So. Yeah. It's officially a week late, but sapphireswimming and DannyPhantomSG1 actually managed to finish a collab for Dannyversary. Woot woot.

It was particularly hard this year because I (DPSG1) am currently living in Florida working full time at Disney World while Catherine (sapphireswimming) is working as a full time student at college far away from me. It's been rough. But Danny brought us together.

And Tucker too, I guess. Yeah he did.

And we finished this lovely collab. It was supposed to be funny, but it ended up angsty. But we should have seen that coming. So yes. Enjoy some bro bonding. Because there is not enough Danny and Tucker friendship in the world.

Katzenjammer

n. hangover; distress; a discordant clamor

April 10, 2013

Tucker felt a heavy weight fall lazily upon his shoulder and rolled his eyes. Not again.

Without looking, he poked the form next to him, but received no response other than a soft grumble.

"Danny. Dude, seriously. I think you've had enough. And this is me saying it."

Danny's head lolled in his direction and graced him with a too-wide smile. "You cannever have enough, Tuck!"

Casting him a sympathetic glance, Tucker softly pulled the tenth empty glass from Danny's hand, aided by the fact that his friend would randomly phase in and out of tangibility.

"No," Danny murmured to the air in front of him, face no longer smiling. "Never have enough..."

"I think," Tucker said, "you actually can, Danny. No more for you."

Tucker absently handed the empty glass to the bartender without taking his eyes off of his friend. "You want to go home yet?" he asked quietly.

"Home..." came the garbled reply, the voice thick with drink and emotion.

"Yeah," he said. "Home. You know, that place where you live?" A pause. "Or you can crash at my place if you'd rather." After watching the emotions that crossed Danny's face just then, "You know what? Never mind. Forget I said anything. We can just stay here for a while."

"I wanna 'nother blah-dee-thingy," jumbled words fell from Danny's lips as he attempted to lift his head and look at the bartender. Tucker just shook his head.

"No, Danny. No. More."

"But I wanna-"

"No, Danny. Come on, man. You can't keep doing this. You need to talk to someone. You can't just drink this away."

"I don't needa talk 'bout 'nything!" Danny flailed suddenly, eyes flashing a momentary green before settling back into their drunken blue.

Tucker ignored the outburst, but put a hand on Danny's shoulder. "Yeah man," he agreed with subdued sarcasm, "that's why you've been here for the past four nights. You know you can't keep this up forever."

Tucker watched as Danny's face changed. It fell gradually from delirious frustration to a calm tranquility. He closed his eyes slowly, whispering out, "Has it really been four nights of this?"

Tucker sighed. "Yep. We have been partying hard this week, haven't we?"

Danny snorted. "Some party."

Tucker paused, cautiously looking down at his own drink before pushing further. "So...why exactly have we been partying it up this week, bro?"

Danny's face closed off until Tucker couldn't find a trace of emotion in it. His jaw worked for a moment and then he turned to face the wall in front of him.

"You know why."

Tucker coughed awkwardly. "You can't win every fight, Danny. And you can't drink them away for that matter, either." He bit his lip, continuing to evade eye contact. He didn't want to step too far.

Danny muttered something unintelligible.

"Couldn't understand you, dude," Tucker smirked.

"I said 'I can try,'" Danny said defensively.

Tucker chuckled. "No. You really can't. Not as long as I'm here to look after you," he said, patting his best friend on the shoulder.

Danny was quiet for a long moment. "Party-pooper," he said, the sides of his mouth threatening to turn upward despite the way they trembled.

"It's not much of a party to begin with if you're just doing it to forget," Tucker nudged.

"Yeah..." Danny slowly agreed. "But what..." he trailed off again until Tucker wondered if he was going to continue or if the drinking hadn't affected Danny more than he'd originally suspected.

"But then what am I supposed to do?" he whispered hoarsely.

Tucker looked up thoughtfully, staring at the wall that was covered in various alcoholic beverages and the bar mirror. He could see Danny in the reflection trying hard not to cry or pass out from his drunken stupor. He couldn't decide which one his friend was closest to.

He didn't know how much of this Danny would remember in the morning. He hadn't seemed to recall much from their previous nights out, but his ghost half must have given him some sort of advantage over the average drinker and would probably remember enough that Tucker would have to say something. He couldn't just leave a friend hanging.

"You just...keep going," was the best advice Tucker could manage in the heat of the moment.

He winced as Danny lifted his eyes to glare at him via the mirror behind the bar.

"Heh, I suppose that is a little cliché, isn't it?" He paused. "But I'm serious. You keep going."

"I've just...I try, but it's never good enough," Danny slurred, reaching for a glass instinctively and grunting when none was found.

Tucker diverted his attention away from the lack of alcohol in front of him with a, "Hey, look at me." And once he had his undivided- if somewhat blurry- attention, he continued, "Whenever you try, you try your hardest and there's nothing more anyone can do."

"I feel like there should be more I can do. Because...I should," Danny blinked twice, confused by his own logic.

Because I'm the hero. Tucker heard what Danny meant to say, even if he couldn't find the words through the haze. Because the hero's always supposed to win.

"Even superheroes don't win every battle, dude. At least, not the way they want to," Tucker chose his words carefully. "But this," he gestured to their surroundings, "is not the way to deal with losing."

Danny bristled. "Yeah? And what is? Because obviously, whatever I've been doing since I was fourteen hasn't been working." Each word was surprisingly clear as he spat them out.

Something in Tucker snapped in that moment. He wasn't sure if it was the alcohol or the fact that he'd been trying to keep his cool while dealing with this for the past four nights in a row, but he felt a subtle jab in Danny's words.

"What, and you think only your life has been affected since we were fourteen? You think you're the only one with problems?"

Danny jerked back with the first outburst, but said nothing as Tucker continued talking. It seemed like a switch had been pulled and for the life of him he could not stop the words that suddenly poured out of him.

"How dare you, Danny. You're my best friend, and I've been there for you through all of this. I know it's been hard for you and that you have all this responsibility, but do you think you're alone? Have you been running around fighting battles by yourself for years? Do you think Sam and Jazz and I don't follow you everywhere we can possibly go, and when you do have to fight by yourself, do you think we just go home and completely forget about you and everything else you're doing?

"Well, we don't, alright? We never forget about you. How can we, when our entire lives revolve around helping you fight the ghosts here? I mean not that we mind because it's the right thing to do and we've all known that for a long time, but do you really think that you're the only one who's given up on their dreams to fight ghosts? Do you? Have you thought about why Jazz came back after college even though she must have had twenty job offers as soon as she graduated? Did you even think that I might have wanted to-" he broke off, breathing so hard that his throat choked up.

"...maybe I wanted to have a life outside of this," he clarified, not daring to indulge in his own forgotten dreams of love and fortune.

Danny, fueled by rage and intoxication, balled his hands and allowed his eyes to glow plainly. "Well, if you want to have that life, you're free to go live it!"

"Enough with the pity party, Danny!" Tucker yelled right back at him, standing up from the barstool. "I get that you're the one with the powers, okay? I get that. And I know that you don't want to live that life. You never have. And I don't want it either. I tried that for a while—remember?— and it didn't turn out so well.

"But you know what? You have the ghost powers. Which means that you can do something." He jabbed a finger at Danny's chest for emphasis. "You can fight. You can save people. You can literally fly through walls and pick them out of harm's way and shoot lasers out of your hands. Sam and Jazz and me? We are at your side, fighting every single fight with you. But we can't do any of that. We can't get to people in time because we can't fly. We can't get into the burning building because we can't go intangible. We can't jump in front of someone to take a blast because we can't put up our hands and automatically have a shield there. We're human, Danny! We're just human."

He stopped yelling long enough to recognize blue eyes blinking blankly at him.

Shudders ran through him and he swallowed heavily as he deflated. "So don't you dare try to tell me that you're the only one who can feel this way. Don't you dare," he repeated as he sank back into his seat.

"No one ever told you you had to stick around, Tucker. Nothing's keeping you here," Danny said darkly, his voice completely steady.

Tucker picked his face out of his hands and stared over at Danny in shock. He hadn't meant to let loose with that tirade, but at the same time, he never imagined that his friend would respond like that. "No, that's not... what I meant... Danny..."

"I don't need you to sit here and tell me what I can and can't do, and I don't need you to yell at me for forcing you to have such a horrible life," Danny looked him straight in the eye, and Tucker almost jumped out of his seat from the intensity of his stare.

He thought for a second that the eyes flickered green and suddenly Tucker wondered what he had gotten himself into. He'd never meant to push that hard. He'd expressly tried to avoid a confrontation like that every night as they sat in the bar. It was Danny who was hurting now and trying to wash it away with alcohol. He needed to step up and be there for the guy, not antagonize him, no matter what issues they were all having.

"No one's asking me to stay here," Tucker said lowly, and he saw a glimmer of worry mixed with anger pass through his friend's features, "but no one needs to ask. I'm staying here because I want to be there for you, Danny. You're my best friend. And I want to help you more than I want to have my own life.

"It might sound as cliché as telling you that you've gotta keep going...but it's true. We're all doing everything we can, and we're all doing it together. Because we care about each other. We care about you. And that's why I'm not letting you come back here tomorrow night, and that's why I'm gonna let you crash at my place tonight.

Danny stared at him warily, as if he wasn't sure what to make of the quick change in Tucker's attitude. Everything seemed to take longer to process tonight and he also didn't want to completely let go of the warm anger inside him, knowing the feeling that would replace it.

He squinted and slurred out, part question, part challenge: "Now you... think you can tell me what I can and can't do...?"

"Yeah," Tucker said, "I do. Because I'm your best friend, and I've been your best friend for years. And you're not thinking clearly because you've had a hard week…no, you've had a hard life," Danny visibly winced at this. "So, yeah, I think I can tell you what to do because you're my friend, and I care about you. And I know you'd do the same for me. That's what I'm trying to tell you, Danny. You don't have to drink all night, and you don't have to hold all your guilt and emotions inside. Because I'm here for you. We all are. And we share that same burden. We do it all together, and that's what makes us…us."

Danny took in the speech in dumbstruck silence, his clouded eyes becoming shiny with emotion. He opened his mouth to respond, then closed it, lips trembling.

"Tucker..." was all he was able to get out before the first tears began to fall.

It only took Tucker a split second to pull his friend towards him, shaken for just a moment by the tears uncharacteristic in his usually determined gaze. "It's okay, Danny. I know. I know."

He rubbed a hand over Danny's back until he began to sniffle and pull away, wiping tears away and rubbing at his eyes, looking for all the world like he was five years old, instead of the war-hardened superhero he was.

Tucker couldn't help but give a small chuckle.

Before Danny could even open his mouth, Tucker had him beat. "Don't worry, dude. Sam is nowhere to be seen. There won't be any blackmail pictures of that hug."

Danny smiled weakly, trying to place the reference, but unable to before his brow furrowed and he blinked hard. When he yawned a few moments later, Tucker got to his feet and wrapped an arm around his friend's shoulder.

"It's late, dude. You ready to go home now?"

Danny looked up at him, his eyes still bleary from emotional exhaustion. The smile on his face widened genuinely. "Yeah, Tuck. Home."

THE. END.