And as I get more comfortable with this, the headers get longer. Point of note: I never knew how warm and fuzzy nice reviews made you feel. Thanks to those who did so.

Hope you enjoy this chapter, which was posted under pain of death.


Chapter 3: Three M's

Sam sprawled onto her bed, closing her eyes and sighing. Her fingers hurt from all that button pushing on the calculator and copying with her pencil. She just spent three quarters of an hour doing her math homework. Geometric sequences and series weren't hard, but the assignment was grueling. ("110 questions! Is she trying to make our brains fry!" Tucker had complained.) The long assignment was the end of her homework, her having gotten the rest of it done in a half hour.

"Of course," she thought to herself, "I'll have to go through the assignment again when Danny inevitably calls and asks for help. And people wonder why I understand everything so well. I do the assignments twice."

Sam looked at the clock. 6:15. He'd be calling any minute now. And sure enough, she heard the phone ring. Sam rolled over and answered the line.

"Hi, Danny." she answered immediately.

"Hey! How'd you know it was me?"

Danny was met with a soft chuckle from the other end of the line. "You always call around this time, Danny. It's the story of my weeknights: get home, do my homework, eat dinner, do your homework..."

"You don't do my homework, you just help me with it!" Danny protested.

"Yep. I help you with every single problem," Sam shot back.

"Fine! I'll go ask Tucker for help, then," Danny pouted.

"Oh, you know I'm just messing with you. If I really had a problem with it, I would have stopped helping you loooong ago."

"...Sam, where were you this afternoon at school?"

Sam's eyes widened, and she swallowed hard. She had completely forgot she'd ditched them today, probably around problem fifty-seven or so.

"Sam? You there?"

She sighed. "Honesty's the best policy," she thought to herself with resignation.

"I was in one of the science labs with one of the teacher's aides. He wrote me a pass so I didn't have to go back to glass this afternoon."

"...Wait, he?" Danny asked swiftly, the second word carrying a tinge of jealousy.

"Yes, he. Do you have a problem with that?" Sam asked angrily.

"N-no! I just assumed you went to see a girl; I figured you'd be fed up with guys after what me and Tucker did." Danny improvised. He smiled. "I so saved myself," he thought.

"That makes sense, but nah. He was actually quite sensitive. I was pleasantly surprised."

Sam heard a crunching sound on the other end of the line. "Danny? Something wrong?"

Danny, breathing deeply to calm himself, threw the pop can he had crushed into the trash bin. "Nothing's wrong," he stated, aggravation seeping through his voice.

Sam was quiet, deep in thought. "He couldn't be jealous of Tal... could he?" Her powerful mind quickly turned this possibility into revenge for Danny's ogling of the giant gremlin. And maybe she'd be able to deduce his true feelings for her.

Sam declined to mention Tal's "orientation", instead opting to not say thing else on the matter and let Danny stew on his own.

"So, problem one."

Danny shook his head, trying to push aside the possible scenarios his mind was making in regards to Sam's absence. With another guy.

Sighing, he dropped the subject. He turned to the book.

"Yeah... how do you do geometric sequences again?"

The moonlight blasted through the bedroom window of Danny Fenton, illuminating the halfa's night-black hair, sky-blue eyes, pale-skinned legs, not-that-stinky feet, red-and-white T-shirt, and polka-dot boxers.

But that wasn't what was keeping him awake. His head turned slowly to the clock in his room. After reading the time (11:30), he rolled his head back to look at the ceiling.

"Dammit, why do I care that she was with a guy anyway?" he thought with frustration.

"We went over this in class: YOU. LOVE. HER. Do you need a neon sign, like the ones on the house, to spell it out for you?"

"Look who it is, my voice of reason that's nothing like me."

"Of course I'm nothing like you, you've never listened to me! How do you expect to emulate my greatness if you always go and do stupid things? Anyway, you should be grateful; I've graced you with my presence twice today."

"I'm so thrilled," Danny thought back dryly. "I mean, even the voices in my head insult me. It's sad, I'm not even popular in my own head."

"Sure you are. But unlike your fantasies, I'm concerned with what is true. Your love for Sam, for example."

"Like that matters, she likes that guy she hung out with today." Danny moped.

"Do you like to make errors in judgment?" the voice asked rhetorically. Before Danny could answer, it continued. "You know nothing about this, and it's only been one day. Don't assume. If you're that worried about it, then go and a--." The voice stopped in mid-sentence.

"Go and "a"? That doesn't even make sense, and you're supposed to be the reasonable one!"

"If I finished it, you'd never get to sleep since you'd be up worrying all night. Listen, I don't know about the rest of the brain, but I know I need to get my beauty sleep. To get your mind off of things, why don't you do that physical appreciation of Sam that we were talking about earlier today. You are alone now."

In the silver light of the moon, one could see the crimson tint on Danny's cheeks. "Well, g'night, then."

"'Night, Casanova."

Danny closed his eyes, and ran his mental eyes around Sam's mental body. Her luscious, pale legs. The boots only she could make look good. Her delicate, petite, yet oddly strong body. Her soft, raven hair. He could smell her lavender scent, and it was enrapturing. Then his eyes focused on the part of her body he treasured the most – her eyes.

Those large, amethyst eyes, the ones that he adored so much. It drove him insane whenever he caught a glimpse of her when she was in the middle of doing something to support her environmental beliefs; her eyes positively sparkled then. And when she had him locked in a stare, he could feel himself being swallowed up in them, as if they were shadows.

Hot, sexy shadows.

Danny opened his eyes, and practically felt the heat rise from his face. "Crap, the warning wasn't a joke..." he thought with embarrassment. Well, he certainly couldn't go to sleep now. He could do one of two things, and he wasn't going to wait for the second.

"I'm going to hate myself in the morning..." was his last thought before he pulled the covers over him. Thirty minutes later, the boy's breathing became uniform as he fell asleep, the moonlight shining off of the last drop of sweat running down his forhead.

Tal let out a hearty laugh as he walked around the dust-caked room he was in earlier today.

"And now that it's safe to say Sam will never have to worry about Paulina getting Danny ever again, a third of my mission is complete. And to think, she told me that those two would get around a love-based plan. But, I guess it's to be expected. Ember's a novice in comparison to me.

Alas, I daresay this is enough self-gratification for one night. Time to plot how to get one of them to admit their love..."