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.

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Danny sank a bit into the back of his chair waiting for Dash to say something.

A whole day had passed since the incident in Danny's room that caused Dash to leave the Fenton residence without a word, and Danny had spent the day afterwards with his stomach in twisted knots wondering what consequences it would have. As it had turned out, Dash didn't appear the next day, giving Danny a welcome reprieve from the torturous program he had been subjected to spending everyday after school with Dash.

While it had left him with some free time alone, Danny had spent the previous day and the whole morning in school wondering what was to happen now, and in all his attempts to catch the other boy's eye, Dash had steadfastly refused to look at him. In all honesty, he had not expected Dash to react in such a way; lame though his excuse had been for the state of his room, Danny had not expected Dash to merely stare at him before turning around and stalking out the door. He, Danny, had followed him wondering in mute desperation what to do. Dash's fists had been clenched tightly, and though he could not see the jock's face at the time, having trailed behind him as he left, Danny had imagined a look of fury upon it, and had considered his options to either let him walk out, or ask why he was reacting in such a way, or beg him to stay.

Eventually, he had gone with the first choice and done nothing.

Now Dash was sitting on the couch across from him in his home, silently watching him with appraising eyes that seemed cold to Danny, and he was struck with a feeling of shame and awkwardness as he usually did when he felt as if he were being judged in some way. He felt like a naughty child whose parents were deliberating how to deal with. He wondered if Dash would say anything unless he prompted him to.

Shifting around in his seat, Danny cleared his throat, but far from sounding impressive in the way he had heard others do it, it sounded more like trying to work vocal cords someone had a stranglehold over. Dash's face remained impassive.

"You didn't come yesterday," Danny finally managed to get out.

Dash didn't respond for a moment, although the intensity in his eyes seemed to strengthen, Danny thought.

When Dash parted his lips, there was a smacking sound came with lips fastened too tight for too long. His tongue darted out to wet them.

"No, I didn't," he said quietly. "I spent yesterday thinking."

Danny's feeling of awkwardness increased, and he was distinctly aware of a feeling of apprehension that bloomed with that statement. "Thinking."

"About you," Dash clarified, changing his position on the one-person couch to lift his denim-clad right leg on to the arm, his eyes now situated on the raised leg, "and what to do about you."

"Dash—"

"I've been with the support group for over a year," Dash went on as if Danny had not spoken, "and in all that time, I have never seen any one of my charges lash out in a way like you did." His tone made him sound, Danny realized, like a father who was trying to understand why his child had done something outrageous.

"Dash you are reading way too far into this," Danny tried to explain frantically. "I wasn't lashing out, I—"

"You trashed your room because you were upset about this arrangement," Dash said in that same voice, not taking his eyes off his right leg. "You'd been complaining about it for days."

He finally turned his head to look directly at Danny again. "Or, I don't know, maybe it was something else. Maybe you got some bad news while you were upstairs or something. Maybe I shouldn't have left you alone for so long without checking on you."

"I'm trying to—"

"I decided to quit being your support mentor," Dash announced, his head turning back to look at his leg.

Danny's heart dropped. "What?" It was a dream come true. But, he realized, as horrible as he found Dash's presence to be, he didn't want the other boy to leave just because he thought Danny was too immature to be bothered with.

"I decided to quit being your support mentor yesterday," Dash repeated, now picking at a loose thread on his jeans. "But then I decided against it." He turned to face Danny again.

"I've put in too much work this past year to give up on someone now, Fenton, especially on someone like you," he said in a stronger voice. "If I ever gave up on you now, that bitch Alyssa would never let me hear the end of it, regardless of how many people I've taken on since I joined because she expects it. So, if for nothing else, I'll keep at it just to not give her the pleasure. While I'm around, that's going to be the last tantrum you ever threw."

He stood up imperiously, regarding Danny with a look of disdain as the raven-haired boy looked back at him with a shocked expression.

"You're weak," Dash told him. "You acted like the stereotype of how some fat, middle-aged comic book artist thinks a teenager in the new millennium would act. And I am telling you this for the last time – grow up."

He started to walk away, and it was then that Danny pushed himself to his feet and said loudly, "You arrogant, self-involved hypocritical bastard."

Dash paused, turning his head halfway. "What?"

Danny marched up to him, gripping the blonde's well-muscled arm and turned him around. "You always think it's all about you, don't you?" he said. "You walk into this house and the only thing you think is that I'm some morose character who's one black outfit away from slitting his jugular vein."

He pushed himself up against Dash, taking note of the stunned look he bore. "You're nowhere close to figuring out anything about me. Your stupid little mentoring programs aren't going to help you with that, so stop thinking that you have any right to judge me or anything you think I've done." As he said it, he couldn't believe that he had been so worried about Dash finding out his alter-ego as Danny Phantom. The only way Dash would have ever seen him for his true self, Phantom and all, would be if he transformed right before his eyes, and even then he would have to probably slap him to get the boy's attention.

"I already told you I didn't trash my room. Believe me, if I wanted to take my anger out on anything, I'd choose a better option than destroying the place I sleep in," Danny snapped.

Dash stepped forward menacingly, causing their bodies to push against each other. "Believe me, Fenton, if I didn't have so much riding on this, I would beat the crap out of you for that. And if you didn't do it, then I'm at least going to make sure that it never happens again."

"Fine," Danny retorted. "Just stop griping about your problems to me and then telling me I'm pathetic for being a whiny brat."

Pulling himself away from Dash's vicinity, he steadily marched up to his room, a small sense of pride surging through him for finally having voiced his frustrations about something in his life – and of course, there was the look Danny had seen cross Dash's face as he left.

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Danny didn't bother spending all day in his room this time; a few hours passed and he decided that he was hungry, knowing that Dash would be waiting the whole day anyway. With any luck, Dash would decide to leave once he saw his charge was alive and well for himself, and so it was with that hope that Danny went downstairs later that afternoon to fix himself a little snack.

Dash, however, seemed far from leaving – as a matter of fact, Danny jolted when he saw not one but two boys sitting down in the living room: Dash, and his best friend Kwan, whom he had apparently decided to invite over without Danny's approval.

The two of them had been sitting across from each other digging into the new packet of chips the Fentons' had just bought a few days ago when they caught sight of him.

"Jeez, Fenton," Kwan said to him. "You left your guest down here all by himself? That's not very gracious."

"That's because he's not my guest," Danny frowned deeply at Dash, pivoting to go into the kitchen. The two jocks joined him, Dash tossing the empty bag of chips into the trash while Danny fixed himself up a peanut butter sandwich. "What are you doing here?" he asked Kwan, not bothering to look up from his task or, for that matter, inject any emotion into his voice.

"I got lonely," Dash spoke for his friend, his tone vehement. At this point, Danny had neither the energy – having spent it all arguing with Dash earlier and silently raging against him in the time after that – nor the will to pretend to care about any message Dash sent him.

"Actually, I'm here on restraining duty," Kwan grinned sardonically. "Restraining you from trashing the place again or restraining Dash from killing you. Whichever comes first."

He shrugged, taking a bite of his food, starting to walk out. "Clean up whatever mess you make before you leave," he told them.

"What's with you, Fenton?" Dash said bitingly. Danny turned to him, a small taunting smile playing on his lips.

"Must be my bratty inability to care, Baxter."

Dash stared, then let out a little growl from the back of his throat. Kwan looked vaguely amused by the proceedings.

"Is this like a foreplay kind of thing you guys have going on?" he joked, earning himself strange looks from Danny and Dash, both seemingly having forgotten their current display of contempt for each other to stare at him.

Kwan grinned easily. Danny rolled his eyes, back to the indifference that had settled in him after the fight.

"Where are your parents, anyway?" Kwan called to him, now having pushed past Dash to dig into the refrigerator. "I thought they were, like, scientists working from home."

"Ghost-catchers," Dash clarified in what Danny thought was a tone too snide for one who had lived his whole life in a town renown for attacks from supernatural beings.

"Whatever," Kwan said, resurfacing and looking delighted with the block of cheese he had found.

"They used to work at home," Danny said, leaning against a side of the wall close to the door. "But they got offered jobs in Axion Labs after the Grays' moved out."

"Sweet," Kwan said. "You heard they were run out by ghosts?"

"Well, what did they expect, with Valerie chasing them all the time," Dash said. "What was her problem anyway; we already have Danny Phantom looking over the town, it's not like he needed any help from her."

"Didn't you use to date Valerie, Fenton?" Kwan suddenly turned to him.

This caught Danny's attention; his relationship with Valerie Gray, while having spanned for years, had been practically non-existent, what with the both of them avoiding each other when dealing with ghost-hunting, not having enough time to spend on many actual dates, constantly being on-again/off-again, and general confusion about where they stood with each other. In the end, the relationship had never really taken off, although they had decided to spend her last night in town together before she moved last year. Danny hadn't known that anyone else aside from Tucker and Sam had been aware of the relationship and its status.

"Where did you hear that?" Danny inquired.

"Where did you hear that?" Dash repeated, eyebrow creased. "And why? They're not in our circle."

"Thanks, Dash," Danny said coldly.

Kwan shrugged, looking briefly worried. "Around," he replied nonchalantly. "I wasn't sure if it was true though."

"We went on a couple of dates," Danny said, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly, uncomfortable with the expressions on the faces of the two jocks. Kwan playfully nudged Dash in the ribs, causing the other boy to slap his arm away.

There was a heavy silence in the room afterward, which, in Danny's opinion, was not completely unpleasant – he preferred it much more that continuing a conversation with the other two.

Kwan broke it. "I'm bored," he declared. "Let's do something."

Both Danny and Dash shot him agitated looks again. Kwan, however, did not seem to mind, or perhaps did not care, as he sauntered out of the kitchen to wander about the living room, peeking into various doors that led him into a hall closet, a guest room, and finally into the basement that had been turned into a laboratory by Jack and Maddie Fenton.

"Cool beans!" he exclaimed, jumping over the last two steps at the bottom, Danny following behind him wondering if he ought to direct them out of the room for fear of anything going wrong. Dash walked behind the dark-haired boy, muttering to himself, "Cool beans, who says cool beans anymore?"

"What does this do?" Kwan said, nodding to a large, strange-looking device in the middle of the room. It looked as though there was a giant green spider's web in the middle.

"The Fenton Ghostcatcher," Danny told him. "My parents invented it about four years ago. It's supposed to remove ghost energies or something. It's like a dreamcatcher, but, you know, for ghosts. I guess."

"Neat," Kwan said, a polite smile on his face, walking away to look at a different object.

Dash yawned rudely. "Can we get out of here please?"

"In a minute," Kwan said. "Come on, Amity Park's been attacked by ghosts for years. Aren't you interested to see how Fenton's folks protect the place?"

"Like I said before," Dash spared a half-glance to Danny, "Danny Phantom's always done a good job. The other ghosthunters are just wasting their time while he's around."

"Danny Phantom can't be everywhere at once," Kwan said to his friend, picking up what looked like a rocket launcher with Jack's face on it. "I'm sure he appreciates all the help he can get – don't you think so, Danny?" he turned around, hoisting the weapon on his shoulder.

"Be careful with that!" Danny rushed forward to carefully remove it from Kwan's grip. "And … I guess so. I mean, I don't really know him, so …"

"Really?" Dash asked, tilting his head back to one side. "We've all noticed that you and the Phantom are usually close by. Not to mention you both share first names."

Danny stiffened.

"Coincidence," he offered. "In fact …" he paused, desperately trying to think up something that would satisfy Dash's suspicions, "in fact, it's how we bonded."

"Bonded." A muscle near Kwan's mouth twitched.

"Yeah," Danny said. "I met him one day, he told me his name, and I said that my name was Danny too, and that's how we met." He had said all of this very fast, nervously hoping that it had been good enough an alibi.

Dash seemed to think it was plausible enough, nodding to it, and Kwan smiled again before turning back to look at more inventions.

Danny inwardly sighed. In his frustration over the name the residents of Amity Park had bestowed his alter-ego, he had stupidly yelled out the name he had given himself, only stopping to consider how similar it was to his real name after winning a huge fight with the ghost Pariah Dark.

It didn't matter, he convinced himself every time his mind lingered on the event. No one would ever figure it out.

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It was already dark by the time Dash and Kwan decided to leave. Danny's parents had not yet returned from work, although Danny expected that they were already on the way back.

Opening the door for them to leave, Danny was suddenly struck by a sense of guilt over the trouble they had taken to be with him. True, he loathed that he was forced to spend each day with the man he hated, but Danny had enough sense to realize the effort Dash took to come every day and spend hours while Danny had displayed his discourtesy by locking himself in his room.

"You sure you're going to be okay?" he asked as they passed.

Dash rolled his eyes. "Fine, Fenton," he drawled, effectively removing any shame Danny had felt over his behavior. 'Don't hit your ass on the way out,' he wanted to say.

Slamming the door shut as soon as they had exited the threshold, Danny smirked in self-satisfaction.

He checked the time. It was only seven thirty. His curfew was not until ten. He fumed at the injustice of having to live with the same condition that had been imposed on him since he had been fourteen, but his parents hadn't wanted to take chances on Jazz and him, fearing that they would be in danger being out so late in a ghost-infested town like theirs.

Still, that gave him a good two and half hours to patrol the town for ghosts before he would be missed, and unless a ghost threatened past then – which, he had to admit, they did a lot – he could spend the time before bed finishing off his homework. If it was quiet, he wouldn't even need the full two and half hours to hunt.

Transforming into his black-and-white jumpsuit emblazoned with the letter D across the chest, his hair now white, and eyes an unearthly green, Danny jumped and floated upwards until he had passed through the floorboards of the level above and up through the roof. He could see Dash and Kwan across the street from his house; turning invisible he flew over to their direction.

"You going home?" he heard Dash ask the Asian boy.

"Nah. I think I'm going to hang out a while," Kwan replied. "It's too early to go home."

"Yeah, but I'm beat. I'll see you tomorrow then." Dash started to walk away, bidding goodbye, which Kwan returned with a raised hand.

Danny circled the streets, looking for signs of any activity. There were none, but he knew better than to let his guard down.

However, after a while of watching a mildly interesting game of night Frisbee between a middle aged man and his dog in the park, Danny decided that while the ghosts were away for the time being it would be wise to get in some studying time and patrol later on.

Turning around and heading back to his house, Danny failed to spot the mane of blue flame rising behind him, nor did he see the curl of the lips upon a mischievous face as fingers encased in a black gloved strummed deftly on the strings of an electric guitar. A giant fist rolled out from the instrument, catching Danny off-guard, punching him squarely when he turned around to locate the source of the noise.

"Hey, dipstick," Ember McLain greeted the half-ghost.

"Oh, god," Danny groaned, pushing himself off the ground. "Shouldn't you be retiring after so many flops?"

"Funny guy," Ember floated towards him, hand at the ready to strum her deadly equipment again. "I'll keep this little interlude short and sweet – tell me where you've hidden Plasmius's spirit, and I'll let you live."

"An ultimatum?" Danny snickered. Turning intangible, he launched himself at the girl, skidding past to reappear right next to her, "I think not, pre-Madonna." Uncurling his fist into an open-faced palm, an ectoplasmic blast managed to hit his adversary, hurling her back.

Recovering, Ember glowered, before taking off, zooming in the direction of Danny's bedroom in attempt to locate the soul Danny had acquired. Danny flew after her; he didn't know what this fascination for Vlad's soul seemed to be, but he'd be damned if he let a ghost take it from him without beating them half an inch of their afterlife.

As she headed straight for his house, Danny threw ball after ball of ectoplasmic energy at Ember, hoping to deter her from her goal, but veering left and right, she successfully managed to evade each attack. When she turned intangible, Danny knew the attacks were lost as they would merely go right through her; he turned intangible himself, and the both of them phased through the wall to enter Danny's bedroom.

"Get out!" Danny yelled. "Get out, get out, get out!"

Ember grinned at him, hands on her hips. "That's not very hospitable, dipwad. Now where is it?"

"You think I'm going to tell you?" Danny scoffed. "You're going to have turn tangible if you want to find it, and the moment you do, I'm blowing your ass right back into the Ghost Zone."

"You don't even need that soul," Ember snapped, turning corporeal again when she realized that he was right. "And I promise you, stop me from getting it, and you're just going to have to deal with a thousand more to take my place. And I'll be back for it – and so will Skulker and every other ghost you could possibly dream of. You can't hold all of us back."

Danny turned tangible again as well, hovering above the ground, looking at Ember curiously. "Why are all of you so desperate to get your hands on that soul?"

"Power," Ember asserted.

Danny laughed, polishing his hand against his suit to mock her. "Well, I didn't know I had all of you so beaten down," he started to say, but Ember dug the end of her guitar against his neck.

"This is so not about you," she said. Danny's eyes flicked down to the instrument pressed against his skin worriedly. "I—"

But she was cut off, for at that moment, a green blast of energy jolted her away, and Danny breathed freely with the immediate threat of the guitar gone. Turning his head to see who had saved him, he stared in shock, feeling the icy calm demeanor radiate from Kwan as he stood through the doorway holding one of the patented Fenton ghosthunting guns.

"Kwan …" Danny croaked, his right hand twitching.

Ember stirred from her position, and keeping his eyes trained on her, Kwan cocked the gun in her direction. "Out of the way, Fenton."

Ember's eyes came back into focus on her attacker, jumping to her feet and holding her head to steady herself, but as Danny suddenly lost his concentration and stumbled back on the ground and away from the perimeter clumsily, Kwan got in another shot, knocking her back, and in a flash pulled out a Fenton Thermos, uncapping it to expose the light that Danny was so used to; leaping out of the way, he stared incredulously as the vacuum engulfed Ember and sucked her into containment.

Knees buckling, the events unfolding in front of him barely registered, as Danny's mind flashed through the five words over and over again.

Out of the way, Fenton.

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Author's Note: Thanks for all your reviews up until now everyone! Hahah yes, it has kept me motivated. I'm glad to see such a positive response to the news in the previous chapter.

I've been continually frustrated by my writing skills reading past these chapters. Not only do I find them very short, but they are riddled with errors in grammar and spelling, and I've noticed a tendency to repeat certain words, seeing them numerous times in one chapter. I have to say, I'm pretty satisfied with the way I wrote this chapter right now, and I hope it will improve from here. Thanks for bearing with me.

As always, read and review. I do love having a lot of them. ;)