A/N: So I literally wrote this in about ten minutes give or take, not including the brief break I took to eat dinner at the insistence of my parents. I wanted to get something out for this segment for Phanniemay (which is Favourite), but I was running low on both time and inspiration. I took a great deal of that inspiration from a post on tumblr, the link to which is also on my profile. I'm not entirely sure how well I did on this, but I suppose that's the end of it anyway. Enjoy, hopefully. I hope I did alright with this, at the very least.
Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or any characters that are mentioned by name.
They did everything together. They weren't just Sam, just Danny, or just Tucker, they were Sam, Danny, and Tucker, and wherever one went the other two were almost guaranteed to be there as well. The "three" or the "trio" were terms that exclusively meant the group of friends, even though they weren't the only group of friends whose numbers amounted to three. It was simply a universal constant to Amity Park, almost as certain as at least one ghost attack a day and the appearance of Phantom at the largest of them; it was so common that no one gave it a second glance. Unless, of course, one wasn't from Amity Park at all.
If the people at Amity were honest with themselves, almost no one had any idea how it was the three had become friends. Whenever asked, the adults would usually mention something about "childhood friends" and how "those three are always together", but they never elaborated. Asking the teens got marginally better, if not irrelevant and occasionally false results.
Some of them would talk about the time the group had meticulously planted and placed various trees and plants everywhere around the elementary school; across the school yard, on top of various desks in planters, and hanging from the jungle gym and flagpole and, the most memorable of the mystery plant placements, the leafy shrub they seemed to have planted into the ceiling, upside down. They'd set it up complete with an elaborate makeshift watering system that ran next to their desks along the wall and left it dangling, allowing it to rain bits of leaf and branch onto people's heads. Many hypothesized that the trio had taken out some the ceiling tiles and makeshifted a harness to hang the shrub upside down, while others believed that the shrub was completely fake (albeit well faked), though some simply didn't care to think about it and simply enjoyed the fact that there was a tree stuck in their ceiling. The shrub became beloved by the students and still hangs above their heads, the janitor sometimes trimming the branches of the surprisingly large plant. Taking it down and disassembling the mysterious water system the trio had built would be more trouble than simply allowing the plant to remain.
Other teens would mention how the three did everything together and shared everything; t-shirts, pants, food, video games, movies, jokes, you name something you'd seen any one of the three hold and it was virtually guaranteed that the other two had been in possession of the object in question at some point. Even in playing one-player shooting games or Dance Dance Revolution at the arcade the three shared, unanimously agreeing on who hit what button and when. There was no shame between the three, and little there was that wasn't shared among them. On a similar note, no one held onto secrets better than the trio either. Whether it was an inside joke or something private, there was almost no one who could decipher the mysterious codes in the forms of jokes and secrets the three shared. They almost never told anyone, and it quickly became known that when it came to Sam, Danny, and Tucker, anything said between them would stay between them. The select few that were privy to the intricacies of their pasts and jokes considered it an honour, and were almost as tight-lipped about every spoken word as the original three were.
Only a handful of teens, however, could tell you about that short period of time before Sam, Danny, and Tucker had simply been DannyandTucker, at the very very beginning of their school days. According to the local kid myths among the handful, one day the two had gotten into detention with each other and the next day they'd been virtually inseparable. Sam's inclusion to the group had been similar; the young girl had released every single one of the class pets, was placed into detention, and sure enough afterwards the duo became a trio and that was the end of the story.
Of course, if anyone asking questions found themselves dissatisfied with these answers, they could always turn to two sources; the younger community, or the trio themselves.
The kids provided the strangest but possibly most accurate information about the group. They'd often talk about how one would fix their bike's chain, mention how they'd all wander around helping with ghosts in the middle of the night, and one child would say something about how despite the number of detentions the trio were also infamous for getting, they were also the nicest people in the entire city.
If Danny was asked about his two best friends, he would always smile and mention how the three had been friends as long as they could remember, one hand at the back of his neck as the other gestured while he spoke. When Sam was questioned, she'd huff and say something along the lines of how the two "were the only ones willing to get into trouble with her even though she was for the rights of animals", her somewhat flippant tone offset by the creeping grin that always appeared on her face. Tucker, if asked, would flash a smirk and jokingly hook his thumbs around his shirt collar, saying "How could those two ever resist Tuck?"
And when the trio was asked about why they were always together, questioned about their relationship with each other and why they'd become friends, all three of them would give a somewhat enigmatic but happy smile and tell them, "Well, we just clicked, I guess. They're my best friends, why wouldn't we hang out with each other?"
Oftentimes the person questioning would leave, still feeling dissatisfied but unable to gather any more information. Some people, however, would smile back, understanding the meaning beneath their words.
It wasn't Danny, Sam, and Tucker, separate people but close; it had never been that, and it was a concept that was hard to understand for some people
Some friends are forever, even before they meet each other.
"Why are you in detention?"
"It's wrongful imprisonment, just because I didn't think those poor pets should have been locked in cages. "The girl frowned. "What about you two?"
The two in question looked at each other, then back at her with a shrug. "I dunno."
A stomach rumbled. Danny immediately offered the mystery girl his sandwich, which she refused.
"I can't eat that, it's got animal meat! If I was going to eat animal meat, I would just eat my own lunch." She frowned, glaring at the sack that contained her own lunch.
Tucker leapt forward, thrusting a bag of carrot and celery sticks towards her. "Here, take my rabbit food! I'll eat your lunch."
The girl made a face at him but took the bag, shoving her own at him. Tucker promptly snatched Danny's lunch out of his hands and replaced it with the one he'd gotten from Sam. "There. Now we've all got lunch."
The two smiled at him before sitting down.
"So, what's your name?" Danny asked the girl.
"My name's Sam," she replied, popping a carrot stick into her mouth with a crunch. "What about you two?"
"My name's Danny," he said, unwrapping the sandwich that had been shoved into his hands as though his lunch being forcibly replaced was a normal occurrence.
"I'm Tucker," the boy in question said through his mouthful of sandwich, "but you can just call me Tuck."
The three shared their lunch, the boys eagerly questioning their new female companion on how exactly she'd freed every single class pet in one morning, the girl in question lapping up the attention and eagerly explaining to them what had happened.
Tomorrow the rest of the school would be baffled when Samantha Manson walked out, not in a pink dress filled with tears, but in a large shirt and jeans, flanked by the two resident trouble makers. Half a year later, there was no Sam or Danny or Tucker, it was simply the trio, the group, the three.
They were the forever friends, and the thought of them being anything but that was simply impossible.