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"Whaddya think?" Were the words that had just come out of Tucker's mouth as he, Sam, and Danny turned the corner onto the road that would lead them to Fenton Works.
"I think it's ridiculous to waste your gold on animal training when weapon manufacturing is the most lucrative skill," Sam replied matter-of-factly, gesturing toward stats of some kind on Tucker's PDA. A quick glance on Danny's end confirmed his suspicion that they were talking about Tucker's newest RPG, which was something he himself hadn't yet attained and therefore knew nothing about.
"Hmm, what do you think, Danny?" Tucker asked, not that the other boy noticed. He was busy staring off into space, exactly like he'd been doing through the duration of their walk from school to his house.
"He doesn't have the game yet," Sam answered in his stead. "Plus, I think we lost him a block ago, anyway."
Tucker furrowed his eyebrows and leaned forward to look past Sam at Danny. "Dude, what's wrong? She's right. You've been staring at nothing for, like, ten minutes."
"Huh?" Danny asked eloquently before shaking his head to clear it. "I mean, sorry. It's nothing."
Tucker sighed. "C'mon, man, what's the matter?"
"You know you can tell us," Sam added the moment they reached the sidewalk outside Danny's house. The trio stopped walking, and the halfa among them gave a theatrical groan.
"Okay, so y'know how I told you Vlad's been creeping up on me lately?" Here, both of his friends nodded, so he continued. "I thought he was acting a bit weird."
"Oh, boy, that's new." Sam said with a smirk. Danny didn't laugh. Tucker did.
"Yeah!" the latter barked, slapping his knee in the process and gaining a fond smile from the girl.
Danny kept on talking, dutifully ignoring this exchange. "He's been less… I dunno, brooding lately. And since he's in town he won't stop pestering me. It's like I'm being followed around by Vlad, but he's not quite himself."
"Maybe he's finally come to terms with his life, dude," Tucker suggested. "Got over your mom, met someone new…" Danny couldn't tell if this was a joke or not, so he didn't respond, instead opting to grab the mail before the group retired to his bedroom for the next few hours.
Three pairs of feet clunked up the stairs noisily. Danny shifted through the letters with minimal interest and, once he'd sat on his bed, flipped them out onto the floor one by one as if he were dealing cards. "College letter for Jazz, letter for Jazz, Jazz again, Jazz… Bills… And this one just says 'Fenton,' so I'm not sure who it's supposed to be for." He held up the last envelope in the stack as proof.
Sam took it from his hand to examine it, then asked, "Mind if I open it?" When Danny nodded, she carefully tore the envelope open and unfolded the piece of cream-colored stationary that had been inside. "Oh my gosh."
"What?" Danny and Tucker spoke in unison, both of them craning their necks to see what the girl had discovered.
"It's a letter," she said, sounding rather awestruck.
Danny resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Tucker laughed once and said, "Well, yeah, Sam."
"No," the Goth said, almost urgently. "I mean, look. It's a letter. Not, like, a bill or a college brochure, but an actual, handwritten note. It's on stationary and everything. I didn't think anyone still did this."
At once, the halfa's heart skipped a beat. He grabbed the letter. "I bet I know who would."
Tucker and Sam shared an uneasy glance. The former's voice arose with, "You don't really think he'd have the nerve to—"
"Oh, he's got the nerve, all right," Danny said with a scoff. "It must be a love note for my mom. Go figure."
"I wanna read it." Tucker snatched the paper from Danny's hands, receiving only a mildly bothered "Hey!" in return.
Sam sat beside Danny on the bed and got comfortable. "Go for it."
"Ew, don't encourage him, Sam." Danny wrinkled his nose. "I don't wanna listen to Vlad attempting to romance my mother."
"'You could say I'm a secret admirer, of sorts.' " Tucker began, reading in a deep, dramatic voice and consequently causing Sam to stifle a snicker and Danny to moan in anguish. "'Without my signature I am anonymous and untraceable. Despite this, I'm sure you've gathered who has written you this letter; this declaration; this...' Sam, what does this say?"
The teen in question scanned the word at which Tucker had pointed and scrunched up her nose, just as Danny had earlier. "It's 'billet-doux.' It means it's a love letter."
"Oh, gees," Danny groaned.
Tucker snorted and continued reading, sans his dramatic voice, to the halfa's slight relief. "'Your ability to string details together to solve a puzzle is absolutely enthralling. I admire your strong will in this sense and in many others. I'm incredibly glad things aren't as awful between us as they once were. While there's still a bit of distrust, that's what makes it entertaining.' "
Here, Sam interrupted to snort out a laugh. "I'm going to puke."
Danny's face was bright pink by this point. "I'm not sure we oughta be reading this." He was, of course, ignored.
"'Trust me when I say that I mean well. A gorgeous, tenacious being such as yourself is not something to overlook, and I'd very much love to see the way you apply that tenacity in other—' " The reading broke off into a gag. Tucker's voice strained the rest of the way through the sentence. "'In other areas.' "
The pink on the Fenton's face flushed to a healthy red. "Oh my God."
Sam shot him a smirk. "Steamy."
"Sam, don't."
"Sorry. But hey, you gotta admit he's pretty romantic."
Tucker shrugged one shoulder. "True. Wordy, but romantic."
Danny covered his face with both hands, and the other boy took that as his cue to finish reading the remainder of the letter. "'It would be an immense pleasure to see you again soon, Little Badger.' "
The halfa's face, having already warmed from pink to red beforehand, had no other extreme to rise to and so shot down to a rather impressive white, instead. He felt goosebumps prick his arms.
"Aww, that's a cute pet name," Tucker gushed. "Vlad should be a Valentine maker or something. Or a poet. Are there ghost poets?"
"What's the rest?" Sam inquired, leaning forward in anticipation of more hilarious excerpts.
"I don't really think we should hear—" Danny began, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. Before he could finish his sentence, Sam laid a hand on his shoulder and cut him off.
"Chill, Danny. We won't even give it to your mom, so it'll be fine."
Tucker nodded his agreement before launching into a grinning recital of the final lines of Vlad's billet-doux. "'Recently I have been working on tearing myself away from my previous romantic endeavor, so I suppose I should note that I still find your attractiveness, albeit painfully familiar, very enrapturing. You…' " The boy's eyebrows inched higher up on his forehead. "Uhh…"
Sam gave him a quizzical look, which soon morphed into one of slight worry when she noticed Danny had resorted to hiding his face in a pillow. "What? What does it say?"
"'You always did look so much like your mother, Daniel.' "
"What?" Sam's mouth dropped open, only to curl into a grin seconds later. "No way. There is absolutely no way."
Tucker whistled. "Wow, dude. Looks like you got yourself a sugar daddy if you ever want one."
"Tucker!" Danny exclaimed, tearing the pillow away from his rather mortified-looking face.
Sam couldn't resist breaking into a laugh, leading Tucker to follow soon after. Once the only serious one among them had had enough of this, he snatched the letter, stomped down the stairs with it, and carried it out the front door with the intent of ripping it to shreds and tossing it in the garbage.
He jerked the trash can lid upward with one hand, then suddenly felt the weight of it leave his grip with a swoosh. Blinking, he looked up to see Vlad smiling deviously at him, metal lid in hand. "Ah, nice to see you got my letter, Daniel."
It took him a second to find his words, but when he did, he spoke them deliberately. "Why did you give me this?"
Vlad heaved a long-suffering sigh. "I assumed that would be obvious. Did you even read it?"
"Yeah, I did. And it was, like— I mean, why?" Danny's face flushed once more when the millionaire's free hand settled on his shoulder.
"I know, I know," the older man said with an airy tone, closing his eyes and gesturing with his hand. "I'm sure you blanched upon reading it." He peeked out of one eye for only a split second, but Danny still caught it.
"Of course not," the teen said with a roll of his eyes, "I swooned."
"That's an impressive word for you, Daniel," Vlad commented, receiving a frosty smile in response.
"Thanks. I know how you appreciate junk like that."
"I'm touched." The millionaire traced an index finger along Danny's jaw, stopping just under his chin and lifting it up. Despite the sneer on the younger halfa's face, he adamantly stood his ground, refusing to back away. Vlad continued speaking, tempting his fate by leaning in with every word. "You know me so well."
The sneer from before eased into a line when Danny swallowed hard. "It's pretty easy since you're such a shallow jerk." His voice wavered. Nice one, dude, he thought with a mental grimace. Real tough.
Vlad's mouth was close enough to Danny's that the latter swore he felt his lips tingling, but before any semblance of an actual kiss occurred, Sam and Tucker threw the front door open with twin cries of their friend's name.
The sound Danny made might've been called a shriek, but he preferred to think he hadn't made a noise at all.
Vlad jerked away and resorted to smoothing out invisible wrinkles on the front of his tux. "Lovely to see your friends again, too," he mumbled.
"What is he doing here?" Sam asked with a raised brow to accompany her words.
Tucker, trying hard not to snicker, replied, "C'mon, didn't you read the letter?"
Sam's serious façade broke away in a similar fashion, but she quickly sobered. "Oh, right. Is, uh, everything okay here, or should we stay for…moral support?"
"Sure, stay," Vlad answered fluidly, as though the thought didn't irritate him immensely.
"No, no, we're fine here," Danny said through clenched teeth. "I'll be up in a bit. Just taking the trash out," he added, pointedly shooting a glare at the older man. Vlad looked up at the sky and whistled innocently.
It took the two of them a few moments, past all the gawking and tittering, but they eventually returned to Danny's room while he and Vlad wrapped things up outside.
"Listen," the dark-haired boy started, "Don't show up at my house like this ever again."
"How about that atrocious Nasty Burger you love so much?"
"N— Wait, what?" His grip subconsciously tightened on the letter.
"I certainly won't touch that garbage, so if you'd like, I could take you somewhere nicer." Vlad grinned at Danny's startled expression.
"Oh, um. Uh."
"Splendid! This was a good talk." The man checked his watch. "It is about time I left, though, I'm afraid. I'll pick you up at noon tomorrow, how does that sound?"
Danny's mouth felt suspiciously dry. "Uhhh…" was still all he could manage.
Vlad hummed. "I'll take that as a yes. Well, now. Goodbye, Little Badger." He reached out, took Danny's free hand, and kissed his knuckles, reveling in the fact that at least the boy hadn't jerked his hand away. "I'll see you tomorrow. Don't forget."
In a flash (literally), he was gone, utilizing his ghost form to return to wherever it was that he'd come from.
Danny stood there awkwardly for a little while before he looked at the now-crumpled letter he still held. Once his sense flooded back to him, he felt his eyebrows lower over his eyes as though they possessed their own free will. "Well that was weird." He attempted to smooth the stationary, eyeing the curly letters inked onto it before folding it carefully and sliding it into his back pocket.
He supposed one date with Vlad wouldn't hurt.