The Hazards of Humming

Written for Phanniemay '16, Day 24: Music

(inspired/requested by lunagalemaster)

"Is that… Billy Joel?"

Sam and Tucker crept down into the FentonWorks lab, in awe of the sound drifting quietly up the stairs. "Danny's downstairs doing homework," Jazz had said offhand when she'd answered the door, as usual. They'd thanked her and had made the usual trek to the basement.

"Danny must have the radio on. Weird. He usually has earphones in," Tucker said.

Sam shrugged and they continued down the stairs. Once they reached the bottom, they realized that Danny wasn't listening to the song on the radio. He was singing the song. Sam didn't think she'd ever heard Danny sing. The two stood at the bottom of the stairs, not wanting to disturb the music.

He was singing Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young." The more Sam stood and listened to the catchy tune, the more she noticed a fuzzy feeling creepy over her brain, almost as if someone was tucking her brain in with a warm blanket. The music was just so good.

Beside her, Tucker felt the same way. How could anyone's voice be this soothing? He wondered as his mind grew numb. He relaxed, shoulders slouching and allowing the straps of his backpack to slip down his arms and onto the floor with a heavy thud. Tucker paid the sound no mind. Sure, there were hundreds of dollars worth of drop-sensitive electronics in the bag, but did it really matter? No, he decided. Not while he had this music.

The music didn't last much longer. Danny started at the sound of Tucker's dropped backpack, cutting off his singing abruptly. When the music stopped, Sam blinked a few times, feeling like she was waking up from a long nap. Tucker shook his head a little, looking around. "Oh hey, Danny," he said as Danny leapt up from his seat and ran towards them. "Wait. Why's my backpack on the floor?"

"I am so, so sorry, guys. I didn't think you were getting here for another twenty minutes and Jazz never comes downstairs so I thought it was safe and-" Danny babbled nervously, helping Tucker and Sam into a pair of lab chairs.

"I… I don't feel so great," Sam said, clutching her head. "What just happened?"

"Yeah, my head feels funny," Tucker said, his posture mirroring Sam's. "Do you think there's a gas leak down here? Well, maybe not. You look fine, Danny, so I dunno what just hit us."

"That would be, umm, my fault," Danny said, pulling up a chair to sit in front of them. "Actually, let me run up and get you guys some water or soda or something and I'll explain."

He was back before either of the other two had even registered his absence holding two sweaty glasses of bubbly amber liquid, a third glass tucked under his arm carefully. Tucker held his glass in slightly shaky hands and took a sip. Ginger ale, just what his mother always gave him when he felt sick. He rolled the carbonated liquid around his mouth before swallowing, trying to get rid of the slightly stale taste in his mouth.

Beside him, Sam downed half the glass in an attempt to lose the dry feeling in her throat before stopping to sip the rest. She savored the ginger flavor for a moment before speaking. "Danny, what just happened?"

Danny took a deep breath and settled in his chair, rolling his glass between his hands. "I don't think I've ever done this in front of you guys because I really only tend to do it when I'm alone and bored. Humming and singing's a habit I picked up years ago as a way to pass the time and to try to get rid of whatever song was stuck in my head. I noticed a few months after the accident that flying and invisibility and the others aren't the only powers I got when I became half-ghost. I also… Have you guys ever heard of sirens? Like in The Odyssey? I think we covered that in Lancer's class sophomore year."

"What are you saying?" Tucker asked, confused. The fog hadn't quite lifted from his brain.

"Are you saying that when you sing, it's like in the Greek myths?" Sam asked. The ginger ale must've helped her head to clear faster, Tucker thought. Definitely not that she paid more attention than me in class.

"Whenever I try to hold even a tiny bit of a tune," Danny confirmed. "People who listen for more than a few seconds get kind of… well, like you guys just were."

Tucker felt as if his mind was finally starting to clear. He upended the cup and swallowed the last of his ginger ale. "Why haven't you told us about this, man? We could've, I dunno…"

Danny flashed him a slightly pained smile, shaking his head. "Not much for you guys to do. It's no big deal, really, it doesn't hurt me or anything. I just gotta watch where I hum, right? Can't have people tuning out when they're driving or something. That's actually how I started to figure it out. I was singing along with the radio in the back of the GAV with Mom and Dad and Dad started to go off the road. Thankfully it wasn't during rush hour or something. I panicked and kinda reached through Dad to grab the wheel and get us back on the road. I thought for sure they'd figured out my secret since I was so obvious but they started shaking their heads a few seconds later like they'd just woken up. I snuck back to the back of the GAV and pretended nothing had happened."

"Jeez, dude," Tucker remarked.

"Tell me about it," Danny replied. "I had a suspicion but it wasn't until one night at dinner Jazz mentioned not being able to focus on her college essays. She said she kept zoning out. Jazz never zones out. She's like the Terminator when it comes to staying on task. I stopped humming while washing the dishes and she got the essays done the next day."

"Why haven't you told us about it? It's not too much weirder than anything else you've been able to do," Sam said, placing her own glass on the table behind her. "If anything, it seems like it'd be pretty useful when trying to catch ghosts, like using Ember's powers for good."

"I'm not going to use this to catch ghosts. Or for anything else," Danny answered forcefully, surprising his friends with his vehemence. "I really, really try not to use it, ever."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you," Sam said, verbally taking a step back. She'd realized lately that she'd been pretty overbearing when it came to her friends. "Do you mind if I ask why?"

Danny let out a breath. "It just feels horrible, you know? I don't wanna have that sort of power over people. Overshadowing is bad enough but at least for that I have to physically possess someone and do things. You guys didn't see yourselves just now. You would have done anything I asked you to. It's…" He looked down at his hands. "I try to use my powers to help people. To fight the bad guys. This power just feels too… Vladdish. It's slimy. Skeevy. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth." He looked up to see a small smile on Sam's face. "Why are you smiling?" He asked, suddenly annoyed. "This is some serious heart-to-heart stuff I'm telling you guys."

"It's just… you've got all this power and you've had it for a while, right? It seems like you're really taking Uncle Ben's advice: 'With great power, comes great responsibility'," Sam quoted. "You have a power that a lot of people would use to do shitty things and instead you've decided not to use it at all. That's something that not a lot of people would be able to do."

"Come on, I'm a teenage boy. Surely I'm not the one with the best moral compass around here," Danny scoffed, annoyance forgotten.

"I'm serious. This whole time you could have been refining this power to the point where you could change someone's mind with a whistle. That's what Vlad would do. That's what a lot of people would do, if only to make their life easier," Sam said.

"She's got a point," Tucker said, crossing his arms. "I can't say I wouldn't use that to, say, get into the girl's locker room."

"Dammit, Tuck," Danny said, shoulders shaking as he tried not to laugh. Sam elbowed Tucker in the side a little harder than she needed to.

"Ouch! Come on, Sam. It's not like Danny hasn't snuck in there before. He's more than able to," Tucker continued, dragging Danny down into the metaphorical hole he was digging.

"I'm revoking the Spider-Man quote," Sam said, massaging her temples with her fingers. "No responsibility here."

"All this time I just thought your singing voice went to shit after puberty and you were too embarrassed to sing along with stuff," Tucker said, shaking his head. "Guess ghost puberty is weirder than human puberty?"

Danny finally drank some of his soda, rolling his eyes.

"Yeah, any other weird ghostly changes we should know about?" Sam asked jokingly.

Danny choked on his ginger ale.

A/N:

Thanks so much to lunagalemaster for suggesting a siren au when I was stuck on prompts for Phanniemay. You're a lifesaver!

Unfortunately, this is the last of my finished oneshots for now. As school gets going, I'll be working to get what else I've written finished and fit for publishing. As always, comments/critiques very much appreciated (:

-attu