Chapter Text
Stiles would like to consider himself to be quite smart. While he wasn’t exactly a straight A student, when he set his mind to something he could research complex and underground topics like a pro. Pair that with the necessity to connect different clues before everyone got murdered by the monster of the week and he felt he had a lot of practice playing detective. In short, Stiles thought his cousin would have had more faith in his intelligence than this.
“Oh yeah, no, that makes Sense Danny. You’re Danny Phantom, the mysterious glow stick that appeared in my cousin's room clearly forgetting I was here. Obviously no relation to my pun-loving cousin Danny Fenton, who you look like the inverted twin too, and your name is literally a play on.”
Stiles almost felt bad in the tense silence that followed. Danny, side-eyeing the door and still hovering in place over his bed. When he began to open his mouth still with a look of panic in his eyes, Stiles took pity.
“Jesus Danny, how long have you known me? I’m not gonna snitch to your parents about….. Whatever this is. Actually what is this? Are you some type of ghost? Have I been rooming with a dead guy?”
The tension seemed to melt from Danny’s shoulders as Stiles continued to speak. Slowly lowering from his hover to perch on the end of the bed, rubber boots resting on Stiles' air mattress.
“I’m not dead. I think.’ Danny fiddled with the sheets on his bed while he spoke. The slightest of echoes creating an eerie quality to his voice. Almost as if more than one person was speaking. “Long story short, sometimes I’m a ghost and sometimes I’m not because of an accident in my parents lab. That same accident resulted in a portal to the afterlife opening up, making it sorta my responsibility to stop them. Please don’t tell my parents, I promise everything is totally fine and I haven’t been possessed by a ghost.”
As if to prove his statement, two shining white rings diverged over Danny’s form, revealing his human self.
“Huh, that's a new one, and here I thought I had seen everything.’ Stiles sat up from his bed and placed a hand on Danny’s knee. ‘ You know, crazy supernatural shit is inherited apparently. I don’t know where we got it from, but it must be since I’m pretty sure my hobbies could rival yours in koo-koo. I’m still human, but I’m in a werewolf pack. We have a kitsune and a banshee and we are fighting a different guy each week.”
If Stiles doubted his last second decision to fess up before he couldn’t anymore. After seeing his cousin relax under a tension he hadn’t even noticed before. His eyes shining like the first moment of true connection they had felt since when they were both kids. An age that felt like centuries ago, when they maintained an innocence and had the possibility of a normal life.
Stiles couldn’t deny himself that he felt lighter. He missed his cousin. Sure, they texted, and he had spent the last day with him, but when you keep such a monstrous secret, you can never really connect past that.
Sure Stiles had friends in the know, who he could talk to. But they were all so fucked up that conversations together felt like a minefield. Saying too much could hurt the other person. But he always said too much. It was a compulsion really; once he started he could never hold back the flood of word vomit.
It was a happy thing to realise that his cousin Danny might get it. They always did understand each other like no-one else. Their crazy just seemed to click.
“You know Danny. Real moments, cousin to cousin, actually bring it in at first, gimme a hug.’ Stiles climbs onto Danny’s bed and wraps his cousin in a hug, ‘if these years have been anything like mine you need a hug. I’m really proud of you for doing what you believe is right,’
When Danny deflated into his arm and began to sniffle into his shoulder, Stiles held on a little tighter and prepared for a long night. For a moment he felt safe, an alien feeling to him now.
Despite their shared suffering, he was happy that they had always been the same kind of crazy. If they weren’t, then they really would be suffering.
Together, everything might just be tolerable.