fandoms: the suite life/henry danger
rating: G
word count: 271
tags: aged-up characters, established relationship, future fic, mild hurt/comfort
Zack’s mouth twisted into a frown as he examined the other boy. There was a red mark blooming across his left cheekbone, and split along his bottom lip. His insides sank. Despite his desperation to do so, he knew there was nothing he could say to bring back the light in those puppy-dog brown eyes, or the bright smile that’s long since taken up a permanent residence in his head.
At that point, it was simply a waiting game.
I have a midterm tomorrow so i will put off learning about this shiny new (to me) thing called the zenryverse? But man does it sound alluring ✨️
Good luck with your midterm!! I'm sending you all the good grade vibes 💖
I'm gonna put this under a read more because I took 8 paragraphs to explain something I probably could've covered in 4 sentences 🤦♀️
OKAY, back in the day, around the time Hour of Power aired, I started this Henry Danger sideblog (if you see old HD gifsets floating around from a deactivated blog, there's a 70% chance they're mine. I was legit the only gifmaker in the fandom for quite a while) and then roughly six years ago, I accidentally deleted the blog I'd had since like, 2012 (meaning the HD sideblog went with it) and I lost a decade+ worth of gifsets and memories and mutuals/friends :(
But, ANYWAY, when I had this HD blog, someone sent me an anon ask that was something like "what if Henry met Zack?" as in, Zack Martin, my bestie and current URL, from the Suite Life of Zack & Cody/On Deck and I was like "what if Henry did meet Zack?" which led me to starting a crossover AU, Danger on Deck, where the HD trio & Piper end up on the S.S. Tipton to track down this hacker that's causing chaos all over Swellview (as a warning, I haven't updated that fic in six years, and I'm pretty sure we had this convo on ao3 already but like. I feel like my writing is leagues above what it used to be, so the writing in DoD makes me cringe now. :/ Plus, I have this terrible chronic illness that's literally left me disabled so I can pretty much guarantee that DoD won't be updated anytime soon, and when it is, I know my perfectionism/OCD is going to make me do some extensive rewrites/edits, or I may end up rebooting the entire thing, because I feel I can certainly do better now)
But anyway, I started the fic where Zack's just beginning his, "figuring out he's bi" journey, so he's literally obsessed with Henry, and he's so desperate for his attention, but he hasn't Figured It Out yet so he's like. Convinced himself it's totally platonic. He clearly just wants to be friends and that's all lol
and on the other side of it, Henry's convinced himself that Zack's the hacker (which, I'm not saying he is or isn't) so he's also obsessed with Zack, but in a negative way (until eventually, his feelings start changing)
And like, as a sidenote/disclaimer, age gaps in relationships (especially those involving minor characters) typically makes me super uncomfortable/squicked out, but since Zack and Henry were pretty much the same age in their respective canons (with Henry being like, 13ish when HD started and Zack being around 12) I basically made it so the shows sort of "exist" at the same time, so Zack and Henry are roughly the same age.
After I started DoD, the creative juices kept flowing, and it eventually got to the point where I was trying to shove every goddamn trope into the thing, and my wonderful beta reader/valued friend was very gently like, "I think you're trying to do too much." And I know it sounds silly, but my mental illness has a tendency of giving me these arbitrary rules I have to follow, so for some reason I felt like I could only write one (1) crossover and that's it? which is, ofc, absurd, so after I figured out that I could write as many crossovers as I please, it snowballed, and now I have.....oof, too many to even count
(I literally have a whole future for them planned out, like I know what their first shared apartment looks like, they have a bulldog at one point, I have part of a one-shot of their wedding written, I have kid OCs it's..... a whole thing. And even beyond that, I've got two fake dating AUs, an AU referred to by it's title, Partners in Crime(fighting), and a whole bunch of random one-shots) (with none of them posted beyond little snippets here and there, because I'm very good at starting things and very bad at finishing them lol Plus, I'm trying to avoid past mistakes, i.e. Danger on Deck, that doesn't get updated in 6+ years and then I want to rewrite the whole thing, so I'm not allowing myself to post the first chapter of any multi-chap fic until i have at least 70% of the whole thing done)
But, anyway, since I had so many AUs and counting, I jokingly dubbed it the zenryverse but then it sort of stuck?? and now that's simply the phrase I (and some of friends that have also written zenry-centric things) use. And back when DoD was still relatively new, my wonderful, amazing friends were making fanart and playlists and stuff, so I created a sideblog basically for myself, so I'd have a place to keep all of that together, but then when I started creating a thousand different AUs, I changed the URL to @zenryverse and it's where I try to keep all of my zenry nonsense, even though I have an insanely bad habit of still posting zenry stuff here, on this blog
But, anyway, sorry I rambled on there -- I get a great deal of joy talking about them and I rarely get to beyond yelling into the void, so I have a tendency to take even the smallest opportunity and absolutely sprint with it lmao
Nothing major, just my first published piece in testing the waters of the Zenryverse. As friends know, I write almost exclusively HD content for Charlotte and I am not a Suite Life person, but I do feel like I comprehend Zack as far as Nikki has interpreted him, so I hope I do both of them justice in this little tidbit that I whipped up. @zenryverse
The last time that Charlotte had agreed to bunk with a stranger for convenience purposes, she absolutely lived to regret it. Jasper’s ex girlfriend when he was still… doing that whole, finding himself thing and dating girls. The girl had tried to kill her, despite being pretty tight with Jasper. Sure, this was absolutely different, but Charlotte felt a little bit triggered every time Zack smiled and asked her if she needed anything. She would wait for the moment that he’d pull out a weapon and charged at her. It was ridiculous. She knew that, but that was what her mind decided to do to her with the anxiety of living in a new place with a stranger.
“Henry’s boyfriend,” was basically how she even knew this guy. Henry. “Master of being a good judge of character,” she thought sarcastically as she watched Zack cooking in their shared apartment, while she sat at the little table that was only big enough for the two of them, because that was all that they currently needed. He smiled at her from the other room - actually - there was only a threshold separating the kitchen from the “dining area,” which was a little corner of a room that she used for studying. Zack generally ate on the couch… the futon.
She forced a smile back at him and looked at her computer again. Charlotte had been accepted into Harvard and she had a full ride, but, there was some type of discrepancy in the dormitory applications and she wound up not having a place to stay by the beginning of the semester. A disaster, but something that she was quickly able to work around… Henry’s boyfriend offered her some space in his place. It was small, but he had an extra room that he could clear out for her and put a few things in storage. He generally used the room for his music creation and hobbies, but some of it could fit in his bedroom and he could rent out a storage space for the things he didn’t use as frequently.
She hated to put him out that way, but she had to have something very quickly, as the semester wasn’t going to wait for her to find an affordable place close enough to school, but she promised him that she’d be out of his hair as soon as fiscally possible. “No worries! Hen says you’ve literally saved his life more than a few times. You’re welcome wherever I’m at.” Right.
But, staying under the same roof with someone that she only knew through Henry, MILES away from the person that they knew each other through and for her, away from everything that she knew at all. She didn’t think she would get homesick, but being in close quarters with somebody that she didn’t know how to really interact with was more challenging than she’d figured it would be. The weather was very different, she didn’t know which eateries were the good ones yet. She had signed up for way too many classes to get her core curriculum out of the way, and she didn’t have any friends… after years of practically living with all of her friends. They were all doing their own things and their schedules were different enough that she couldn’t even schedule screen time with anybody but Schwoz, and half the time, he was running around after his new team of heroes.
The most conversation outside of classes she had were that Mika kid contacting her for advice, and these strained interactions with Henry’s boyfriend. He set a plate down next to the computer and she smiled up at him politely. He did keep her fed, so that was a plus. “There’s a farmer’s market I like to hit up, if you want to come with me this weekend,” he said, sitting across from her.
“Uhh…” she pulled up a holographic schedule and shook her head, “No can do, but thanks for the offer.” Zack’s eyes were studying the schedule with a smile in them. She nervously put it away and his eyes landed on her. She shrugged and said, “I use the tech from… you know… I made the schedule interactive, too.”
“Hen talks about how smart you are all the time. I mean, I knew, but it’s always kinda cool to see things for yourself… hey… you think that could work with sheet music?”
“Definitely,” she said. “I’m not that great at writing music, but I could make a program that made the holograph capable of recording the writing of music.”
He leaned back and folded his arms, smiling, “What you said was ‘not that great at writing music,” what I heard is that you write music?”
She laughed, “I mean, I can hardly call it that. I did learn to play a guitar fairly easily.” She huffed, just thinking about it, “Ray made me and Jasper learn instruments so that we could be his band. The idea was that we’d be on the scene of places to play his soundtrack during battles…”
Zack laughed and shook his head. “That’s… not a terrible idea.”
“It’s very narcissistic though.”
“I’ve heard he’s full of that. I relate… slightly.” He glanced at her untouched plate and that was her cue. Charlotte pushed her laptop aside. Dinner smelled delicious. She tried a little and saw as he lit up when he watched the obvious satisfaction on her face. “Is it okay?” He asked, knowing the answer.
“So, so good!” She commented, before forking herself another mouthful. “Thanks, for cooking dinner.” She managed, between chews.
“You were going pretty heavy on those instant noodle thingies. Figured you could use an actual meal, since you’ve got like daily classes. Why do you have daily classes?”
She held a finger up as she finished chewing, then admitted, “I thought because I was coming right out of school, full days scheduled, that I could go right back in all the same… and I can, but… I didn’t prepare for some of the extras.”
“Like eating?” he asked, incredulously. She shrugged. “How is that an extra?”
She chuckled, then thought for a moment, before pulling her schedule back up, hovering above the table, “When are you going to the farmer’s market?”
“Saturday, around 1.”
“Lock in schedule,” she said and Zack watched the lights of the time switch around as she gave other commands to make room for the visit. “There. I can go.” He held out his fist towards her and she shook her head, “I’m sorry I don’t fist bump while eating.”
“Fair enough.”
She returned to her studying while she ate. Zack eventually took their dishes away to wash as she stayed there for the rest of the night, ignoring her reminder to go to bed until everything else in the apartment was silent and she knew that if Zack had already gone to sleep, she was surely up far too late for her own good. Whenever she collected her things to duck into her room, she heard him talking softly and held her ear close to his bedroom door.
“Of course, I’m taking good care of her. I don’t know if she’s really taking the best care of herself though…”
She left him to his privacy. Probably talking to Henry. She checked her phone. Henry had tried to call her a few times within the past couple of hours. She suspected that he must’ve had some free time and presumed she’d be winding down or something. She glanced at Zack’s door and knocked twice, “Goodnight, Zack,” she called.
“Oh, there she is!” she heard him say. “She just told me goodnight. I could give her the phone… okay… nevermind then.” And after Henry must’ve said a little more, Zack called back, “Night!”
Henry had warned him not to get in her way if she was sleepy or hungry. He knew she wasn’t hungry, but if she was sleepy, he didn’t want friction. Henry knew her best, after all. He heard her bedroom door open and shut and talked a little longer to Henry before nodding off to sleep on the phone.
Charlotte noticed after getting out of the shower that Henry had texted her his warnings to Zack with a wink emoji, prayer hands and a heart, with the note: Last thing I need is you murdering my man.
She rolled her eyes and simply texted back: Goodnight, Idiot. He could hear the smile in her voice when he read it. He was glad two of his favorite people were in the same place when he couldn’t be with either of them, but dang. He missed them. Figuring things out without Charlotte around for a change had been one of the biggest challenges of his life. He wondered sometimes if things were just as hard for her, but she was Charlotte, so.. Not likely.
Charlotte laid in bed, playing some lo fi music from her phone trying to sleep. She wondered if Henry was having as hard of a time as she was… Nah. He still had Swellview. She picked up her phone to tell him that she missed him, but decided against it. He still had Swellview and he had Zack, and he had a new situation to settle into without her. “I miss you, Henry,” she said to herself and set her phone back down, willing herself to try to get some sleep while she still had a little time.
i still want to move mountains, i still want to change the world
wow, okay, it has been a very very very long time since i wrote anything here, but — i had to break off my writing hiatus, because it is @zackmartin ‘s birthday!!! nikki, i want you to know that even though i’ve been on and off a lot for a while, you’re still one of the brightest, bravest, and kindest people i know, and you’ve always been one of my biggest supporters. you show so much love to everyone around you, and you deserve all the love in the world in return! i am so so proud i get to know you and so happy to be able to call you my friend. i wanted to write a little one-shot for the amazing @zenryverse for you today, because i love and miss them all, and i’m a little rusty in writing anything beyond scripts but i really hope you like it! once again, happy birthday, and i hope today is spectacular and brings you so many good things. the title is from “when she grows up” by craig campbell.
summary: He remembers being fifteen, is the thing. The restlessness of it, the dauntless way of looking at everything. None of Ray’s attempts to shut him down, tell him he was too young, not good enough, had ever worked — they’d only made him want it more. He can see it in her eyes; Izzy is itching for something to prove, and he knows where she got that from.
word count: 1,720
Henry had seen this coming, of course.
He’d thought — hoped, really, and in retrospect it just seems overly optimistic — that he could stave it off by a few more years, at least. Izzy is freshly fifteen, solidly in the middle of the teen-angst phase other parents had warned him about, but beyond a bit of door-slamming and incessant texting things have been good. Manageable. He and Zack aren’t perfect parents, by any means, but he thinks they’ve been handling it well.
He’s not sure handling it well extends to him standing outside his daughter’s bedroom window and waiting for her inevitable attempt to crawl out of it, though.
Izzy’s not the type of kid to sneak out much, or at least she hadn’t been before. But there’s been a sudden rash of crime downtown, and she’s been acting shifty this week, and Henry had spent dinner triaging the symptoms of a hero complex over spaghetti. He knows them well. He invented those symptoms. And now he’s passed them down to her, which is terrifying in a way that uncharted-parenting territory has rarely been before.
He doesn’t really have a benchmark for how to handle this. His own parents had been entirely uninvolved in his side job, and Ray was hardly a good role model. All Henry has is the person he was at fifteen, and he really, really does not want Izzy going down that road.
Which is why he’s loitering in the yard, in the dark, like some creepy stalker outside of his own home. It’s been about twenty minutes. He’s distracting himself with one of the phone games that Felix had gotten him hooked on and starting to think that maybe he overreacted when somewhere above him, a lock clicks. The window scrapes open.
Henry watches appraisingly from the ground as Izzy maneuvers herself through the window. She’s dressed in all black — where did she get leather pants? — and there’s a pink-and-black mask covering her eyes. It’s not a bad costume. She’s climbing nimbly into the tree that hangs beside her bedroom, and trying to shimmy her way down. One of the branches under her foot creaks alarmingly, and he hears her swallow a yelp.
“That one won’t hold your weight — try the one to the left!” Henry calls from the ground.
Izzy shifts her foot and breathes an audible sigh of relief. “Thanks, Papa—”
Then, she nearly falls out of the tree. “Papa?”
Henry’s heart skips a beat, but Izzy doesn’t slip despite her falter. She does, however, cast a panicked glance at him over her shoulder, still clinging to the branches. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” Henry replies flatly. “Can you get down so we can talk?”
Izzy bites out something that sounds like a swear under her breath, but Henry chooses not to comment. He waits until both her feet are planted firmly on the ground to say anything at all, actually. It doesn’t take long — Izzy’s always been a climber — but once she meets the ground she turns to look at him with so much self-righteousness in her expression it makes him stumble over the speech he had planned out in his head.
“How’d you know?” she demands, glaring at him through a mask that, now that it’s up close, looks familiar.
“Is that my old mask?” he asks by way of an answer. He can see her flush a little even in the low light. “Did you spray paint it?”
Izzy shrugs, crossing her arms. “It’s just one of them. You weren’t using it.” Henry raises an eyebrow, amused, and she scrunches her nose at him. “Aren’t you going to ask where I’m going?”
“Oh, I know where you were going,” Henry says, trying to sound casual about it, like the whole situation hasn’t got his stomach doing backflips. What if he hadn’t been here, if she’d done this yesterday, if he’d missed her by a minute? He’s doing everything he can not to think about it. “Iz—”
“I know what you’re gonna say, okay? I’m too young, I’m not ready yet, it’s dangerous.” She tilts her chin up at him, fifteen-years-old and already so full of that indomitable defiance. “You’ve said it all before. But you were younger than me when you first started, and you didn’t even have powers! I do. I can use them.”
He wants to say, you’re just a kid. He wants to say, you don’t get it, yet, what you’re signing up for. It’s not that simple. It’s not so easy.
But he remembers being fifteen, is the thing. The restlessness of it, the dauntless way of looking at everything. None of Ray’s attempts to shut him down, tell him he was too young, not good enough, had ever worked — they’d only made him want it more. He can see it in her eyes; Izzy is itching for something to prove, and he knows where she got that from.
“C’mere,” he says, and jerks his head for her to follow as he rounds the corner of the house towards the front door. Izzy looks at him questioningly but obliges, and then they’re sitting on the porch steps, the driveway sprawling out in front of them and the streetlights glowing in pinpricks of gold down the road.
“I started fighting crime when I was thirteen,” Henry starts, and then has to tamp down a laugh when Izzy makes a face like she’s bracing herself for another dad-lecture. “Listen, just listen for a sec. Look…being Kid Danger meant the world to me. I loved my job. I helped a lot of people. But I made a lot of sacrifices for it. I didn’t go to prom, or graduate high school, or go to college — I didn’t have a normal childhood, and, look, I wouldn’t have traded it, but it wasn’t easy. Back then it seemed like nothing was more important than being a superhero.” Izzy’s looking at him with huge brown eyes, and Henry smiles a little. “And then I met your dad, and everything changed.”
“Gross, Papa,” she says, but it’s half-hearted, and Henry laughs.
“What I’m trying to say,” he continues, “is that…I know how you feel. I get it, okay? Right now, it feels like the only thing that matters is…is putting on a mask, and using your powers, and saving the world. I just want you to know that you have time for that.” He tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear. “The world isn’t going to end tomorrow. Your life is gonna be a lot bigger than that suit.”
Izzy’s mouth twists, and when she ducks her head he’s afraid, for a moment, that he’s said the wrong thing. Then she sort of leans into where his hand is resting on her cheek, and the tight thing in his chest loosens. “I know it’s not gonna be easy,” she says finally. “I’m not doing it for…for the laughs, or the excitement, okay? I’m doing it ‘cause I wanna help people.” Her voice goes small, then: “I wanna be like you.”
Henry wishes she were still young enough to wrap in blankets and pull into his lap and shelter from everything else, because he wants to keep the world away from his daughter. Instead he tucks an arm around her, and puts his chin against her hair, and tries to just breathe. His kid is here, right now, and that’s what matters.
“How long can I stop you for?” he sighs after a while, and he can feel her smile.
“That depends. How many nights are you planning to spend camped outside my window?”
Henry laughs, and then he pulls back to look her in the eyes. She’s staring right back at him, determined, fifteen-years-old and so much of him and Zack and herself. She’s growing up. He takes a steady breath. Then: “I want to do this right, okay?”
“Okay,” she nods, and tilts her head at him. “What does that mean?”
“It means none of the sneaking out at night,” Henry begins, ticking things off on his fingers. “Absolutely no running headlong into danger, especially alone, ever. School comes first, and I want you to stick with your friends, and your clubs, and your normal teenage experiences. No fighting crime until I say you’re ready—”
“But—”
“Iz,” he says seriously, with both hands on her shoulders, “I’m gonna train you. I’m gonna show you the ropes, and when you’re older, and you’re ready, I’ll let you come on some missions with me.” He watches her eyes light up, and smiles at her. “But if we’re gonna do this, we need to trust each other, alright? No lying. No secrets. I mean it. If you really want to do this, we do it together.”
He gives it a moment to sink in, the gravity of it. If they go through with this, things are going to be different, almost surely for good. He watches that understanding settle behind Izzy’s eyes. Slowly, she nods back at him. “Okay, Papa.”
He sticks a pinky out towards her and smiles. “Swear?”
She rolls her eyes, but loops her finger through his. “Swear.”
“Good.” He ruffles her hair, grinning, and she squawks out a protest but laughs anyway. “Now get to bed, okay? You’ve got school tomorrow.”
“What? I thought we were gonna train—”
“Yeah, on a Tuesday night? No way. We’ll start this weekend.”
“But Papa,” she starts to protest, and he stands up and cuts her off with a grin.
“Hey, if you focus on school this week and do well in training, I’ll talk to Aunt Char about making you a brand-new suit.”
She leaps to her feet, beaming, all protests dying immediately. “Are you serious?”
“If!”
Izzy stands on her toes to kiss his cheek and then scrambles for the door. “Gotta go, I’ve got school bright and early tomorrow!” she grins, throwing the door open, and he laughs.
“Good night to you too. Oh, and Iz?”
She stops for a moment in the doorway, silhouetted by the warm light from the house. Young and brave and so full of life. He loves her more every single day.
“You’re not gonna be like me,” he tells her, and smiles. “You’re gonna be a whole lot better.”
[Image ID: A digital drawing of Henry Hart and Zack Martin from @dangerondeck’s zenryverse.
Henry is wearing a blue flannel and blue jeans while placing a yellow flower crown on Zack’s head. Zack is wearing a black shirt, a red jacket, and light brown pants. They are outside next to a tree that has “Z + H” carved into the tree with a heart around the letters. /END ID]
A little bit late on the gift, but again happy birthday @zackmartin ! Ilysm Nikki!!💞
a/n: ok first and foremost this is for @zackmartin bc she is incredibly cool and epic and lovely and the zenryverse literally wouldnt exist without her. i wrote this as just siblings being siblings except maybe idealized a little bc my sibling relationship kinda sucks if you read more into it i will literally end you. no proofread we die like men
word count: 346
fandom: zenryverse
also tagging: @angrypunchguy @sunsetcurve @neshatriumphs @mistyskiesrambles @perhapspearl
The faded words on torn pages refused to enter her mind. Izzy had been trying to read the same paragraph for several minutes, and just couldn't do it. Giving up, she flopped down on Felix's double bed, sleepover style. She glanced up at her little brother, who was engrossed in an Overwatch match.
"Hey, Feeeelixxxx?" Izzy questioned, trying to bug him just a little bit. He didn't move, just replied with a simple "Hm?".
"You read Gadsby last summer, right?" At this, he took off his headphones, still keeping his eyes on the screen.
"Yeah. Why?" Izzy couldn't see him raise an eyebrow, but she felt it in her soul.
"Can you tell meee..." She stole a quick glance at her assignment. "... the main idea of chapters 3-5?"
"Mmm, no. Sorry." He threw his headphones back on. Izzy sighed and turned onto her back. Opening up her book again, she started chapter three from the beginning.
Finding herself once again unable to read it after about ten minutes, she raised the book as high as she could before letting it fall on her face. A headset fell with a *clack* onto a desk, but the noise didn't register in her mind. She felt a presence looming over her, yet refused to move.
"Izzy?" Felix asked her, only a little bit annoyed.
"Mmh?"
"Do you need help?"
Izzy half-heartedly nodded in response. Felix hopped onto the bed and gently patted the spot next to him. Moving to his side, Izzy quickly made herself comfortable with her brother's coziest blanket, made by their Auntie Char.
Felix coughed before starting. "Chapter 3. Youth cannot stay for long in a condition of inactivity..." As he droned on, Izzy remembered back to when Felix was much, much younger. She read to him in bed like he's doing for her now. Smiling to herself, she listened to his monotonous voice and paid close attention to every word. Neither of them noticed the door creak open, nor Henry and Zack looking at their little angels in peace and joy. They knew they had raised them well.
