Gravity & Other Unreliable Things

Summary: Danny has been keeping a secret from everyone ever since the incident. He has been able to hide it only through his bond with Sam and Tucker. However - after the trio is scattered across the country for their first year of college things fall apart and he's forced to tell them the truth about himself. A truth more terrifying than if he was just half-ghost.

Warnings: Danny x Sam, and mentions of Tucker x Valerie. This story is a gentle AU. I've bent Danny's origin storyline a little. Also, in this story no one besides Sam, Tucker, Jazz, Vlad, and Danny's parents know about his powers. This is about one year after their high school graduation.

Chapter One

A gratuitous gaggle of phone calls interrupts someone's beauty sleep.

Ring ring.

Ugh.

"...Hello?"

"Hi, Sam!"

"Do you have any idea what time it is, Jazz?"

"... Eight thirty?"

Sam rubbed her eyes furiously, shifting the phone in her hands. It was too fucking early to be speaking on the phone.

"Its too fucking early."

"Sorry - I can call back?"

"No, it's fine. What's up?"

"Just calling to check in." Jazz hummed from the other end of the line. Sam's eyes narrowed.

"Oh, really?" She asked, getting up out of her bed and pinching the cellphone in between her cheek and her shoulder as she rubbed sleep from her eyes.

"I hadn't heard from you in a while and-"

Sam rolled the crusts from her eyes around between two fingers.

"-just wanted to check in and-"

"If you want to talk to Danny you should probably call him." Sam snapped irritably. It was way too early in the morning to be talking to Jazz Fenton. It was much to early to be thinking about Danny Fenton. In fact, it was much to early - in Sam's opinion - to do much of anything other than hit snooze repeatedly and sink further and further into the recesses of her goose down comforter. She didn't even have class on Thursdays until noon and she usually slept in until eleven or eleven fifteen. She was a creature of the night. Apparently, Jazz Fenton was not.

"What happened?" Jazz asked after a long pause in which Sam could practically hear the gears whizzing around in the other girl's head.

"Nothing!" Sam's hand gesticulated wildly, even though Jazz could not see, "Nothing happened!" It was almost entirely the truth.

"How come I don't believe that?"

"Because you psychoanalyze everything around you. That tends to be your-"

"Or maybe-" Jazz interrupted, "Because neither you nor Danny have returned any of my calls for over a week."

"Maybe its none of your business."

There was a long pause on the line before she heard Jazz heave a gigantic sigh. It was reminiscent of the way Mrs. Fenton used to sigh at Sam, Tucker, and Danny when they had gotten detention for the umpteenth time. A long winded we'll-talk-about-this-later-young-man kind of sigh not. Not to be confused with the I'm-very-disappointed-in-you sigh, though the two were related. No, this was the kind of sigh that Sam suspected you had to get a lot of practice in to nail down the right amount of exasperation.

"I know it really isn't any of my business, but I'm really worried. About you and Danny."

"You mean Danny?"

"You're my friend, Sam. I'd like to think that we've gotten a lot closer over the past year."

Sam frowned, picking at her nails. The Nebulous Abyss black of her painted nail was slightly chipped along the outermost ridge. She inspected it closely in front of her face. Of course Jazz was her friend. It was complicated.

"You're my friend Jazz." She admitted softly, "Of course you are. You just also happen to be my ex-boyfriend's big sister. Things are... complicated."

Jazz was quiet for a moment.

"Ex?" She questioned gently.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"How about I come visit you?" Jazz asked suddenly, "Maybe this weekend?"

"You don't have to drive all the way down here..." Sam started, "Really - its not a big deal."

"Saturday?"

"I have finals."

"Maybe-"

Sam stopped this train of thought before it even started.

"Even if you come here I still don't want to talk about it." Sam warned. She knew that Jazz would pry whatever she wanted out of her. And really, she was still stinging from the latest upheaval of her and Danny's relationship. Maybe Jazz would have some insight into how her idiot brother thought. Because Sam sure as hell didn't get it.

"I'm also not in the mood to host. Really, you shouldn't come. I'm no fun at all." She continued, "Besides. Its almost summer break. I'll see you in a few weeks anyways."

"...Fine." Jazz said from the end of the line before hanging up and that was that. Sam groaned, looking down at her phone.

Great.

For some reason this seemed backwards to Sam. Shouldn't Jazz be on Danny's side in this whole breakup ordeal? After all they were blood related. Then again, Jazz had always been a bit of a strange older sister. Sam brushed her hair absently, weighing the pros and cons of going back to sleep before realizing she wouldn't be able to anyways. Just the mention of Danny had her emotional. She frowned, sawing through a particularly rough knot at the mere thought of him.

Danny made no sense. Not that he had made sense before. Their relationship was defined by polarities, dotted by spectacularly fantastic fights and make ups. For the past few months things had gotten more turbulent than normal. Add to the equation that Danny was hundreds of miles away and... Sam sniffed for a moment. She was not going to cry. She did not cry.

She had just thought that things would have been different. The three of them - Tucker, Danny and her - had been through so much. They had shared the weight of responsibility throughout high school. Everyone always said that college was different, but Sam hadn't really thought things would become so broken.

Jazz was living in Amity Park with Danny's parents, interning at North Mercy Hospital in the psyche ward during her final year of college. Soon she would be a full-fledged certified shrink. If anything the closer she got to completing her program the more nosy she got. She also got extremely more accurate in her readings of people.

Tucker was studying computer engineering at MIT in Cambridge.

Sam was in Washington DC, studying liberal studies.

And Danny was the furthest from them all. He had traveled all the way to Berkeley, California to study astrophysics at the University of California. He had originally planned to go to school closer to home, but miraculously had gotten an acceptance letter back from his hail mary of a college application. They had all been surprised. Not that Danny wasn't smart. He was brilliant, but the ghost hunting had pretty much decimated his GPA in high school. A mysterious benefactor had written Danny an eloquent letter of recommendation. It didn't hurt that this anonymous admirer was an alma mater of the University of California Berkeley. It had taken a whole five minutes to figure out the letter-writer had been Mr. Lancer.

And so - they were scattered across the country.

It hadn't been so bad at first. Tucker and Sam were close enough to drive and visit each other on weekends, and Danny visited home when he could. They would spend breaks together. The trip from California to Washington DC was difficult and so the first few quarters of freshman year Sam hadn't seen him very much.

However, about five months into being long distance Danny had suddenly appeared outside of her Women's and Gender Studies class.

She had been walking out of class, looking down at her notes when her physically attractive and stubbornly feminist roommate Jules had paused.

"Do you know that guy?" She had asked softly and Sam looked up to see Jules' pretty face frowning critically. Her violet eyes followed to see what poor boy was getting the brunt of Jules's 'stay-back-creep' stare before seeing a familiar quaff of brunette hair and baby blue eyes.

"Danny?"

He was there in three long strides. Sam had dropped her bag and let herself get enveloped in his hug, Danny's windswept hair tickling her cheek as she noted that he had grown a good inch since she had last seen him. And he had... scruff? It was becoming. She felt a blush start to creep across her cheeks at the thought.

She was certain that Jules was scrabbling around for her unhinged jaw. After all - she had only described Danny to her roommate. They were so long distance that he had never actually visited her campus or met any of her new friends.

"How in the hell did you get here - don't you have class?!" Sam had whispered, more like hissed at him, although she was not-so-secretly glad he was there.

And he had just pulled her in for a long dazzling icy kiss and then brought his lips close to her ear, making her shiver - she had forgotten how cold his breath, and touch, was.

"I jumped." He whispered conspiratorially, pulling back and giving Sam a wink.

"You - what?"

"Tell you about it later." He promised, "Want to get dinner?"

He had gotten a new power? Teleportation? Sam felt a thrill go through her at the thought of him being able to come visit whenever he wanted. She didn't realize the larger implications of what he was telling her, however.

"Aren't you going to introduce me?" He elbowed Sam gently.

Oh yeah- right.

"Danny - this is Jules, my roommate. Jules, this is my boyfriend."

"Danny." Danny gave her his best grin, shaking her hand before rubbing the back of his neck shyly.

That had been six months ago.

Sam shook her head a little at that realization. Already their first year of college was drawing to a close. In a week there would be finals and then she would be heading back to Amity to... She felt a sadness creep through her being at the realization that her best friend and her were no longer on speaking terms. The sadness melted into anger - frustration - because really, there was no reason why Danny and her should be anything other than friends - if not lovers. They had been through too much to not be in each other's lives anymore. If anything, it had felt like Danny had shoved her away from him. He had shoved everyone away. He had moved off to California and had left them all behind. It was so selfish. Sam, Tucker, and Jazz were the only ones that knew about his secret - that really knewhim. Why would he just go off and leave?

She didn't understand it. She didn't know if she ever really would. She did know that summer break was going to be weird without going to the movies and playing video games and hunting ghosts until the wee hours of the morning.

Sam was halfway through her day, making her way to her three-o-clock history class when her phone vibrated again.

...Ember, you will remember - Ember, one thing remains...

"Tuck." Sam greeted, flicking it up as she paused along the main thoroughfare.

"Hey Sam." Tucker's voice resounded through speaker.

"What's up?"

"When is your last final next week?" Tucker asked. Sam could hear the sound of clacking keyboards and the mumble of voices in the background, "Because I was thinking that we could try and carpool or something. We don't both need our cars right?"

Sam frowned at the thought of having to be stuck in Tucker's beat up Datsun for two whole days it would take to get back to Amity Park.

"My last final is on Thursday." She told him.

"Great!" Sam could feel the force of Tucker's smile through the phone, "That work's out perfectly. Mine's Thursday night. Why don't I head over Friday morning, pick you up, and we head back together?"

Ever since Danny drifted away from them both Tucker and Sam had only grown closer. Not that they hadn't been close before. Their friendship had been something completely unique and strong in its own way. The two of them had a kind of bickering humor - a friendship that hadn't gotten tainted by romance or strained by relationships. It was still pure.

"Alright, fine." Sam relented, "But my hybrid would get better gas milage."

"I need to be able to drive to Valerie's and back over break."

Sam already had known this excuse was coming. She remembered that her response to this would have been 'Oh yeah? Well I have to use my hybrid to go over to Danny's too.' and which then Tucker would have replied 'Danny can just jump to your house. I need my Datsun.'

Sam swallowed the lump in her throat. Tucker seemed to sense the way the conversation had soured and had accurately guessed the reason why.

"It'll be okay, Sam." He said softly. Sam knew that Tucker was hurt as well, in his own way, by how Danny had treated him lately. Although Sam was certain that Danny still talked to Tucker on the phone.

"Yeah, whatever. Let's just pollute the environment even more that in already is." Could she get through one full day without talking about Danny Fenton?

"Hey, my baby isn't that bad." Tucker joked, "Besides, I just tricked her out with a new stereo system."

Sam groaned internally. Great. Now she had to be stuck listening to Tucker's terrible music taste at fifty thousand decibels.

"See you Friday."

"Yup." She hung up.

She managed to get through the rest of her day without another interruption or memory of her ex. She spent the remaining hours of sunlight studying with her roommate in the grassy lawn near their apartment complex. The studying was a great distraction for the dread she felt in her stomach. Not for the first time she wished she had gotten an internship, a job, something, anything so that she didn't have to go back to Amity Park this summer. Besides Foley there was nothing there. Her parents - while getting along a little better now that she had her distance - were still a big pain in her ass. Her grandmother was living in a retirement home in the next town over. Most of the people she went to high school with she detested. There were no more ghosts to hunt now that the Fentons and closed their Fenton portal. Jazz was going to be poised ready to psychoanalyze her the minute she stepped across the border and always memories of Danny would be haunting her every footstep.

Jules looked up at her, smiling, before her smile faded at her roommate's gloomy mood. Not that Sam wasn't usually gloomy.

Jules Matthews was the same age as her, their birthdays were a mere fifteen days apart. She had long blonde hair and a slender frame that reminded Sam of Star. She was petite and pretty in a pointy way, but had a vulgar mouth and a fierce hot-headedness about her that scared off most suitors. Sam was still unsure if Jules was interested in men or women - or interested in anyone at all. She had never shown any real emotion other than disdain for anyone that had attempted romance upon her. However, she was a frighteningly protective friend and the best kind of study partner.

"First wave Feminism." She pointed a red painted nail down at her notes and then, with the air of a drill sergeant, pointed to Sam, "Go."

Sam recited the history dutifully, but her heart really wasn't in it.

"Hey." Jules said breathlessly, "I think we've done enough studying. Want to go get veggie wraps, some Charles Shaw, and binge watch Girls?"

God bless this woman, Sam thought to herself.

Ring, ring.

Sam felt an extreme case of deja vu settle over her. Only this morning there was a dull ache somewhere behind her eyes that only came with too many glasses of wine the night before.

She fumbled for her cellphone for a long moment, flipping it open, not bothering to look at the caller ID. The only people that would call her this early were her parents and one Jazz Fenton. And since Jazz had just called her not three days ago that meant it was just her parents.

"Seriously. It's too early. Call back in an hour." She mumbled into the phone, hanging up and putting it back on her bedside table.

She had just curled back into her covers with a long satisfactory sigh, closed her eyes and started to drift when...

Ring, ring.

Ok. Seriously.

She gritted her teeth and let the phone ring itself into silence. Perfect. No one would call back again after that. Certainly not her parents, although, Sam was certain she was in for a verbal lip-lashing later. She was fine with that. The bed was much to comfortable to abandon for another hour or two, at least.

Ring, ring.

"Of course not." She groaned, answering the phone again, "What?" She snapped, not holding back the attitude. Maybe this would teach her mother to call at ten not eight.

"Don't hang up." Said a voice that was definitely not her mother's.

Sam froze, her heart pounded and she sunk weakly back into the bed.

"Danny?" She hissed, instantly feeling defensive. His voice was a little deeper than she had remembered, but it was recognizable, "I thought we were currently pretending each other doesn't exist." Her voice dripped in sarcasm, "Pretty sure that means you don't call me. And definitely not at eight in the morning."

"I know." He answered softly. He sounded unsure and almost... scared.

Good, thought Sam grumpily. He had some nerve.

"You have exactly one minute, no more, no less. Beginning now."

Sam tapped her fingers along her sheets.

"Right." Danny stated matter-of-factly, "I need to see you."

He paused, expecting a tantrum. Which, Sam happily obliged.

"What makes you think I want to see you? You have no right. You pushed me away, stopped coming over, said we needed to take a break... You ignore me for months, won't return any of my calls -" She was really laying it thick right now, feeling her throat get choked, "You - You hurt my feelings Daniel James Fenton." It felt like a vast understatement, but hopefully the sound of her fluttering heart was conveyed through the serious and deliberate use of his middle name.

"I know." Danny said weakly, "But-"

"I thought we were friends-"

"We are friends. We're more than friends."

"Friends call friends back."

"I'm calling you back now."

"Oh, to what do I owe this great honor of your attention?"

"Please, Sam."

"It's been a minute." Actually, Sam wasn't entirely sure if it was a minute or not, but she was done listening to him, "Good night." Actually, it was technically good morning, but Sam felt was easily flustered by the sound of Danny's voice and in all dramatic movie scenes heated phone calls always ended with a curt Good night, sir.

"Wait - Sam. Please." His voice broke, and she paused. She hesitantly placed the phone back to her ear just to hear his last remark.

"Please." He whispered, "Don't hang up."

Sam had never heard his voice sound like that.

"What's going on, Danny?"

"We need to talk. I need to see you."

"Why? Why now?"

"Because I miss you." Danny admitted.

Sam knew there was something else that he wasn't saying. She frowned severely. Danny sounded... a little unstable to be honest. He sounded.. distraught. Distraught was a good word for it. His tone of voice was enough to make her worried.

"I miss you too." She admitted softly after a long pause. She could hear his breath softly on the other line, waiting for her decision. Would she see him? Sam ran a hand down her face, almost gouging out her eyeballs. God dammit this boy made her so mad! How dare he just pirouette right back into her life. Well, he did sound pretty remorseful on the phone, maybe he did regret it... No, she had given him a second chance - and a third.

"Sam?" He asked unsurely, "Please?" It sounded nice to hear him beg her.

She lifted her eyes to her dorm room ceiling, her lips silently forming a tiny prayer to the crack along the far east corner.

"Fine." She breathed, "Coffee. We'll talk for thirty minutes. That's it."

"When?"

"In two hours." Sam glanced at the clock. Wasn't like she was going back to sleep anyways.

"Uh.." Danny mumbled.

"Is that inconvenient for you?" Sam snapped, irritated.

"No - no-" Sam could practically see him waving his hands on the other end of the line, see him rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "It's just that.. I'm flying in tomorrow morning."

"You're flying? Across the country?" She asked dryly, her eyebrow raising, clearly doubting Danny's physical endurance of flying all the way to D.C.

"Like, on a plane." Danny continued.

Two things hit Sam then. One: Danny wasn't just teleporting. Why would he spend unnecessary money when he could teleport? Two: He had already bought a plane ticket. He had been assuming she would say yes. She gritted her teeth and clenched her hand that wasn't holding her phone, giving it a small shake at Danny's disembodied voice.

"So, why are you taking a plane? Like peanuts that much?" She asked conversationally after a long moment of strangling Danny's invisible neck from hundreds of miles away.

"No. I just haven't jumped in a while. I'm rusty. See you tomorrow, then?"

She frowned as he expertly weaseled his way out of that line of questioning, but didn't care enough to press him. Really, she shouldn't care at all what Danny did. But she did. She cared. A lot.

"Right. Eleven. Don't be late."

"I won't."

Sam rolled her eyes and was about to hang up.

"Sam?"

"What? You're already way over your allotted minute, Fenton. I have plenty of other things to do besides talk to you." Her sarcasm was lacking in its normal bite. She had enjoyed talking with him - enjoyed knowing he was still alive somewhere over in California.

"Like sleep?" Sam could hear Danny's smile from through the line.

"Maybe."

"Thanks." His voice was quiet. He paused like he was going to say something more, before, "Sorry I woke you. Bye."

"Bye." Sam whispered, looking down at her phone.