Based on a tumblr prompt: Danny's 18th birthday he suddenly realizes that he's not aging.
.
.
.
Senior yearbooks were delivered in August, just a month before Danny was due to start college as a freshman. On his birthday, in fact. Other schools got their yearbooks in before graduation, but Casper High was just special like that.
It was weird. What Danny once would have thought with frustration was now accompanied by rueful nostalgia.
He flipped slowly through the pages, giggling a little at the picture of Dash covered in ghost slime, then at the picture of Lancer covered in ghost slime, then at the final picture of the entire class covered in ghost slime.
That had certainly been a day.
A smile still played around his lips as he browsed the freshman pages. He didn't know anyone from that class well, but looking at their faces as they were presented with the robotic frog cadavers was funny.
Sam's legacy at the school, he supposed. Better than his legacy of several Danny-shaped holes in the walls. Good thing they didn't know he was Phantom, or else they might have tried to make him pay for them along with his last library fines.
Then, he got to the senior class pages.
Like anyone, he was most interested in finding his own. Every year, the yearbook did a special picture page for the seniors. It had each student's senior class picture, of course, their freshman picture, and their baby picture.
Danny found his, and suddenly his smile was like a brittle mask over his face.
His freshman picture and his senior picture weren't quite identical. He'd been wearing different clothes, for one, and for another senior Danny was better rested and more muscular, but...
If the pictures had been of someone else, he wouldn't have thought they were taken four years apart. He might have thought the pictures were of brothers. Twins with different lifestyles.
But they weren't of someone else. They were of him. They were his pictures. He should have looked older.
He didn't. Danny looked fourteen in both pictures.
He looked fourteen now.
The snap as he slammed the yearbook closed snapped him out of his panic. He took a deep breath.
Fourteen. Fourteen, the age he was when he'd walked into the portal and...
Died.
The age his life should have ended at.
If he'd stopped aging... There was nothing to say it wouldn't start up again, was there? Ultimately, aging was wear and tear on a body. Maybe he'd just stopped growing. But if he had stopped aging... at fourteen...
Maybe fourteen would be the age his life ended at anyway. Even if he was technically eighteen. He should have looked eighteen, too.
He closed his eyes. This wouldn't go unnoticed for long. Sam and Tucker would have gotten their yearbooks, too, and they'd be coming over today.
They'd know. Sooner or later. He could try to hide it, but...
No. He was eighteen. He was a mature adult. He was past this. Past trying to keep secrets that would inevitably come out from his friend.
He fumbled for his phone.