Author's Notes: It's after graduation and I'm back at writing... Uh, yeah...
A Musical Interlude
Chapter 6- Epic
The next month was odd to say the least. Ghost attacks were sporadic, but nothing quite as dramatic as Technus' inexplicable return. Something wasn't right about that. To make matters worse, there was no word from Wulf. Not even rumors of a sighting. This was putting Danny a little on edge, despite his new relationship with Sam. And the rest of the crew wasn't too happy about it either once he filled them in.
Finals came and went, and Danny and the band headed home to Amity Park. Sam went back to Sleepy Hollow, but said she'd be visiting for most of the summer once she got things straightened out back at home. Danny had already talked to his parents about it, and they had happily agreed to let her use the guest room. Hell, they were just thrilled to hear that their son had a girlfriend at last. Danny usually had such a hard time coming out of his shell.
It was now the first week of June. Sam was supposed to be coming over this afternoon, and it made it difficult for Danny to focus on band practice. The group had decided their first demo tapes would center around sci-fi/supernatural themes like Gamma Ray, Primal Fear, and Helloween since all of them were well-read in both subjects. So far, they had worked out six songs: Recurring Nightmare, Shooting Star, Cyberpunk, Through the Void, On Wings of Fire, and Bad Moon. As per usual, they got all their rehearsals in, but it took longer than one would expect due to all the goofing off. Today in particular, most of the screwing around was between Tucker and Jack. Tucker kept playing the synth hook to The Final Countdown by Europe and annoying Paul and Bram who hated that song. It only made it worse when Jack started singing in his harsh voice as per the cover of that song by Norther. In between, they worked on a few covers including Epic by Faith No More, Scream! by The Misfits, and Frankenstein by Iced Earth.
At last, it was time for the band to pack up and Danny to leave Tucker's attic to meet Sam at his home. She had asked why he didn't choose a landmark since she might have a hard time finding his house, but he assured her it was difficult to miss. As he sat on the stoop, Danny had a hard time holding in his excitement. He was going to be spending most of the summer with Sam! Could he be any luckier?
Every passing car brought his hopes up, only to bring him back down when it zipped past his house without pause. At last, his patience was rewarded when a black Mercedes pulled up in front of his house and out stepped Sam. She looked up at the massive equipment over the house that made up the ops-center of Fenton Works and back down at Danny. "Okay, so I wasn't hallucinating."
"Told you you'd find it," Danny quipped and strode up to Sam, enveloping her in an embrace and a warm kiss, which she was all too happy return.
"You're even cuter than I remember," Sam mock gushed.
"And you've never looked more beautiful," Danny said back in the same tone.
"Oh, what I wouldn't give for a video camera."
Danny winced and looked over his shoulder at Jazz who was standing in the doorway with her arms folded over her chest and a rather smug look on her face. Since starting college, Jazz hadn't been able to maintain the upkeep of her long red tresses, so she had it cut just off the shoulders now. If anything, it just made her look even more like an overachieving workaholic. "Sam... this is my sister, Jazz. Jazz, this is Sam."
"Your girlfriend?" Jazz asked teasingly.
Sam pulled Danny into another forceful kiss before he could respond, but broke it before he had the chance to reciprocate. "That should be painfully obvious at this point, don't you think?" she asked in her usual sarcastic, but friendly manner.
Jazz raised a brow, her smile never faltering. "It's going to be fun having you around, Sam." She then turned back to the house. "Mom, Dad! Danny's girlfriend is here!"
Ghosts be damned, the ability of the senior Fentons to show up within milliseconds of a call like that regardless of wherever they may have been a moment ago was not only uncanny, it was also inexplicable in its defiance of the laws of physics. In a blur of orange and blue, Jack and Maddie Fenton zipped into sight of the front door. This should be interesting. The Fentons didn't exactly excel at first impressions. Danny still remembered the day Jack and Bram had first come to his house. Maddie tried to determine if Bram's impossibly deep voice was some sort of supernatural phenomenon (when he demnostrated his singing voice, the floor shook), and Jack (Fenton) spent at least an hour telling Jack "the Ripper" about his "good, strong name" and how his stage persona's namesake had something or other to do with ghosts... It was at about that point that no one in the house was really paying attention to the Fenton father, actually. "Brace yourself," Danny muttered to Sam discreetly as he led her inside before his parents had the chance to get outside and make fools of themselves all over again in front of the neighbors.
As soon as the door shut, he knew that the flurry of embarassment was about to commence.
"Sam, so good to meet you at last!" Maddie said enthusiastically. Blush, coming in on runway 5; blush, you are cleared for landing, and... "Danny hasn't stopped talking about you since he got back." Go!
Danny felt his face heating up already. Record timing.
"She believes in ghosts, right?" Jack muttered in a suspicious tone to his son, but still loud enough for everyone to hear. "She's certainly pale enough to be one."
Activating defensive measure of shrugging shoulders and ducking head lower to try and appear beneath notice. Evalutation: ineffective. "Dad, we went over this. She knows I'm half-ghost."
"And we already went over the fact the we're not going to put Danny and Sam through this," Jazz interrupted as if scolding children. "We agreed that when she arrives, you avoid talking shop around her whenever possible."
"But she does believe in ghosts, right?" Jack pressed. "If our son is going to pass along the family genes..." Oh dear god! Code red! Blush reaching critical mass!
Before he could ramble on any further, Maddie's reasonable side kicked in. "She's right, dear. We did promise." She then turned to Sam with a pleasant smile. "Danny and I will get your bags, dear. Jazz will show you your room."
Crisis averted. Temporarily. Relax defenses, but keep early warning system active. Sam had a wide-eyed look of surprise, apparently having taken Danny' warning with a grain of salt. Hey, he tried to warn her. Everyone says their family is weird. The Fentons, however, regularly redefined the word.
Danny sighed in relief and went out with his mother to get Sam's luggage. Predictably, it was all in matching black. With the two of them carrying things, it only took one trip to get it all up to the guest room where Sam was already settling in. He saw her laying on the bed with her ankles crossed and hands behind her head. "Ah, room service," she joked. "Set the bags down anywhere, bellboy. And get me a salad."
"Don't I get a tip?" Danny asked with a feigned pout.
Sam sat up and grabbed Danny's shirt, pulling him down to her in a passionate kiss. Danny was in a rather blissful state at that point. It wasn't until after the kiss was broken that he realized his mother had left the room. It was funny. His parents always found some way to get involved with his life before, but now they were giving him his freedom to make his own choices.
Danny sat down beside Sam and pulled her into his lap. "You know of course that the guys and I have to practice for four hours every day, so that's going to cut into 'us' time."
Sam gave a lopsided smile. "You had to bring that up," she muttered. "It's okay. I know it's important to you." She gave him a kiss on the cheek and smiled softly.
"Thanks, Sam. I just didn't want to disappoint you after you come all this way to see me and I'm not around."
"It's only four hours out of a sixteen hour day," Sam laughed. "But it's okay, really. C'est le vie."
"Tish! That's French!" Danny started kissing his way up her arm, which sent Sam into a fit of laughter. She fell out of his lap onto the bed, dragging Danny down with her. "Speak some more! Creme broule, enchante, Eiffel tower...!"
Sam kissed him forcefully to shut him up and smiled. "Easy there, Casanova."
"I prefer Doctor Feelgood, if you catch my drift," Danny teased before realizing he was laying in a bed in a tangle of limbs with Sam. He could have timed that one a little better. He just hoped she was sufficiently turned on to take it in good humor.
Sam just cuddled up to him with a grin. "I think I like where this is going. But not right now. It's been a long trip."
-x-
An hour later across town, Tucker, Bram, and Paul were sitting in Tucker's living room playing in a Halo II free-for-all. Actually, Bram and Paul were really getting into it and targeted each other almost exclusively. Tucker was sniping them from the sidelines whenever they were distracted. Not like he was going to complain, mind you. He hadn't had a winning streak like this in a while.
"You're goin' down, Darth!" Paul shouted as he opened fire on Bram who swiftly took cover.
"Bring it, cheesedick!"
"Punk-ass bitch!"
"Cunt rag!"
"Communist!"
Bram stopped in mid-breath and looked strangely at Paul. "What!"
Paul took the opportunity to blast Bram clear out of existence. "Woot! I smoked that bitch!"
Paul's revelry was cut short when Tucker put a bullet right through him. "Man you guys are making this too easy." That might have been a mistake. Paul and Bram nodded to each other and cast dark looks at Tucker as their characters respawned. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.
Bram looked down at his pocket and took out his cellphone. He looked at the caller ID and rolled his eyes. "Figures." He set the cell on speaker phone and put it on the coffee table as the game resumed and the now united rivals proceded to hunt Tucker down like a dog. "What is it Danny?"
"Bram?" Danny's voice came from the tiny phone. "I need some advice here. Sam's here. She's taking a nap right now from the trip, but I need your help. I don't want to screw this up."
"Oh for crissakes, man!" Paul groaned in exasperation.
"Dude, you haven't shut up about this all week," Tucker reminded Danny as he barely dodged a flurry of bullets aimed at him. "I think at this point, you could afford a few screw-ups and Sam would just call it charming."
"Danny, need I remind you that this is the fifth time this week you've bugged me about this?" Bram asked. "Did you make her laugh?"
"Yes," came Danny's reply.
"Were you confident and sincere when appropriate?"
"Yes."
"Did she make out with you?"
"Yes."
"What the hell else do you want me to tell you? The proper way to give a woman oral sex?"
There was a pause on Danny's end. "Well... now that you bring it up..."
If Bram could have torn himself away from the controller long enough to slap his forehead, he would have at that moment. "I'm not having this conversation with you. Not now, anyway."
"At least he's thorough," Tucker commented in his best friend's defense.
Bram rolled his eyes and proceded to turn Tucker's character into a smear on the wall. "Danny..." he said slowly. "What you've been doing has been working so far, right?"
"Yeah," Danny responded with just a hint of suspicion.
"Then my advice is to keep doing it!" With that, Bram hung up and stuffed his phone back into his pocket. "Alright, back to the carnage."
A few minutes into the merciless slaughtering of Tucker's character, the young technophile couldn't help letting his mind wander. Sam really was good for Danny. The poor guy had been lonely long enough... which reminded Tucker of something. "Hey, Bram. Now that we've got Danny hooked up, you think you could help me score a date?"
Bram turned his eyes toward the ceiling in exasperation. "Will it get you people to stop asking me about this every hour on the hour?"
"Maybe," Tucker answered.
There was a pause before Bram sighed. "I'll talk to Jenny tomorrow. Beautiful women often have beautiful friends who are also single."
"Beautiful and single, my favorite kind." Tucker went back to Halo II feeling triumphant. Was he being a little superficial? Perhaps. But twenty years of singledom forces you to be... open to the possibilities. Yeah, that sounded good. The whole trick to not having to feel guilty about anything was just keeping in mind that you only needed to justify your actions to yourself. Who cares if no one else liked it? Everyone who was important was satisfied. Ignorance truly was bliss... except right now when the ignorance of where Paul had been hiding caused Tucker to get a face full of grenade.
-x-
Sam awoke to see Danny sitting next to the bed flipping through one of her scrapbooks. It was only half-finished as it was all memories of her and Danny. "See anything you like?" she asked as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.
Danny dropped his head back on the bed, looking at Sam upside down. "If I didn't before, I do now."
"Flattery will get you everwhere," Sam purred.
"Plenty more where that came from." Danny then smirked and arched a brow as he turned around so he could face Sam without having to strain his neck. "Of course, I think you'll have to work for the rest. You can't expect me to just kiss your ass all day, do you?"
Sam chuckled a little at that and stretched out like a cat. "Fair enough. Have I told you today how adorable you are?"
"Repeatedly," Danny answered. "Keep it comin'."
Sam just laughed and grabbed a fistful of his hair. "How about this instead?" She pulled him into a forceful kiss, smiling against his lips. She had never figured she'd be this aggressive with a guy, but it just felt natural. There was something magical also about Danny being her first boyfriend, just as she was his first girlfriend. It was like they were both discovering everything together. And that gave her a feeling of contentment she had never experienced before.
-x-
Tucker was walking down the streets. Paul and Bram had to leave for dinner, so Tucker decided to go searching for some job applications. He hoped that the game shop was hiring. The problem with being an adult was having to actually work for a living. Bah. Work. The only stuff he really enjoyed doing didn't count as work, and unfortunately, he needed a degree to do that. So he had to look forward to another 4 years as a minimum wage slave.
His internal monologue of self-pity was interrupted by a rather eye-catching poster up in the music store window that wasn't there yesterday. "Ah, crap," he thought aloud. Summer just started and already they were going to have to put up with this. He whipped out his cell phone and dialed up 1 on his speed dial.
"Hello, Danny? Yeah, it's Tuck... Oh, nothing much. Just thought you might want to know. The Queen Bitch of Rock is back... Duh. Who else would I be talking about, Alanis Morisette?"
Ember Strikes Back!
This Saturday Only at Amity Arena!
Author's Notes: The semester has really sucked, but it's finally over. Thank god. Hopefully I can get some of these things out of the way. Chapter 7 coming up soon along with the much-anticipated updates to other fics such as Lights, Camera, Action, Waiting for Dawn, Dawn of a New Age, and To Hell and Back. Updates all around this winter!