“So what kind of tea is this?” Danny questioned, blowing some of the steam away on the cup. He took a sip of it, and his mouth immediately began to tingle.
“Oh, it’s blood blossom tea!” his mom chirped.
“Fuck.”
Maddie turned around, “… I’m sorry?”
“Oh, um.” Danny squirmed in his seat before giving her a tight smile. “It rocks, uh, thanks.”
I am going to die. Danny’s tight smile widened as his mom continued to stare down at him with a disbelieving and unfazed raised brow. And it’ll be because of mediocre, bland, fucking tea.
Finally, Maddie turned back to the pot of filled with steaming hot water. “If you don’t like it just tell me and watch your language Danny.”
Danny sunk a bit in his seat. “’Sorry,” Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck. Fuck! I’m going to die, in this kitchen, while my mom berates me on my cursing. Great. Fuck-tacular.
He should go, he should find something to distract his mom, run and find a way or do research or call his friends, hell, worse comes to worse even find Vlad for answers. Should, must…
and won’t.
Let it come. The thought comes with a startling bitterness. I’m tired, of this, of everything… Danny can’t help but stare at his mom, I wonder- she adds more tea-bags, none the wiser. What would she do?
He waits, he waits for the god-awful pain that’ll have him screaming, withering, and twitching on the ground. Danny braces himself, eyes squeezed shut and on the verge of hyperventilating.
A moment passed, then another. Nothing happens.
Odd. is what comes to Danny’s mind as his mom starts humming. Very odd.
Strangest of all, Danny found himself to be almost disappointed.
The chair skids behind him as Danny shoots upright. Maddie turns off the stove before raising her brows in slight surprise.
“I… have homework. That I need to, uh… to finish.”
Danny clinches and relax his fists that were tight by his sides. “… yeah.” His head felt like it was dunked underwater and held hostage there. His whole body felt like prickly static, as if he fell asleep in one position for too long and didnt move the whole night.
“Ok? Do you-”
“Thanks mom.”
Danny could feel his mom’s hot stare as he goes down the hallway and up the stairs. The silence weighs him down on his shoulders, the whole house. All Danny could do was listen as the thud of his footsteps that echoed in his skull.
~
The bedroom door clicks behind him.
What the fuck was that? Danny begins to pace his room, face pulled into a frown and brows furrowed. Jesus Christ. What was I thinking?! That was stupid, dangerous and-
Suicidal.
Danny stops. He ran his hand through his hair and his shoulders started to shake. “… I can’t afford to think of that.” He tells the empty room.
He swings his hand tightly back to his side and looks at a poster of space where stars layered upon stars, planets drifted in the distance and the only word NASA, stretches across the top in its red circle. Everything in his chest felt tight as if his heart was being squeezed, and it certainly wasn’t because of the binder.
“I… can figure this out, on my own. The blood blossoms. I’m not in any immediate danger, at least.” Danny pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand and gestured to the poster with the other. “I’ll just use you like how a Tucker uses the rubber ducky theory. He explains every little thing he’s doing to an inanimate object then eventually catches his own mistake, cracks in the computer code and hacks the system.” Thankfully, it gave no response.
“… ok, so. Fact.” Danny resumed his pacing. “Blood blossoms hurt ghosts,” He stepped over a pile of dirty laundry. His own screams echo in his mind before Danny forced them aside. “They hurt me, a half-ghost… thing, whatever, as well.” Right now, wasn’t the time for an identity crisis either. “I know this as a fact because villagers used this on me.” Danny hesitated and crossed his arms behind his back.
“Fact, I was Phantom when that happened and fact…” Danny’s head turned and shot back to the posters, eyes wide. “The exact same ghost hunting equipmentmen have different effects on my human and ghost halves. Mom gave me Blood blossoms when I am in my human form, and blood blossoms lose their effects when eaten by a human-” Danny took a deep breath. “… Ok, so, that makes sense and that’s why it has no effect on me now. I… I should be ok…”
Danny walked to his bed and sat down. Muscles unwounded and tension released as his shoulders sagged. Oddly, his eyes stung, and his vision blurred.
Danny wiped the tears and frowned. I’m fine… The frown tightens as a strangled sob escaped. I’m fine, I’m going to be all right why am I- The tears felt thicker, heaver and ran down his face faster than he could wipe them away. Why am I crying?
You know when you hold your breath for almost too long under the water? When you reach the surface and take a breath, no matter how short, and your lungs hurt? Your whole body feels like its on fire and it burns but it feels good, too, to take that breath? That you want nothing more but to keep breathing even if it hurts? It’s a good, if strange, sort of pain.
Danny had one arm tightly clinched around his chest and the other covered his mouth, silenced sobs shook his shoulders and rattled his chest. His lungs, his throat, his fucking eyes hurts. He felt like he was suffocating, and his tear-brimmed eyes made everything so murky that he might as well be blind. His skull felt a splinting headache that left him almost at a lost of what was up and down.
This can’t go on. Danny squeezed his eyes shut, more tears oozed out. I can’t keep living like this.
It’s going to kill me, one way or another.