#df2

He’s so, so beautiful—the muscled slope of his spine, the gentle curl of his biceps. His hair has grown long enough to tumble into his eyes now; Daniel knows he’ll end up carding them out of Lando’s face once enough complaints have been made. 

“You should get a back tat,” he says absent-mindedly, light fingertips dancing along where he can so clearly picture ripples and whorls of dark ink. “It’d be sick.”

“I wouldn’t be able to see it though,” Lando says, frown seeping through his voice. 

Daniel shrugs, even though he can’t be seen. “I would.”

Lando’s body rocks with an inhale. “Oh.”

Sometimes when Ellie uses her powers, Danny can’t get close to her. He breaks into a sweat and he can’t breathe and he feels like he’s going to overheat. It starts close to ten months after they got their powers, and for a while, Danny blames the approaching summer for the sudden hot flashes.

By mid-July, he can’t blame the summer heat for his brief and spontaneous cold flashes, vicious waves of cold that leave him shivering. His fingers become stiff and he swears that he leaves trails of frost on everything he touches.

By the end of August, Danny is always wearing a thick coat despite it still being fairly warm.

Ellie, on the other hand, has sported nothing but short shorts and thin tank tops all summer, claiming she feels like she’s in the middle of a raging inferno and that she might melt into a steaming puddle of goo. Any time Danny builds up the nerve to get close enough to touching her, he swears that their skin sizzles on contact. Ellie likes it but Danny does not.

Sharing a room becomes the most miserable thing so Ellie moves into Jazz’s room for the entire month of September.

Danny’s shivering has been getting so bad that he can barely pull himself out of bed most days. His hands shake, his teeth rattle, and he trembles so hard he gets headaches and muscle cramps. Ellie fares marginally better than Danny. She’s always sweating and has to keep water and a fan nearby at all times. The heat fogs her mind so much that she occasionally forgets what’s she’s doing. Both are sluggish on their worst days and distracted on their best.

Undergrowth shows up at the beginning of October.

The attack is quick and their little group of ghost hunters are not prepared. The ghost must knock them out with some sort of weapon because the next thing Danny knows, he’s waking up pressed against his sister and the two of them are tied together with vines. Tucker is on the other side of Ellie and Sam is nowhere to be seen.

The plant ghost introduces himself as Undergrowth and monologues for several minutes about how he intends to turn the urban jungle into a real jungle. Danny can’t remember half of what he says, the heat coming from his sister feeling like pins and needles stabbing him from all over. Ellie shouts something he misses at the ghost and the next thing he knows, she shaking him, hands on his shoulders.

“Wake up, Danny. Please wake up.” Her voice sounds far away but he blinks at her, sluggish and sleepy. He tries to reach for her face, but his arm falls back. “Oh thank god.”

“Ellie,” he mumbles out, squinting up at her, “what happened?”

Ellie helps him sit up, biting her lip. He glances around, trying to figure out where they are, but he doesn’t recognize anything. There’s thick vines all around them and Danny realizes there’s a faintly glowing shield surrounding them on all sides. Ellie’s in her ghost form and from the way her hand twitches occasionally, he can only assume she’s the one holding it up. For the first time in two months, he feels comfortably warm. “We’re in the sewers,” she says, green eyes watching him gather his bearings. “Are you okay now?”

Danny blinks and takes a deep breath. He shifts into his own ghost form and shakes his head. “I feel awful,” he tells her, “but better than I have in a while. What’s going on?” He wants to reach out and touch her shield. It feels different. It feels warm.

Ellie rocks back on her heels in her crouched position. “Undergrowth has our family. All of them, including Sam and Tucker. The entire town, too. He plans to use his plants to control everyone for slave labor and food.” Her breathing shudders and Danny edges closer to her. The intense heat she’s still radiating has him keeping his hands to himself. This is the first time they’ve both been in their ghost forms since the weird hot and cold thing started.

“That’s not good.”

“Thanks, Captain Understatement,” Ellie grumbles, failing to hide her small smile.

Serious mood successfully averted, Danny stands up and narrows his eyes at the vines lining the sewer walls. “How did we get here? If these belong to the ghost, why isn’t he attacking?”

Ellie moves to stand beside him, still holding the shield. “Well, as soon as you passed out, you froze a lot of the vines holding us together.”

“I did?” Danny breathes, eyes going wide. He looks down at his hands in awe, mouth falling open slightly.

Ellie nods and crosses her arms. “They were easy to break out of after that, all fragile and junk. Undergrowth already had Tucker by then, and our parents showed up with the RV. They tried to cut the baddie down but he broke the RV and put both of them under his mind control.” A shudder races down the girl’s spine and she falls silent.

“Then what?”

Ellie turns to look at him, swirling green eyes huge. “Then he showed me Sam. He’s using her like she’s a puppet or something. Said that her love of plants makes her a good ‘caretaker.’” She spits the word like it’s acid and Danny’s almost glad he didn’t see it.

“We’ve got to get back out there and fight him,” Danny murmurs, keeping the tremble out of his voice. He’s starting the shiver again, the cold fighting off the warmth he’s been feeling.

“We can’t, Danny.” Ellie’s voice breaks and she turns away, shoulders stiff. Danny reaches a hand out and tugs on one of her arms and she lets him uncross it and hook their elbows together despite his recent aversion to touch. “We can’t fight something that can just regenerate.” Sweat breaks out over her skin.

Danny shivers harshly sending jolts up the arm he’s still holding. “Then we’ll find someone to help us. Th-There’s g-got to be way to defeat him.” He has to pull away from his sister’s heat, the light stinging becoming too much to ignore.

Ellie’s quiet for a long minute. “But who?” she asks, voice dropped to a murmur.

Danny barely hears her over the renewed chattering of his teeth. Being in his ghost form has his shivers returning with a cruel vengeance. He rubs his arms and feels frost on his fingertips. “Fr-Frostb-bite.”

“Wait, really?” Ellie’s brows furrow and she turns to look at him, incredulous. “Why him?”

Danny takes a deep breath and blows it out, focused on the warm shield. The air mists up and sizzles upon contact with his sister’s energy, steaming away and leaving small drips in its wake. “H-he might be able to h-help.” A violent shudder has his curling inwards, his chest aching. “With this.”

His sister doesn’t argue and drops the shield. She latches on to his arm and pulls them into the air and intangible. He doesn’t know where exactly they are, but he assumes she does as she flies them up and out of the sewers. “We’ll find him, Danny,” she tells him. “I promise.”