A/N: Sorry for the abysmally late chapter. I had some trouble with my computer since the last time I updated.

Author: loosedefense

Title: Weak

Pairing: Danny/Dash

Disclaimer: Danny Phantom is the property of Butch Hartman and Nickelodeon. This story implies nothing about the characters nor does the plot of the story have any effect on the show itself. This story is pure fiction and fantasy.

"Why are you following me?" Danny Fenton snapped in irritation.

Dash Baxter folded his arms around his chest. "Because it's my job now, Fenton, and I've already told you that if I have to do it then I'll do it well."

"Everybody's gone home!" Danny shouted, fists clenching stiffly by his side. "Don't you think you're supposed to look after me during school?"

"Let's not get carried away," Dash rolled his eyes. "I may want to do my job well, but not so much that I would risk being seen around you all day long."

"Oh of course," the bitterness was far too evident in his voice for Danny's liking. "I forgot, the only thing that matters to you people is your reputation."

"Shut it, Fenton," Dash said. "What do you know about it?"

"Like I don't know anything about not wanting to be seen around somebody I don't like," Danny smirked.

"Besides," Dash chose to ignore the dig, "it's not as if you're going to kill yourself right under Lancer's nose in school, so why should I bother keeping an eye on you then?" His smug look seemed to wipe itself off his face. "Don't get any ideas though."

"I am not going to kill myself!" Danny yelled.

"You know, anger is often one of the symptoms of severe depression," Dash grinned confidently.

Danny seethed. With all the things that had happened in the past few days, psychobabble was quickly becoming one of the things he hated most in this world.

He turned around and marched up the sidewalk to go home, cursing himself for not having taken his car, not having enough time thanks to an unexpected battle with some random ghost in the morning before school. Even with the meeting they had shared in the Lancer's office with both he and Mr. Connor yesterday afternoon, Danny hadn't anticipated Dash to start shadowing him around, which had put a dent in his plan to turn ghost and fly home. Not until he had turned a corner and could safely transform anyway.

But as he walked, Danny spied out of the corner of his eye Dash following him behind. Frowning, he quickened his pace, only to see Dash doing the same.

He ran.

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By the time FentonWorks was in sight, Danny was sprinting as fast as he could, Dash keeping up close behind him, a determined look on his face.

"You can't come in!" Danny shouted, struggling to run faster.

"Oh, yes I can!" Dash clenched his teeth as he sped up.

Danny got there first, slamming the door open with all his might and desperately turning around quickly to shut it. But before it could close completely, Dash slapped his hand firmly against the wood to stop the movement. Danny grunted, the door gaving way a little as Dash shoved the weight of his body against it. He did the same, praying to every god whose name he could remember at the moment that he would be strong enough to close and lock it.

"Damn it, Fenton, let me in!" Dash demanded shoving against the door even more. "If you don't, I'll tell your parents about everything and how you're not letting me … do … my … job!" With that final word, the athlete had managed to overpower the other boy and force his way in. The two of them tumbled and rolled into the house, breathing hard from the exertion.

There was a pause as Danny lay flat on the floor and Dash on top of his legs, both trying to regain some strength.

"Ouch," Danny said.

Pulling himself up to a sitting position, Dash took a moment and then flashed an evil look at the brunette.

"I told you already, Fenton, that's not how this works. You're not getting rid of me that easily, much to my disgust."

"Now get me some juice."

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"It must be torture," Sam said sympathetically.

"It is torture!" Danny raised his hands in aggravation. "He shoved through the door, he demanded juice, he told me to not sound so whiny when I wasn't even being whiny—"

"Maybe it would be best to lower your voice," Sam interrupted. "Tucker, will you stop playing with that stupid PDA when we're talking?"

"I'm not playing with it," Tucker defended himself, pulling the earpiece away long enough to answer. Sam snatched the device from his hand to look at what he was listening to.

"Ember McLean – Remember?" she sneered, revolted.

"This song," Tucker grabbed the PDA back, "is a classic."

"This song is evil!" Sam exclaimed. She took the PDA from him again and pulled out her MP3 player and selected a song that she thought was far more appropriate, pulling out the earphones connected to the PDA and stuck it into her own device. Tucker jumped as a loud blast of music blared into his ears, removing the offending piece and leaning forward to see the name of the band whose music had assaulted him.

"Veranda Of Souls?" he raised an eyebrow. "No thanks."

A muscle twitched next to Danny's eye. "Um, guys?"

"Oh, sorry," Samantha turned her attention back to him, packing her player back into her bag. "You were saying?"

"Yeah. I was saying," Danny said sarcastically.

"Sheesh, touchy," Tucker grinned cheekily, causing Danny to look all the more sour.

"It's not funny, you guys," he said. "How am I supposed to go ghost with him hanging around every day?"

"Did he really say he'd meet you every day?" Sam asked in surprise.

"Well …" Danny considered, "no. But he's really dedicated to the cause. He keeps saying that if he has to do this, he should do it well. I'm starting to think it's his way of motivating himself."

Tucker snorted with laughter.

Danny narrowed his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Tucker managed to gasp. "It's just—" he buried his head against his hands, shoulders shaking with laughter again, "—Dash … Dash being around you … taking care of you …"

He threw his head back and let out a wheezing kind of laughter. A muscle started to twitch in Danny's cheek as he fought a smirk back. It was a pretty ridiculous situation if it weren't such a nuisance for him, to be honest.

"Support group!" Tucker launched his head back onto the wooden table they were sitting at outside the school, still laughing.

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"I'm going to tell this to you one last time," Danny sucked in a breath of air and squared his shoulders, his eyes smoldering as Dash watched on passively, his chin balanced on his fist. The two were once again in the Fenton residence, and though it had only been two days as of yet, Danny was once again sure that he had reached his limit with this situation.

"I made a mistake," Danny tried to ignore the little shake in his voice as he got the words out. He was going to calmly explain everything to Dash. Jazz had always told him that the only way to take control of life was to be clear and level-headed – something, she claimed, Danny had yet to learn.

No time like the present.

"I was tired after a long, hard day of school, and all I wanted to do was come home. But then I had to take that stupid test –" hmmm, the stupid part may not have been the best thing to add, considering, "– and I simply wrote down whatever answers I felt like. Yes, I know, it was stupid and I just walked right into it, but like I said, it was a mistake. And I was having a bad day. You can't blame me for sounding depressed or whatever Connor's accusing me of after a bad day, can you?" he placed his hands on his hips.

Yes, this was going well.

"So … I'm not going to kill myself – never even had the thought cross my mind," Danny concluded confidently. "So you're just wasting time here. Precious time. Precious, valuable time." He paused. "Time better spent with football or in the Nasty Burger or—" he winced, "— with Paulina."

Dash continued to stare at him, his eyes still skeptical. Danny waited for him to say something.

"Nice try, Fenton," Dash said, the signature smirk coming back to his face as he drew the hand he had been resting his chin on away from the table, allowing it to fall to his side. "But 'never contemplated suicide'? That's a stretch. Everyone contemplates suicide at least once. Even me."

"You?" Danny folded his arms around his chest. "The ever sneerful-cheerful I-hate-everything-about-my-whiny-generation Dash Baxter?"

The blond shrugged unconcernedly. "I'm still a member of this generation. Just because I hold contempt for our flawed outlook doesn't mean I've never experienced it every now and then. Call it a flaw in upbringing."

Danny lost his temper.

"Look!" he snapped, "this is my house and I will not allow you to treat me like some nutcase invalid. I don't have suicidal tendencies, I don't need to be kept on constant watch, and I – don't –" he pushed his finger stiffly into Dash's muscular chest "– need to be followed around by need to be followed around by you!"

The coolness that had graced Dash's face all through the encounter thus far evaporated as he lost his composure. Without a second thought, he reacted to the jab, shooting out his arms and shoving Danny back with all his strength, causing the smaller boy to stumble back and press up against the wall behind him.

"I'm getting sick of this, Fenton," he barked, not caring for the involuntary wince Danny had given at the sudden jerk. "I've already told you that I have to do this, and I am not going to explain myself again. You'd better stop playing the victim all the time and learn to accept that sometimes you have to just make the best of a shitty situation." He slammed his open palm against the wall to the immediate left of Danny's face, blocking the path with his arm, and leaned in. "And if you can't make the best of it, I don't give a damn – you're going to have to stick with it.

"I don't want to be here any more than you do, and you know that. I have better things to do with my time than baby-sit a guy who can't get over himself. But when Lancer and Connor come up to me to check up on our progress, I am not going to end up stammering some lame excuse about how everything's fine. Not if they can so easily see that it isn't."

Danny clenched his jaw, fire raging in his eyes to match those in Dash's. As of this moment there was no one that he hated more than the person in front of him.

Dash breathed in and out once, sharply, and pulled back to fall gracefully back into the chair he had been sitting in. His eyes were still fixed on Danny as he pulled one leg up to rest over the other, his arms crossed over his chest, daring Danny to defy him.

Danny peeled himself away from the wall and stalked over to the stairs and up to his room. Just before he turned the knob of his door, he checked to hear any sign of Dash moving downstairs, perhaps making his way up behind him, but there was nothing. As far as he could tell, the other boy was still rooted to his chair, and knowing him, in the same stubborn pose.

He's like a child, Danny fumed, pushing his door open and slamming it shut behind him with the loudest bang he could achieve.

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Danny wasn't sure how much time had passed since he had come into his room and flopped down on the bed. It was late, though, and the sun was starting to go down. Soon enough it would be night, and he would need to patrol the streets once again as Danny Phantom.

Pulling himself up to a sitting position on the side of the bed, he took a moment to brace himself, then stood up, and closed his eyes. He felt his feet sink into the ground, and lower through the boards as from bottom to top he started to disappear and lose tangibility in his form. Floating down through his room, he descended gently through the ceiling of the living room below his bedroom, and having reached the floor, he willed himself to stop. He turned around and was surprised to find Dash hunched over the coffee table in the same chair he had been sitting since Danny had last left him, books strewn on the table and on the floor beside, writing busily into a sheet of paper splayed out over his notebook.

Rematerializing again, Danny asked with a harsher bite in his tone than he intended, "You're still here?"

Dash looked up in surprise. "I didn't hear you come down."

"I have quiet feet," Danny lied. "Why are you still here? It's pretty late, isn't it?"

Dash snorted. "Yeah, like I'm really going to leave without you coming down from your room. Have you finished with your little tantrum?"

Danny opened his mouth to protest that he had most certainly not thrown a tantrum, but then froze as he heard the sound of glass breaking somewhere upstairs. Dash's head shot upwards to the direction of the sound.

"What was that?"

Danny stepped backwards, his hand reaching out and gripping the banister of the staircase.

"Wait here," he warned the jock.

Shooting upstairs, he missed the confused look on Dash's face turning into one of indignation at the order.

Rushing to his room, where he was sure the sound had come from, Danny pushed the door open and halted, shock widening his eyes when he saw the hulking figure before him, back turned towards him.

Though he could not see the face, there was no mistaking the heavy armor that adorned the body of the intruder; having heard the door swing open, Skulker turned around, facing Danny with a leer.

"Ah, ghost-child!" he boomed. "Lucky now that you are here; I admit that I had been slightly disappointed not to find you when I entered." In an instant, he raised his right arm, a small square part in the middle parting to allow a piece of weaponry to rise, aimed at Danny. "But I have you at gunpoint now, so all is well."

Danny's eyes darted from the weapon – no doubt built by the hunter himself, as it looked as out-of-this-world as any other piece of artillery Danny had seen from the ghost's arson in the past – to the open door which he was still attached to by the knob. He couldn't risk Dash hearing or seeing any of this, but one false move and the sadistic ghost would give him a wound with all sorts of unknowable consequences.

So he took the chance to transform into his ghost half; seeing this, Skulker fired, but Danny was ready. Willing every part of him except the wrist attached to the door to turn intangible, the shot flew harmlessly through him, but sadly, blew out a small chuck of the wall behind him. Slamming the door shut, Danny willed the remaining appendage intangible as the rest of him, and, leaping from the floor with the tips of his toes, soared towards Skulker, fists pushed out in front of him.

As he was just about to reach the ghost, he once again forced his fists tangible, thereby knocking the bigger ghost down thanks to the fact that he had expected the halfa to simply glide right through him.

Skulker was quick though. Faster than Danny had expected him to, the hunter jumped to his feet and, letting out an aggravated roar, turned around to face Danny again and swept his powerful hand through the area of the ghost boy's torso. Fortunately, Danny had not had the time to turn tangible, and the blow passed through him without impact. The objects on the desk behind him, however, were not so lucky; as Danny spotted the broken lamp that lay at his feet to the right, this being the object that had broken and alerted the boys to the ghost's presence in the bedroom, the rest of the knick-knacks were shoved off the desk to fall on his left.

Leaping up, Danny hovered in midair, temporarily out of Skulker's grasp, taking the opportunity to turn corporeal again, and landed safely down just out of reach, jumping forward to land a solid punch to Skulker's face. The hunter, however, had been ready for it this time, and it did little good. He returned the favor, a steady punch to Danny's stomach which sent him flying across the room, his arms wide open by sides so that they dragged along every piece of junk upon the furniture that didn't have a wide enough berth from his fall.

"Foolish ghost-boy! I did not come here to fight you," Skulker took a step closer to the prone boy.

"Uh-huh," Danny said sardonically, pushing himself up a bit to raise his head and clutch the side of it with one hand. "That's why you fired a gun at me."

"Oh, that was simply to drive you into submission," Skulker said dismissively.

"Fenton?" Danny heard Dash call out from below. "What's all that noise?"

Panicked, Danny turned back to face Skulker. He had to finish this. He wanted to ask what the ghost hunter wanted if it wasn't to carve his head and mount it upon his wall, but he couldn't risk Skulker being seen by Dash, and even worse, he couldn't risk being seen as Danny Phantom.

Through the heavy quiet of the room, Danny heard the telltale squeak of the second stair. Fear gripped his heart – Dash was coming upstairs.

Picking himself up, he thought quickly. "Hey Skulker," he whispered.

Skulker tilted his head; apparently, he wasn't as concerned of being discovered by the human he knew was coming, nor did he seem to understand why Danny should care. "What?" he demanded.

Bracing his shoulder, Danny rushed towards the hunter as fast he could, the only thought in his mind being that he had to time this right, or he was sunk. He was too quick for the ghostly hunter to prepare himself, and so when the moment Danny felt his shoulder hit Skulker squarely in the chest, knocking the ghost off-balance, he went intangible once more, before the other being fell too far away from him, and the connection between their bodies caused the both of them to lose their substance at the same time, against Skulker's will.

Lighter now, Danny maintained their connection, taking off from the ground once again to gain more leverage, and as if in slow-motion, transferred his strength from his shoulder to his extending arm as he started to shove Skulker away, and finally, pushed him all the way through out of the wall of his bedroom into the open air.

It was only when the ghost was completely moved through the wall and out of the house that Danny broke the connection between them, and allowed himself to rematerialize again, and Skulker forced back into solid form, not having expected the attack at all and was thus unable to prepare himself to maintain his intangible form without Danny. Danny heard the cry of surprise as Skulker plunged down to the ground, outside of the house now, and smiled a little at the loud crash that told him that the ghost had landed in a heap on the concrete below.

He'd hardly had time to change back into his regular form though when he heard the doorknob rapidly turn and Dash pushed through, stopping dead in his tracks at the sight before him: Danny, breathing heavily with sweaty brow, the desk behind him, a small broken table lamp on the floor to his right, and broken glass and precious things all around the left side of the room.

Danny gazed wildly at Dash and the stunned look he wore, trying to think up an excuse to explain the state of his room.

"Er, would you believe this lamp caused a domino effect in all the other objects … as it fell in the opposite direction?"