposts are kinda hard to see at night, well, unlit lampposts are harder to see at night, because obviously you can see one that's lit up at-"

"Stop!" Tucker yells through the useless rambling. They both already know that that isn't the truth, so why bother pretending?

"Just stop."

Danny is silent and looking at him with a mixture of things. Caution. Worry. Calculating. Guilt?

Tucker doesn't care at the moment, whatever it is, he's just tired. It's been a long week already, he doesn't want to deal with this again.

"I'm tired of this" he said.

Danny doesn't question it, he doesn't have to. They both know what he means.

The silence stretches on, hanging heavy in the air.

"Can't you just be honest with us again?"

He can hear the "no" without it ever needing to be spoken. Deep down he knew this attempt was probably pointless, but he couldn't help but wish they could just fix whatever was wrong and the three of them could go back to the way things were.

"Just- I wish..."

"Tuck, no-" Danny had started to say.

"...that you would tell me the truth."

Tucker watched as Danny's eyes widened, but was distracted a moment later when a chill sent goosebumps up his arms and spine, and the nearest streetlight flickered out ominously.

Something changed. Shifted. It was something that there wasn't a word in the English language to even describe.

"I went after a ghost."

Tucker's eyes flew back to Danny's now fearful ones.

"Her name is Desiree. She grants wishes. Like the one you just made. She's been in Amity for the past week, causing chaos by granting every wish she hears." Danny said, in a nearly monotone voice.

Tucker's mind was reeling. He knew Danny was telling the truth now, the same way that he knew he wasn't before, but how? And how is any of this truth actually true?

"What? What do you mean you went after a ghost? Are you insane?" Tucker asked.

"I mean I went after a ghost. It's kinda what I do now."

"Wha-do you mean-wait are you a ghost hunter too now? What the hell dude?" He's more confused now than possibly he's ever been in his short fourteen year lifespan.

"Sort of. I catch the bad ones and send them back to the Ghost Zone, but I-I al...so a-a-am...am...am...n-no."

Tucker stares in a mixture of shock and bewilderment as his friend struggles with his words. Why was he even opening up about this so suddenly? Then he remembers what Danny said before, that there's a ghost granting wishes...just like the one you made.

A ghost was forcing Danny to tell him the truth then? His brain instantly told him to protect his friend, to get the ghost to stop this mind control over him, but then...

A part of himself was glad, no matter how much his brain told him that that was sick. A part of himself needed to hear this so desperately, that it let the ghost have its hold over his friend. He needed to know what was going on. He needed to know that Danny wasn't leaving them just because he thought he was better than them. He needed to know it wasn't his fault.

"...but also, I am one."

"What do you mean you are one? One of what?!" Tucker asked anxiously. He couldn't stop himself, not now, not when he finally had the chance to find out.

"One of the g-g-ghosts."

Tucker felt his stomach drop to the floor.

Suddenly he wasn't so sure if he wanted to know any of it at all.

"Not really, but at the same time, yeah. I got into some sort of accident in my parents lab, and I guess it made me half ghost, at least that's what Pointdexter said. So now I'm stuck with all these ghost powers, and they honestly still scare me, but hey, I'm trying to at least use them for something good."

This was more information than he could handle right now. How could he have even let this happen? Danny wasn't ready for him to know any of this stuff, and he still won't be, even now. So how did he think this was a good idea? Was I that desperate to know the truth? What kind of friend does that make me?

He needed to fix this, or at least stopping it from making it worse. Tucker thought quickly, coming up with a solution he could only hope would work.

"I wish you don't have to tell me the truth."

Just like that, Danny stopped. His eyes were filled with both relief and fear, but they avoided Tucker's own like the plague. Tucker knew then that he had messed up. But how was I supposed to know that there was a wish-granting ghost in town? He reasoned that it didn't matter much whether it was intentional or not. The damage had already been done. He'd only wanted to mend the tear in their friendship, but had he really only succeeded in shredding it further?

It felt like five minutes before either of them spoke again.

"Danny, I'm-" Tucker finally began.

"No. Whatever you're going to say, just please don't. I can't- I don't wanna know what you..."

Tucker doesn't know what to do, or what to say. So much had just been revealed to him that he could barely process any of it nor the implications of it yet. All he really knew was that it wasn't anything like the truth he'd once imagined he'd hear.

"Desiree, I know you're here."

Desiree, that was the ghost that had granted his wishes, right?

Within moments a ghost materialized that looked like an actual genie in a bottle.

"You can't blame me for letting your little secret slip, Phantom. So he has wished it, so shall it be."

Phantom. Wait. What?

Tucker was beginning to get a headache. He didn't have the energy to even try and understand it anymore.

"Yeah, but I've got one more wish for you." Danny said.

"Ah, so you've given up on trying to stop me, then."

"Not yet, but...I wish that Tucker had never wished for me to tell him the truth."

No.

Tucker may not have had time to even begin to understand what Danny had unwillingly told him, but he knew for a fact that Danny could not continue to keep this all hidden. It would tear him apart. It would tear the three of them apart.

"Danny, no! I'm sorry, okay?! It was wrong to force you to tell me but you can't keep all this bottled up and you know it!" Tucker yelled in a last desperate attempt to even have a chance at ever fixing things, but it was too late.

"So you have wished it, so shall it be..."

A/N: So, very different from the episode, but I figured it naturally would be, since that entire episode was based on Tucker, his friendship with Danny, and his repressed jealousy of Danny's ghost powers. Hope you guys enjoyed this one as much as I enjoyed coming up with it and writing it!

Next chapter I will try to get up on Thursday, May 23rd (Which is the day after I graduate high school! :D)

UPDATE!!! Sorry, we've got company this week, so I'm moving the next update to next Thursday, May 30th. (Btw, graduation was yesterday, and it went well!)

UPDATE (again...) Sorry again, trying to get the next chapter up this weekend, so within 2-3 days or so.

Thanks for reading/favoriting/following/reviewing! "See" ya next time! :)