Jason feels bad for his new neighbor-the dude has no idea his spouses are criminals.
Daniel Manson-Foley is a perfectly ordinary guy.
He works at Wayne Enterprises in the R&D Department, goes out to the movies with his husband and wife every Saturday, can't cook but still tries, is stupidly in love with his husband and wife, and has zero ability to sense when he's in danger.
Seriously, Red Hood has had to save his ass so much it's become 'known' in Crime Alley that "Daniel Manson-Foley's spouses hired Red Hood to be a bodyguard".
Samantha Manson-Foley has no registered job, but she usually comes home covered in blood splatter with weapons hidden just under her coat.
Tucker Manson-Foley does freelance coding work, and Oracle has confirmed that he's virtually following his wife to wherever she goes and erasing all trace of her.
So Jason's pretty sure they're a hitman-couple; Tucker is the fixer and Samantha carries out the hits.
Damn does he feel bad for Daniel.
Or; Tucker is a freelance coder who writes some of the best security in the world, Sam is a heavily armed under the table Mortuary Cosmotologist who is in heavy demand, and Danny decided to have a legal paper trail so that if the GIW or his parents make him go missing it'll be easier for authorities to realize something is wrong. The resident vigilantes horribly misunderstand the nature of their lives.
Danny's first few years as a halfa had been... rough. He'd been trying to protect himself and his town using powers he knew nothing about. Between ghost fights, trying to limit the amount of damage his parents caused, dealing with the GIW and somehow passing his classes, he'd barely had time to sleep much less anything else.
Slowly, eventually, things had gotten better. Danny had tried multiple times to shut down his parents portal but it never stuck. The Fentons had built the thing after all so any damage he caused, they could eventually repair. It was Tucker who had hit upon the idea to shut off their access from the other side. Since the portal opened at a fixed point in the ghost zone, couldn't they just block off the door from the inside instead of trying to keep the door from opening at all?
It took the three of them almost two years to design and build a gate around the portal opening in the ghost zone but in the end it worked. He couldn't stop his parents from keeping the portal turned on and they still had access the small amount of ectoplasm that leaked through the gate but they couldn't access the zone itself and the ghosts didn't have free access to the human world anymore.
By Danny's senior year of college he (almost) had a normal life. Okay, not really but close enough! His parent's inventions ran on ectoplasm so with a significantly reduced supply, their ability to run their current devices and to make new ones was severely limited. Danny had, over time, come to a understanding with his ghostly rogues and come up with a truce of sorts. He'd built a new ghost portal, one he kept under strict control. Ghosts were still able to come through but only with his approval so they had to play by the rules or be stuck in the zone. The GIW was still a problem but Tucker had hacked into their systems ages ago so they had plenty of advanced warning if the agency was going to do anything. Plus with fewer ghost attacks, the agency was starting to run into problems with the higher ups in the government on why exactly they were needed and had had multiple budget cuts.
After years of constant fighting and stress, Danny had finally been able to relax a little and enjoy some of the things he'd been missing out on. He'd joined the astronomy club, gone to a few parties and spent an entire weekend eating junk food and playing Doomed 2: Mega Doom with Sam and Tucker when it came out.
Having been wearing the same basic jeans and t-shirt combo for years, Danny had decided to try experimenting a bit. He'd pierced his ears, bought a bunch of temporary hair dyes to try out different colors and spent several weeks wearing different clothing combinations to see what felt right.
It was in those weeks that he went back to the ghost zone for one of his regular visits and discovered his Phantom form had also changed. His ears were pointed and his skin had taken on a slightly greenish tint. Overall his ghost form seemed slightly more....well...ghostly. No longer a direct inverse color copy of his human self, the proportions were just a bit off. A trip to Frostbite revealed that most ghosts that were originally alive would naturally look exactly as they did when they died and would usually keep that form for several years but ectoplasm is influenced by emotion and if a ghost viewed themselves differently, they would look different. The changes were often (if not always) subtle, but most ghosts did alter their forms over time.
While it certainly didn't happen every time he changed forms, it became a semi-regular occurrence to see Danny sporting a new ghostly feature. Some of the changes stayed long term and some of them would fade when Danny decided he didn't like the new look.
*****
Even with all the changes, good and bad and ghostly, the last year of college was one of the best of Danny's life. He wasn't a sleep deprived fourteen year old vigilante anymore. He was graduating as an engineer and he was getting married to the two people he loved most in the world.
When they graduated, Danny, Tucker and Sam all agreed the best choice for where they would live was obvious. Danny already had a job offer from Wayne Enterprises and the city's high death rate meant Sam could work there easily. The abundant ambient ectoplasm plus the extremely territorial local vigilantes that meant the GIW would never set foot in the city were just the icing on the top of the very dark and gothic cake that was Gotham City.
They'd picked out a large, if somewhat rundown, apartment in a questionable area of town called Crime Alley. While they had enough money to get a better place, privacy was more important and no one in their new neighborhood was going to be asking questions or calling the cops if they saw or heard something strange.
Danny didn't even make it a day in Gotham before someone pulled a knife on him as he was walking some trash out to the dumpster. He didn't really think it was a problem, a tiny bit of intangibility or smidgen of ghost strength took care of it easily enough and he carried on with his day. It was maybe a tad annoying when it kept happening but Danny just couldn't' bring himself to act cautiously when the human criminals didn't really register as a threat to him. The fourth time, Danny had been so distracted reading an article on his phone about the new deep space probe NASA was working on that he didn't even notice he was being threatened until after the would-be mugger repeated himself. Twice. Sam and Tucker had teased him mercilessly.
*****
It was three weeks after moving to Gotham and the seventh time someone tried to attack him while he was walking home that Danny was first "rescued" by one of the local heroes, Red Hood.
"He's so cute you guys!" Danny was practically vibrating in place telling Sam and Tucker the story after Hood escorted him home. "A little baby half dead vigilante just like I used to be!"
"Are you calling us old now Danny?" Sam asked with as smirk and a raise of her eyebrow.
"Yeah man, besides you've grown like, an inch, since high school. You're still a baby", Tucker chimed in.
"Oh come on. You know what I mean!" Danny said, rolling his eyes. "Just because you're a giant Tucker doesn't mean I'm a baby. I'm travel sized for your convenience."
"Oh, he's convenient now!" Sam exclaimed.
Danny dramatically stuck a pose, throwing himself backwards in his chair and holding the back of his hand to his forehead, "Such terrible partners, mocking me so!"
Sam and Tucker laughed at his antics.
"Sooo the little baby vigilante is our neighbor right, J-something?" Sam asked, switching back to the original topic having sufficiently poked fun at her spouse.
"Oh definitely," Danny said sitting up straight again. "They've both died, that's obvious. Plus there aren't exactly a lot of tank shaped people around."
*****
Several months later, Danny had just come back having spent the day in the Far Frozen and he distracted brainstorming how to reveal his latest new feature, maybe something with a hat? Ooh, he could go the sexy route, "Anybody feeling horny tonight?". Danny snickered to himself imagining Sam and Tucker's reactions.
A gun suddenly appeared in front of his face. "Not another step twink. Hand over your wallet and phone and anything else you got."
Danny eyed the gun and they guy holding it. "Really? Not even a quip? No threats? Just straight to the old 'hand over your wallet' line?" Danny shook his head in mock disappointment and grinned as he saw Red Hood drop into the alley behind the mugger. "You get a 3 out of 10. Very unoriginal style. Really, you're giving criminals a bad reputation here! I mean, I'm pretty sure this is like, the third time, someone's tried to rob me in this exact spot even!"
"Fourth," said Hood, his voice distorted by his signature helmet.
Danny couldn't help but feel a little bad for the guy as he let out a small, pained sounding wheeze and went pale slowly turning to see Red Hood looming behind him. Danny caught the gun as the mugger dropped it and took off running. "Dropping your own gun brings your score down to a 2!" he shouted in the direction of the fleeing man.
"What?" Danny said, as Red hood shook his head at him, "Seriously, I've had far better mugging experiences. He deserved that low score."
"You could try not being mugged." Hood said taking the gun from Danny, putting the safety on and shoving it in an empty holster.
"Ah, but you see I don't have to try to get mugged in the first place. I'm just naturally gifted."
Hood gave an exasperated sigh. "Come on, I'll walk you home. Got something I wanted to talk to you about anyway."
"Oh, what's up?" Danny asked, falling into step beside Hood. He couldn't help but notice the vigilante seemed uncomfortable.
Red Hood started to speak then stopped. Danny waited patiently for him to begin.
"Listen I...my dad went to jail when I was a kid and left me and my Mom behind with basically nothing."
Wow. Danny had not expected that. "I'm...sorry to hear that."
"You don't have to be sorry. "It was a long time ago...just...I'm saying the people you think you can trust aren't always worth it. Sometimes, even when you love somebody, they can be bad for you...and maybe sometimes it's better if you aren't around each other anymore."
Was Red Hood having problems with his family? Maybe with the Bats? Danny knew they worked together sometimes and he'd thought maybe they might be a family of sorts though he wasn't sure on the specifics. "That's can be true for some people," he replied cautiously, waiting to see if Hood would continue so he could find out what was bothering him.
They'd arrived back at the apartment and Hood stayed silent as he walked Danny up to the door. Danny watched him fidget with something in his pocket.
"Look, just think about what I said. Okay?" Hood finally blurted out. He grabbed some papers from his pocket, shoved them in Danny's hand and stalked off without waiting for a reply.
"Okay then," Danny said to himself. What was all that about? Danny let himself into the building and looked at the papers Hood had shoved at him as he automatically walked the path to his apartment.
One was a picture of Sam in her work outfit taken from some sort of security camera. Why would Hood be giving him a picture of Sam when he was having trouble with his family?
The next was a picture of Tucker sitting at his computer. It was clearly taken with some sort of zoom lens and you could vaguely see the same picture of Sam from the previous photo up on his screen. What? Danny couldn't fathom why Red Hood would be giving these pictures to him. Or how he had the pictures at all. Was someone targeting his family? Was it the Bats? Was Hood talking about not trusting family because his was up to something?
The last papers were pamphlets. One was for a shelter for abused spouses and one was titled "You Can Get Out" and seemed to be about how to get away from criminal influences in your life and what resources were available to help.
Danny unlocked his front door and stared down at the papers and photos, trying to puzzle out what on earth was going on. Wait...did he...Danny looked at the papers. He glanced at the bucket with it's bottle of laundry pre-treatment sitting next to it in the front closet where Sam's work clothes were currently sitting still covered in blood and soaking before they could be washed. He looked up and into the living room where Tucker's computer set up which took up an entire wall with wires and custom built tech sprawling everywhere, the screens displaying endless lines of code.
"Hey dude, you're a ghost not a vampire. You don't need an invitation to come in the door." Tucker called from the kitchen.
Danny shut the door and walked towards the kitchen. Sam was at the stove making a vegan stir fry. She was dressed in fuzzy purple pajamas with cute chibi ghost pattern on them. Tucker was sitting at the table sipping some hot chocolate and also already in his night wear, an old ratty set of pajama pants he'd had for years and a faded t-shirt that said "Chicks Dig the PDA".
Danny looked down at the papers then up at them again. Oh! Oh, Hood thought... Danny tried to hold in his laughter. He looked at the hallway mirror and allowed his transformation to wash over him. The mirror reflected his new black horns piercing through his floating white hair, his pointed ears, his eyes with black sclera and toxic green irises and his pale slightly green tinted skin. His smile was far too wide to be human as he lost the battle to hold in his laughter. His core echoed his amusement and as his laughter filled the air so did the sound of cracking ice and distant echoes.
"He!" Danny breathlessly struggled to get out the words as he couldn't stop himself from laughing. "He thinks you're the scary ones!"
I can just imagine Sam seeing the flyers and grinning mischievously. Making Danny and Tucker pale a little. Oh no, she's plotting. That poor poor soul. And just, oh so casually reads them thoroughly. Looks at Danny and beckons him over. Aggressively drags him into her lap for cuddles.
Sam: So. What do you think would happen if you, oh for instance... Called in sick for a week tomorrow morning? So we could spend the day in bed?
Danny of course, would like that very much. But also!
Danny: No taunting the local cape brigade! Just hunt him down and coo over how sweet it is he cares or something!
Tucker: But babe. A whole week off?
Danny: I can put in for a vacation! I'm not using sick days when I don't have to! Especially not when we'd get the cape brigade knocking the damn door down!
Sam:.... I suppose that's fair. Fiiinnneee. I'll just do what you said. Should freak him out just as much.
Imagine Sam walking over to the neighbors door and knocking. Jason answers to the Manson girl he’s pretty sure is a hit woman and wonders what she wants. Sam just casually slips him the fliers and says “it’s cute that you care, but I promise he’s not in any danger.” Then leaves. Jason looks down to the fliers he gave Daniel. The ones about how to escape a criminal home.
The ones he gave Daniel as Red Hood.
Bonus idea, eventually the bats hire Slade Wilson to try and find out what he can about this supposedly hit man family (and the one innocent civilian) Maybe they want to check what kind of jobs Sam was taking since maybe they are good or neutral grey hit men who actually love Danny?…Only Slade can’t find anything. Not just about their jobs, nothing. It’s like these people don’t exist. He and the bats literally combine resources, call in favors, they get the league of assassins involved. And they can’t find anything.
Now even Slade is scared and kinda wants to hire both Sam and Tucker. They did find out one interesting fact though. Apparently, they have been covering for the bats and Hood’s actions. (Mostly Hood, they have to take care of the baby).
Everyone is collectively loosing their minds.
Danny bursts I to laughter as they watch the playback of Jason's face when Sam handed him the fliers. Then gives Sam a kiss on the cheek.
Danny: See babe! Didn't I say this would freak him out just as much without us getting visitors at an unfortunate time!
Sam: .... Yes. Ok. And it as fun. So.... They think we are dangerous. And you are a precious baby, must protecc.
Tucker: It's the damn baby face. Gotta be. Or just how good he got at playing innocent over the years!
Danny: Or, and hear me out. The fact I don't need weapons to be dangerous. So I don't carry any. Unlike you pair.
Sam:..... That's fair. Also, uh. So they not know how many muggers you've scared off?
Danny: Jay Hood doesn't believe me. I swear it's the fact I'm smol.
Tucker: Eh. You had to get something from being short right. I mean, at least you don't need a ladder to recan the top shelves like Nana Ida. But....
Danny: Only cause I can fly!
-------
Jason slamming into the batcave.
Jason: Sam, scary wife? Showed up at my civilian home. Handed me the fliers. Said it was sweet that I care. But he's perfectly safe!
Tim*chokes on his red bull*: She what?!?!?! At least they love him? But fuck! What a power move!
Bruce:..... She knows your ID?
Jason: Apparently!
Bruce: We still haven't found anything on them.
Tim: Which, when you compare it to how much of a presence Danny has? Makes it even weirder!
Jason: Yeah.... He made an off hand comment about wanting it obvious if he goes missing. Apparently his parents are bigots.
Bruce: Hm.
Tim: B! He's in his 20's!
"Sam is a heavily armed under the table Mortuary Cosmotologist"what exactly is she doing?
Living in Gotham in Crime Alley and working as a Mortuary Cosmetologist under the table, which required dealing with at least a few criminals.
Better armed than sorry.
What if Danny runs into Damien when the kid is trying to help an animal?
Danny can see it’s a lost cause but the animal really wants to stay with this nice human that is showing it love and becomes a ghost. Damien is upset about not being able to save them but then Danny gently takes the body from the boy’s arms and hands him a green wiggly version of it.
“You didn’t fail, kid. You gave them a reason to keep going.” Danny explains, using his powers to give the ghost-animal a head pat, “I’ll give their body a proper burial for you, go ahead and take them home, bud.”
*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
So Damien knows something is different with Danny and it could help his family figure things out (a ghost meta?!) but Danny also helped him and didn’t judge him for crying over a stray animal that most people see as pests. He’s torn between loyalties. Annnd Danny tells Sam about how sweet the youngest Wayne kid is and how he gives off ghost baby vibes like Robin, “OMG guys I think my boss and his whole family are the bats!”
Idk I just want soft Damien and Danny moment
It was a pigeon. You know, that most people would call a ‘flying rat’.
Now Damian has a ghost pigeon.
Damian is never telling. His family are supposed to be detectives yes? Then they Should be able to figure this out themselves. How often have his words been dismissed. No. He will keep this secret for Mr. Foley-Manson.
~ahem~
Damian gets kidnapped by a cult and ghost pigeon goes to Danny for help.
Cue Team Phantom rushing into save Damian and the Batclan getting “proof” that Sam is a mercenary who works with a white haired meta.
Are Sam and her partner flirting?
Oh no. Who is gonna tell Danny?
One of the major reasons that metas aren't open in Gotham is the fear that they and their powers would be misused due to how insanely widespread the criminal elements of the city are.
And there they see a pretty apparent contract killer and some kind of distorted-looking meta flirtingly complimenting how quickly they managed to take out the cult. With Damian unconsciously bound in the middle of the room on a chair.
The two disappear impossibly quickly and the cameras nearby stopped working when they passed, so no way to trace the meta at all. What the hell.
A bit of groaning and movement indicated that the cultists aren't dead, or at least not all of them. Some seem to be rather banged up, as if someone with much too great a strength hadn't known what they could do. Probably the meta then.
All in all, things somehow only kept getting worse.
Samantha Manson, untraceable contract killer and her hacker husband Tucker Foley, who must have distorted the footage that night, are cheating/know about cheating on their Husband, an innocent civillian, keeping their activities hidden from him. They know who Red Hood is. They might know who the bats are.
And what do you mean Danny took an impromptu holiday leave today for a week, just as his Wife told Jason that he doesn't need any help to get away from them?!
This was already a shit day, and if they find Danny dead because his spouses couldn't let him get away, the pit in Jason might just flare up again more than it had in months.
Jason is gonna freak out the moment Danny grumps and rolls over. "Five more minutes!" What! the! Actual! Fuck! He's still not breathing! But what!?!?!
Sam gets back to Danny being agressively checked over by Red Hood. Sitting there with the most out upon face you can imagine. "I told you! I don't need to breathe! C'mon dude!"
Sam: Huh. You ok big guy?
Danny : You know how I said me taking a week holiday just after you scared the shit out of the local vigilantes was a bad idea? And would end up with one of them in our house?
Sam:.... You are NEVER letting this go.
Danny: Nope. Also! I think I broke him.
Tucker wandering a few minutes later. To a tense stare off between Sam and Red fucking Hood.
Tucker: Ok. What's happening?
Danny: Hood thinks you guys are cheating on me. With a white haired meta. *deadpan tone* how could you. You beast.
Tucker: Sam doesn't want to tell the truth does she?
Danny: Nope! So now this.
Tucker:.... I'm getting food. You want food babe?
Jason: Truth?
Danny: We're... actually a foursome! 😃
Danny: Our fourth is just shy. Practically a ghost. You never see him unless there's food or, ah, Fun Stuff involved. 😃
Sam and Tucker: 🤦♀️
Tucker:..... Babe. Babe why are you like this?
Sam:.... Why do we love him so much?
Tucker: Irreversible trauma from our teen years and unhealthy co dependency from it.
Danny: Hey! I am a delight!
Jason: I am so confused. You have another partner?
Sam: No. The dumbass has a magical girl form.
Danny:.... I hate that you call it that.
Tucker: Mostly cause you hate that she's right?
Jason:.... Magical girl form?
Sam: Danny is the white haired meta. He can switch.
Danny: Boo! You never indulge my chaos!
Jason: Proof please?
Tucker: Danny do the thing. Or no snuggles tonight.
Danny draws back, fully faked shock and betrayal. Before grinning and shifting into Phantom form. And Jason? Quickly figures out just why he's such a dense idiot about his safety.
Jason: ..... He's the dangerous one isn't he?
Sam: Oh yeah. We ain't got anything on our man.
Tucker: Like. We are good. And have the tech to defend ourselves against him. But for sheer destructive ability? I'd need to like, Jack the Pentagon and steal their missile codes.
Danny: You make it sound like I am a humanoid nuke! I'm not that bad!
Jason:..... This is why you rate the muggers? They just... Aren't a threat at all?
Danny: Nope.
Does Jason start trying to make the foursome lie a truth? Now that he knows
Danny went from smol, cute, must protecc. To smol, cute, could destroy me. Jason... Is possibly interested. But al so, he is not to sure about Sam and Tucker yet. Are they insanely hot and competent? Yes. Does he know enough about them yet to make a choice? No.
For now? Making friends. For... Reconnaissance purposes. Yeah, totally that.
