'Phanny,' her mind said, sending chastising thoughts her way, 'you really shouldn't be starting another story.'

"Butbutbut," Phanny stammered, "this one will be really short!"

'What about Can of Worms? For some reason people want you to finish it! Appease what few fans you have!'

"I just got in the mood for some TxV fluff, there's not enough of it! I'm pushing DxS to the side for once. It's different!"

'No it's not. You must control your imagination,' he mind chided, 'and your typing fingers, otherwise any fans you have will kill you to death.'

"I'll take the chance!" Phanny exclaimed.

'I will kill you to death as well. Beating you to death with your own skull, like I did when I was the mind of your ancestor Rusty Shackleford.'

"Beat me to death with my own skull? That doesn't sound physically possible!"

'That's exactly what he said when I did it.'

"...Shut the fuck up, mind. You don't own me."

...So, guys, enjoy some TxV goodness. It's my first go at really writing Val, so I may be a bit wonky.

I don't own Danny Phantom. Also, I'm not insane.

-Phanny

P.S. Anyone who can tell me who Rusty Shackleford is will be my new favorite person.

"Do it."

"No," Tucker shrugged Sam's hand off of his shoulder, "it's not going to work, I just know it."

"Come on," Sam insisted, "you were so confident before - you asked her out once and she said yes!"

"As a rebound date!"

"You've asked every other girl in school!"

"She's different!"

Danny was just sitting on the other side of the trio's usual lunch table, looking amused at the exchange.

Junior prom was coming up at Casper High, and though they knew they would have another prom in their senior year, this one still felt important. That afternoon, several uncertainties hung in the hot, humid air around them.

One: would the school food give them food poisoning?

Two: would Danny escape Dash's wrath?

And three, and possibly the most important: would Tucker Foley finally get off of his ass and ask Valerie Gray to prom?

Since Tucker had gotten him and Sam together two months prior and they planned to attend prom, Sam was dead-set on returning the favor.

The thing was, Tucker had been burned by Valerie before. Now that she was decidedly unpopular, he had a slightly better chance, but his normal 'TF as in Too Fine' confidence seemed to vanish around her. Meaning one thing: he really liked her. Sam had taken it upon herself to help her friend, and was trying her best to arrange the odds in his favor (re: meddling) to no avail.

One may ask why Sam was okay with one of her friends even breathing around Valerie Gray, since she had spent a good two years trying to kill her boyfriend, but the thing was…she had stopped. It was so weird, but she wasn't hunting Danny anymore, just other ghosts. The trio couldn't figure out why, but they weren't going to look a gift horse in the mouth, and Sam had actually grown fairly tolerant of her presence as a result of this change in demeanor.

"Sam, if he doesn't want to, don't make him," Danny tried to help his friend out, but his girlfriend was known for being persistent.

"But he totally does want to," Sam insisted, "look, you can see it in his eyes!" Sam grabbed Tucker's face and pointed it at Danny, as if to prove her point.

"All I'm seeing is a growing disdain for you," Danny told her, "by the way - that's a vocab word, so you owe me a quarter for using it correctly."

"Does anyone care about my feelings? What about Tucker's needs?" Tucker made Sam let go of his face and crossed his arms, "if I want to ask her, I will. Not now."

"All right…" Sam seemed disheartened - as…unfavorable as her approach was, she really did care, so Tucker couldn't stay mad at her. He hated his good nature sometimes.

Valerie knew she wasn't as popular as she used to be, so she knew she should have expected that no one would ask her to prom (except Nathan. She was taking great pains to avoid him). As much as she would say she didn't want to go, she couldn't help but be disappointed. But she was Valerie Gray - she didn't let petty things get her down, not anymore. She told herself that as she put her books in her locker at the end of the day, two weeks before said prom.

"Hey Val?" Something had changed about Tucker Foley that she wasn't sure if he liked - the normally loud boy from freshman year could now somehow appear out of nowhere like a ninja. Ninja Tucker did not sit well with her.

"Yeah?" Maybe it was the fact that she was still a little down, but her reply wasn't as sharp as she thought it could have been.

"I was just wondering…if, uhm, anyone had, uhm, asked you to prom yet?" Tucker sounded a little more nervous than she was used to. Suspicion raised.

"No," she said, more bitterly than she intended, "no one has. Not yet."

"Oh good," she looked at him quizzically and he backtracked, "uhm, not good, I mean, maybe it is, maybe you don't want to go and someone not asking you is good but if you did want to go then you might see it as a bad thing and if you did you would probably wait for the right guy and you know if none of the guys have asked you that maybe they just aren't good enough and you know I think I'm rambling but I should get to the point that I…uh…well…hmm…I just sort of…uhm…well you, see, the thing is…uh…maybeyouandmecouldgo-"

"Tucker, I'm sure the sentiment is nice, but I don't understand a word you just said."

"Oh, well, that's too bad I should probably go you probably want to go home and I shouldn't keep you it's not important I was just thinking of maybe asking you a question that you don't need to know and I-"

"Tucker!" Valerie's eyes were wide - he hadn't stopped to breathe since he started talking, "inhale!"

Tucker did so, but looked a little hesitant to start talking again.

"Let me see if I can do this," Valerie said after a moment, "from all that gibberish I can gather the words 'prom,' 'you,' and 'me.' Are you trying to ask me to prom, Tucker?"

Tucker just nodded. Oh god, he had made such an ass of himself, he was so going to get it…

"Okay."

"All right, I understa-what?" Tucker's eyes went wider than ever before, "did you say okay? Did the word okay just leave your mouth? You know it's me, Tucker Foley, right?"

"Yes," Valerie said simply, "I want to go to prom, I was waiting for someone to ask me, you asked me, so I said okay." With that, she closed her locker and left the school, leaving Tucker with his jaw dropped and his eyes wide for a moment before he sobered up. The placid expression didn't last long.

"Holy crap she said yes!"

"Why did I say yes?" Valerie was pacing her small room - she felt like she was losing her mind over this.

Why did she say yes to Tucker's offer? Her mind was offering up a multitude of reasons, not of which sounded even remotely true.

'It's a pity date. He seemed so desperate.'

'You just wanted to go.'

'If you didn't go with him, Nathan would keep bugging you.'

'It would be embarrassing to show up without a date.'

None of these reasons seemed to click with her, until a treacherous thought entered her brain, and she tried in vain, to shake it away.

'You like him.'

"I do not," she grumbled to herself. She couldn't. He wasn't her type.

'So sweet guys who have been nothing but nice to you are not your type? He once took the fall for something that would have gotten dad in even more hot water. Remember that?'

She did remember. She remembered blowing him off the next day, too. She remembered going after his best friend (and, as she had found out on her own awhile ago, in more ways that one).

'You're shallow to think of him as "that tech geek" all the time,' her mind told her, 'you have lost so much, you deserve something nice for a change, but you're denying it. Making excuses.'

It was true. She had fallen in popularity, lost most of her material possessions and "friends," and here she was trying to push off the one good thing that had happened to her in awhile as some sort of temporary insanity. She couldn't do that to Tucker. She couldn't do that to herself.

'You like him.'

"Yeah," she said to no one, "I guess I kinda do."

…Now what was she going to wear?

Yeah, this is gonna be pretty short. Three chapters, maybe.

I'LL FINISH CAN OF WORMS SOON. I HAVE NOT ABANDONED IT.