Falling in Love

Disclaimer: A piece of super special awesome virtual fudge to anyone who can guess what this is going to say . . . I'll even give you a few hints. It has to do with me, Danny Phantom, and how I totally don't own it.

Or YGOTAS, for that matter . . . kinda quoted it in the disclaimer there. Kinda.

In life, there were only a few things that Jack Fenton loved more than ghosts: Maddie, his kids (especially his precious Jazzerincess), and fudge.

Lots and lots of fudge.

Although everyone knew about his eerie fixation on the delicious dessert, no one had ever bothered to ask why it existed. His strange obsession with the treat was as odd as a ghost being obsessed with boxes, yet even Jack Fenton's kids just took it for granted that their dad had some weird chocolate craving that could only be satisfied by eating a piece of fudge.

And although that was at least partly true, Jack hadn't always been quite so fixated on that particular dessert.

His love of fudge all went back to Maddie. What didn't, really? The first time Jack had met Maddie was during their college days. Although he'd been a little skeptical about her at first, ultimately she won him over. After all, Maddie was a beautiful, amazingly intelligent woman who was also interested in the paranormal, in ghosts and the ghost zone, and although some people thought Jack was kind of naïve and foolish, Maddie somehow managed to see past that. She knew that Jack was brilliant, that he had a mind designed to invent and that could come up with incredible (and somewhat bizarre) ideas, and that he was capable of doing great things. Her faith in him, her friendship and her trust, made it easy for Jack to be friends with her.

It hadn't taken long for the two of them to become more than just friends, either. After Vlad's terrible accident, very little time passed before the two of them started dating. Some people laughed at them, especially Maddie's friends, for they just couldn't understand how the two could actually work as a couple. Jack, after all, was always super excited, super cheerful, and super hyper. He bounced about the world like a young puppy, anxious to explore and to stick his hands into things that he did not quite fully understand. But Maddie was a good match for him. She was calmer. She was thoughtful. She helped turn Jack's ideas into reality, and she helped keep him from getting killed by his own curiosity like a certain cliché cat. She was perfect in every way because while she compensated for his faults, he, too, compensated for hers, for Maddie tended to be a bit overly cautious and less-creative than her husband. She often over-thought things, too, and Jack couldn't help but wonder if that was the reason why Maddie was such a terrible cook.

For no matter how hard she tried, Maddie's cooking was absolutely horrifying, practically inedible, and Jack, in his normal, harmless, and unfortunately somewhat tactless way, had just so happened to point it out the first time she had ever tried to make him an extra special dessert on their six month anniversary: fudge.

Maddie, of course, had burst into tears. She'd tried so hard, had worked at it and done everything the recipe said. It should've been easy. Maddie was good at science, after all—why shouldn't she be good at baking, at performing an aspect of cooking that was more like chemistry than art? Maddie couldn't understand it. Neither could Jack. But as she sat there sobbing during their date, Jack had simply smiled and told her, "Mads, I don't care how bad your cooking is. You don't need to be good at it. You're already an amazing woman, and I can cook okay."

"But I wanted—I wanted—to be able to do something special for you, Jack," she'd said softly, wiping the tears with her sleeve and streaking her make-up all over her beautiful blue blouse. "I want to be able to cook food that you'll love."

"Then keep trying," he'd told her. "If you want to do it that badly, then just keep practicing, Maddie. Someday, you'll make the best fudge in the world and I'll never want to eat anything else again."

"I doubt that," she told him, chuckling gently as a small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, but sure enough, Maddie kept trying. Every week she would make a little fudge, every week Jack would try it, and every week she managed to do a little better. And finally it happened. One night when they were sitting quietly at her apartment, she set a piece of fudge in front of him with a smile on her face, wondering as she always did if this was the day that Jack would finally tell her that enough was enough, that she should stop before he got sick or ended up getting diabetes from all of the sugar.

"Are you sure you're not tired of my cooking yet?" she'd asked softly as she sat down across from him, and Jack smiled at her as he picked up the piece of fudge. The instant it touched his tongue, a brilliant grin spread across his face, and suddenly he jumped around the table and scooped her up into a huge hug, making her laugh.

"Jack, what're you doing?"

"Don't you get it, Mads?" he chuckled. "I told you that if you ever made the perfect piece of fudge, then I'd never want anything else in the world again, and you've done it, and that means that it's finally the right time to do this, Maddie . . . although I gotta say I wasn't expecting it to happen so soon. Not that I don't have faith in you, but, uh, you know."

"Jack?" she asked, cocking her head to the side curiously as he put her down and knelt before her, and she was surprised that he seemed so nervous, something which made her feel a twinge of uneasiness as well. Jack was never nervous, after all—his confidence was boundless.

"Mads," he began slowly, his eyes locked on hers as he gazed up at her, "I've never loved anyone as much as you, or anyone's cooking as much as yours. I've been waiting for this day for a long time. I knew you could do it, Mads, and I knew you'd never give up. And I don't want anyone else to make fudge for me again, not ever, so . . . Will you marry me, Maddie?"

Tears poured down her face as one of the brightest smiles the future Madeline Fenton would ever wear crossed her face, and throwing her arms around him she cried "Yes!"

And every week, Maddie Fenton would make a huge batch of fudge for her husband, the food that had become his favorite food in all the world, and the dessert that had become the best thing that Maddie Fenton could, and ever would, make in her kitchen.

A/N: Right . . . So this story is a bit odd for me. I don't usually write these kinds of shamelessly fluffy and romantic stories, but, um, yeah. This one just sort of happened, but I think I'm okay with it since the last one was very, very angsty. Admittedly I may be channeling my own recent baking disaster here through Maddie's failed attempts at cooking, though . . . It seriously sucks when you screw up making your boyfriend's birthday cake.

And yes, it has been a lame and somewhat frustrating couple of weeks in my little corner of the universe. -_- With any luck, though, things'll get better soon. They usually do. ;)

Anyway, I hope that you guys enjoyed it nevertheless. Chances are you won't be getting more romance anytime soon-I'm already working on the next one-shot, and if nothing else, it definitely doesn't belong to that particular genre. No clue when I'm gonna have that or the next chapter of my story Lost finished or uploaded, though, since I'm working like crazy the next few days, but hopefully it'll be soon.

I think that's it for now, other than the ever-constant plea for reviews.

'Til next time!