Doctor Dash

Chapter 28

"Can I eat now?" Lex asked the moment they entered the house, tugging on his father's hand.

"Okay. Okay," Danny said as he pulled his ha Deend free before his son could try to bite at his fingers again.

He was still thanking his lucky stars that Dash didn't question that little oddity. But maybe Dash was giving him some space after that whole complete meltdown last night. Danny rubbed tiredly at his face, still feeling drained after bawling his eyes out, and a flush rose to his cheeks as he remembered that he cried on Dash's shoulder. It still made his head spin that Dash wasn't laughing at him or teasing him for that. It was weird. It didn't fit with the image he had of Dash from high school. But they had both grown and changed since graduating from Casper High.

"What do you want? I could make you a sandwich with ecto lime jelly and booey-gooey peanut butter." Danny headed for the laboratory with his son trotting along behind him.

"Yeah!" Lex cheered, pumping his fists into the air.

Danny smiled to himself, shaking his head as he walked over to where he kept all his ectoplasmic ingredients. He grabbed the jars of bright, neon green jelly and a dark green, creamy peanut butter. With those in hand, he returned to the kitchen with his son, who kept at his side in his eager anticipation of feeding his ghost hunger. After slapping the jelly and peanut butter onto slices of bread and pressing them together, he handed the sandwich to his son. Lex immediately took a large bite out of the sandwich, happily munching on it while ignoring the smears of green around his mouth. Danny scraped a glob of the jelly off his thumb with his teeth before he screwed the tops back onto the jars. It still had a funky taste to him, but there was something about it that made his stomach growl with hunger. He still preferred normal human food over anything made with ectoplasm though.

"Is it good?" Danny asked, dropping his gaze to his son, and Lex nodded with a wide grin, already halfway finished with his sandwich. Crouching down, Danny folded his arms over his legs. "So what sort of things did Dan teach you yesterday?" After playing babysitter to Youngblood and Box Lunch, neither of whom wanted to return to the Ghost Zone after their hour was up and made him chase them around for way too long, Danny didn't get much time to ask about the training before they were heading off to Dash's house for the sleepover.

Lex swallowed his mouthful before speaking. "He tried to show me how to make energy balls, but," he frowned, lowering his head, "I couldn't get it to work."

"Hm, maybe that's just a little too advanced for you right now," Danny said as he stood to grab a paper towel. After wetting it, he crouched down again and scrubbed his son's hands and face clean of the sticky green residue from the jelly and peanut butter. "It took me a while before I developed the ability to use ectoblasts. How about we work on something else? I bet you'd enjoy flying." He grinned at his son before he tossed the dirty paper towel into the trash.

"Yeah, I wanna fly!" Lex bounced on his feet, excited at the prospect of learning how to fly. From what he demonstrated so far, he could only manage a slight hover for a short time before he had to drop back to the ground. Moving while floating seemed too much for him at the moment without someone to teach him.

He put off the training for too long, Danny realized. He should have started teaching Lex more than simply defending himself in a fight, like a human. Plenty of times while they were at home, he could see his son's powers start to act up: sinking through the floor, floating into the air at random moments, and disappearing for a second. Danny had to breathe a sigh of relief that no one ever caught those accidents if or when they happened outside of the house. How was he to explain those incidents if one of Lex's classmates or his teacher saw it happen?

"Let's head down to the lab then." Danny grabbed the jars to return to where he usually kept them. Once the jars were put away, he sat down in pretty much the center of the laboratory. "All right. Now I know you can hover a little. I want you to give moving around a try when you do it this time."