Chapter Text
Thursday November 1, 2007 was an average day for Danny Fenton: school, avoiding his family, Technus battle, avoiding his family, video games with Tucker until being “sent home because it’s a school night,” avoiding his family…
Sam was home with post-trick-or-treat sniffles, so…Nasty Burger it was!
At least the dive cafe still had their polyfill cobweb and plastic spiders up. Danny knew he could hide in there. How many sodas could one, hypothetically, consume, before your teeth rotted in your mouth?
Worth it. The alternative, going home, was not an option. Not on November First.
The Fentons weren’t exactly subtle when it came to Christmas… Jack insisted on decorating right after Halloween “to let Santa know he is welcome.” Maddie, on the other hand, was solidly in the “Rudolph is anathema until after Thanksgiving” camp.
In other words, the only day of the year worse than Christmas Eve in the Fenton household? November First.
By contrast, Halloween is fantastic—arguably the best holiday of the year. There are no awkward family meals and obligatory visits by distant relations, candy is a certainty, hanging out with your peers is encouraged, and best of all, it’s the one day of the year that it’s socially acceptable to be half dead.
Sure, the holiday promotes a lot of ghost stereotypes, but compared to just about any other holiday, Halloween takes the cake every time.
November First, however, marks the beginning of the other season.
Danny Fenton was a died-in-the-wool grinch. He was not ashamed of this.
To be fair, there were a few parts of the season he didn’t mind…like colorful lights. Who doesn’t like Christmas lights? Shimmery incandescents reflecting on filthy snow runoff in the streets at night? Chef’s kiss.
Danny sipped his soda slowly. He was already on his second for the evening, and he had to make it last until curfew. Then, he could go home and get yelled at for something he was actually guilty of doing. Committing a crime willingly beats getting caught in an ideological crossfire any day.
Danny placed his forehead on the table and sighed. How bad would it be if he disappeared to the ghost zone until December 26? How long would it take for his parents to notice he was gone? This was a depressing train of thought…
Luckily, Danny’s thought train was soon derailed by screaming in the cafe.
“I am the BOXXX GHOOOOST.”
Speaking of getting caught in the crossfire…
Danny peeled his face off the slightly-ketchup-sticky table and blinked the spots out of his eyes. It was always significantly less satisfying transforming without his friends around. Who cares if you’re “going ghost” without an audience?
A box of Christmas decorations hurled against the back of Danny’s booth. He cringed, watching tinsel and cheap dollar store bells spill haphazardly across the linoleum floor.
Danny groaned, sipped up the rest of his soda, and ducked under the table to transform. He came face to face with a lovely row of gum wads under the table (several of which he was proudly responsible for) and emerged as soon as he was certain the coast was clear.
Danny followed the sounds of chaos to the restaurant’s storage closet, where a poor underpaid high school dropout was cowering in fear as the Box Ghost ranted about…what else… boxes… and made a mess as he did, basically throwing Christmas decorations everywhere.
Danny already had out his thermos, but he paused when he saw how broken the ghost seemed that evening.
“Oh no,” the specter complained, more mumbling than wailing, tossing some uneaten, broken candy canes on the ground. “Let’s just pack up allll the junk we bought last year but didn’t use and throw everything in boxes until it’s time to commercialize and profit again.”
A set of over-reused tinsel garlands with several years worth of unremoved scotch tape were chucked in the general direction of the cafe worker, who paused from their fearful cowering long enough to yawn. Danny gestured with his chin, inviting them to leave. The worker nodded and crept away, and the Box Ghost barely even seemed to notice.
“Hey Boxie,” Danny began.
“Just shoot me with your thermos and get it over with,” the ghost pleaded, not even looking up as he casually decapitated an elf-on-the-shelf and tossed it over his shoulder, where it landed on the flat-top next to a blackening quarter-pound veggie burger. Danny flicked an ice blast at the melting toy before it could set off the smoke alarm.
“Not a fan of Christmas?” Danny prompted, hovering closer. If he could play ghost-therapist, he might save himself another visit from the Box Ghost for at least a few more months. When was Boxing Day again? Every ghost obsession followed a semi-predictable pattern, he’d found. Danny had been getting better in the past year at preventing attacks, largely thanks to Jazz, whose role on the team had inadvertently shifted to ghost-counselor.
The ghost frowned, shaking his head.
“Maybe put down the razor-sharp plastic icicles and we can take this outside?”
Danny eased his hand onto the other ghost’s, turning the box intangible and guiding the sad specter to the roof, where hopefully there would be fewer decorations to unbox and fire hazards to create.
“I just…don’t like the holidays much,” the ghost explained, sitting beside Danny on the roof, watching the streetlights of Amity Park ‘blink a bright red and green’ in the night.
“Me either,” Danny admitted with a sigh. “But you know we’ve talked about letting your obsession control you. Should I schedule another meeting with Jazz?”
The other ghost shrugged.
“Everything comes in boxes,” he explained. “Things people want, don’t want, can’t afford, hate, love…puppies that show up on the side of the road in January…toys from charity that get pawned on New Year’s Eve…wedding rings for engagements that don’t last the twelve days…handmade quilts and mosaics flooding the thrift stores for spring cleaning…everyone wants everything and they hate not getting it but they also hate getting it…” The ghost crumpled, throwing his face into his hands. “It’s overwhelming.”
Danny sighed, nodding, remembering what Jazz had mentioned before about the Box Ghost probably having some form of box-themed psychometry.
“It’s a lot,” Danny agreed. “November First hits hard?”
The ghost shivered, in his own way, looking down at his semi-translucent hands.
“It never gets better,” he said with a sigh. “Every year it seems like there’s just more… more.”
Danny sighed. He knew it wasn’t much better in the ghost zone, where most of the ghosts practiced holiday traditions of their own.
“Have you considered a vacation?” he offered, looking up and watching the stars as he talked. The Box Ghost looked at him quizzically, but Danny didn’t notice. November had some great stargazing conditions, after all.
“I’m stuck here with ghost duties,” Danny explained, “but there’s plenty of other cultures where they don’t even practice seasonal gift giving.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Maybe…” Danny winced, feeling like he wasn’t really trying hard enough to connect with the other ghost. He was just absentmindedly running his tongue, hoping to say something that might help on the off-chance. “Maybe they have…other interesting boxes? Like, types of boxes? Box-making techniques? Maybe you could expand your, um, obsession boundaries a bit?” This was probably a terrible idea. Danny winced. What was he even saying? He should just zap the dude into the thermos and get home before his curfew violation escalated into another grounding.
“More… more boxes?”
“Y-yeah,” Danny whispered, internally slapping himself in the face. He tore his eyes from the sky long enough to see the Box Ghost, who was staring at him as though he’d just offered him the world.
In a way, he had. Dangit.
“You’re right,” the ghost said, his face brightening into a warm smile. It was an odd look on him.
“Don’t put yourself in…a box.” Danny winced. He’d been trying to kick his pun habit.
“Don’t put myself in a—” the ghost repeated, thinking over the words. Danny wasn’t sure if he was upset or just really slow…
“HA! Hahahahaha!” bellowed the ghost out of nowhere. He clutched his stomach and rolled backward in the air.
Danny half-smiled awkwardly, suppressing a yawn. He just wanted to sleep at this point.
“I will travel the world, searching for the ideal box,” the ghost announced, straightening tall. Danny could have sworn his aura was shining brighter than normal.
“T-that’s great, Boxie…”
Jazz was going to have a heyday when she heard about this…
“You should listen to yourself, oh King Phantom-of-the-kind-words. We may be stuck in our obsessions, but you’re right. Maybe your box can be bigger if you let it.”
That was…oddly poetic coming from a guy with a history of limited articulation. Danny smiled back, holding up the thermos.
“So…I can put this away?”
The ghost responded by taking his hand and shaking it profusely.
“Thank you. I wish you a non-awful November. Until we meet again.”
Danny watched with some trepidation as the ghost drifted away and faded to invisibility.
“Hopefully that won’t be for awhile,” Danny mused, making for home. He needed to email Jazz asap so she wouldn’t be blindsided later on when the Box Ghost started rambling about Platonic box forms or something…
As he flew, Danny looked down at the streets, absentmindedly observing people’s yard decorations. A few sagging jack-o-lanterns…some cheap Halloween inflatables that hadn’t been taken down yet…a stand of Christmas lights from an overenthusiastic neighbor that Jack liked to face off with every year on decorations.
Danny was surprised to find a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Maybe he was being uncharacteristically optimistic…
But those Christmas lights sure looked a lot like stars.