A/N: Sorry it's been so long since an update! I'm not exactly known for my regularity, and school's been kicking my ass. Still, I hope y'all enjoy this one. It's some more Dani/Danny because I'm obsessed with their relationship.

SOPHOMORE YEAR

At first, Dani only visited them in big, grandiose bursts.

She zoomed through the Fenton portal after a massive injury at the hands of Prince Aragon, surprised to find herself in a new home but just glad Danny was there. He'd fixed her up and hugged her tightly; that night she'd slept in what was supposed to be his room. He'd carried her to bed and tucked her in. She would never tell him, but she knew he'd snuck back in to watch her sleep after he thought she'd gone to bed. (It was kind of nice, anyway, having someone who was worried about her).

Still, she'd snuck out in the morning while he made breakfast.

After that injury, it was for another shot of ecto-dejecto. Then it was to figure out what was going on with this whole bleeding from down there thing. Then because she was lonely.

As time went by, she made sure to drop by more and more- when she wanted company or care, mostly.

She liked Valerie a lot, and she'd gotten to know Sam and Tucker on more than just a 'my clone's friends' kind of way. She knew, for example, that Sam was a vegan but secretly lusted after a few select cheeses. She knew she could play videogames with Tucker for hours without him ever once letting her win because he felt bad for her. After a few visits, she began to know them as her friends too, friendly to her independent of Danny's involvement.

And so she kept coming.

Dani still thought of her visits as spontaneous drop-ins, but she'd been noticing some changes lately.

There were two NASA mugs in the cabinet now; until recently, she'd snatched Danny's every morning before he got down to breakfast. He took the new one because she liked the way the chip on the bottom looked liked Mayall's Object.

Valerie bought Zombieland on DVD after they watched it together and Dani liked it. Tucker kept the sheets in Danny's rarely used room freshly laundered, and Sam was always ready with breakfast early Tuesday morning. (Tuesdays were "against the rules" in the Ghost Zone, and hiding out in the Far Frozen every week got boring).

It was halfway through their sophomore year when she found herself spending more time there than in the Ghost Zone.

She didn't put much thought into it, shoving the realization into the back of her mind. She liked being there. She liked the people and the house and he- er, Danny's room with the big bed and the NASA posters. It wasn't like she'd given up on being a nomad or anything. She just liked the family life every once in awhile.

She was still telling herself that when she entered the portal, stopping to phase back to human and to wipe her feet on the doormat. That was Tuck's little addition to the lab, and it was essentially useless, in Dani's opinion. The lab was just going to get ectoplasm back on her sneakers anyway.

"Hey Dani!" Danny called, looking up from where he stood. The boy still refused to wear a trademark FentonWorks hazmat suit in anything other than ghost form, but even he couldn't avoid the safety goggles. He pushed them up on his head and re-rolled up his plaid sleeves, staining them with ectoplasm in the process. "What's up?"

She shrugged as she walked over to him. The ghost girl pushed herself up with her elbows and sat on the lab table.

"What's that?" she asked. Her nose wrinkled in disgust.

"A prototype my dad sent me," he told her. He held it up in the light, tilting it this way and that. It looked like a regular white belt, sans the massive FentonWorks belt buckle. "He wanted it to mimic a ghost's intangibility powers, but I'm pretty sure it actually prevents them. Still, useful, right?"

Dani laughed, her legs aimlessly swinging in the air.

"Kind of like an anti ghost liquid that actually makes them stronger."

"Yeah," he snickered. "Kind of."

They were silent for a moment, and Danny reached up to pull his goggles off entirely. His gloves came off with a snap.

"Sam missed you yesterday," he said. His hand moved to the back of his head to tug at his hair. "What were you up to?"

"I hung out with Pandora," Dani shrugged, pushing herself up to sit on the table next to him. In reality, she had been avoiding the house. She'd been there for a few days already that week, and she was pretty sure they were getting tired of her. They were, after all, a bunch of college kids- they didn't want to hang out with their friend's clone all the time.

"The box lady?"

"Basically."

"Hm." Danny shifted his gaze to a seemingly insignificant spot on the wall. "Sounds fun."

"Yeah, it was! She's pretty cool, and she showed me how to do-"

Dani broke off. Danny was staring at her, his eyes soft, a certain glint in them that she didn't recognize. His mouth was set in a tight line.

"What?"

"Nothing," he insisted, smiling at her. "It's just… I bet I could show you how to do that."

"You don't even know what that is," Dani laughed. Her dark hair swung forward as she pushed herself up on her hands, resituating herself on the hard surface of the lab table. A year ago, she could hardly even bring herself to be in this room. She still sometimes got the creeps when she came through here alone, but there was something comforting about sitting next to Danny while he worked. She continued teasing him, biting but not unfriendly. "You're just jealous because you know she's stronger than you."

"Hey! She is n-" Danny paused in the middle of his coming rant, shoving her shoulder playfully. "I'm not jealous."

"So what is it then?" she pushed, still wearing a friendly smile.

"It's nothing really, only… the Ghost Zone sucks sometimes, don't you think? There's Walker and all those aggressive ghosts and all anyone ever wants to talk about is their obsession."

Dani shifted in her seat again. Something about this conversation was making her uncomfortable; her skin was crawling. Did she suck too?

"Sometimes," she admitted eventually. She clinked her ankles together, focusing on the sight of them.

"But it's nice here, right? Most things work like you'd expect them to and there's us and food and stuff."

"Yeah, I guess."

She and Danny were both prone to shifting eyes, awkward conversations. In her peripherie, she could see him fumbling with the invention. Were she to guess, she'd say he was focusing very intently on the surface of the table.

"Y'know, I mostly stay with Sam in her room."

Dani made an 'ew' face, looking up at him again. This was a more familiar train of conversation; she'd been teasing Danny about his girlfriend since she'd known there was one to tease about.

Danny, however, was still looking away.

"I know, gross," he muttered. "It's just that with me in Sam's room, we're wasting a whole big part of the house. After all, I only really stay down here when her parents are in town."

She flared up, defensive.

"I wouldn't call the room a wa-"

"That- that's not what I mean. I'm just saying, it should have a purpose, right? I just think…"

He sighed heavily, dropping the invention on the table. The tension dropped out of his shoulders as machines hummed in the background. When he looked up at her, his smile was reassuring, his voice suddenly firm.

"You can have the room, is what I'm trying to tell you. If you want it."

Dani blinked at him.

A room.

A bed of her own, not just borrowed from Danny. Maybe she could get a new mattress- the old one was nice, but she'd heard some remarkable things about pillow tops from Klemper. She could add some new posters to the wall- she loved NASA, but she'd also taken some interest in a popular action series lately. She and Sam would have weird vegan breakfast together most mornings, and Valerie could help her with her homework and play sports with her in the backyard. Tuck would teach her how to hack, and they could all be a real family.

She could try her hand at being a girl instead of a half-ghost. Branch out from a life flitting between lairs and wishing for her own.

She could also be let down. Danny could get tired of having her around and ignore her until she left. Sam could complain about the hollow copy of her boyfriend wandering around. Valerie and Tuck could regret inviting a stupid teenager into their home.

Danny looked stupidly, dopily hopeful. He had a way of making her worry about being his clone; did her eyes get that wide, her face tilt in that way? He also had a way of endearing her to him, of making her feel cared for. He was the only one who looked at her that way, so open and concerned and devoted.

They were complicated. He was her clone and cousin and father and brother wrapped into one confusing, college-aged package. She was a homesick nomad, a teenager trying to create a background with nothing but broken fragments of a family.

"I'll take the room," she decided, hopping off the table. He moved in a blur, and she found herself grunting as he pulled her into a hug.

"Enough, enough," Dani huffed, her hands pushing at his chest. Still, her smile was hard to hide, even against the fabric of his ecto-stained shirt. "You're so gushy, jeez. They call me the girl."

Danny broke away from their hug. He held her at arm's length; his grin was wide.

"At least I don't hang out with box ghosts," he snickered. "So c'mon. Let's go upstairs. I have a surprise for you."

"Fudge?" Dani smirked, her spirits lifting. The corners of Danny's mouth twitched, and his eyes glinted green in the lab's lights.

"What else?"