I'm finally gonna do it, Danny thought as he flew to school. I'm tired of both of us refusing to admit how we feel for each other. I'm finally going to tell Sam that I love her. The two of them were in their senior year of high school. For the past four years, they had constantly denied their true feelings. They had both been afraid that the love that they felt wasn't mutual; that their friendship would be destroyed because the other person didn't feel the same way. Danny had finally gotten over both Paulina and Valerie in his junior year. He realized that Paulina could only love Phantom and reject Fenton, while Valerie would like Fenton but never accept Phantom. He realized that the one person who would like him for who he was, for just being Danny, had been right under his nose since preschool. It was at that point that his love for Sam truly blossomed.
Sam, of course, had known about her feelings for Danny since they were freshmen. Before that, when she hung out with Danny and Tucker as best friends, she had known that Danny was special to her. However, since the accident that had changed their lives forever, she had come closer to him than ever before. She had laughed every time he defeated the Box Ghost, cried over his unconscious body every time he fought a ghost more powerful than himself. Her feelings for him had evolved from hormonal "teen love" to true love. I just hope he feels the same way for me, she thought as she walked to school.
Sam arrived at Casper High just as Danny Phantom landed behind a clump of bushes. There was an eerie flash of white light, and Danny Fenton walked out from behind the aforementioned shrubbery. At about that time, the third member of the trio, Tucker Foley, drove up in a black Honda Element with the license plate techno-geek. He had wanted to get an SUV, but Sam convinced him to get a hybrid instead. "It'll save you so much money on gas, you'll be able to buy a better PDA" was the argument that finally won him over.
The three of them walked into school together. Almost immediately, Paulina approached Danny and, running her finger down his chest, asked if he had seen Inviso-Bill lately. He pushed it away. "What's the matter? Am I making your girlfriend jealous?"
"He/She's not my boy/girlfriend!" Danny and Sam yelled in unison.
"Okay, novios, whatever you say," she said with a smirk and walked away to talk to her popular friends.
Danny, Sam, and Tucker hung out by Tucker's locker until the two minute warning bell rang for their first period class. Sam headed over to the History Department for her Holocaust Studies course, while Danny and Tucker had math with Mr. Ozai. In the middle of a boring lecture, Tucker passed a note to Danny. It read, "When are you going to tell her how you really feel."
Danny responded, writing "hopefully tonight."
Tucker rejoined, "It's about time! I was getting kind of tired of trying to hook you two up. I still haven't finished repaying all the favors I owe from that meat locker thing."
"Wait, you mean it was you who was responsible for that?" Danny wrote, outraged. The incident to which they were referring had taken place two years ago. Danny and Sam had 'accidentally' been locked in a meat locker that 'happened' to have a ghost shield around it that prevented Danny from phasing the two of them out. The idea was that they would have to hug each other to keep warm, and the constant touching would help them realize their true feelings for each other. Unfortunately, Tucker had forgotten the teeny little detail that Sam was an ultra-reyclo vegetarian. She saw all of the meat and, in a fit of rage, broke the door down with the haunches of a cow.
"Please don't tell her! I don't want to die being strangled by the wires from my PDA!"
"Don't worry, I won't tell Sam-yet. But I have soo much leverage on you now." Tucker gulped, knowing that nothing good could come of Danny having dirt on him.
Meanwhile, Sam was trying to stay awake through Mrs. Khon's lecture. She took this course for two reasons: one, because the subject was a major part of her Jewish heritage, and two, because the only work she had had to do the whole year was try to look attentive. She spent most of the class staring into space and thinking about Danny. She thought about his ice-blue eyes, his raven hair…she snapped back to attention when she saw the teacher staring at her. However, once Mrs. Khon looked elsewhere, she returned to thinking about him. I think that I prefer the blue eyes to the green…But I like the jumpsuit, it makes him look really sexy! Especially since he's started to widen out. It was true, Danny was no longer the small, skinny adolescent he had been as a freshman. He had shot up, now standing at six feet. While he was not as muscular as Dash Baxter, his arms and abs were firm and strong. In his ghost form, he was a formidable opponent. Of course, right now the only part of his ghost form that Sam was thinking about was the skintight costume.
She was broken out of her reverie by the bell. Danny was waiting for her outside of the classroom. The two of them walked together to Spanish. This class was noisy and crowded, so the two of them were able to sit in the back pretty much undetected. They spent much of this time reminiscing about all of the good times they had had. "Remember the first school dance, when I was wearing the Amulet of Eragon?"
"Yeah, you really had a roaring time that night." He said, and they both laughed.
"Remember when Ember put me under that spell?" Danny asked. Sam blushed, remembering how much she had enjoyed having Danny love her instead of that slut, Paulina. It had broken her heart almost as much as it had Danny's when she had had to break the spell by kissing Dash. Quickly changing the subject, she said, "Remember when Desiree made it so that we had never met?"
"Yeah, that was really weird." Their conversation pretty much followed this vein for the rest of the class. The three friends all had English together, then lunch. After lunch, Danny and Tucker had regular history together, while Sam had math. For their last class of the day, they had Tech. Danny and Sam were in the same Tech class. Tucker, of course, was in the AP class. During the class, Sam received an IM from Danny. It read meet me in the park, at the top of that hill with the single tree on it, tonight at 6:00. Surprised and curious, she replied okay. She wanted to ask him what was going on, but as soon as the bell rang, she looked over to his seat but he had disappeared. Damn ghost powers, she thought.
As soon as the bell rang, Danny turned invisible and intangible and flew out of the room. He reached through his locker door and put the books he needed into his backpack. Then, he flew home. He spent the afternoon pacing his room, thinking about what he was planning to do that night. He was nervous, afraid that Sam wouldn't reciprocate his feelings. He didn't know if he would be able to even see her again if she were to reject him. The pain would be too much. Unable to continue to think like this, Danny gave his head a little shake. He tried to think about the opposite; what would happen if Sam admitted that she loved him back. He grinned at the thought of fireworks and a meteor shower in the background of a long, passionate kiss.
Sam came to the park that night, just as she had promised. What could he be planning? She thought to herself. Upon ascending the hill, she realized that this was the place where they had had their first fake-out make out while Sam was trying to hide Danny from Valerie. Danny walked up to her, seemingly out from behind the shadows that the setting sun cast on the hill. "Sam," he said, "I have something very important to tell you." She could tell that what he was about to say was extremely difficult for him; his facial features revealed the turmoil that was going on just beneath the surface. He put his hands on her shoulders. "Samantha Adele Manson," he said, enunciating every syllable as though they were the most important words he would ever speak, "I love you." Sam stood stock-still, her eyes wide.