Inspired by Sapphireswimming, Cordria, HaiJu, AnneriaWings, pearl84, and all the other wonderful DP writers, out there.

I, for one, am glad to aid in keeping the Phandom alive (half-alive?), if only just for a little while longer.

If a piece is unfinished, I'll state so at the ending point. I have an old account, Neversaid-I-Madesense, which also has some DP Phanfiction, including the intro to what was meant to be a multi-chapter fic, Abstruse, which…I never continued. Yes, that's me, unwise Celly, who can't maintain things reliably worth a darn. Blagh.

I'm going to rewrite it as a oneshot, here in this very series, though. Eventually.

You may notice that there will be some common themes in a lot of these 'shots. That's because the whole purpose of this drabbleseries is to help me get more acquainted with Hartman's world, because one: I just need an excuse to practice writing, anyway, and two: there is an extremely long fanfic I am working on in the background, a rewrite of the entire first season of the show, which will then be followed by season two, and then, season three…it's my interpretation of the whole DP universe. Headcanons are in abundance. Expect to see a ton!

I'm ambitious, right?

I gotta be.

If anyone's curious about the title...spasmodic, adjective: occurring or done in brief, irregular bursts, "spasmodic fighting continued." Caused by, subject to, or in the nature of a spasm or spasms, "a spasmodic cough." Snagged off Google definitions. Sounds pretty accurate.

All of my oneshots are open to be adopted by other phanfictioneers, more than once, and by different people (unless I state otherwise)! All I ask for is a link, and credit, and the mutual agreement not to steal the more specific headcanons without permission. Thank you so much for reading this ridiculously overlong intro.

Enjoy!

SPASMODIC.

a drabbleseries.

written by: Celeste Angela Pichowsky (aka, Fruitiest of Mallards on FF & cellyangiechowski on deviantART)

original "Danny Phantom" concept © Butch Hartman & Nickelodeon

no copyright infringement intended

THE IDEAL OF TRUE LOVE.

Happy, extremely belated Valentine's Day, considering I began, finished, and am uploading this piece in the beginning of March.

Do you believe in true love?

If so, what is your opinion of it?

That's a loaded question, one Danny Fenton turns over again and again in his mind as he walks down the hall. English teachers, Danny's found, are the type most often prone to the strangest, and most clichéd writing prompts. He misses his old English teacher, even though he practically crashes into the man every day. It's a small Illinois school, and Danny's never come within a hundred miles of Chicago. A yellow slip of paper rests between his index and middle fingers, he brandishes it like a weapon when a teacher inevitably confronts him. Okay, maybe that's a little bit dramatic, but, there really, really isn't a single member of staff in Casper High who isn't familiar with his infamous, truant face. He's accustomed to being hounded at every chance. It's only because they care. "Where do you plan to go to college?" "Don't you want to graduate?" "Aren't your parents upset?"

His parents are beyond upset. For various different reasons, that knit together more intricately than they can imagine. 2003, he was a freshman. It's 2004. He's fifteen, and a sophomore. His problems have done nothing but thicken. He didn't ever expect much else from them. Honestly, he's not sure how he received enough credit last year to graduate. He guesses it was just his teachers–an assistant principal-slash-English teacher who goes by Mr. Lancer, namely–scraping the bottom of the barrel, for his sake. He wishes he had the extra time to sit down and feel touched. And guilty. He's going to completely waste their efforts. His excuse? He can't reveal.

He can be helpful. He can cheer up his teacher's day, and fight to remain on their good sides, when he isn't skipping class. Teachers' pet? This is high school. Nobody's stupid enough to mock that. Danny spies football jackets up ahead. Well, almost nobody. He veers to the right. He knows this school like the back of his hand. He'll take another route. He doesn't have the patience to deal with classic bully, Dash Baxter, and his gaggle of idiots, today. The fact Danny's grown taller and–bigger, during the summer, may rule in there somewhere, as well. He was fourteen, in the beginning. He's not the same guy.

Few of them are. Tucker Foley, his best friend, is the golden poster boy of every single last digitally-oriented subject in their district, when the previous year he was universally disdained for hijacking students' grades near constantly. Which, he hasn't stopped. Danny hopes Tuck' didn't learn to lie so easily from watching him. His other best friend, and girlfriend, Samantha Manson, still wears the dark, Gothic-esque clothing she has for...basically as long as he's known her. He'd technically "met" Sam in elementary, but they never really spoke until middle school. Her taste in fashion has tamed since seventh grade, that's for certain. He doesn't want her to stop with the purples and blacks, to be honest. To Danny, those colors are her staple.

Right at the moment, he's doing nothing special. Delivering a message from his homeroom teacher to another, across the opposite side of the building. It doesn't seem important, from the outside-looking-in, but it was nice seeing his teacher looking delightedly surprised, instead of horrified and shocked, after he'd rescued her a week ago from being crushed by a telephone pole Skulker uprooted.

Appreciate the little things.

Sam is thin-lipped.

"...if we mix this substance with the psychode..."

She has no idea what a psychode is. She doesn't care, "So, uh," she starts, "what does any of this has to do with Phantom? I mean, what's so special about him?" It's a dumb thing to ask. What is it about Phantom that isn't special? What is it about her boyfriend that isn't special? Everything is. That's not the point. Jazz, seventeen, working, and a senior, sent her a text during her last period class, explaining the dangerous, surprisingly effective-sounding anti-ghost weapon her parents were developing. Have finished developing. Observing it now, Sam can tell it's been a long time in the making. And it's been kept quiet? In the Fenton home? Often, Danny ventures down to the lab–with a keen eye, perfected out of necessity and sheer experience, after nearly two years half-alive. He hasn't said a word. He didn't know. Doesn't know. His sense alerted him to yet another threat; Spectra, hovering above Casper, waiting to initiate some plan involving who knows what. He hasn't returned, though it's been half-an-hour. Dr. Penelope Spectra is a tricky one.

This is big. Sam hates it.

"Well..." Maddie Fenton, ghost huntress extraordinaire, trails off, "...I guess you're right, sweetheart. We are kind of overdoing it." Her face lights up, "We just got carried away! We have everything we need. Right, Jack?"

Jack blinks, as if awakening from a trance, "Yeah. Exactly," something in his countenance becomes relief. Sam frowns deeply. "We're…always so busy, y'know? Over that little–asshole," he catches himself suddenly, "Sorry for the language, hun." He smiles at her, apologetically. Sam shrugs, feeling disturbed. This is what Danny hears every day? He doesn't come to her? No, of course he doesn't. Hero complex. She hates that, too.

Then again, why should he come to her? She's the one perpetually complaining about her parents. He probably thinks she's selfish–except, this is Danny, and Danny never thinks that of her, at least, not that he lets show. He probably thinks she has enough issues at home. Or, maybe, he just doesn't know how to begin talking about it. She resolves to change that.

"Is everything ready?"

"Yep."

"Then, let's go."

She also resolves to stop Mr. and Mrs. Fenton from destroying their own son.

Maddie hates the Phantom. She doesn't call him Danny, she refuses. In her opinion, he shouldn't even have a name. She hates everything that has to do with him. She hates his grin when he materializes suddenly in their lab, right above her head, apologizing in a tone that offers no apology, and a Fenton weapon, two or three, plonking onto a near desk. Danny hid in his room, last time, when Jack had to shove a fist in his mouth to quit shouting. Maddie hadn't felt much better.

Always a step ahead. She wants to pull her hair out some evenings.

She hates Phantom's white hair, constantly ruffled from some endeavor or another–he accomplishes more feats than she and her husband combined, with seemingly no less than a mere breath of effort. That's another thing. The breathing. How? Why? It is a subconscious habit? Ectoplasmic entities hardly even have those. There's their obsessions, and not a lot besides.

She hates Phantom, for the way his acid green eyes stray to her daughter, her daughter, as if Jazmine has anything to do with…with anything! Maddie hates the boys who come knocking in her daughter's direction by default, but Phantom, she despises. And it's a thousand times more disgusting, considering…

She cringes and tastes bile. His voice is a factor, an echoing mockery of her son's. Her little boy's, one of the three voices in the entire world she's memorized by heart, and can pick out from a crowd of a thousand different inflections and speech patterns. Jack recognizes it, too. They both have, from the very beginning. At first, it blindsided them. All they saw was a ghost. Something to hunt, and catch, and then experiment upon. Then, they got an up-close view. Got to listen.

Maddie doesn't think Jack is ever going to forgive him–it. Phantom. Not a he. An it.

They haven't sat down and told Danny, yet. What are they supposed to say? "Morning, son," a nonchalant swig of orange juice before school ("Yeah, Dad? What's wrong? Mom, what's with the face?"), "Well, it's like this, Danno … remember the accident you had? Months and months back? It's like this..." Maddie knows Jack so well by this point in their marriage, has known him this well for a long time, she can hear the pauses, the repeating, gathering his wits. Because, really, how does anyone put this? "Your heart may have stopped beating, only for a few seconds. Those, those watts … they were bad for you, son. The portal opened, and ectoplasm got through. A ghost used you as its imprint. There, I said it." Oh, Jack. "Now, it flies all across the city, day and night, doing god knows what, with your face. With your identity. We're doing the best we can, son. I swear to god, we are. I'm so sorry, Danny."

(And then Danny would laugh, just laugh, because what the hell. This is too much.)

Danny never talks about it, being hospitalized. Under any circumstances. If anybody brings it up, anybody–Maddie would go as far as to say his friends, too, but she doesn't hear enough of their conversations to be certain–he completely closes in on himself. Looks away. Blocks it out. Maddie wishes she knew what to do. Has it already been a year? More, or less? Danny's flunking math. Algebra is his favorite subject. Or, it was. Astrophysics, rocket science, becoming an astronaut. Nobody could achieve literally reaching the stars without numbers. It's Danny's dream, even though he hasn't mentioned it since…since when?

It doesn't matter, at this very second (it always matters), because what she and Jack are doing is for their son's sake.

It's not a clunky machine. It's sleek, it's slender, and the rat bastard will never see it coming.

Maddie's right. Jack won't forgive. He's the quicker to anger of the pair. Maddie has helped him become a better man, throughout their marriage. He still has his moments. Until recently, there hadn't been reason for the FentonWorks patriarch to lose his temper, but Danny's accident marked a sharp change in their lives, one that came upon them without pretense. The discovery of ghosts, real, touchable and doubtless ghosts, had been fantastic, absolutely fantastic. The price is his son, isn't it?

Jack pictures the bags under Danny's blue eyes, imagines his haggard breathing, chest rising and falling only faintly…the Portal accident took a lot out of them all. Danny, most. His poor, poor son.

It is. Danny is the price. It is a price Jack is not willing to pay.

They–Maddie and he–contemplated shutting down the Portal. It nearly stole Danny from them, their own handiwork. There is a line between being devoted to your job, and being too devoted. A dumb kids' accident? That's exactly what it was. That didn't stop it from being the single most horrible thing to ever happen to them, as parents. It was more severe than the time Jazmine fell from the monkeybars, fracturing her elbow. It was worse than the dog that tried to maul Danny as an infant, around Christmastime. It's no secret Danny's a grump during December. Jack has a feeling he knows the true reason why.

It was four months before Jack and Maddie stepped within five feet of the Portal. They're less leery of it, now, but, the thing that threw Jack off most was when Danny casually frolicked into the lab last week, telling them he got some Chinese takeout for dinner, if they didn't mind. None of the Fentons can cook worth a penny, so no one blamed him (Jack would do it, too, if he could get away with it–Maddie smacked him on the arm). Then, when he thought nobody was looking, Danny's gaze turned to the Portal.

Jack tensed.

A side of Danny's mouth twitched. He was…laughing?

Jack was befuddled. Is befuddled. He hasn't told Maddie. Isn't sure what to say. "Sweetheart, our traumatized son just..." He'd drift off, there.

After that, the ghost attacks worsened in intensity. Phantom appeared more often than ever before. Maddie Fenton nee O'Dwyer and Jack Fenton took an oath: protect the town of Amity Part, and most importantly, their family, regardless of the cost.

So did Danny.

But, they don't know that.

"Dan?"

Danny looks up.

"Don't transmorph tonight again if you don't have to. Your parents are…really serious, about this."

Danny's fifteen years old. That doesn't postpone the swell of love in his chest. "I can't make any promises. But, thanks Sammy." He's thrilled when she doesn't sour at the nickname. They've got the rest of their lives (half-lives) ahead of them. He already knows who he's going to marry. Thinking too far ahead? He doesn't care. He doesn't tell her that, either. The last thing he wants is to scare her with commitment on top of everything else. "Where is everybody?"

She sighs. "Exactly where they're supposed to be, Danny. Safe and sound. Don't worry." Eye roll. He never gets tired of it. "Do you really have to keep track of everything?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, I do keep track of everything," which is the wrong thing to say, because suddenly her dark violet eyes are flashing in alarm. It's a second before he understands what he said, "Uh…well, yeah," there's no point lying. He lies to everyone, literally everyone, but her and Tuck. He wishes he could include Jazz in that list, too.

"Danny," Sam breathes, shaking her head, Danny feels the sensation of her skin against his, just a simple touch of palms, and blinks. As much as he resents the setbacks that come with being a teenager, the hormones are too hard to resist. It's not long at all before the night is lost in a blur of hands and sounds he can't believe are coming from him–or–or…Sam.

Sam.

"Did you complete your assignment, Mr. Fenton?"

"I sure did."

"Well, may I have it, then?"

"What? Uh–oh, yeah. Um. It kind of got…destroyed."

"What?"

"Some things went wrong this morning. In the lab. My parents think a ghost sabotaged their new invention or something."

"All…right. And why, pray tell, was your homework doing in your parents' laboratory?"

"Uhh…that's a long story. I was showing my girlfriend some cool stuff, and, uh. Things kind of got…out of hand?"

"Too much information, Mr. Fenton."

(Snickering.)

"Hey, shut the hell up, back there!" (Danny's scarier than he used to be. They obey.)

"I've spoken to your parents about this, Mr. Fenton. They cannot, and will not allow their vendetta against Phantom to get in the way of your grades. Your father explicitly told me so over the phone. I can't find it in myself to disagree with him! I can't imagine how you got in there, in the first place. Last I heard, you were forbidden from entering that lab."

"Aww, man, Teach'. Please, don't call 'em!" (It physically pains Danny to pretend to be a moron.) "My dad's…really pissed off." (Was Mom starting to cry before Danny phased through the ceiling for school? He tries not to think about it.)

"Well, Pilgrim's Progress, Mr. Fenton. I can't imagine why!"