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So, you could say that Danny’s life is tough. With double the troubles and double the responsibilities that any fourteen year old should have, it reflects in his slumped shoulders and tired attitude. Not that you can really blame him… if you know about his double-life, at least.
There’s the typical highschool drama. Being both the school's resident punching bag and freak already sets the bar low enough as it is. Trouble with teachers because he can’t do his work properly. Barely having enough time to eat. Not to mention whatever his friends might be debating or arguing over that particular day. He loves them, but some peace wouldn’t hurt every now and again.
Then there’s also his home life. His parents love him, sure, but he can't deny that they can be… neglectful at times. So while the two of them are constant and loud parts of his life, he can’t really say the last time he had a meal with them. Or a conversation on something other than grades and ghosts. Even then that’s with his human half. With all the equipment they make to take Phantom down and all the times they have little squabbles of their own, it’s pretty strange to deal with mentally.
It’s sad, really. That Phantom gets more time and attention from his parents than just plain old Danny does.
Anyway.
So when Danny first realised his general attraction to some other boy at the pool that previous summer, you can bet he shoved those feelings deep, deep down. He has enough on his plate as-is. No need to throw in some… random attraction to some stranger. It’s not like it meant anything, he was just… appealing to look at.
But that summer, that long, long summer, is what opened his reluctant eyes. He found himself recognizing his like for the male leads in books and shows as more than just admiration for their, typically, heroic acts. He found his eyes tended to be drawn more towards the male models in ads rather than the female ones. And his attraction to Paulina seemed so… fake now. Like it always had been, but the fog had cleared away to make room for more realisations and uneasy feelings.
It just, it couldn’t mean anything! He wasn’t gay or something. He’s seen those openly out at school, he’s heard the slurs in the hallways aimed in their direction. Aimed his way from time to time as well if a bully was feeling particularly nasty. So, no. He couldn’t be gay. He wasn’t something that could be said in such a way that it looked physically painful to acknowledge. He wasn’t one of them. That was their thing, and that’s fine! But that was their thing. Ghost was his thing. That was his ticked off box. He didn’t have another one to check off as well. No, just, nope.
So all these thoughts and feelings got pushed down inside of himself with all the other things he refuses to outwardly acknowledge. Nestled right between the fact that he literally died and the fact that he doesn't actually like the fudge his dad makes. Just something he will keep to himself until the thought either goes away entirely or it stops hurting.
And this worked, for a while. His days passed by with no real significance to those issues buried in the depths of himself. No one caught on and it became something that was almost forgotten entirely. Just another secret hidden from the rest of the world that he carried with him. No big deal.
Instead he put all of his energy into his fights. Each punch, kick, and blast having more force behind it than usual. Fights stopped sooner, but the bruises grew. It was hard to hide them all, but the pain was easier to focus on than the intrusive thoughts, so it was worth it in his eyes. Nothing some of his sisters concealer and a few well-placed bandages couldn’t hide. And he’s a clumsy kid as it is, so who's to say anyone would notice the change anyway?
That is, until he got sick.
Illness wasn’t something that typically affected him anymore since The Accident. It was something he witnessed in others. Something he copied on occasion to blend in. Admittedly, at the beginning, he still got stuffy noses and colds. Tucker's guess was that the sudden DNA change needed some time to adjust, like how he gains new powers or when he first started out and his current powers would surface without control in his human form. Danny just leaves it as “another weird ghost thing”.
But there’s this little thing that the Ghost Zone has elected not to tell him. A little thing, when translated into human terms, known as ghost flu. Simple, but it gets the point across. Apparently even when you die you can still get sick, which he’s sure not many people are going to look forward to…
Leaving aside the questions of “Are there ghost vaccines?” “Ghost medicine?” “Doctor appointments and other ailments?”, it seems that he has come down with a case of the dastardly disease. Luckily it just seemed like the normal flu in his human half, so his parents didn’t question it too much when he began to sneeze and strike a high fever.
Which is how Danny ends up home alone. His parents at some tech conference and his sister at school, he is left in his room to wallow in the misery of a hazy mind and sweaty clothes.
Surprisingly, Danny only wished that his mind was even more clouded.
He is just aware enough for his thoughts to circle back, but too hazed to keep the hidden ones… hidden. Most of them would just lead to either the questioning of his existence or make him sad for the next few miserable hours. So that left his… sexuality? Is that even what he could call it? Is that what it really was?
That feels like such a big term, such a big label to decide. Is his attention to other males really such a big deal? It could just be some odd phase. Sure, the more he thinks on it, the more he realizes that it has always really been boys that got his attention easier. But that doesn't mean anything! He still liked Paulina and talked about girls with Tucker. So, really. There’s just no way.
Sure, it’s always him bouncing off of Tucker’s enthusiasm. And he may not be able to recall a single girl that was attractive to him in the same way as that guy at the pool. And maybe he’s just always assumed that was “normal”. But so what? None of that means anything, really. It’s not like he can picture himself falling in love and even marrying some guy in the distant future who would look stunning in a suit or at some alter. Or how the two of them would be partners in every sense of the word and Danny wouldn’t have to be afraid to tell him about Phantom. Or even how they’d get a dog alongside Cujo and maybe even talk about adoption some day.
Definitely not.
…
…
…
…...Fuck.