Danny and M'gann being rivals at a trivia competition hosted by NASA and Danny winning because every question has to do with a place he visited during a mission from Clockwork. M'gann confronts him and they get into a fight because the prize was a book about the history of the martian constellations written in the martian language donated by J'onn and she wanted it. Everything escalates from there.
I could swear I posted this answer, sorry
Oh, ho, ho, this is such a fun scenario. I imagine book ending up donated was case of major miscommunication between J'onn and M'gann, because I don't think he'd give it away if she let him know and I don't really see him not asking about that.
Anyway, M'gann thought that winning it back would be a child's play, I mean, her interest in space was rather focused on Earth, and it doesn't really count as space when she's on Earth but it was Martian book, she is Martian, questions would probably be about Mars.
And she'd get it too, she was better than most of the participants, but then comes this one guy and steals it from in front of her nose.
And look, she usually isn't too prone to conflict. But the guy was mocking her when he said she did well and it was an honor to compete with her, and when he offered to reprint it for her.
Danny, on his end, was absolutely smug little shit at the start there, he's not winning often so he can and will gloat when he does. But when he realized how intense the girl was about that book, his offer of printing was entirely sincere. And she blew up on him just like that?!
And maybe at some point during the argument he throws something like "Well, it's not my fault you have to get good. If you win this other thing at the upcoming competition we can do an exchange". By that time he'd probably be able to make his own copy he was already planing to do because figuring out Martian script would require taking it to Ghost Zone and he wouldn't want to contaminate original.
And maybe this gets M'gann to really sit down and study space as a whole, and maybe it's fun and maybe she doesn't win at the next competition, but she gets Danny to give her another chance and they just keep and keep going...
And maybe one day Danny doesn't show up, and M'gann realizes she actually started to enjoy his company, at some point. And then he doesn't show up to next competition either...
And maybe she uses resources at her disposal to figure out where he lives, so Miss Martian can go figure out where her space trivia buddy disappeared...
Sorry if it's messy, my brain is freaking scrambled lately
Freshly dead Danny found portal to Mars in Ghost Zone. It was one good thing that came from him getting ghost powers, so he keeps visiting, invisible so he doesn't get caught.
He does get caught, of course, by one M'gann M'orzz. They become secret friends, but Danny tells her he's from Ghost Zone instead of saying he's from Amity Park. But they do get closer anyway, Danny smuggles to her some Earth media she didn't have access to before and takes revenge on people he caught being racist to her. M'gann answers all of his questions about Mars' culture and history and physics and all that, as best as she could (she didn't spent uncharacteristic amount of hours refreshing everything so she could answer, shut up) and teaches him some basics of shielding one's mind. They go flying together and hung out and bond.
They're besties, as much as they can be, when Phantom visits only once every few month and outside of that they have no way of communicating.
And then one day, about two Earth years after they first met, when Phantom shows up, M'gann isn't there.
He doesn't know that shortly after Miss Martian joins Justice League's covert Team, Young Justice.
He does learn about heroine's existence later, but doesn't realize it's his friend, because a) why would he, there are many martian girls and even if he knows that Miss Martian is Manhunter's niece, he has like hundred of them and b) there are probably more Martians who were obsessed with random sitcom from early 80's c) she is green. His friend very much wasn't. That was, like, a big thing.
M'gann doesn't even know to look for Phantom on Earth, though she does ask around for Ghost Zone in the beginning. For all her friend was clearly unhuman, he looked like Earthling, so they may know where he was from. Nobody did, because Ghost Zone is not a term people use for it, even if they somehow know it exists.
And then, by stroke of luck, they meet again. And for the life of me, I can't figure out how it could go.
I recently realized I drew them quite a bit since 2024, and yet I didn't share them here, for some reason (I was too tired o figure out tags, and then forgot there was something to share lol). So, one big post it is :D
Somewhat chronological, though not perfectly.
I forgot at the start I was obsessed with putting ship name over the art. They turned out so cute here! I like the way their eyes turned out on the regular sized thing, I really need to get back to playing with eye shapes more. Playing with effects on chibi one was lots of fun too, I also have to do this more often tbh
Whenever I think about writing Danny being there when M'gann revealed her true Martian form, I battle to urge to play it emotional and serious, and having fun with that in form of Danny being way too into it. Like, he made fun of Tucker for being a monsterfucker, but the moment it's Meg, he's down bad. He cannot offer emotional support, his blue screening right now, I'm (not) sorry.
Not much to say about that, they're just cute. Sleeping one is adorable, switching it up and down until I forgot which way it was supposed to go was fun. You can probably clearly see when on this timeline I received amazing art for "(Don't) leave me here alone" from Clockworkclown. I'm still obsessed with the colors on that one, I swear. Unfortunately, this combo was rather hit or miss in a way it was working for me, so I'm back to more canon coloration
And these two are rather new. Left one started out because I liked heart hypnosis eyes I found in one picrew (and also made me have a brief thought of making couple picrew on my own, for other rarepair shippers in need of some art) and decided to inflict it upon them. Some love potion or something like that, I don't know. I absolutely love the lightning on it, especially on M'gann's face. Never thought of it as my forte, but I did well here
The right one, as a process, was fun. Doodle on little card, more specific pose sketch digitally, transferred to paper again, sketch on clothes in a way that turned out mess, transfer to other piece so it's all nice and clean and only then lineart and markers, but it was worth it. Space cape is always great and when I showed it on discord, one comment made me enter "more alien M'gann design" spiral, but that's a thing for a different time
M'gann was first one out of the Team to learn that Phantom was a halfa, because he was really, really new to the hero business when Bialya happened. She helped him remember enough to go ghost before finding others, partially because she was also curious who this guy was, since she kinda remembered others but not this guy. He kept up the act for others for much longer.
On the other hand, Danny was last to learn that M'gann was White Martian, because for one reason or another he wasn't there during Team's "Let's drop all secrets now" day. Maybe he even learned about it second hand, from someone who asked if he knew about it, because they were so close :)
Humans have wings and Martians don't. Sure, M'gann can shapeshift them on, but that doesn't mean she knows how to use them. She can fake it well enough anyway, but Martians flight is based on their telekinesis and if someone looked a little closer they'd know something is off.
Cue, Danny teaching her flying with wings.
Bonus idea, if due to ghost stuff or just the way he died, in ghost form Danny's wings aren't really reliable, so M'gann gets to pay back the favour and teaches him how to fly without wings
Count the freckles, connect them like the stars part 5, Perseus and Andromeda
masterpost
Summary: Five time Danny found and drew constellations from M'gann's freckles and one time she did that for him
“I think the guy is usually the one supposed to take the girl out on surprise trips,” Danny joked, as Bioship darted faster than they’d ever dare with full human aboard. It wasn’t the best day for how Danny felt about the fact that he wasn’t one anymore, but even then he had to admit it came with some neat perks.
“Well, I’m the one with the vehicle, and I’m not human, so I don’t have to let human conventions stop me from keeping a promise I made to you.”
He looked outside and stomped down everything it made him feel. He pressed his fingers right under his knees, hoping for the pain to bring him some clarity. M’gann was just being a good friend, if anyone else wanted to go somewhere, she’d fly them there in the heartbeat. Sure, she wasn’t going around promising everyone outings, at least not with such intensity as she did with him (unless this too had been projection of the yearning mind), but it was only because she found humans fascinating and wanted to know their views of the stars. He wasn’t special.
But he wanted to be. He wanted to make her smile when she saw him, just because. He wanted to be the first she’d go share exciting news with. He wanted to be the one she’d seek out when she needed to vent. Someone she’d find when she just needed to exist, silent but there, like that time she had migraine, but without pain. He didn’t want her in pain.
In particularly brave fantasies, she grabbed hair at the back of his head and kissed him on the lips—
He really needed to get his mind out of the gutter, if he planned to keep all of these things under the wraps.
“One day I’ll find driving instructor who doesn’t pass out when they hear name Fenton, and it’ll be my turn to take you somewhere nice.”
“I’ll be waiting for that,” she said with a bright smile, and Danny wasn’t stupid, he could understand when people lied to make someone feel nice (M’gann was the one who taught him how to use his ghost half for that, after all), and he could tell with certainty he rarely felt, that she meant it with her whole heart.
“Also, we’re here,” she added, before his thoughts spiraled too far.
He looked through the window, slightly bigger as if Bioship could tell he wanted to see the most (she probably did), but there was only inky darkness outside.
“Where is here?”
“Atlantic Ocean. I thought it should be dark enough to stargaze properly.”
Okay, technically, he was a half ghost, he didn’t need to breathe. He shouldn’t feel like that just because she– just because she went so far out of her way to make sure their night together would be great. He gathered himself around the almost wheezing gasp and grabbed basket and a blanket they prepared for today before he phased through the roof to set it all up. It was as much to lessen his guilt over coming when almost everything was ready, as well as to give him extra moment to make sure he wasn’t going to destroy what he already had by being weird.
The inherent uncanniness of using his ghost powers as human, with it’s small ache and growing dread, helped. Generally, he was supposed to avoid it, Frostbite was rather clear about it, but Danny didn’t want to be Phantom tonight. He smoothed out last crease on the washed out, checkerboard blanket that accompanied him from some time around when he started to stargaze with his parents. It usually felt weird to try use blanket without his family around, so it mostly collected moths since they started working on the portal more intensely.
It felt right to bring it back for M’gann.
He dragged in last bit of salty fresh air before he phased back in with a smile.
“If I may, my lady,” He bowed with a grin, one hand behind his back, one palm up in front of him, like men did when asking ladies to dance in movies about times long gone. She laughed, but not in a mean way, and put her hand in his.
“Always,” she promised, looking him in the eyes with such intensity that he was almost sure it wasn’t only help with phasing that she meant. He discarded the thought before it could settle and disappoint him.
He floated them up, their legs folded so they’d go through faster, heads half raised in anticipation. Considering Bioship’s speed and the way ceiling covered so much, they, at best, only vaguely knew what to expect.
As soon as their knees settled on the softened surface, he raised his head even higher, taking a moment to just drink in the sight. Something caught in his throat and when he managed to breathe out around it, the world grew simpler in it’s intricate beauty.
The sky was bright.
Danny breathed.
He couldn’t say that he forgot it could look like that, not exactly. He’d seen photos, and that one trip to night sky reserve when he was ten (Fenton Trip of Double Digits, as dad kept calling it) was still one of his favorite memories to return to.
But living in city full of lights, it was easy for the memory to dull.
He breathed.
He swayed along with bobbing of the Bioship, hovering somewhere in the middle of Atlantic. The sky was bright and so full that rational knowledge that most of the space was empty couldn’t win with his eyes. It sprawled in every way he looked.
He breathed.
He was a speck of dust in grand scheme of things and he was free. No matter what he did or didn’t do, in what he succeeded or failed, if he ever were or weren’t, nothing would change. Universe was huge and beautiful and he was a part of it. He was so small that he was free to do whatever, because nothing would change. He was a blip on the timeline, image so quick he couldn’t be even counted as subliminal message in the infinite flow of everything.
He both did and didn’t hear the waves dozens of feet below them, but his core sung with the stars, as if it was possible for sound to travel through the vacuum. Well, it was his core and ghosts had a knack on bending and breaking rules of physics. Maybe there really was a song, a call from universe that he was able to hear.
Maybe he should listen to the summon, should get up and fly, up and up, until he was one with the stars.
Next to him M’gann gasped softly.
“I didn’t realize sky could look like this.”
He glanced her way and with a muted surprise he realized he did stand up at some point.
His face frowned, lead by the sort of distant surprise at the admission. It shouldn’t be new to her. It…
The train of thought was hard to follow, so he let it go, eyes drifting back to the stars.
“Surface on M’arzz is too dangerous to go look at the sky, when I was flying to Earth we’d been facing sun the whole time, and here I didn’t really have a chance to go before today.”
It made sense. He nodded, head flopping to the side a bit.
“Tell me about them?”
He looked at her and paused for a breath, two, to consider it. Stars kept calling him, kept whispering that they were the place he should be, that they were home he always missed. He was barely standing anymore, a breeze away from flying.
But it was M’gann who asked. He would walk through the fire if she so wished. He would kill and die for her. He would—
She asked about stars. Stars liked to be talked about. And she was of stars. From stars.
He sat back down right next to her. He could talk for a little bit before he joined the stars. They waited for millions of years, they could wait a bit longer.
But not too long.
“We call this bright part the Milky Way,” he started, words feeling clumsy in his mouth, as if things he was trying to describe were too great for any language he knew, but he was trying anyway. His hand traced it across the sky, as if ‘this bright part’ required any clarification, “because in the past it reminded people of spilled milk… I think. For sure, it’s our galactic disc,” he turned around slightly and pointed above the brightest part of the sky. Huh, he usually wasn’t this good at finding cardinal directions, “This is Polaris, the North Star.”
“The tail of the little bear, right?”
“Yes. It goes like this,” his mouth said, lazy finger tracing the connection between the stars, “In some thousands of years our relative position to each other will change. So it won’t be good North Star anymore. Then the new one will be Vega, from Lyra constellation. It’s under horizon right now. It should show up later around here,” His torso turned more north east, his hand moving closer to the bright strip of Milky Way, while his mouth kept talking “There, a bit higher is Draco, a dragon. In some myths it was set in the sky by Hera, as last revenge, to separate Big and Small Bear.”
He traced creature’s long tail, his eyes and hand climbing higher on the sky. He realized that M’gann was sitting right behind him, head almost hooked over his shoulder, so she’d see exactly what he was pointing at. It was a distant realization, not bearing any sort of emotion with it. He just felt how part of his back was covered from wind and hair tickling his ear and he couldn’t tell when it started.
World outside of stars was hard to really focus on. It wasn’t bad. After all, stars were only thing that was really important right then.
“Then there is Big Bear, Ursa Major. If we only take this part–” his finger went between Alkaid and Mizar, to Dubhe, to draw shape reminiscent of Ursa Minor, “–it’s called Big Dipper. In this case Ursa Minor is called Small Dipper.”
His hand felt weird, both too heavy to control and light enough that it raised almost on it’s own. He kept it high, finger moving, more north than north-west, to trace another constellation.
“This is Auriga. It doesn’t have one myth it’s related to, like Virgo, but it’s always tied to some guy with a chariot,” Chariots were meant for travel. He was supposed to travel, to join the stars, even if he didn’t have a chariot, “One version even says it’s inventor of four horsed chariot himself, Erichthonius, son of Hephaestus, raised by Athena. Some other say it’s about few figures who died in relation to their chariots. There is a version that says it was Phaethon, son of Helios, god of sun. He once managed to get permission to drive Chariot of the Sun. He wasn’t strong enough to hold the horses in check. It burned life away in some parts of the world. Created desserts and let other places be overtaken by frost. Zeus killed him. Helios got his chariot under control before anything even worse happened. He couldn’t bear for his son to be gone like that, so he raised him up to the sky, so he’d always be, even if they couldn’t see each other.”
Danny could also always be, stars sung to his very core. He just needed to go up and join them…
There was hand on his shoulder, pushing him down before he could fully drift away… M’gann… Shoulder… Stars…
M’gann had a stars near her shoulder. What constellation was it? He had to know that, he had to—
Orion.
He spun around south-west, quick but clumsy, flailing as his knees caught on loose blanket. He promised to show it too, he… came to halt when he couldn’t see the stars for a moment.
He blinked at M’gann, just few inches away from him, dully noting quick dash of surprise before her face shifted into… something else. She was still looking at him, eyes half closed, not quite meeting his, mouth slightly open. A blush, as far as he could tell in the bad light.
He blinked again.
Had she gotten closer? Had she—
Oh.
He put hand a bit before her ear.
“You have Perseus and Andromeda on your cheeks.”
Her face twisted and he felt whisper of disappointment that wasn’t his own, but she smiled again before he could make sense of it. His mind still felt too heavy, or really too light, like helium balloon threatening to escape if he loosened his grasp on it. Stars were a bit quieter now that he couldn’t see them, or at least not as much.
Well, her freckles were like stars, which didn’t help to really clear the star haze.
He lightly pressed thin marker against Alpheratz. Huh, he didn’t realize he had a pen on him, let alone when he took it out.
“Andromeda was Aethiopian princess,” he started quietly, “Her mother, Cassiopeia was incredibly beautiful and vain. She said that she was prettier than Nereids, sea spirits, which is the type of insult one just doesn’t aim at immortals. They asked Poseidon, God of the Seas, to punish the country for hubris of it’s queen, and he agreed,” As always, M’gann’s skin was cool to touch as he drew, hand with pen raised awkwardly to not let it smudge. He should bring her with him, so she could warm up from the stars, “Sea monster, called Cetus, started haunting the coast, eating cattle and people who got too close to the shore at the wrong time. Royal family, distraught, asked the oracle what brought it upon them and how to undo the damage. The monster would only be satiated if Cassiopeia died, but upon hearing it, Andromeda offered herself instead of her mother, and gods agreed to it. So she was tied to some rocks, awaiting her death.”
M’gann put her hands on his knees as if for support. He lost his voice for a moment. A cough brought it back.
He put the pen on the other side of her nose to draw line from Gorgonea Tertia to Algol.
“Then, right when she thought she’d die, a guy showed up and slayed the monster. His name was Perseus and he was on his way back from quest to kill Medusa, woman who could turn people into stone if they looked at her. He freed Andromeda and took her home with him. There he turned the king into stone with Medusa’s head, because king sent Perseus away on this seemingly impossible quest so he could freely harass Perseus’ mother, Danae. Then, when all was solved, Perseus and Andromeda got married and lived happily ever after, which is rather surprising, considering we’re talking about Greek myths. And then when they died, Athena put them in the sky… Actually, they should be visible tonight,” he said, turning back north-west as soon as he drew last connection on Perseus, the freckle constellation. His back stretched almost uncomfortably, but he refused to move his legs until M’gann let go, “We got lucky, Andromeda will hide under the horizon in few hours, but for now they both are high enough to see.”
It was a bit hard to make out, because Perseus’ backdrop was the Milky Way, but something in him knew exactly where to look. He traced it and then moved down to Andromeda, then to Orion and then to other stars, trying to see them all at once.
They were getting louder, to the point where it was hard to hear his own thoughts, hard to hear anything other than whispers of “come to us, come to us, come to us“. He might’ve started floating again, it was hard to tell. He thought stars were getting closer. He grabbed M’gann by her wrist, so she would come with him—
Breath was punched out of his lungs. He blinked at the closing ceiling of the Bioship, mind much clearer now that he couldn’t hear the stars.
“I’m so sorry, Danny, you were getting unresponsive and I panicked,” M’gann said, sounding genuinely apologetic as she helped him sit up.
“It’s okay.”
“Are you sure?” There was about fifty-fifty chance that his ghostly healing wouldn’t kick in and he’d bruise, but otherwise everything was in order, so he nodded, “It was a bit weird. And frankly worrying.”
“I’ll ask Frostbite to do a check up, or something,” he muttered somewhat dismissively, considering the merits of reassembling the sandwich that crash landed with them. M’gann jabbed him lightly between the eyes.
“You do that, and do it quickly,” she commanded with an almost glare.
“Why?”
“We can’t go stargazing again before we know it won’t fry your brain, can we?”
Oh.
Oh.
She wanted to go out with him again.
Now would be a good time to know how to duplicate, so that he could sent one to whoop and do a stupid triumphant dance somewhere out of sight. He didn’t know how to duplicate, so he just grinned at her, not bothering to worry if it wasn’t too much.
Only thing stopping me from writing enemies to lovers or just plainly "they hate each other" M'gann x Danny is the fact that I don't like enemies to lovers as a dynamic (and the fact that it would have to be longer fic and I have other plans for long fics).
But there could absolutely be a way to do it. I could probably come up with scenario for any romance dynamic you could choose...
Yes, this is me blatantly asking you to try me and send me something (my answer probably will be more of a prompt instead of a fic, but still)
