“I thought you said you just had leftovers, Tucker?” Sara asked as Tucker finally made it to the deck of the Op-Center with several plastic bags full of fireworks hooked over his arms.
“I do!” he protested as he dumped them onto the metal decking. He heard footsteps behind him coming up the stairwell and straightened, yelling, “And I could have used a little help!”
Danny and Sam both appeared, Sam carrying nothing, Danny carting another set of bags filled with chips, sodas and, much to his great relief and dismay, no ice. He dropped them next to the bags of fireworks as Sam headed for the railing, dragging Sara with her.
“It has the most amazing view, doesn’t it?” she asked Sara as she pointedly ignored Tucker.
Danny chuckled as he sorted through the food and drinks, grinning as he pulled out a handful of sandwiches in baggies. “Mom made us real food, Tucker,” he called over to the other boy, who was emptying his bags and sitting the fireworks in neat piles of varying types and sizes.
“Tell me they’re not egg salad,” was all Tucker muttered as he moved to another bag.
“Um, Tucker?” Danny said as he noticed the growing pile of explosives. “That’s more than leftovers from the Fourth.”
Tucker grinned at him happily. “Yeah, isn’t it great? I picked most of them up the day after on sale.”
Danny shook his head as Sam and Sara made their way back over, sitting down and poking through food (Sam) and fireworks (Sara) curiously. Sam was opening a soda as Sara was picking up a handful of bottle rockets. She examined them then sat them back down, picking up several small cylindrical fireworks with no names on them.
“How do you even know what’s what, Tucker?” she asked as she dropped them back into their growing pile. “You’ve already taken them out of their packages.”
“But that’s the greatest part of this,” he explained. “You never know what Danny’s going to set off until it’s done.”
She made a noise of assent. “Explain to me exactly what we’re doing, please? And why does Danny get to play with fire and no one else?”
Danny, Sam and Tucker exchanged smiles and Sam hopped up, closing the door of the Op-Center’s stairwell to ensure that nothing said would drift inside. Danny’s parents did tend to spend most of their time in the basement of the brownstone working in their lab, but there were no guarantees that they wouldn’t need to get something from the Op-Center and overhear something that was far safer kept between the friends.
“We started this three years ago,” Sam began.
Danny stuck his tongue out at her. “My aim kind of sucked. And my control.” He held up one hand and let some of the ectoenergy that surged through him surround it until it glowed a very bright green. “I needed practice.”
Sara’s eyes went very wide and Danny realized that, in the three weeks since Sara had admitted to knowing his secret, she still hadn’t ever seen him do anything less than normal. It was like the secrecy was ingrained now, and he flashed her an apologetic grin. “It’s a little much, maybe?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s just hard to think of you as a…”
“Superhero?” Tucker supplied.
“Something like that,” she demurred.
Tucker grinned and hooked an arm around her, tugging her down to sit next to him on the decking as he continued to play with his piles of fireworks. “Well, I thought maybe we could see if Danny’s ectoblasts could, you know, start a fire. There was a ghost that could and I wondered. Since the Fourth had just happened, we snagged some of the things we hadn’t set off and kind of decided to try it out.”
Sam dropped down next to Danny as she took up the thread with a careless brush to her hair, pushing it back from her face so that she could look at Sara. “So we started by having Danny light them up down here, right on the Op-Center. And before too long we decided that since he could set them off, why not toss them up and let him aim?”
“That was your idea, Sam,” Danny put in. “And if I recall, you mocked me for days when I missed half of them.”
“Ah,” she said. “But you didn’t miss them the next time, did you?”
“That didn’t count,” Tucker interjected. “It only counts with the fireworks.”
“Well, it helped him learn how to aim better, didn’t it?” Sam shot back hotly.
Tucker shrugged. “I’m just saying it doesn’t count since it wasn’t fireworks.”
“Do they do this often?” Sara asked. At Danny’s questioning look she laughed. “Argue about your other self?”
He nodded readily. “They’re like my coaches or something. Sure we’re learning together, but they seem to know so much more about it.” The roll of his eyes lent sarcasm to his words and Sara laughed even harder.
“I wouldn’t be so smug about it if I were you,” Sam said as she shoved against him with her shoulder. He looked down quickly, trying to hide the way his cheeks flushed red at the touch.
“Yeah, because this year, you’re going to do more than one at a time,” Tucker tossed at Danny as Sara groaned. “Oh, that didn’t sound like I meant it to.”
Danny could only hide his red face in his hands as he struggled between embarrassment and laughter. “You are a pervert, Tuck.”
“Proud of it, too,” he said. “Pass me some meat.”
Danny did, tossing several of the all meat sandwiches at Tucker before handing some smaller ham sandwiches to Sara. “Might as well eat now. We don’t start this until after dark. Safer that way; no one can see who’s up here since we leave the lights off.”
“Your parents don’t have a problem with you setting off fireworks up here?” Sara asked as she unwrapped a sandwich and took a bite.
Danny shook his head as he handed Sam some vegetable pita wraps, desperately trying to keep his fingers from touching hers. “To be honest, I’m not even sure if they know we do it. I think they think the explosions are just lab accidents from other houses.”
“They’re kind of… dense isn’t exactly the word I’m looking for, but it’s close,” Sam said with a sideways glance at Danny, a small smile playing on her lips. “To be honest, I never really thought we’d pull off keeping this a secret from them for this long.”
“Oh,” was all Sara said as the group settled into demolishing the edible supplies.
It had been an odd few weeks, Danny thought as the friends talked and ate and generally waited for the sun to finish setting. Sara confessing that she knew about Danny Phantom had been crazy enough, but what Danny was terming the attack of the ice cubes was still so vivid in his mind that he had a hard time just looking at Sam sometimes. Okay, he admitted very, very quietly in the back of his mind as he stole another glance at her. He was just having a hard time, period.
It might not have been so difficult if he hadn’t started noticing how often Tucker and Sara disappeared for their own trysts, leaving Danny and Sam alone. It was torture, he decided. He was torn between avoiding being alone with her, and at the same time taking any opportunity he could get to touch her. And at the same time dreading it because of the hormones that were bound to break out and wreak havoc on him.
It would help if she’d quit dressing so damned provocatively.
She didn’t, he realized with a sigh. She wasn’t dressing any different than she had been for years, still considering the staples of her wardrobe to be skin baring shirts, skirts that should be illegal when Danny was around, and her favorite heavy boots that just happened to be steel toed. Sure, she’d made changes to her wardrobe. The purple tights were long forgotten, and she no longer had dozens each of the same shirt and skirt.
She even wore jeans and shorts. Not to mention the tiny black bikini that had started the entire mess. He blinked at the remembered bikini and coughed as he choked on his soda. Right, breathing and drinking equals bad when done together.
It wasn’t that she had changed, he decided. It wasn’t even that he’d changed, because he’d been thinking about Sam for years. Since they were fourteen. It was only that his perceptions had shifted drastically since he’d found out exactly how nice it was to touch her, to kiss her. How smooth and soft she was…
He groaned as his hand phased out and his soda can slipped right through it, crashing to the deck of the Op-Center and flipping to the side, dark cola glugging from it and spreading across the metal. “Damn it!” he exclaimed as he shuffled back, Sam doing the same as Tucker swooped forward to save his fireworks and Sara grabbed the now wet bag of food.
“Your hand disappeared,” Sara said matter of factly, and Danny laughed.
“It does that,” he said. “Sometimes. You’re taking all this pretty well.”
She smiled as Tucker gave up on the fireworks with a sigh. “Tucker, we’ll get some paper towels and clean it up,” and she glanced at Danny. “My father is British. The British are known for their backbone.”
“Seems as good a reason as any,” Danny said as he took the wet bag from Sara, taking things out and sitting them on the soda free part of the deck. “If you guys could get some paper towels and another bag to put everything in, Sam and I will get the rest of the fireworks.”
There was a flurry of work as Tucker and Sara headed for the closed door and then downstairs, and Danny helped Sam move the fireworks to safety. He glanced down at the puddle of soda and the wet bags they had left there until Tucker and Sara came back with clean up supplies. Then he glanced at his hand, clenching it into a tight fist before letting it go and dropping it to his side.
“So what happened?” Sam asked, lavender eyes concerned. “You haven’t lost control like that since sophomore year.”
He looked at her, wondering exactly what he could say, and she blinked slowly, lazily, running a nervous hand through her hair. “Sam,” he said, soft and low, and then reached a hand out to her, catching her chin and closing the distance between them in a single step.
He lowered his mouth to hers and smiled into the kiss as her arms came up around him, fingers playing lightly with his shirt. He flicked his tongue out against her lower lip, sucked it into his mouth gently as she pressed herself against him. And then they jumped apart as a slam from down the stairwell surprised them, leaving them both breathing raggedly and staring at each other like they’d nearly been caught doing something wrong.
“We’ve got the paper towels!” Tucker shouted up the stairs, and ten seconds of mad pounding against the stairs later Tucker and Sara were flourishing two rolls of them and a small garbage bag.
And five minutes and thirty seconds later the mess was suitably mopped up, sticky wet paper towels and dripping plastic bags all tied up neatly in the garbage bag. All four of them started resorting the fireworks under Tucker’s directions—he claimed to have a plan about the order they were set off in—and by the time the sun had set fully half an hour later, they were ready to begin.
“Are you going to go ghost?” Tucker asked as he tossed the first firework, a single, up and caught carelessly.
Danny snorted. “Do you think that’d be safe at my house?”
“Point,” Tucker said, and then threw the firework into the air as hard as he could, smiling when it arced up a respectable distance from the building. Without warning a green glow encircled it and it erupted in bright pink and blue sparkles. Sara laughed and Sam whooped out a war cry.
“First try! Go Danny,” she said with a hug that had them both turning more than a little red before pulling hastily back from the other.
“What about the rest of it?” Sara asked as she peered over the railing to the dark street below. “What if it hits someone?”
Tucker laughed and kissed her cheek. “You’re sweet, Sara. Don’t worry about, there’s nothing left over. That’s part of the thing, too. Danny has to use enough power to make it all burn up, but not enough to disintegrate it before it even goes off.”
“He can do that?” she asked.
Danny shot a look at Tucker, then shrugged. “It doesn’t seem like I’m ever lacking enough power for things like that. My control is just a little off,” he said, temporizing on the fact that his control was almost nonexistent unless he was actually concentrating. Which wasn’t always possible in the middle of a ghost fight.
“That’s why half the time he ends up destroying things he doesn’t mean to,” Sam said dryly. “Like the miniature golf course.”
“Or the Nasty Burger,” Tucker added.
“Hey, that wasn’t my fault!” Danny said, trying to defend himself. “That was the nasty sauce.”
“Sure, Danny,” Sam said with a drawl. “Try and blame the condiments.”
He rolled his eyes and Sara laughed. “Let’s just do some more fireworks,” he finally said.
Another one was tossed up, and then another, and then Tucker started to toss handfuls, making Danny really have to concentrate on aiming and rapid firing. The sky was filled with a flurry of rapidly sparkling colors that died out only to be replaced by more, and it didn’t escape anyone’s notice that more than a few of the neighbors had dragged chairs out to the sidewalk to enjoy the show.
“When did they start doing that?” Danny asked as he made quick work of yet another group of fireworks.
Sam laughed as Tucker tossed more, a handful following his up as Sam hefted several herself. “They did it last year, too,” she said as green, purple, pink and gold scattered through the air. “Face it, Danny, you put on a good show.”
He grimaced. “I don’t do shows anymore.”
“Anymore?” Sara asked.
“Don’t ask,” the other three chorused, all wearing remarkably similar frowns.
“Alright,” she said with a confused smile. “So what happens when you put too much power into it?”
On cue Tucker tossed a single and Danny leveled a glowing fist at it. Green ectoenergy lit up the night and exploded in a brilliant blast, leaving nothing but a few scraps of papers to drift down over the teens. “That,” Danny said as he scrubbed his hand through his dark hair, dislodging burnt paper.
“Impressive,” was all he got, and then Tucker was kicking the side of the railing.
“That was the last one,” he said. “All that’s left are these,” and he held up a handful of sparklers. “The guy tossed them in for free. He said he wanted to ditch the last of them.”
“Those can be fun,” Danny said as he grabbed one and poked the tip with a glowing finger. It lit up and sparks flared as he swirled it around in the dark. “See?”
“Light me!” Sam said as she grabbed another one from Tucker and held it out to Danny. Soon, they all had sparklers going making wild random dances through the air, relighting as soon as one ran out until the last one finally fizzled and was dropped to the smoldering pile of hot metal.
Sam collapsed back against the railing with a grin. “That was fun. We should be little kids more often, you know?”
Sara laughed. “Aren’t we already? I mean, look at Tucker and Danny.”
Said boys were currently arguing over who took the garbage down. Tucker was protesting that he’d forked over the cash for the fireworks, which Danny countered with the assurance that he knew exactly who had paid for them (and he glanced at Sam as Tucker followed that line of thought) and Tucker giving in. Then the argument was that Tucker had been the one to go buy them. And Danny pointed out he was the one who had lit them all.
“Boys,” Sam muttered. “At this rate, I think we should just ditch the trash ourselves.”
Sara smiled. “No. I’ll take Tucker. I want some alone time with him anyway.”
“Please don’t tell me things like that,” Sam said, pained. “He’s like my brother.”
“And is Danny like a brother?” Sara asked shrewdly, glancing at Sam from the corner of her eye as she brushed her hair back.
“Umm…”
“It’s alright, Sam,” Sara said. “You don’t have to answer that.” She refrained from adding that it was useless since everyone already knew the answer. It was just a matter of time really. And she was down on them eloping right after graduation.
To think, if she won, she’d take the entire pool. Which, if Sara recalled, was up around three and a half thousand right now. More if Lancer upped his bet that they’d be caught out before Christmas. Less if Tucker won. He was all for them having to be pushed together forcibly, with an eye at prom.
“Tucker, let’s just take it down, alright?” Sara called as she walked over to him and slid an arm around his waist, pressing a kiss to the side of his neck.
“Sure thing,” Tucker said quickly and more than a little happily.
Danny laughed as Sara dragged Tucker and the bags down the stairs, then grimaced as there was the distinct sound of kissing echoing up. “You guys could at least close the door!” he yelled at the open doorway. There was a clatter of shoes and then Tucker’s hand shot out and slammed the door shut, making Sam collapse to the ground in hysterical laughter.
“She planned that,” Sam managed to wheeze out. “She absolutely planned that.”
He groaned as he slid down the railing to sit beside her. “I didn’t need to know that. Too much info, thanks.”
“Yeah,” she said, stopping suddenly as Danny’s hand covered hers on the cold metal of the Op-Center deck.
“Sam, I—” he started to say and stopped when she shook her head.
“It’s better not to try and talk,” she whispered as she leaned closer to him.
“Yeah,” he said with a nod as their lips met.
He slid his tongue into her mouth as her fingers tangled in his hair, tasting her as she shifted against him. His fingers bit into the skin of her waist, just where her shirt and her skirt missed touching, and then he was pressing her back, mouth sliding along her jaw as her hands skimmed his skin beneath his shirt. She sighed as he pressed kisses along her cheek to her ear, sucking the lobe in, nibbling it gently and letting it go as she gasped.
The skin of her throat was salty sweet and Danny was breathing raggedly as he let his tongue swipe along it, savoring. “Danny,” she moaned and arched up into him, and his entire body tensed as one of her legs came up around him, circling his leg and pulling him closer as she pulled him back up to her mouth.
“I love the way you taste,” he muttered as he covered her mouth with his, possessively, and let a hand reach back to her thigh where she held him close. The skin was smooth, silky, and he held it tight under his hand, knowing that there would be marks when she looked later and not caring in the least. Danny liked the idea of marking her as his, so that everyone would know.
His hand slipped up her leg, and she whimpered into his mouth as fingers moved underneath the hem of her skirt, pushing it and bunching it to the top of her thigh as he pulled her closer to him with the other arm, her hair sliding across it and her mouth open as she looked up at him with hazy lilac eyes.
She smiled as his fingers brushed across the soft skin of her waist, the hem of her panties, and he kissed it away as he slid his hands back to cup and realized—
“You wear thongs?” Danny asked in astonishment and then suddenly phased intangible.
Sam laughed hysterically as he fell through her and Danny yelped as he went through the Op-Center, the roof, through the stairwell and past Tucker and Sara, and all the way to crash into the floor of the lab with a resounding thud and a pained groan. He pushed himself up, rubbing the back of his head and rotating his shoulders to make sure nothing was broken as he looked around.
His parents were nowhere to be seen, and Danny was more grateful than ever that they were as eccentric as they were. Especially as he was greeted with gales of laughter from a distinctly mussed Sara, and very flushed looking Tucker when he got back to the deck. Sam was laughing too, faintly, and decidedly smug.
“It’s not funny,” Danny muttered as he shot a heated glance at Sam.
Sam smiled back. “Of course, it is. It’s not every day I poke you with a lit sparkler.”
“With a what? Oh,” he said, recovering quickly. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, well.”
Tucker laughed. “I didn’t know you could be scared into intangibility.”
“Shut up, Tuck,” Danny muttered as he headed for the railing, leaning against it and looking out at the dark town.
Then the laughter did stop. “Guys?” Tucker asked. “Where’d you get another sparkler? Cause we used all the ones I bought.”
Danny turned and glanced at Sam, who arched an eyebrow. “That,” she said to Tucker, “is something you’ll never know.”