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Super Last Minute Danny Phantom Anniversary story that takes inspiration from my continuous battle with heightened anxiety and bouts of acute sound sensitivity. Please, everyone, take care of yourselves.
Having superpowers was pretty great most of the time. Living out childhood fantasies, going on adventures, and experiencing things that few others could ever hope to. But as much fun as it was there were downsides to balance out the good. Case in point, having superhealing and regeneration meant Danny never had to worry about sore muscles or back pain, but it also meant most medicines and drugs didn't even have the chance to affect him before being purged from his body or made inert. Again, not too big a deal, until his enhanced senses started causing him to have panic and anxiety attacks and nothing he could find helped in the least.
Which is what lead to him spending the last two weeks working with his father in what looked like a lab straight out of breaking bad. Apparently, a rite of passage for the former witch hunting family that his dad had forgotten about in his exuberance was learning about many different branches of botany so that they could 'better know their enemies', find their own concoctions to use against so called witches and warlocks, and because at some point after the Salem Witch Trials, a Fenton-Nightingale had discovered that hallucinogens grew naturally around the city and may have been the actual culprit behind the hysteria and they felt that learning about such things would help prevent them from making 'future unfortunate mistakes'.
Their goal was to create a drug that wouldn't burn out from the ectoplasm in Danny's system, or become inert due to his human cells… and wouldn't just kill Danny outright. It was a fine line that so far they hadn't been able to walk, as several of the halfa's duplicates and hundreds of blood samples could attest to.
His frustration growing as yet another drug was broken down by a blood sample, Danny angrily pushed himself away from the table he had spent the last three hours hunched over, a deep, shuddering breath wracking its way past his lips as he tried to settle his nerves. Even with the lights dimmed he felt like he was staring directly into a lamp, the gentle hum of the machines around him grated on his ears like a whining dog, his damn skin prickled from the feel of his shirt against his chest like it was being rubbed raw. It was too damn much. He needed something, anything, to dull his senses even if just for an hour or two so he could just sleep again.
It was all just too much.
"Danny," it wasn't until he heard his dad's soft, for him anyway, call that he realized his ragged breathing had started to come out hard and fast, his perpetually slow heart beat approaching what a normal person would consider a resting rate. "Deep breath okay?" His dad urged. "Take it in, hold it, and let it out." The large man mimed the action, taking exaggerated breaths through his nose and out his mouth and Danny did his best to copy him. "Now count to a hundred in squares."
It took him longer than he'd like to admit for Danny to pull the trick off, numbers having only ever making sense to him when paired with machines or the stars. When he finally finished counting he turned to give his dad a small, grateful smile, one that he returned with a soft grin of his own before he spoke again, "Did I ever tell you that I was autistic?"
Danny blinked confusedly at the strange question, "No? I kinda guessed you might be but Jazz said it wasn't right to assume and–"
"She's right," the older Fenton cut him off, "it is, but I am."
"Why are you telling me this now?" Danny asked, still confused.
"The reason I only wear these jumpsuits is because if I wear anything else all I can think of is how the fabric feels against my skin," his dad revealed, "I love fudge so much because when I was younger it was the only thing with sugar that I could eat without puckering. Your mother and I never developed hard projectile based weapons like normal guns because the sound of the firing pin makes my back itch. The lab is normally kept so bright because I see the contrast between light and dark so starkly that it sometimes gives me vertigo."
Danny looked down at his hands, "Why are you telling me this?" He repeated.
His dad sighed, finally standing back up to his full height. "I think we should give up on the drug."
The halfa's head snapped up, "What?" he yelped, "No!"
"Danny," his father sighed, "even if it worked–"
"We're basically just making a strain of pot that can actually affect me," Danny argued, "it's stuff already used for anxiety and epilepsy disorders! It'd work!"
"You are not epileptic Danno," His dad argued back, his voice still soft, "you are hypersensitive. It's not the same thing. Yes being high might help you but once you come back down you'll be right back where you started at best." He sighed heavily, "I think acclimation therapy would be better for you." He raised a large hand before Danny could protest, "I know, I know that with your powers you don't like the idea of anything that involves giving emotional control to someone else, but is it really better to go crazy trying to figure out a way to go numb? Or being numb your whole life?"
The younger Fenton looked down at his hands again, not answering. He had nothing against therapy itself, he thought it was extremely important for a lot of people, but ghosts weren't like humans. Emotions gave them strength, they felt them more intensely than most humans and could be consumed by them for far longer before hitting any kind of 'burnout'. To a ghost, most forms of therapy would result in weakness, vulnerability, or their entire being warped into something new. Danny didn't know if he was like that, didn't know if his human half protected him, but he didn't want to risk it.
His dad gave one last tired sigh, "I'm going to make you an isolation box," he told him, "one that locks from the inside. No light, one-way noise isolation, complete temperature control, oxygen regulation, the works. And even if it comes out looking like a coffin you are going to sleep in it tonight so when you wake up and can actually think, we can discuss this again. Okay?"
Slowly, Danny nodded, "Okay," he whispered, "okay."