Hello all! Thank you for reading along with this story, your support is greatly appreciated.

Shoutout to Data Seeker, Devilsummoner666, and Dragonrule for your reviews, I really appreciate them and hope you and everyone else continue to enjoy the story. Let's get on with the next chapter!

Disclaimer: I do not own any part of Danny Phantom. Unfortunately those rights belong to Nickelodeon, when they should really belong to the creator Butch Hartman. Until proper ownership is restored, please enjoy this fanfiction.

Chapter 5

Danny's alarm blared loudly on the nightstand next to him and he blindly slapped his hand around until it turned off. He yawned deeply and stretched his arms up while still lying down. It had been fairly uneventful last night; his patrol went normal and beyond the odd ectopi roaming the town he hadn't run into too much trouble. He actually managed to get a decent night's sleep, which for him was now a solid 5 hours. He discovered that as time went on, he needed less and less sleep in order to feel recharged. It was handy since he didn't usually fall asleep in class as much. Well, usually, he'd still be yelled awake by some teachers (mostly Lancer) occasionally.

"Good morning Danny," a voice purred.

"Good morning," he groaned back, continuing to stretch. He froze as recognition sank in, then opened a bleary eye to see a very familiar genie ghost hovering above him over the bed; with long raven hair curtaining a lovely face that was pulled into a soft smile. The young ghost stared back for nearly a solid minute trying to comprehend what exactly he was seeing. When his brain finally caught up with his eyes, a rather unmanly shriek pierced the room as Danny pulled the bed covers up to his eyes while Desiree giggled at his reaction.

"Sweetie? Are you okay?" his mother called through the door. Danny realized that she had been about to wake him if she still found him snoozing; which was a likely possibility since he was still a bit slow in the mornings.

"Uh, yeah mom!" he called back while his eyes didn't leave the still giggling genie who now was trying to suppress her giggles by covering her mouth with a dainty hand.

"Okay sweetie, well breakfast is ready!" his mother's tone was as cheerful as ever, "Hurry up so you're not late for school!"

Danny strained his ears to listen to his mother's footsteps walk down the hallway and begin descending the stairs. Once her steps became fainter, he whipped his attention back to the amused-looking Desiree. "What on earth are you doing here?" Danny hissed quietly.

Desiree's smile faded a bit at his accusing tone, "You said I could come visit you again today, so here I am."

Danny blinked in befuddlement; he honestly wasn't sure how to respond to that at first. "Well yeah," he eventually answered, "I did say that, I just didn't expect you to be here when I woke up, I guess."

"That's okay," Desiree smiled again, "I've been here since before you woke up."

Danny chuckled briefly before he realized that she didn't seem to be joking. Then his eyes widened in astonishment before he gathered his wits enough to respond. "Uh…Desiree…?" he asked hesitantly

"Yes my h—Danny?" she caught herself before openly calling him her hero.

'My Danny? The heck is that supposed to mean?' he thought to himself, he wasn't sure what to make of that statement but set it to the side for the moment in order to get to a much more pressing question on his mind.

"Just how long have you been here?" he asked at last, trying not to freak out at the implications. The crimson-eyed ghost looked contemplative which only added to Danny's rising panic levels.

Finally she shrugged, "The sun was beginning to rise when I arrived to your chambers," as if it was the most normal situation in the world. Danny's eyes bulged and looked over at his alarm clock. He knew for a fact that the sun rose at around 5:30 am and his clock currently read 7:09 am.

'This means she has been watching me sleep for like an hour and a half, what the heck?!' he thought, not understanding what was going on. His mind tried to wrap around the situation happening right now, but frankly it was way to early to deal with all of this. With a deep breath he let go of his thoughts and proceeded to get out of bed, silently thanking the powers that be that he had remembered to at least put on pajama bottoms the night before, though he was still shirtless.

As he searched about for a shirt, Danny failed to notice the infatuated gaze directed his way. Desiree silently admired the sleek and firm muscles her hero was sporting. It made him lithe like a coiled panther in her eyes. She couldn't help but bite her lip appreciatively as he tiredly stretched his arms above his head, his muscles rippling at the motion. She unconsciously floated nearer to him as he searched about for a shirt to wear and was stunned at what she saw.

Upon closer inspection she began to notice the various scars and wounds from past battles decorating all across his back, shoulders, and arms. At that point Danny had grabbed a shirt and turned back around to face her. She became further dismayed at how heavily scarred his chest and stomach area was as well. She was so distracted, she failed to notice Danny flinching in surprise at her close proximity. He noticed her crestfallen expression though and followed her gaze down to his heavily marked torso.

"It looks a lot worse than it actually is," he commented trying to lighten the mood. He knew it looked pretty bad, and would've looked a lot worse if he didn't have his healing factor. Desiree didn't seem to find the joke very uplifting and continued to stare at his old wounds a bit longer before she met his gaze.

"Are any of those…from me?" she asked warily, not entirely sure if she wanted to know the answer. Danny hesitated, he remembered a particularly nasty burn mark he gained from fighting one of the summoned movie monsters Sam had inadvertently wished for a couple years ago, but he didn't want to upset the genie ghost any more than she already seemed to be. He looked down at himself again before shrugging and beginning to don the shirt he found.

"I don't remember," he lied smoothly, "There might be, but then again, even the Box Ghost got a couple cheap shots and left his own marks," he smiled at her and while she didn't seem to completely believe him, she didn't press the issue.

Desiree instead raised a hand and a familiar gentle glow surrounded the appendage while she asked, "Would you like to have them removed?"

Danny froze in surprise before smiling warmly at her, "No, but thank you for the concern," he answered sincerely, "I take pride in these scars. They are proof I've survived this long and many of them are lessons I won't soon forget."

When Desiree raised an eyebrow in question, he proceeded to lift up his shirt a bit and pointed to a larger mark on his lower right abdomen, "See this one? Turns out that unless Ember is actually on a stage, she does not like anyone listening in on her music."

Danny then retold the time a number of months ago when he accidentally came across the rocker ghost in the industrial district of Amity Park. She hadn't been causing trouble and seemed to be writing some new songs. When he approached her and asked about the music, she got flustered and upset her music writing session getting interrupted. She immediately started shooting lasers out of her guitar and shrieking at him to leave. He chuckled as he recalled how quickly he had hightailed it out of there. The following night she found him again and actually apologized for her freak out, saying she had gotten embarrassed at someone hearing her music before it was complete. He forgave her but the laser blast from her guitar still took a few days to heal. As a compromise, Ember promised to not try any hypnotizing plots to take over the world for at least a month. Desiree giggled at the story and felt a bit more at ease.

"Anyways, I better get down to breakfast before I have to shower and get dressed," Danny frowned before murmuring, "It's too bad I can't get you some without my parents being suspicious. Oh! Wait a minute!" he turned back to Desiree with a smile.

"I wish that you could have a full plate of breakfast of whatever my mom made downstairs without them noticing it's gone," Danny wished. Desiree's core thrummed happily as she granted the wish and after the pink mist faded, a large plate filled with strange foods rested in her hands.

"Ooo," Danny awed at the food, "French toast, scrambled eggs, and breakfast sausage, nice!"

Desiree glanced back and forth between the food and her hero, unsure of how to proceed. Danny pointed to the fork resting on the plate, showed her how to use it, offered his bed as a seat for her, then left to go eat his own breakfast. Desiree examined the fork, and hesitantly stabbed into what the halfa indicated as "breakfast sausage". She hadn't told her hero that ghosts didn't really need to eat and she hadn't bothered to do so since the last Christmas Truce party. However, she was quite moved at her hero's concern for her and wasn't going to waste his good intentions; so she took a dainty bite of the fragrant food. Her tastebuds were quite delighted at the flavorful meat and soon she began digging eagerly into the food.

Meanwhile Danny raced down the stairs so he could dig into breakfast himself and silence his growling stomach. Both his parents were present in the kitchen. His mom stood at the stove while stirring a new batch of scrambled eggs and his dad sat at the table reading through the newspaper. Maddie smiled when she saw her son and greeted him warmly. As Danny sat at the table his father looked up from the newspaper and grinned widely at his son.

"G'morning Danny boy!" his father greeted him cordially while his mother came over to kiss her son on the forehead.

"Good morning," Danny answered happily, enjoying this rare family morning. More often than not, his parents remained more absorbed in their work down in the basement lab, so he'd eat breakfast by himself before going to school. He found this to be a rather nice change of pace. After kissing her son, Maddie looked down onto the table and became confused.

"Huh," she commented, "I'm sorry sweetie, I thought I had already left you a plate of food. Must've been my imagination, your father and I were up a bit late last night working on the new ghost shields."

Danny chuckled and glanced up towards his room, figuring out where the missing plate had actually gone. His mother moved quickly to get him a new plate and soon Danny started digging into breakfast.

"So anything new happen at school Danny-boy?" Jack asked absently while continuing to read through the articles. Danny flinched but kept any expression from off his face. He couldn't exactly tell his ghost hunting parents that he befriended a wish-granting ghost and she was now in his bedroom eating breakfast. That sort of story, he knew, would only lead to shooting and ghost capturing for experimentation, and he wasn't going to allow anything like that happen to Desiree. Danny paused for a moment at the thought. He couldn't figure out why he felt such a hot anger at the thought of Desiree getting captured by his parents. He couldn't help but feel oddly protective over her and it didn't make much sense.

"Not really," he answered as calmly as he could.

"Really?" his dad asked, "Says here in the paper that there were two ghosts sighted at your school yesterday. Did you happen to see them?"

Danny did his best to quell his fear, knowing full well that he was one of the two ghosts the article was talking about. "No dad, I was in the restroom when it happened," he lied smoothly. He always disliked lying but as time went on lying and keeping his secret seemed to come easier to him.

"Maybe one of your friends saw them then," Jack pressed, putting down the paper to look directly at his son. Danny kept his expression emotionless and simply shrugged as he continued to eat.

"You'll need to ask them," Danny answered and made a mental note to give Sam and Tucker a heads up in case his father wasn't distracted and actually bothered to ask them about it later. He then quickly finished his breakfast, thanked his mother and ran back upstairs to his room. When he entered, he was pleasantly surprised to see a happy Desiree enjoying the last of her French toast, while making some rather cute sounds of pleasure from the delicious food.

"I take it you like it?" Danny asked, slightly startling the genie from her meal. Her smile quickly returned twofold and swallowed her mouthful before answering.

"This is quite delicious. I especially love this fried bread, the spices on it are divine!" she said happily. Danny nodded, "Oh yeah, French toast is one of my favorites too. If you like cinnamon so much I bet you'd love Red Hots," he chuckled at Desiree's puzzled expression.

"It's a cinnamon flavored candy," he explained, "Tucker likes them a lot, it's a little too much cinnamon for me but maybe you'd like it."

Desiree smiled and nodded before finishing off the last of her breakfast plate. Danny took the empty plate and fork and set it off to the side on his study desk.

"So," Danny began a bit awkwardly now, "I better get ready for school before I'm too late." Desiree in turn simply smiled and nodded at him from her seat on his bed.

"Uh…" he then trailed off, "Which means…I kinda need some privacy…"

Realization flashed across the green ghost's face and a darker green blush spread across her cheeks.

"Oh yes…of course," she said before regretfully getting up from her seat on her hero's bed and began to float in the air. "Will I be able to see you again today?" she asked a bit shyly. Danny in turn smiled at her and nodded.

"Of course! I mean we can meet up after I'm done with school today if you wish," he felt rather eager at the idea of seeing the lovely ghost again. He then looked over to the clock on his bedside table and groaned when he saw the time.

"I'd better get going, I'm gonna hop in the shower but I'll see you later today, okay?" Danny waved as he started to leave the room.

"Very well Danny, I'll see you later," Desiree waved back as he left the room. She felt so drawn to him she almost followed him into the bathroom. She caught herself and an even deeper green blushed heated up her whole face. She immediately turned invisible and intangible and flew away out from her hero's dwelling and sped off to find a place within the school where she could continue to watch over her hero.

Well what a way to start the day! How will the rest of the day turn out for Danny? We'll find out.

As a side note, some of you may be expecting some steamier scenes, and they will be coming! Again, this is a slow burn story and rated T so nothing too extreme but a for sure romance is on the horizon!

Thank you for reading I'll see you next time!