Chapter Text
Danny hated winter. The moment fall days became short and the nights became chilly he wanted nothing more than to huddle under three layers with a warm cup of coffee. Danny hated how the cold would seep into his bones and stay there, leaving his eyelids drooping with an undeserved fatigue.
The cold never bothered him much when he was little. Danny could remember the glee of running out to sled with Tucker and Sam during snow days. Of watching the news with his mom and dad early in the morning, desperately waiting to see if a few measly inches of snow would allow for a half day to spend outside in it.
Like many things in Danny’s life, that all changed with the portal accident.
Danny thought that he found some measure of equilibrium in the months after the accident, but that all seemed to fly out the window by late October. He shivered through the cold fall nights, and by winter it was difficult for Danny to find any warmth at all. He would take to doubling up on sweatshirts and sleeping with several blankets at a time. Tucker and Sam would try and hold his hands to keep him warm, but more often than not Danny would just soak the heat from their skin and leave his friends shivering.
It was something of a slap in the face to learn he had an ice core.
It made sense, all things considered. Danny’s ghost form never felt the chill. If anything, Phantom put off his own frigid air, dropping the temperature of any room he occupied.
If only he could stay in that form forever. Unfortunately, Danny’s unconscious mind refused to maintain a spectral form. No amount of practice seemed to change that, no matter how much Danny honed control over his other various abilities.
So Danny lived with the chill, learning to accept the glum misery of a very physical seasonal depression until the ice thawed in Spring and he could breathe a relaxed sigh.
What Danny wouldn’t give for a fire core… Though he supposed the melting summers Vlad experienced were hardly better than the lows he felt with winter. Their human halves simply struggled to balance with their ghost cores.
Danny worried that the winters of Gotham might break him, being so close to the coast, but he was pleasantly surprised when the wind didn't quite cut through the city as it had over the farmlands surrounding Amity Park.
Without ghosts to fight in the towering city, he didn't have reason to spend his nights out in the cold anyway. Danny could simply walk to the nearest coffee shop by his apartment and fuel the coffee addiction that five years of cold and exhaustion had worn into his habits.
Sam would berate him if she could see how many espresso shots he added to each cup, but coffee brought Danny too much comfort for him to care.
Hell, it had brought more than that into his life.
Danny never thought much about dating after his sophomore year of high school. Two years of trying to date girls, ignoring how much he enjoyed the… aesthetic of a masculine physique, had left him wanting nothing more than to step back from it all.
It took entirely too many conversations with Jazz to learn that what Danny first chocked up to gender envy might be something more.
He tried to ignore those feelings.
It worked up until Danny met Tim Wayne.
It happened in spring when Danny was in peak form, happy to bear the chill of his ice core against a sweltering heatwave. He went to the coffee shop as usual, determined to have a hot cup of caffeine no matter the climbing temperatures. The barista didn't even bat an eyelash when he ordered seven extra shots of espresso for the third time that week.
The coffee shop was full of people that day, everyone sneaking indoors to escape the heat. Danny took a seat in the corner with his coffee, happy to see he'd finally managed to grab one of the window seats, and one facing the door no less.
He pulled out his sketchbook and took to doodling.
The sketchbook was almost full by now, filled to the brim with all manner of drawings. Scenery, animals, people— both ghosts and humans. Danny took up drawing when Jazz gave him some supplies for Christmas after the accident. She said that it might be a good outlet for him, and he begrudgingly had to admit it worked. Sketching helped organize his thoughts, and gave him more ideas to put into practice with sculpting his ice.
Danny didn't pay much attention at first when a lean boy with black hair trudged into the shop, sighing contently at the air conditioning. He did, however, pay attention when the boy ordered eight shots of espresso with his coffee.
Danny watched the guy wait for his drink, noticing the dark bags beneath his eyes and the tired slouch in his spine. It was a familiar sight, and between that and the coffee order Danny felt a fuzzy kinship forming for him.
When the barista called out his name, Tim, the boy lit up with relief. He took the drink with a smile and a thanks, turned to look at the tables— and that smile fled away as he noticed that each table was already full.
Given the early hour and the heat, Danny thought that this Tim shouldn't be surprised, but the coffee shop was a smaller one that didn't usually fill up. Danny could also sympathize with someone so blinded by the allure of coffee that they didn't take stock of their surroundings.
Danny wasn't sure what possessed him to wave his hand, grabbing Tim's attention. The boy's eyes locked on him, his brow quirked in a silent question. Danny found himself gesturing for him to come over and sit down.
If he was surprised at his own actions, Danny was even more surprised when he took him up on the offer.
"Is this seat taken?" Tim asked awkwardly, glancing between Danny and the opposite side of the booth.
Danny shook his head. "Naw, go for it," he said with a grin.
Tim flashed him his own small smile as he sat down and Danny felt his core flutter happily. Was he really that lonely these days that sitting across a booth from someone was enough to appease him? It had been a month now since he last saw Sam and Tucker, and he hadn’t exactly made friends in Gotham. Hell, Danny hadn’t even been in Gotham for very long. He’d spent some time traveling the Zone for about a year, drifting aimlessly as he tried to figure out what to make of his life— his afterlife. He loved the Zone and his friends within it, but Danny found he missed the human world and all of its trappings too much to stay there.
It had taken a while to find a place he could call home— that would even compare to Amity. Eventually, the ambient ectoplasm of Gotham had drawn Danny in and he’d stayed there since.
Tucker and Sam kept joking about joining him in the city. With Tucker’s genius, he could probably land himself a spot at WE without much fanfare. Sam, too, was clever and strong enough to survive the place, and so in love with the dreary aesthetic that she would blend right in. They were both in college now, however, and Danny insisted they stay there. There would be plenty of time for chaos once they graduated.
For now, Danny haunted Gotham by his lonesome, content to sit alone.
…Usually.
Tim had a laptop bag with him and pulled it out as soon as he sat down. The swift clack of keys shortly followed, only pausing whenever Tim grabbed his drink to take a sip— and sometimes not even then. His brows were creased with focus and Danny found his eyes traveling more than once to the eyes beneath them. They were a stormy sort of sapphire, much darker than his own ice blue.
Tim would occasionally glance up and Danny had to quickly avert his gaze whenever he did. His heart beat a little too quickly each time it happened. Danny would force himself to look back down at his sketchbook and continue with his mindless doodling, but it was hard to ignore the eyes peeking out at him over the laptop screen.
It didn't bother Danny at first— until he focused enough to realize he'd started to sketch the boy across from him.
Danny took in a sharp intake of breath and pulled his sketchbook close to his chest, hiding the drawing from view. It was nothing more than a simple gesture sketch, but Danny's face still burned as Tim looked up from his work curiously.
"Is everything okay?" Tim asked, tipping his head to the side in a way that reminded Danny of Cujo.
His core fluttered again, a pleasant ripple that rumbled into a purr and—
Ah. Shit.
If Danny's face wasn't flushed before, it had to be now. The purr died in his chest as the shock of his emotions took over, but the giddy thrum of his core refused to abate.
Here he sat across from a cute guy, enjoying each small glance and quirk of his smile, but it had taken a purr from his core for Danny to realize what exactly was sitting in front of him:
A crush. A bit, fat, giant crush that has long lashes and a crooked smile.
Danny glanced down at his sketchbook. The gesture drawing would have been difficult to pin as Tim, were it not for the obvious blocked out laptop below him.
Danny hastily flipped the page, picking his pencil back up.
"Sorry, I just messed up is all," Danny said after what felt like far too long of a pause.
Tim stared at him, his eyes surprisingly sharp for someone who looked as though they were running on maybe two hours of sleep. “Ah, that sucks. Well, I hope you have better luck with the next one,” he said with a sympathetic smile.
Then, before Danny could say anything else, Tim shut his laptop and grabbed his bag.
“I should probably get going, but thanks for letting me sit here,” he said.
All Danny could do was stutter out a quick, “Y–yeah, sure. No problem,” before Tim stuffed his laptop into his bag and stood up.
The boy gave him a small wave before hurrying out of the shop, pulling out his phone as he went. Danny waved back, wishing he would stay a bit longer.
He spent the rest of the day in a fog, his head back at the coffee shop, listening to the gentle clack of Tim’s laptop keys as he worked.
Danny went back to the coffee shop every day that week, sitting for longer than he normally did. He tried to convince himself that he just wanted more time to sketch, that the coffee shop was relaxing and the perfect place to wile away a couple of hours.
He tried to ignore the way his eyes snapped to the door every time the bell chimed.
Danny barely knew Tim— hell, the guy didn’t even know his name. The only reason he knew Tim’s was because of the server calling out his order. Danny could hardly call that fleeting meeting anything meaningful. There was no way he had fallen so hard, so quickly for a pretty face and a cute smile.
The bell chimed once more and Danny glanced up, expecting the familiar disappointment of seeing someone who wasn’t Tim. It had been three days and he was getting used to it by now.
Danny’s core thrummed happily, recognizing the black bangs and deep blue eyes before his brain could fully process what he was seeing.
Tim glanced in his direction and Danny awkwardly waved, his lips shaking into an equally awkward smile.
Tim waved back as he walked to the counter. Danny quickly averted his eyes, furiously scribbling a few new lines onto the ghost dragon he was drawing.
Time seemed to slow, minutes dragging by as he listened to Tim’s order and waited for the barista to call his name. He refused to look up, his eyes focused intently on his drawing while his mind was anywhere else. He’d already massacred the dragon’s leg, leaving a mess of scribbles where there was supposed to be a foot.
Danny heard footsteps coming towards him, sure steps across the old wooden floor. A shadow as someone stood close to the table, blocking out the light. He finally looked up, finding Tim standing there with his coffee and laptop bag in hand.
“Hey again. Mind if I sit?” Tim asked.
Danny glanced around the coffee shop, noticing that there were two perfectly empty tables nearby. He swallowed down a lump in his throat, feeling his core give a jittery hum.
“Go for it,” he said, trying to hide the joy in his voice.
~*~
It became something of a routine for them. Danny would return to the coffee shop every day and, more often than not, Tim would show up and join him. He was easy to talk to, his voice soft and smooth, and his laugh light and warm. Danny found himself smiling easily in his presence, the tension fleeing from his shoulders as he leant in to listen to the wild stories Tim told him about his siblings, or the things he’d seen in Gotham.
Danny wasn’t even surprised when he learned Tim’s last name. He just took the news in stride, bundling it with the person who had his core buzzing with a simple glance.
Tucker took the news much less gracefully. He told his friends over text and wasn’t at all surprised when Tucker roped them into a three-hour phone call that began with the shouted words, “What do you fucking mean Tim Wayne?”
On a warm day in June, Tim asked Danny if he wanted to go out to dinner with him. It sounded like a date, and Danny asked him as much.
“If you want it to be,” Tim said with a nervous grin.
Boyfriend. The word rolled easily off Danny’s tongue whenever he texted Sam and Tucker about Tim. Whenever he teased him, stealing fries off his plate on their dates and lamented how much it wounded him when Tim threatened violence. Their coffee dates never abated, and more often than not they would leave together, walking hand in hand.
Danny was nervous to hold Tim’s hand when they began dating. Sure that he might have a problem with the chill that lingered on his skin.
Those worries were spectacularly unfounded.
Despite his fears, Danny couldn’t deny the request when Tim asked to hold hands. His boyfriend threaded his long, nimble fingers through his and they were so warm that Danny felt like his core might melt in the embrace.
“Wow, how are your hands so cold right now?” Tim asked with a chuckle.
“S–sorry, they’re always kind of like that,” Danny said, trying to pull his hand away.
Tim held on tight, locking their hands as if they simply belonged together.
“No, no it’s fine,” he quickly assured. “I prefer the cold.”
Ancients , Danny would do anything to keep him close.
~*~
Danny could tell that Tim was nervous to introduce him to his family. He wouldn’t stop pacing, muttering a long list of concerns and warnings under his breath.
“Your family can’t be that bad,” Danny reassured him.
“You’re right. They’re worse,” Tim countered.
The bar for eccentric families was rather high for Danny. It took a lot to match up to the Fentons, with reanimated hotdogs on the menu and weapons hidden in every cabinet. Danny hadn’t spoken to his parents in a couple of years, but he still sometimes imagined Jack Fenton slamming open his bedroom door, shouting some nonsense about ghosts that could well and truly wake the dead.
That didn’t even account for Dani. A clone of a sister, who came and went like a stray cat. She was staying with Jazz for now, last Danny heard, but there was the ever-present risk of her barging into his apartment with a glitter bomb or kazoo. Possibly both.
This was all to say that Danny didn’t cower when faced with the chaos the Waynes had to offer— he rose to the occasion.
Danny met Dick first, greeted warmly by a man who seemed entirely too pleased that his baby brother had ‘finally found someone.’ Danny could practically feel the embarrassment rolling off of Tim, and it was with the kindest mercy that Danny replied, “He’s the first person I’ve dated since high school, and I’m not letting him go anytime soon.”
Damian was the second brother he met, and he honestly didn’t live up to the hype. After the horror stories that Tim had woven of being bitten and stabbed by the ‘demonbrat’, he was expecting much more than a bristly huff and a most pompously-spoken, “Nightingale.”
Jason came third, arriving late to the dinner with the smell of smoke on his jacket and his hair tousled by the wind.
Danny just about spat out his food when they locked eyes.
Honestly, considering every batshit thing that went down in Gotham, Danny should have expected it, but still he was not prepared to run into someone who dinged his ghost sense with enough strength to register as a blob. If Jason noticed anything, he didn’t let it show. He simply sat across from Danny and Tim, giving a dispassionate wave to the former before digging into a plate of potatoes and beef wellington.
Well. If he wasn’t going to say anything about it, Danny wasn’t going to either. He just kept his silence, trying to ignore the rancid smell of whatever ectoplasm Jason had in his system. He might have to look into that someday… Eventually.
If Danny scooted a little further from Jason when they played Mario Kart, that was between him and the raised eyebrow Tim gave him.
Danny left Wayne Manor that night feeling a little more confused— and a little more bruised, after Damian finally lived up to Tim’s stories when he ‘accidentally’ threw his controller. Still, there was nothing the projectile could do to erase the crushing victory of his King Boo knocking aside Damian’s Bowser at the finish line.
Danny left in high spirits. He felt… accepted. As if he’d passed some sort of test. When they were getting ready to leave Dick gave him a warm hug, clapping him on the shoulder without so much as a mention of how cold he was.
Tim stayed at Danny’s apartment that night, his head pillowed under his chin as they tried to watch a movie with drooping eyelids. Danny couldn’t even bring himself to get up and change out of his binder, he was too busy enjoying the warm hand threaded with his own.