Lover's Triangle: Part I

Do It Right

A/N: There are flashes of poetry in this - they weren't intentional at first, but they just kept coming. There's no reason to the periodic bouts, so if you see a lot of rhyme in disjointed bursts, well. It was innocent at first, incidentally, and towards the end it gets a little bit more...repetitive. Unfortunately.

Warnings: DannyxTucker slash, citrus-flavored.

Disclaimer: It's a definite no-brainer - it's not mine, I want not to fight, just read this, hope to love, and good night.

The first time they moved together was subtle, sychronized as they pulverized an unruly ghost. Green blasts and blue-rimmed spirals in harmony, cold and harsh yet cool and calm and calling their names out in one voice, and then one of them pinned the other up against the wall and Tucker felt hot, hot and wrong but so, so right that it was Danny he was moving against, rocking his hips up against his now-human friend, soft and gently unlike the numbers and fixed facts of the technology he was used to loving.

The second time they moved together was under the moonlight, and Danny'd not failed to take the lead this time, drawing Tucker out of his mesmerie with his technology and dragging him under the shade of a handy oak tree, their lips and tongues and hands moving together, their hips slowly sliding closer to each other, technology and computerised memos and reminders strewn recklessly on the ground.

And it was so, so, right, and so, so, deliciously wrong.

Glasses askew and beret unleveled, jeans ruffled and white shirt disheveled, Danny and Tucker locked arms around each others' waists and walked away, out of the judging eyes of Casper High and out into their freedom of the first day of the summer holidays, walking to the park and smiling into each others' eyes, twinkling little stars that shine bright for each other.

They haven't told Sam yet, and Danny hasn't stopped visiting her late at night in the privacy of her room, because he knows that to do so would arouse suspicion, and he's really sorry but he just doesn't feel that way about her (not anymore, because he never did feel that way about her in the first place) but this feels so much more right than before.

Then he loses himself in Tucker's kiss (all warmth and love and deep, comforting thereness) and forgets completely about Sam, except as a minor distraction.

The first time they kissed in front of a friend scared the bejeezus out of her. Valerie'd been eavesdropping on her Phantom's conversation when he leaned forward and kissed Tucker right on the lips, which he'd returned eagerly (Danny in ghost form tasted like snow and icing sugar, which, despite being a meat-lover, Tucker still loved - ) and Valerie'd fallen out of the sky and landed, luckily, in a snowdrift.

Danny and Tucker went on kissing, lost in their own little world. When Danny finally lets his head drift back, shock of white hair tufting up in the winter breeze, eyes glazed over with affection and the vaguest stirrings of desire, Tucker eagerly tries again, ghost and human, boy meeting boy. Lips and tongue and hands roaming and touching and tingling and heat sourcing and soaring and slicing through them each time their eyes meet and their arms encircle each other, holding and hanging and always, always ready for the next innovative roll of the desire dice -

And Valerie stands up in her outfit, chokes, and falls over again, this time with an inability to get the images out of her head - she wants to tell Tucker, stop, stop, you'll only break your heart, you'll die because this is the ghost boy we're talking about, but the groans that buzz through the air convince her that hey, even if he does get his heart broken, he's perfectly happy with it while it lasts.

She's blinking very, very, hard, so when Phantom and Tucker go invisible and a chill sweeps over her she doesn't even feel surprised. She thinks that maybe her surprise circuits were worn out for the day.

When they go to confront Sam in the Nasty Burger after school Danny, everyoung and evergoofy, intertwines his fingers in Tucker's chocolate ones, his heart beating twice as fast and twice as fluttery, because he doesn't know how the ex-love of his life is going to take it; whether Sam's going to be all right with him and Tucker now if she knows what's going on between them -

- and even though he's a hero-cum-villain with superpowers and he's used to burdens and worries, when Tucker leans up and captures his lips in a fiery kiss and holds him gently, he thinks he can forget about all of that and let Tucker protect him in lieu of his protection of all else. So he folds his arms around Tucker tightly and, standing under the shadow of the Nasty Burger, he loses himself in a kiss so long in coming and knows all of his worries are going to fade away now.

When they enter the doors of the Nasty Burger, they see Sam sitting off in a corner, lonely sipping, and both their hearts go out to her.

When she sees them and tells them eventually that she already knew and her face, usually so strong is so broken and tired Danny and Tucker hold her separately and tell her that no matter what happens, she's still their friend and will always be, and she holds them both equally tightly before letting their arms fall.

She knows what it's like to be a third wheel, knows how Tucker felt before - let her eyes fall from their faces and tried to smile with empty places in her heart; turns and walks out and suddenly their day's not beautiful at all.

Saturday trips to the mall are never the same; it was always Sam, never wanting, never flaunting, showing off her money to those who needed to see, buying presents, buying games, buying music, buying fame; but now that love is not hers to share, hers to seek, a gentle kiss placed on the cheek; she never really did want to go, and now love is for them two alone.

So they stand in the fountain where it's raining droplets. Mists of fog and fogs of mist surround them and give them butterfly kisses. Burning wet are each others' sighs, slow and ready and oh so right.

As Danny slips down white-pale hands, angel haloed in mystic light, Tucker leans up to capture them, fingers in the warm, moist way, teeth and tongue already at play. Danny's eyes glaze over slightly, and Tucker grins around them, his tongue exploring every cranny and nook in Danny's rough-callused skin, bruised and broken where the boomerang's hit, burned and scabbed from numerous inventions, thin-thread scars from negative intentions.

A prince of ghosts, and he's smiling, and Tucker knows he's oft beguiling - that smile there hides a gutter mind, but Tucker knows he doesn't mind, and besides! What a way to love and be loved; what other way? He cannot say. But he knows it pleases him to capture Danny's attention, to protect him in the way he does, from the outside world that never moves, never changes, never thanks, never never never - an inconstant mind.

Danny protects Amity Park, has done since he got his powers. He thinks it is, after all, a good way to repay that which they have done for him, even though it's not that much. He puts so much in and gets so little out that sometimes he just needs someone to cry to, and that's how he got started with Tucker. You know?

Tucker's been his oldest friend, they must've first met in first grade, or sometime even earlier than that. They'd played for long, saw a little girl in tears; that was their Sam, that was the beginning of their friendships, but - they've gone through the "I'll show you mine" stage so they know each other inside out, know how they're going to answer, always close and getting closer.

Darkness falls and with it comes a stiff breeze. Danny's burning, fighting, fleeing, flying, free - green blasts of hurt that doom even the strongest ghost. Beam of blue, rim of light, sucks in screams, no more ghosts tonight.

When Danny landed on the concrete floor blue rings of light surrounded him for a moment before they reshowed a human boy with human clothes (Tucker'll never tell what he thinks of Danny in all that rubber - at least, not where anyone else can hear, but certainly not now and certainly not here.) Running a hand through untamed hair, Danny approached Tucker with the faintest hint of trepidation in his voice. He was smiling, and he picked up his schoolbag where he'd left it before going ghost.

"Tucker?"

Tucker wastes no time with indecent reply, backing him up against the wall, snatching time where no other can be found, kisses wet against the ground. Moving and straddling, protecting him always, but desires must run strong, and Tucker's is no different. Chocolate skin and chocolate eyes, black-brown hair against red-clashed hat. PDA cool at belt-pressed-skin, T-shirt riding up to show abs that are muscly and thin.

Tucker doesn't waste much time, his hands riding up against warm valleys. Hips bucking and hands lifting and loving and kissing and following, tracing hot kisses up his chest. He feels Danny shudder under his ministration, knows that tongue will go over well, and lines up a target with beady eye.

But just before he plunges head, Danny wriggles out from under him instead. Holding his hands and looking him in the eye, he says with broad smile:

"Be with me tonight?"

Yes, his parents are out of town. Yes, his sister's not coming 'round. Yes, Sam's probably crying in her room. Yes, Valerie's on her nightly hunt of doom. Yes, there are ghosts bursting out from the 'Zone. But Danny couldn't care less if they'd all leave him alone.

The last time they move together they're still separate and teasing and unimaginably pleasing, one last in-sync before they both become one.

They are thirsty for each other as a man in the desert, drinking up the sight of each other and the feeling of their hands caressing soft, their lips moving fast, their tongues lapping heat, their bodies moving together.

And their tastes of each other are so unmatteredly different, all winterspice and marshmallow and coconut and the smell of sugary biscuits on a winter day, cream and scones and jam, and then dark and spicy and musky and husky with the faintest hint of oiled metal cool and hard. And they're close to each other, bed creaking in time to the hips rocking in sync to each other, turning and making their blankets pool in a way that hasn't happened for a long, long time.

There's heat and smile under each glassy gaze, a burning sensation the way they'd never feel on each's own, a building and burning and waiting and waiting, an anticipation, growing, growing, growing.

And as they're rocking and crying together, somewhere else out under the weather, Sam knows and closes her eyes. Because they've been close to her, but they were closer together when before. It was her choice to make Danny go in, she has had a 'baby' with Tucker, together, together they saved the world, but. She was always there to comfort Danny and restrain Tucker, even when they were meant to be, and knowing that Tucker is there for Danny, then all the feelings she has for them don't really matter as long as they're happy.

And over in the midst of night, where a hunter hunts and a ghoul escapes, Valerie can hear their moans and cries, and would never get over the Phantom boy. She remembers that scene again and again, and many a ghost flees her wavering grasp; she falls asleep to its vivid call, comfortable and safe and warm.

And the ghosts themselves know not to disturb him, just one, this only, this rainless night. And as Tucker and Danny move into each other (one on top, pure and true) and gasp and sink into unutterable warmth - a stab of pleasure before trailing tears, an awkward last laugh over pre-coital fears.

One bright kiss; they're now one, and always they will know each other. Memorising each patch of skin - Danny panting heavy in this candlelit night, the power's blown out but that's all right - Tucker slick with sweat and warmth, reaching out before it's all gone.

They sleep in peace, an afterglow (green-warm-gold, clearly he's projecting) in his eyes, Tucker, slowly, he's realized, that Danny doesn't know to laugh or cry, but then he reaches out to hold Danny tight, because when Danny and Tucker are together like this - they know together they're doing it right.

Scribere jussit amor.