Happily Ever After
Summary: Babysitting his sister's four and three fourths year old reminds Danny of how he and his best friends met.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom. Butch Hartman does.
Dedication: This one's going out by request to shaadra-shadow, who emailed me wanting to know how Danny, Tucker, and Sam met.
The person at the door of the dorm room knocked harder. "I said it's open!" Danny hollered over his shoulder not getting up from his computer, his back to the door. It flung open and a little figure darted over and jumped in his lap. Danny gasped as the air was knocked out of him. "Hi Katie." The girl giggled mumbled something into his T-shirt.
"Katie!" came the voice from the doorway. "Don't pounce on people." Danny spun the chair around.
"Hey Jazz," he grinned.
She fell back against the doorway and ran a hand through her now short hair. "Hey Danny," she sighed.
"You don't look so great," he commented, grabbing his niece's hand that was creeping along his face.
"I got called into work late tonight. One of the girls I'm working with tried to overdose."
Danny hissed through his teeth. His sister worked at a recovery home for suicidal teenage girls. When stuff like this happened it meant an all-nighter for her. "That can't be good."
She sighed shifting a Little Mermaid book bag to the other arm. "It's not. I should have called first. But I have to leave my phone open so the clinic can reach me."
"It's fine," he assured her. "Sam's coming over but other than that I'm not doing much."
"You had plans with Sam? I'm so sorry. I shouldn't' have imposed." Jazz looked ashamed suddenly. "I didn't mean to cut in on personal time. I mean you shouldn't have your niece hanging around if your girlfriends coming."
Danny laughed. "It' not a problem, Jazz. She's coming to edit my final paper for Econ. It's probably better for my paper this way," he grinned. Then frowned as he noticed the four-year-old trying to get into the drawers under his bed. "Hey squirt. I'm pretty sure there's something alive in there. Might want to watch out," he said mysteriously. The four-year old turned to him wide-eyed.
Jazz laughed. "Well, I hate to run. But I really need to get to work. You'll call me if there's a problem?"
Danny turned his attention back to his 23-year-old sister. "Don't I always? She'll be fine."
Jazz smirked as she shut the door, "I know she will. I'm worried about you."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It was twenty-five minutes later and Danny and Tucker's dorm room looked like it had been a battlefield. Danny had given up about twenty-three minutes ago to try and keep up with her. He finally managed to catch the screaming four-year-old and wrestle the pajama top onto her. "Come on, Katie. I've let you stay up ten minutes extra."
"Ten more minutes?" the four-year-old whined. Danny squatted down so he was at eye level with her. He shook his head.
"Five more minutes?" Katie pleaded.
Danny scooped up the little girl and dropped her unceremoniously on his bunk, which happened to be the bottom one. "Not even one more minute."
"Story?" she asked, hazel eyes glinting up at him.
"Nope, You have to go to sleep so I can clean this place up before Sam," he was interrupted by a rap on the door. "Speak of the devil and she shall come," he murmured softly. "It's open," he called.
Sam opened the door and poked her head in. "Wow this place is a disaster zone."
Danny smirked up at her from where he was sitting on the edge of the bunk. He waved vaguely to the small auburn haired girl. "And this is the disaster."
Sam's face instantly lit up. "Hey, baby." Sam had instantly taken to Katie, and Danny swore sometimes that was the only reason she didn't just give up on him totally was that then she would never get to see his niece again.
"Sam!" screeched the little preschooler who threw herself into Sam's arms. Sam instantly scooped her up and situated Katie on her hip. "Look at my PJ's!"
"Very cute," Sam almost cooed. Danny didn't even know Sam could coo until Katie was born.
Danny sighed putting his hands on his knees and grinning at the picture the two made together. "They should be," he pushed himself up of the bed. "Took me fifteen minutes to get her in them."
Sam laughed. "Come on, Danny. You know you like playing mommy."
Danny smiled as he walked over toward his computer to pull up his paper. "Oh! I love it! It's about as fun as a root canal."
"What's a root canal?"
"It's something they do at the dentist." Sam explained simply.
The little four-year-old scrunched up her nose and buried her face in Sam's shoulder. "Dentist are mean. You're weird, Uncle Danny."
Danny smiled at her over his shoulder; the computer screen's glow cast strange shadows over his features. "You have no idea." To top it off he made his eyes turn green.
Katie burst into tears and clutched Sam. "Danny!" Sam scolded.
"Sorry. Come here, sweetie." He got up and took her away from Sam. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he rocked her until her sobs subsided and her breathing slowed and her eyes drooped shut.
Sam looked over her shoulder from just having fixed a run-on sentence. "You'll make a great dad, Danny."
He kissed the top of Katie's head and grinned over at her. "I hope that's not you're way of telling me something."
Sam rolled her violet eyes and went back to scrolling. "Last time I checked you had to sleep with them for that to happen."
Danny did an overly dramatized confused look. "Did we cover that in sex ed?"
Sam just laughed. "Hey, can you put Katie down and come tell me what you are trying to say here."
"Sure." Danny slipped her into the covers and grabbed the chair from Tuck's computer and sat down next to Sam. They didn't even get five minutes of work done before a little figure pulled herself up into her uncle's lap. "Thought you were asleep?"
She ignored him and stared at Sam. "Can I have my story now?" she asked.
Sam glanced at the pair, an eyebrow raised. "Uncle Danny does stories?"
The sarcasm was lost on the little girl. "The best."
"By all means," Sam said. "Go ahead."
Danny sighed looking back and forth between the two girls. "I'm cornered, aren't I."
Sam laughed softly. "If she doesn't make you, I will. If that's what you were asking."
"Sam's mean," he said to the little girl. "You're lucky that she's not your aunt."
"But she's going to be." Sam stopped typing mid-word and turned to glare daggers at Danny, who held his hands up helplessly.
He swallowed and turned back to Katie. "Who told you that?"
"Mommy did," she stated very matter-of-factly.
Danny looked at his niece for a minute before responding. "Tell mommy that Uncle Danny said that she can sho—"
"Danny!" Sam cut him off.
"I was going to say 'keep her nose out of other people's business'."
Sam rolled her eyes. "Of course you were."
"Story!" The preschooler cut them off.
"Okay, okay, okay." Danny scooped her up bridal style and carried her back to bed. "What story do you want?"
"How you met Sam."
Danny looked slightly flustered. "Wouldn't you rather have something with a princess in it?"
The girl flashed him a grin. "Make Sam a princess."
Danny nodded. "I guess I can do that."
"Once upon a time," Danny started. "A long, long, long, long, long time ago," Sam shot him a look. "There was a little princess about your age. And her name was Samantha. Except she didn't like Samantha, she just liked Sam so that's what she made everyone call her." He grinned over at his girlfriend, who was staring at something on the screen. "At least she would of if she had any friends." It earned him a glare.
Danny smirked at her charmingly and continued, turning his attention back to the girl who was listening attentively. "Princess Sam came from a rich kingdom, so she went to a different preschool than us common children," Danny gestured dramatically to himself. He didn't have to look to know that Sam was rolling her eyes. "So when Princess Sam started Kindergarten, she didn't have any friends yet. Which was very lucky for one little common child, me."
"Why?" Katie blinked hazel eyes.
"Because, if she had rich friends Princess Sam would never have talked to a poor little boy like me."
"That's not true." Sam crossed over and dropped lightly onto Danny's lap.
"Great," Danny muttered. "Now she's within smacking distance." Sam swatted him gently on the arm. "See! See how mean she is, Katie? She hits your poor uncle for no reason."
"You deserved it." Said the four-year-old with a toothy grin.
He looked back and forth between the two of them. "This is one of those girl things, isn't it?"
"Story!"
"Yes, Danny, story," Sam smirked over her shoulder at him.
"Where were we," he thought for a moment. "Ah yes. So Princess Sam didn't know any other kids and all for the first few weeks of kindergarten, she sat by herself at the block table during free time. She didn't want to talk to anybody else."
"But," Sam added. "It's not like anyone talked to her, either."
Danny laughed. "Guilty as charged. Anyway, poor Princess Sam had a secret. She was scared of the dark."
"Like me!" Katie gushed.
"Just like you," Danny said, reaching down and tickling her tummy for a moment. "But see unlike you Princess Sam was scared to tell anybody. So every nap time they'd turned the lights off, and every nap time, she would curl up in a little ball and try not to cry."
"Why didn't she tell anybody?" Katie asked Danny, not seeming to realize that 'Princess' Sam was right there.
"She was afraid to. So everyday Sam just curled up in a little ball and cried waiting for a prince to come save her."
"Did he?"
"She got saved alright," Sam said grinning over her shoulder at Danny, who smiled back before going back to his story.
"But not by a prince. One day a big, ugly, mean dragon decided to sleep right next to Princess Sam at naptime. The dragon's name was Dash." Sam burst out laughing. "The dragon noticed how the little Princess was crying so he yelled to everyone that no one should be friends with the Princess cause she was a cry baby."
"Did they listen to the dragon?"
"Most of them did," Sam said softly. Danny reached forward and squeezed her hand. Elementary hadn't been fun for Sam.
"But two of them didn't. Two of the peasant boys decided they were going to talk to her. Danny wanted to talk to her cause she was so beautiful and the other, Tucker, because he smelled bad and couldn't get any friends."
The door swung open. "Who smelled bad," the newcomer asked.
"Tucker!" Sam called. He grinned and squeezed her shoulder as he walked past.
"So do you have to tell Sam stories to keep her entertained now? What a sad relationship you two must have." He shook his head.
"I'm telling it to Katie, you idiot." The darker boy seemed to notice the child for the first time.
"What's up Katie. Why are you hanging out with a loser like Danny? You can do better than him." She giggled.
"I'm telling a story here," Danny bit out indignantly.
"What one?"
"How the three of us met," Danny replied.
Sam grinned at him. "With a medieval theme."
"Well than by all means continue, Milady." Said Tucker obviously gesturing at Danny, not the girl in his lap or the child in his bed.
"It's on later," Danny said sarcastically.
"Looking forward to it," Tucker winked at him.
Sam looked back and forth. "I worry about you two, sometimes."
"What happened to the story," Katie whined, turning all the college seniors' attention back to the girl.
"Do you remember where we were."
Katie grinned "Tucker, the smelly commoner," she said with a yawn.
"Ah," said Tuck. "Isn't that where every good story starts?"
Danny ignored him, though it was hard, so much potential for a good comeback in that sentence. "So Tucker and Danny decided they were going to be nice to the beautiful Princess even though the Dragon told them not to. They sat next to her at snack time and played with her at free time and even got her the spot next to the window during naptime so it wasn't so dark."
"So they became friends forever and ever?" Katie asked hazel eyes drooping slightly.
The three exchanged a glance over her head. All three were smiling brightly. "You bet they did," Danny replied, tousling her hair gently.
"Did they live happily ever after," she trailed off towards the end of the question.
"Of course they did." Danny looked at his girlfriend and his best friend, the two who had always been there for him. He looked down at Katie, the 'accident' that had happened to Jazz and her boyfriend, Todd, at the end of freshman year. No, life wasn't perfect, and he would never tell her that it was. But maybe, it wasn't supposed to be.
