Agreement
A Danny Phantom Fanfic by Cori

Edward Lancer glanced up from his lesson plans when the door to his tiny office creaked open and slammed shut. A pale, dark-haired junior stood just inside the door, frustration evident all over his face, and in the way his eyes kept sparking green against blue, and the slow way he was rocking forward and back. Lancer arched an eyebrow and glanced at the clock – only ten minutes until school started for the day – then back at his oddest student. "Problems?"

Daniel Fenton burst into noise. There was really no other way to describe the speech patterns of the frustrated child. The words crawled under Lancer's skin and a headache, not unlike the one caused by eating ice cream too fast, flared into life at his temples.

"Woah," Lancer said, holding up a hand.

Danny's voice cut off with a huff, his arms crossing over his chest, an annoyed wrinkle on his forehead.

"I didn't understand a word of that," the teacher admitted, ignoring his paperwork and leaning forwards, resting his elbows on his desk. He studied the boy, looking for any sort of cuts or bruises that would help to explain what was going on, then gestured for Danny to come closer. When the boy was within striking distance, Lancer grabbed an arm and flipped it around, looking at the scrapes and redness near his elbow.

Words bubbled out of Danny's mouth again. From past experience, Lancer figured it was probably a string of excuses.

He sighed and let go of Danny's arm, watching the boy rub at it. Lancer figured the minor injuries would be gone by lunch and decided it was not something to pick at just yet. "Are you going be calmed down enough to go to class in a few minutes?"

His response was a wrinkled nose and a slow shake of the boy's head.

Lancer pointed towards the chair in the corner by the tiny window. What was this, the forth time in just a few weeks that Danny had come in to his office so riled up? "You know the rules, Danny. No touching anything while I'm gone." He watched the teen toss his ragged backpack into the corner and then slink over to the chair. "Here's a pass to class – just fill in the time when you're ready to go, and make sure you come see me after school."

Danny waved his hand back and forth, then nodded. Lancer studied him for a second longer, then grabbed his paperwork and stuffed it into his satchel. Leaving the boy slumped in the chair, slowly tossing a stress ball from hand to hand, Lancer trooped out of his office and towards his first period class.

"You know the juniors back and front, right?" one of the other teachers said during lunch. Lancer blinked up from his book, momentarily confused by the abrupt transition from the bastions of medieval Europe to a dirty teacher's lounge. "Take a guess as to who wrote this." The teacher held one of the junior class's winter cross-curricular projects in her hand, a thick report with a glossy cover.

Lancer set down his book, careful to mark his page, and took the proffered essay. He flipped through it. It seemed to be well written, with footnotes and diagrams and even a section of references in the back. "This is really nice," he muttered, trying to guess which of the juniors would have done something like this. He'd had them the two previous years in English. "Whoever it is worked really hard on it."

"It's easily one of the best in the class," the teacher agreed, leaning forwards with a sparkle in her eye. "Take a guess."

He quickly read through the introduction, noting the occasional oddly structured sentence and the topic – constellations: past, present, and future – and snorted in amazement. "Fenton."

The teacher nodded and grinned.

"Why doesn't it have his name on it?" Lancer paged through it again, mostly startled that Danny would have worked so hard on a project like this, but then to not put his name on it…?

There was a rustle of paper. Lancer glanced up from his perusal to see another sheet behind handed to him. "This was the title page," she said. It was a slightly wrinkled piece of printer paper, unlike the thicker quality paper of the report, with a quickly scribbled title and author's name. The purported author's name was Dash Baxter.

"Well, that explains the fireworks this morning," Lancer muttered.

"I'm still deciding what to do about it. Fenton didn't show up for class to defend it." The other teacher took a bite of her salad. "But it's pretty clearly his."

"He was in my office a good portion of the morning."

"Doing his 504 thing," she said with a grin, curiosity dancing in her eyes.

"He's not a 504 kid," Lancer corrected, avoiding explaining what, exactly, Fenton was. "Although he probably should be." He tapped the project gently on the table. "I'll see him after school today, why don't I talk to him about it."

The teacher hummed an agreement, chewing on another bite of her salad. "Don't you ever eat lunch?" she asked, changing the topic.

"I don't do lunch," Lancer said. He stuffed the project into his satchel and picked up his book, scanning to find his place.

Daniel Fenton was already sitting in Lancer's locked office when the man came back in from after school bus duty. "There are locks on doors for a reason, Danny," he said – not thinking the teen would take the words seriously, but needing to say something about the invasion of privacy none-the-less.

The boy waved his concern away. "Sorry about this morning." He sounded contrite. "I overreacted."

"To what?" Lancer asked as he put away his belongings and settled into his chair. After a long period of silence, Lancer sent Danny a dark look. "I believe our agreement was you could hide in my office when the world became too much, but you would explain to me what happened afterwards."

Danny scowled and sank down in the chair opposite his teacher. "I know," he muttered. "I just really overreacted and it'll sound stupid now when I say it out loud."

Lancer felt a smile quirk up the corner of his lips. "Improvement."

"What?"

Lancer let the smile grow at the confused look in Danny's eyes. "Last year, you wouldn't have been able to tell when you overreacted to something. It's an improvement."

The boy's eyes narrowed. "I get enough therapy at home. I don't need it from you too."

"I'm not doing therapy," Lancer said blandly, lacing his fingers together on his desk. "I'm looking for an accounting of why you sat in my office for nearly two hours this morning, too upset to remember how to speak English."

Danny sank lower into the chair, digging his toes into the ground and letting his knee shift anxiously back and forth. "It was Dash," he finally said, his voice barely loud enough to carry over the ambient noise in the office.

Lancer sighed and dug into his satchel, pulling out the report he'd gotten from the English teacher at lunch. He tossed it gently into the boy's lap, watching the expression on the teen's face twist into one of pure shock. "Why do you let him mess with you like this?"

"Let?" Danny said sharply, smoothing out a few invisible wrinkles on the paper. "I don'tlet-"

"We both know you could stop Mr. Baxter in his tracks in less than two seconds if you wanted," Lancer said seriously. "You are letting him torment you, and don't give me any of that nonsense about humans and ghosts again."

Danny stuck out his jaw and looked away.

"Danny…"

"He's bigger, and stronger, and faster," Danny said, a quiet litany of facts Lancer was sure didn't matter a lick and both of them knew it, "and popular. He's got a future-"

"You don't?"

"Well yeah, I do, but…" Danny trailed off. "But seriously, Mr. Lancer. You said so yourself. I've got the most write-ups of anyone in the school. I can't be counted on to actually be someplace when I'm told to. I'm unreliable and not responsible and-"

"I said nothing of the sort," Lancer cut in, stunned at the boy's last few words, trying to think over past conversations to pick up where the teen had gotten that idea.

Danny shrugged a careless shoulder, playing with the project in his hands. "I'm not going to be accepted in a college anyways, not with my grades, and not with all my 'discipline issues'. So what does it matter?"

Lancer sat back in his chair, quietly surveying the boy in front of him. The scrapes and redness from this morning were long gone, as was the frustrated green glint to his eyes. But there was something disturbing in the set of the teen's shoulders and the blank tone of his voice.

"Mr. Lancer?" the boy asked.

"You do have the most write-ups of anyone in the school," Lancer finally said. "By quite a few. However," he said, holding up a finger to stall whatever Danny had been about to say, "are they your fault?"

Confusion crept into the boy's eyes. "What?"

Lancer leaned forwards. "Answer the question, Danny. Are most of those write-ups your fault? Are they something you could have changed?"

"I dunno," Danny said, twisting his foot back and forth. "I suppose it depends on who you ask."

"I'm asking you."

There were a few seconds of quiet before Danny shrugged again. "Most of them are because of ghosts, I guess. So no?"

A tiny smile slid onto Lancer's face. "I happen to agree with you. Almost all of your discipline referrals are because you're not in class. And you're not in class because the ghosts don't let you be in class."

"What does it matter?" Danny stared at him blankly.

"Let's pretend," Lancer made sure to emphasize that word, "that Mr. Baxter had the second most write-ups in the school-"

"I think Sam does," Danny said with a grin. "Tucker's probably a close third."

Lancer hesitated. "I tell you, the school will not know what to do with all the free time we'll have after you three graduate. But fine. Let's simply pretend that Mr. Baxter has alot of referrals as well." Lancer glanced at the boy, then continued. "What do you think he gets written up for the most?"

"Being an asshole," Danny said instantly. Then he flushed. "Sorry. I mean, you know, being a… bully."

"Something he is choosing to do, or something that's not his fault?"

Danny opened and closed his mouth a few times. "Yeah, I get the point, but I still don't get why that matters."

"It matters," Lancer said, pointing to the project in Danny's hands, "because that is one of the best projects in the school – which means you can do the work when you're given the time and help. It matters because the vast majority of your discipline problems are not your fault. It matters because this is just high school." Lancer sat back in his chair and scowled. "It gets over quick, and you have your entire life ahead of you. You have a future ahead of you, if you'd choose to do something with it."

"Mr. Lancer-"

"You want to be in a science field. Astronomy, I'm still assuming. You have the brains for it. You have the desire for it. You just have more obstacles in your way than most other kids. Why are you letting them stop you?"

Danny's mouth clicked shut.

"Mr. Baxter is an obstacle. The ghosts are an obstacle. Your family is an obstacle. Your grades and these write-ups are just obstacles. Not insurmountable ones-"

"Mr. Lancer," Danny interrupted with a grin. "You're on your soap box again. I got the point two pages ago."

Lancer scowled. "I mean it, Danny. Stop letting Baxter push you around, and stop giving me pointless excuses. I watched you stalk up to a ghost three stories tall and deck him over the head. A teenager with six inches on you isn't a realistic problem."

"Yeah, I suppose," Danny said, looking down at his toes.

"Danny," Lancer sighed, knowing a deflection when he heard one. "I mean it."

"I'll try, okay?" Danny glanced up at him.

"And I want to see these grades go up," Lancer muttered, shaking the mouse on his desk to wake up the computer. It took only a few seconds to call up the boy's grades. "Especially the science and math grades – those are the subjects you're good at, for crying out loud. Nothing less than a C by the end of the quarter."

"I'll try-"

"You'll succeed," Lancer said, staring at the teen, watching Danny sink into his chair under his gaze. "If you need more time on something, or if the work starts to pile up too much and you need help, you'll come talk to me and we'll figure something out. I will not accept anything less than a C from you from this point forwards."

Danny blinked at him. "But-"

"That includes gym class, because you failing that class again is ludicrous," Lancer continued, overriding Danny's complaints. "And that English project will be fixed and turned back in before Wednesday, hear me?"

"Yes sir," Danny finally mumbled. He looked down, playing with the corners of the plastic cover of his project again.

"God help me, child, you're going to give me an aneurism," Lancer muttered. "If I die trying to get you through high school and into a good college, I will come back to haunt you until you get a master's degree."

There was a quietly chuckled response to that.

"Now scram. I've got stuff to do." Lancer looked up when he didn't hear any sort of movement or response, only partly surprised to see his office devoid of teenage life.

It was barely twenty minutes later that Lancer shut off his computer, grabbed his satchel and coat, and headed for the door. Caught up on grading for once, Lancer stepped out into the cold February afternoon before the sun had set. He shivered, tucked his hands into his pockets, and headed quickly for his car.

His pace slowed as he realized that Daniel Fenton was still hanging around the parking lot. The boy was talking to tall figure wrapped in an expensive-looking trench coat, and the trapped, prey-like expression on Danny's face made little red flags spring to life in Lancer's brain.

Swerving away from his target, Lancer walked over to the teenager, stepping into the conversation with a bland smile, catching a moment of skin-crawling otherworldly language coming from Danny's mouth before the boy's jaw clicked shut. "Mr. Fenton," he said before turning to the taller figure. It was the mayor of the town. "Mr. Masters. Nice to see you."

Danny frowned. "I'm fine, Mr. Lancer," he said curtly.

"I didn't think you weren't," Lancer replied, furrowing his forehead in pretend confusion. He turned back to the mayor. "Am I interrupting an important conversation?"

"Of course not," the tall man answered smoothly, a smile on his face. "I just thought I'd swing by and give him a ride home. His parents and I are old college friends." Lancer caught sight of Danny's blanch out of the corner of his eye at the man's choice of words.

"Well, if I'm not interrupting anything…" Lancer turned to the teenager with a frown. "I let you out of your detention because you had a litany of important things you said you needed to do. If you can stand around in the parking lot for twenty minutes talking to a friend, you can serve your detention."

Danny's eyes went from confused to wide about halfway through Lancer's speech. "But-"

"No buts," Lancer said, pointing towards the school. "Detention."

The boy's mouth moved quietly a few times turning into a disaffected scowl, and he stalked towards the school doors, grumbling under his breath.

"I'm afraid he won't be able to take that ride," Lancer said, turning back to the mayor just in time to see a frown vanish from the man's face and be replaced by a smile. "Trying to teach responsibility, and all that."

"Oh, I understand," Mr. Masters replied smoothly. "I'm sure I'll catch him some other time." The man sent a glance towards the school. "Ta."

Lancer watched the man slip into the back of a limo and pull away from the curb before heading back towards the school. There was only a fifty-fifty shot that the boy had stuck around, but Lancer needed to check. Sure enough, he barely made it through the front doors before he found Daniel Fenton sulking against some lockers.

"I don't really have detention, do I?" the boy asked.

"No," Lancer said. "Who was that?"

Danny arched a confused eyebrow. "Vlad Masters? Billionaire? Mayor of the city? Donated, like, half the money to renovate the school last year?"

"I know who he is," Lancer said with a sigh. "But what I meant to ask is who is he to you?"

The kid looked away. "It's not important-"

"I haven't seen you look that terrified since your parents last threatened to chaperone a school dance," Lancer said, crossing his arms and leaning a shoulder against a wall. "Did he hurt you?"

Danny shook his head, but wouldn't look up.

"Is this something I need to tell your parents about?" Lancer asked. He tried to steer clear of the family topic – he wasn't entirely sure how much Danny's parents knew of their son's life and didn't want to know. But he'd had to draw a line in the sand somewhere about when to stick his nose in, and he'd made Danny well aware of where that line fell. The kid being hurt by the mayor of Amity Park was across that line.

"Mom knows already," Danny said, rubbing his neck with a hand. "Maybe not all of it, but enough that she gets the picture."

Lancer stared at the top of the kid's head, trying to determine if that was the truth or not. He finally decided to accept the answer with a nod - for now, anyways. "You could always get a restraining order-"

Danny's derisive snort brought Lancer up short. The boy glanced up at Lancer through his overly long hair. "If I promise to go straight home and not talk to weirdoes on the way, can I leave?"

"I suppose," Lancer said, grinning when the teen simply vanished right in front of him. Then he frowned, heading slowly back to his car and kneading the heel of his palm into his chest. Why was it that every time Lancer found out a different facet of Daniel Fenton's rather interesting life, he always got a bad case of heartburn?

The man got into his car, shivering while he waited for the heater to kick in. His eyes trailed back to where the mayor's limo had sat, curious about why the man had reallystopped by the school.

He was a smart man. He had all his grading done (for once). He had an entire evening at home to see if he could puzzle out the mystery of the mayor. If he'd figured out that Danny was some sort of quasi-ghost, he certainly could unravel this little enigma on the mayor's part. A grin ghosting over his lips, Lancer put his car into drive and headed home.