Notes: It's been and rather interesting month back home. But my updating and writing situation is now better!
I'll admit it, Kwan's probably my favorite minor human character. He's that one adorable Asian everyone knows. And from "Lucky in Love," I kinda fell in love myself, with the idea of Sam/Kwan. There's plenty of it in here, though it's most likely not everyone's cup of tea. Also, I got Kwan's future career as a scientist from TUE. He's in a scene in his little lab coat, so I just rolled with that. :P
Last but not least, a shout-out to Rubble for suggesting the Fenton Ghost Catcher make an appearance, what with all these conflicting mate feelings and ghost halves.
Family Secrets II: The Huang Family
She loved him, she really did, but Kwan was such an idiot sometimes! How he got to be a scientist instead of the grocery bagger she expected him to become in high school was beyond her. Even now, his inquisitive chemist mode was kind of canceled out by the fact that he was touching everything in the Fentons' lab like a hyperactive child. Sam regretted his recent interest in ghost chemistry, which was kind of her fault. Kwan had been hanging out with the eldest Fentons on a chemistry study he was organizing involving... well, ghosts, and she wasn't sure why she had tagged along but was only glad that Danny was there to keep her company.
Or at least to help babysit her husband while Maddie and Jack had stepped out for a ghost alert.
"Don't touch that either! I have no idea what it does to humans, but what it does to ghosts is not pretty!" Danny scolded.
Kwan pouted before his face lit up and he went right up to another odd contraption. Dangerously close to it. Danny was quick to run up to the pointy invention and snatch it away, roughly throwing it into a desk drawer where it made the desk light up an eerie green before it settled down again.
Sam sighed exasperatedly, the usual scowl on her face. "Kwan, can't you just wait until Danny's parents get back?"
"But this is the perfect opportunity to get a closer look at this stuff!"
"And get us all blown up," Danny muttered, but Kwan didn't seem to hear him as he walked over to a cluttered corner of the lab.
"Ohh, what does this do? It's like a dream-catcher!"
Danny ran right over as he saw Kwan begin to inspect the Fenton Ghost Catcher. "Okay, seriously, don't touch that!"
As if he hadn't heard him, Kwan got a curious look on his face before picking up the Ghost Catcher from its base. "Hey, this is lighter than I would've thought! What does it do?"
"It splits a ghost's essence," Danny deadpanned as he tried to pry it from the other man's arms. "Now, leave it alone."
Sam shook her head helplessly. "Hon,' I think you should put that down now."
"Hm? Alright," Kwan agreed when he heard his wife speak. He looked around to try and find a place to put it down. As he turned to try and find its original spot, Danny could only look on in a moment's sick realization of what was about to happen as the Fenton Ghost Catcher came right up to him – and went straight through him.
Kwan and Sam gaped as, where Danny had been, now stood two people. Or rather stood one man, while Danny Phantom floated next to him. The two Dannys looked obviously dazed, but Phantom was quicker to recover than Danny, staring from his confused human half down to his own gloved hands.
"I'm free?" Phantom whispered incredulously to himself. Then, he let out a joyous holler before fist-pumping the air. "I'M FREE!"
"W-What?" both Sam and Danny stuttered as they tried to make sense of Phantom's disturbingly lewd grin before he flew full-speed through the basement ceiling.
The goth woman gasped as she watched Danny's ghost half fly off. Meanwhile, Kwan's simply scratched his head in confusion. "Uh, what just happened?"
"Oh my God, we have to go catch him!" Sam yelled, grabbing Kwan's arm in a vice-grip.
"Why? Sam, what is going on!" Kwan exclaimed as he planted his feet into the ground to keep them from going anywhere.
"Because! We have to put him back together!" she said as she gestured wildly at the suddenly panicked-looking Danny in the middle of the room.
"...Put him back together?"
Sam shook her head and slapped a hand against her forehead. "You're going to figure it out even if I don't tell you. Danny Fenton, my best friend since second grade, is Danny Phantom, resident ghost and town hero. We were freshmen, I convinced him to go into his parents' broken ghost portal, he turned into a half-ghost. That's pretty much it. Now, hurry up and let's go get his ghost half!"
She began to drag Kwan, limp and shocked into silence, at a running pace towards the stairs and said over her shoulder, "You just sit tight, Danny! We'll be right back!"
Before she could even reach the stairs, however, she was blocked off by an angry-looking Danny.
"No way! I don't want to be put together with that perverted, irresponsible jerk!"
Sam halted and stared quizzically at him. "Whoa, there! Whatever happened to Fun Danny? Since when is Phantom the irresponsible one?"
"Since he became obsessed with the fruit loop!"
Sam sighed and lay a patronizingly gentle hand on his shoulder. "Danny, we don't have time for your relationship problems. We have to go catch your other half! I really didn't like the look he gave us."
Danny snorted. "Trust me, he won't hurt anyone. I guess. Either way, I'm pretty sure what he wants involves Plasmius, and it'll serve that cheesehead right. Mothers are called the aggressive mates for a reason."
The gothic woman shuddered at Danny's rather vengeful look before pushing him aside. "Whatever! Just stay here and stew over your defective love life if you want, but you're going to get out of our way or you don't want to see what I'll do! It's for your own good, Danny."
The Asian man looked nervously between the two of them, but before he could say anything to try and keep the peace, Danny crossed his arms over his chest and smugly said, "You can't scare me anymore, Sam. I raise Dan and teach middle school. In fact, I think you should be the one scared of me."
And with that, he pulled a lever on the wall that Sam had seen but never bothered to find out the purpose of. Danny ducked immediately, but Sam and Kwan were caught by the incoming globs of ecto-goo which slammed them into the wall and glued themselves, along with the two new captives, to the surface.
"Sorry, Sam. You're my best friend and all, but I'd rather have some time away from my other half. For a while, at least. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go pick up Dan from school."
"You freakin' psycho! He doesn't even get out until three hours from now!" Sam screamed that scream of hers which could only mean either a week-long protest or a soon-to-be-dead best friend. She struggled in her new bonds, but they didn't budge.
"And he's our kid too, you know!" Kwan yelled after Danny's retreating back, but a second later found himself nose-to-nose with the man.
"Get it right," he said, a frighteningly possessive glint in his eyes, "Dan is my kid and mine alone! No matter what Vlad says!"
"Vlad?" Kwan repeated, but Danny was already making his way upstairs. The basement door slammed shut, and the unhappy couple was silent for a long minute before Sam let out a furious scream and began struggling anew. Kwan also began to struggle.
"You can't keep us here! We'll call the police!" Kwan yelled, though Sam wondered why when Danny was surely long gone at that point. "We'll take this to court!"
"Kwan, just shut up so I can figure out how to get us out of these!"
But he didn't. He just kept making threats to empty air before realizing that Danny had left them trapped, and that was when he began to yell frantically and hyperventilate. Meanwhile, Sam was plenty worried herself. What was Phantom doing now? Was Danny planning to kidnap Dan and kill Vlad or something just as messed up? How much longer would it be until Jack and Maddie got back and got them unstuck from the wall?
"Sam! Sam, how are we going to get down from here? Sam!"
"Kwan, be quiet! I'm trying to think!"
"But what if Danny's ghost is destroying the town? What is Danny's going to do something to Dan? We have to at least get to Dan before he does! What if something happens to him?"
"I said shut up for a second! Sheesh!"
"He's your son! You should be worried about this! I mean, I am!"
"He's not even my kid, Kwan!"
She stopped moving. Kwan stopped moving. Time itself stopped in its tracks.
"...He's not?"
Sam was silent, her mouth open as if to say something but she could come up with nothing, so instead she looked away and bit her lip. "No."
There was a long, heavy silence between them. Sam chanced a glance in the direction of her husband, and her stomach knotted at the crestfallen expression on his face.
"But... but even the Fentons say he's your kid! And it's not like it's easy to say that someone else is the mother, not like with someone's dad! And if you're not his mother, is Fenton even the father? Damn it, answer me, Sam!"
Sam sighed, but resigned herself. From the beginning, she had told herself that she wouldn't tell him anything that wasn't necessary, but she wouldn't deny it if he asked or found out himself either. She always knew being Danny's best friend was going to complicate her love life, even if that love life was with someone else. "He's definitely Danny's son, but he's not mine. It was to protect Dan. And I swear I asked Danny to let me tell you, but he told me it would be better if less people knew about it!"
"So you lied to me... because Fenton told you to?"
She glared at him. "It's more complicated than that, Kwan."
Kwan rolled his eyes. "Obviously. I mean, you've been lying to me since before we even started dating. Do you even know what that feels like? Damn it, I was so happy to have a sort-of son! I love that kid!"
The woman smiled, though it resembled a grimace more than anything. "To be fair, the bonding between you guys never went well. I mean, you've still got a pretty bad scar from that day at the zoo, remember?
Her husband was not amused. She wished he would look angry, but all that was on his face was disappointment. This was another reason why Sam had vowed not to tell him; he had been so excited when he'd found out she had a son. Kwan really did like kids, being quite playful himself. She had assumed that Kwan's excitement had also been in part due to the fact that Dan did not live with her – all the fun without the mess, so to speak. Kwan was constantly trying to make friends with Dan, buying him a plethora of things and trying to bond with him (which never brought pleasant results, but Kwan never seemed to mind). After they got engaged, she couldn't bear the thought of breaking that illusion for him.
A gasp caught her attention, and her intuition told her to run. Run and hide. Too bad she was still glued to a steel wall in an underground lab. Oh, she knew she shouldn't have given him time to think!
"No way. There's no way!" He paused and shook his head. "What Maddie told me about how ghosts reproduce... and if Fenton's a ghost," she didn't bother to correct him that Danny was half ghost, "and the way he was talking about Mr. Masters – the guy he lives with! The one who practically acts like he's Dan's dad or grandpa or something! And you said that you lied to protect him and Dan... Dude, Danny's Dan's mother, isn't he? And Mr. Masters is... a ghost like Fenton?"
She flinched and grit her teeth, but nevertheless forced herself to respond. "How is it that you can figure this stuff out yet you can never find the remote on the coffee table?"
Kwan gaped at her. "Seriously? That's it? I'm right?"
Sam nodded, waiting for the chaos that was sure to follow.
"I love you so much, Sammy."
"W-What?" Her head shot up and she looked confused at the man, who was smiling rather sweetly. She ignored the hideous nickname for the time-being.
"You've been covering for your friend for like fifteen years, you agreed to pose as Dan's mom even though you'd have to have been pregnant when you were like seventeen, and you even let me think I had a step-son because I liked the idea. How is it not totally cool of you to do that for other people?"
Incredulously, Sam shook her head. "How are you even so okay with this? You should be furious that I lied to you like that!"
Kwan shrugged. "Hey, what's done is done, right? And it wasn't even your idea. You were keeping a secret for a friend."
Sam shook her head and couldn't help but smile. This was why she had married him. Kwan's sweetness was something she hadn't been able to appreciate during that brief interim when she had hung out with Kwan during freshman year. When they had met up several years later, she had seen him in a whole new light.
She remembered well that first day of work after being hired as a humane law enforcement officer, fresh out of the police academy she'd decided to go through after getting her degree. Then walking into the animal shelter and seeing Kwan freaking out as she and her partner brought in a dog in particularly bad shape. He had been in graduate school and living with his parents thanks to having no money of his own, and his parents had insisted that he do something with his time that summer. He had decided to volunteer at the shelter simply because he liked dogs and puppies. She had been stuck talking to him while the dog was treated by the vet staff, but somehow they had hit it off.
Oh, how her teenage self would kick her ass if she knew how things had turned out. But in all honesty, a goofy, optimistic, and lighthearted guy was apparently exactly what she had been looking for. What was the saying, 'opposites attract?'
"But you know," Kwan began after a moment of comfortable silence, "there's still the matter that I just found out we don't have a sort-of-our-kid after all. My family just shrank. I wonder how you plan on making that up to me?"
The woman's eyes widened after she caught on to what he was asking a few seconds later. "Kwan? You don't mean – but we've only been married for four months!"
Kwan grinned hopefully at her. "Yeah, but we've been together for like two years, babe."
Sam scowled halfheartedly, though her gaze was more nervous than anything. "And nine months," she mumbled. "Two years and nine months."
"Like three years, then. You really don't think we're ready to raise a kid?"
Chewing on her bottom lip, she whispered, "I'm not sure, Kwan."
The truth was, she had thought about it. Both of her best friends now had kids. And now Jazz was having her first child as well. According to Jazz, it was completely normal for a woman to have the overwhelming urge to become pregnant when there were babies and other expectant women around her. Sam had been dismissing the feeling for months because she wasn't sure she wanted the part that came afterwards – the child. But if Kwan wanted it as bad as the look he was giving her implied...
"I guess it wouldn't be that bad. To have a kid that's really mine. Not just pretend."
The grin on his face was unbearable, but she was saved from his ecstatic ramblings by loud banging upstairs. A moment later, Kwan let out an rather girlish scream as the lab door was blasted clear off its hinges and the absolutely livid face of Vlad Plasmius came into view.
Although relieved that rescue had come, Sam couldn't help but startle at the scene in front of her. Human Danny was trapped in a blue cube of some sort, slamming his body against the apparently impenetrable walls and swearing up a storm with rather colorful threats aimed at Vlad. The logical thing to everyone seemed to be to ignore him.
The condition Vlad was in was also surprising in itself; his cape was gone save for a few scraps attached to the collar, and his silver suit was scratched up something fierce. Sam's brain seemed to stop as her eyes took in the strange red marks littering the ghost's face and uncovered neck.
The ecto-goo gluing them to the wall was cut away from the two of them with a sharp pink ectoplasmic sword, but Sam barely had time to catch her breath after landing on the floor before something was thrown her way. In her hands, she quickly caught the red and silver thermos that was thrown at her with unmistakable anger.
"Put him back. NOW!" Vlad yelled, his eyes practically radioactive in their vivid glow.
"Geez, what the hell happened to you?" the woman asked with a smirk. Now that she was free, she felt confident once more.
"You little wretch, just do it!"
She rolled her eyes as she stretched her stiff limbs. "Yeah, yeah. Don't be such a drama queen, Vlad."
"Vlad? Ohh, so that's Mr. Masters!" Kwan whispered, albeit very loudly. Sam winced as she caught Vlad's surprised expression before it turned murderous. She moved closer to Kwan as he stalked towards her.
"I hope you know how incredibly lucky you are that both my Daniels like you," the man hissed before flying up the stairs, presumably to lick his metaphorical wounds, as Phantom seemed to have done quite a number on him.
Jack and Maddie came back to Fenton Works to see Sam and Kwan Huang cuddling on their couch just as Vlad and Danny were getting into Danny's car, both blushing furiously. They'd refused to look at either of the elder Fentons, or apparently at each other as they'd argued over who was going to drive. Eventually, Vlad won out as Danny seemed quite shaken up for some reason. Being a common enough occurrence, Jack and Maddie had simply shaken their heads and let the two hybrids drive away.
"You know, I can drive just fine. It's not like I got put together wrong this time," the younger man said after five minutes of driving in silence.
"I think they put you together wrong the first time this happened," Vlad replied rather scathingly.
Danny didn't respond, instead turning to look out the window and dwelling on the horrible turn the day had taken. Unfortunately for him, all of the memories from when his two halves had split were just as clear as if he had experienced them himself as one person. Even the sensations were just as he – as his ghost half had experienced them. He banged his head against the car window, immaturity be damned, until Vlad cleared his throat and gave him a withering look.
The man sighed before taking a sip of the now-warm leftover soda in his car. He could handle this. He'd just ignore the fact that he had seduced – no, he hadn't! He'd just push the memory out of his mind. After all, it hadn't really been him, right? He'd been split, really. He was two different personalities whenever he ran into the Ghost Catcher.
Now he'd just have to avoid looking at Vlad at all costs for a little while.
You know, he liked it even more than you did. And it's not like he can get pregnant, hmm? So just stop worrying about it already.
The soda he'd been in the process of swallowing suddenly found itself half on the dashboard and half in his windpipe as he began to choke.
"Are you alright?" the older hybrid asked, giving him a half-disgusted and half-concerned look.
"Fine!" Danny wheezed a quick response.
It was official. They really had put him back together wrong.
End Notes: Ah, yes – the beginning of Danny's crazy voice we've been seeing in the last few chapters. Danny's lack of luck has been Phantom's luck, what with parents giving Vlad eggnog and his friends' spouses messing things up for him and getting infected with ghost pox. It's also been Danny's luck, in a way, since there's no way he would've lasted a second holding back without the little incidents. Just a fun fact. Also a fun fact: I might or might not do the missing scene between Vlad and Phantom at a later date. I'm very tempted, but no promises just yet.