Chapter Text
Danny raised his hands above his head with solemn dignity. "Red, thermos me."
"Excuse me —" Candice stepped around the side of the bed, " Thermos you?" Candice was as much in the know about popular ghost hunting equipment as any Amity Parker. "You are injured. You are absolutely not getting 'thermosed.'"
Danny dropped his hands and leveled a glare at her. "Look, I can't fly for shit right now."
"Language," William interjected.
Danny ignored him. "There is no way I'm getting in a wheelchair, and even if someone carries me, my invisibility is still spotty and I will not be seen going bridal-style. I simply refuse." Danny crossed his arms.
The Red Huntress shrugged. "Sure, I'll thermos you."
"I have to side with your nurse on this, Daniel," William cut in.
Danny hissed an urgent whisper, "Red, thermos me."
Red rolled her eyes with her entire body.
A knock at the door. Without their knowing, the unlikely quartet shared their first, and possibly last, unanimous feeling: bone-deep annoyance. Another nurse poked his head inside.
"Oh! Sorry to interrupt." He opened the door further with his shoulder, revealing two more bouquets and an Edible Arrangement balanced in his arms. "Some lovely people have brought these for you, Phantom. We didn't let them up here, for your privacy of course, but they wish you a speedy recovery." He set the gifts on the window sill. Evidently misreading the exasperated expressions as inviting and interested, he put his hands on his hips and asked, "So, how are you doing?"
Danny raised his hands again. "Thermos!"
Red reached for her belt and froze at William's betrayed glare.
Danny let out a frustrated breath and gestured at the tone-deaf nurse. "This is why. There's probably a whole mob of Phans outside."
"You know," William said, "Most celebrities deal with this sort of thing regularly. You might as well embrace it."
Danny regarded the Edible Arrangement for a moment, considering; not William's comment, but Edible Arrangements in general. He returned narrowed eyes at his English teacher. "I'm a ghost, not a celebrity. I don't gotta embrace nothing."
Danny turned to Red and pouted. She put her hands up defensively. "I'm not doing shit until I know they aren't gonna yell at me."
"Language," William muttered.
The amicable nurse had been nodding along with the conversation. Candice pointed at him. "Roger, you have rounds to do." She pulled out Danny's patient file and addressed William with an air of finality. Candice knew a losing battle when she was in the midst of one. "Before he leaves," she said, "I'll need your signature in a few places."
William gave up. "Very well."
Danny popped a chunk of pineapple into his mouth and frowned. "Are you sure it's okay?" He asked William for the third time.
William was having a much needed sit in his armchair and finally drinking his cup of tea. "Of course, Daniel. You informed your parents that you are staying… elsewhere for the night, correct?"
"Yup." Danny selected a grape from his Edible Arrangement and adjusted himself on William's couch. "I told them I was sleeping over at Tucker's."
"And you informed Tucker?" William had seen that ploy go wrong too many times.
Danny gave him a dubious look. William was starting to miss his skittish student. "We have systems, Lancer, don't you worry."
"And I really can't convince you to take the guest bed?" William asked, also for the third time. The Red Huntress had emptied Danny from her thermos directly onto William's couch, and he'd been making himself comfortable there for the past twenty minutes.
Valerie swallowed her bite of cantaloupe. "He's slept in so many worse places," she said from her seat on the floor. She hadn't made any moves to leave, despite the night getting on past eleven. She and Danny, both of them now in plain clothes and at least appearing human, had been picking at the Edible Arrangement on the coffee table since the three had arrived at the Lancer residence. William didn't have the heart to kick her out.
"That," William said, "does not make anything better."
Valerie threw a grape at Danny's head. It bounced off his cheek before he caught it telekinetically and bit it in half. "Hey Val, you got any purified ectoplasm on you? I'm hungry." Danny imbued the word with an echoey crackle and bared his blunt human teeth in a decidedly non-threatening display.
Valerie's expression suggested something rude on the tip of her tongue, and then she reconsidered. William peered over the coffee table but still couldn't be sure where she had pulled the large ectogun from. Valerie ejected the amo cartridge, sloshing sticky and green, and handed it to Danny.
William stood up and went to the kitchen before he had to watch his student empty it into his mouth. He put a pot of water on the stove and pulled a jar of Bolognese from the fridge. William made a resolution: The next time Danny Fenton was hungry in his house, the boy would be eating a nice, safe bowl of spaghetti.