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Whoever said that staring at a clock doesn't really make time go slower, is a complete idiot. Staring at a clock was like watching two snails race across a brick, or like getting your car stuck in a hectic traffic jam. It drew on and tested your patience to the point you feel like your going to scream out in rage.

Danny Fenton stared at the clock with his ice blue eyes and sighed nervously. He paid close attention to the clock, anticipating the bell. As soon as that bell rang, he needed to be out of the room, marching down the hall, or he would have to face his worst nightmare.

Dash Baxter, the biggest homophobe in existence.

Danny was his favorite toy.

It was like Danny was the embodiment of everything Dash hated.

Danny was geeky, nerdy, a momma's boy, had a baby face, was nice to everyone, and worst of all; he was gay.

It was like Danny's existence itched at a nerve in Dash, as if he tickled that bud of irritation and caused Dash to be the most despicable human being toward Danny. Ever since they were kids Danny had always been on the bully's bad side, and that caused all of Dash's A-lister friends to bully him as well.

Danny had never really done anything to Dash to deserve such hostility, but for some reason, the older male had always despised the raven-haired teen.

Danny was ashamed to admit that he did once have a crush on Dash when they were younger and before he became a football player. It was in the 7th grade and the blond male was tall, pale and had a build sort of like Danny did.

But unlike Danny, Dash started working out, which lead to him growing out of Danny's type, the more muscular he got.

Yes, Danny even had a type. Not that he's ever met anyone who has come even remotely close to what Danny found sexy.

Danny had always looked at the really cute guys growing up, just as he was sure boys did to cute girls, and girls did to cute boys. He always carefully took in their features to try and figure out what he deemed was perfect, what he would want to look for in a guy. But everyone he found cute was just that... Cute.

Then he watched Rise of the Guardians... And saw Jack.

The white hair and pale skin, along with that lean and only slightly muscular body was downright sinful in Danny's opinion.

But nobody had white hair, and Danny wondered if he would ever find someone like that.

The school bell rang, and the second it did, Danny was about to march out the door, ready to make a fast bolt to the next classroom and avoid Dash completely. Luck wasn't on his side though, and escape became impossible when his teacher called him.

"Daniel Fenton, a word."

With those four words uttered by Mrs. Jackson, his hope of making it to English before Dash could find him was demolished on the spot.

He turned his head back to look at the teacher, her chubby face watching him behind purple reading glasses. He could feel a breeze as the students fleeted the room behind him, and for a moment he was jealous of them all.

"You were daydreaming the last five minutes of class during lecture. Don't let this happen again or I will make sure to keep everyone occupied with classwork." Her gravely voice reminded Danny of a toad, and he wondered how often the lady smoked during break.

He nodded, "yes ma'am." Wanting to get out of the room and into Mr. Lancer's class as soon as possible.

She dismissed him, but Danny looked at the clock and knew that if he didn't book it down the hall, Dash would surely find him and do something horrible to him.

He entered the hallway, cautiously looking in both directions. There was a mob of students outside but he couldn't find the blond jock he was so afraid of. That settled his nerves a little bit, Dash was very easy to spot in a crowd,  for Danny to not see him meant there was a 70% chance that he wasn't there.

He was still careful, however, as he weaved his way through the crowd of students to his locker. Dash could pop out of nowhere at any moment. It was like he had a Danny radar, he always found him, as if Danny was a location that Dash could type into a GPS and track down.

It was annoying.

He shut his locker, English folder and notes in hand, and turned to head to destination B; AP English.

However, as soon as he turned around, he smashed right into a bully chest. Running into Dash like that was like running into a brick wall, his body was so packed with muscle that it was hard as a rock.

Danny looked up, and successfully avoided dropping his stuff, but apparently fate had no intention in letting him get to class without a confrontation with the bully.

The jock was more than a head taller than Danny, and every time the raven had the displeasure of looking up at the older boy, he would always feel like a toddler.

"Umm." Was all Danny could manage, looking up at Dash from the top of his eyes, his black bangs not at all obscuring his vision.

"Hey Fen-toenail," he grinned maliciously down at Danny with perfect white teeth, "suck any dongs today?"

The comment only did minimal damage on Danny, minimal because he himself and everyone who really knew him already knew that Danny was no man whore, but Danny never did handle Dash's judgmental comments well. All it took was enough poking, and Dash had him an emotional wreck of self-hatred.

Danny's head fell slightly further as he attempted on walking past the jock, wondering his chances of the blond letting him off easy today.

Apparently, there was no such chance as the bully blocked his way, "Woah, where are you off to in such a hurry? Is your pimp waiting for you?"

Mustering up all his strength, Danny boldly shoved his weight passed the jock and bolted down the hall, hoping that Dash would give up after that.

Again no such luck.

"Fenton!" Danny could hear Dash angrily yell after him, and the boy knew that the jock was running after him.

That was no fair! A jock against a geek in a nerd chase? Danny was sure to lose.

Danny wasn't a good runner, he only ever worked out during gym with Sam, and sometimes when his mom would take him to the gym with her.

The bell was about to ring for 4th period, and there was hardly any students left in the halls. It made it easy to run without running into anything. But he knew that the jock would catch up to him very easily. So easy, that Danny almost thought there was no point in running.

A hard jerk to his collar, followed by a, "your dead Fenton," let him know that he was caught. A crunch of fear invaded his heart like teeth chewing on gum as he was yanked around, and lifted up off the ground by the front of his shirt, up to eye level with the blond bully.

"You think you can run from me without getting a black eye, Fenton?" Turquoise eyes glared at Danny, and the raven's teeth clenched, worried about what was going to happen.

A fist rose in the air, and Danny shut his eyes and braced himself for impact. His fear was almost physical in the air.

"Forgive me for interrupting." A disgustingly familiar voice rang out, and immediately Danny knew it was going to be a day worse then he had imagined when he woke up this morning.

He opened his liquid blue eyes and immediately noticed that Dash's attention wasn't on him anymore.

Dash was looking at Vlad, one of Danny's father's friends from college.

Vlad had a grip on Dash's arm, which was still poised in position to thoroughly abuse Danny's face.

Dash immediately dropped Danny back on his feet in the eyes of authority, putting on an innocent smile at the substitute teacher. "Hi, Mr. Masters," he grinned, "I was just showing Danny some fighting moves, you know, because he's so darn defenseless."

Vlad's smug grin melted icily over Danny's form, eliciting a disgusted shiver in the boy. "Yes well, we must always protect the week in the community. Now run along Mr. Baxter, I do believe the bell rang a minute ago."

It was true, now that Danny realized it. Right before his creepy "uncle", Vlad showed up to valiantly rescue Danny from a shiny one, the bell rang without either of the two boys noticing.

Dash nervously laughed, glad for an easy opening out of trouble, "you got it, Mr. Masters." He saluted and turned on his heal and walked down the hall into his own classroom.

Danny pointedly avoided eye contact that he knew Vlad was hoping for. He didn't speak at all as he made his way to his classroom, expecting to find two dozen kids sitting through one of Mr. Lancer's Shakespeare lectures. But instead, as he stood in the door frame of the classroom, he was greeted by loud, unsupervised children throwing spitballs, texting, or throwing Tucker's hat around the room.

Vlad's hand shoved Danny forward, and it was then, as he glared back at Vlad, that he knew his horrible "uncle" would be substituting for Mr. Lancer today.

Danny wanted to hurl as he made his way to his seat between his two friends Sam and Tucker, he knew what that meant... He would have to sit through another 50 minutes of Vlad staring at him threw out the lesson.

Vlad often did this, come to Amity Park just to stalk him. He would come and pose as a teacher whenever he felt like it and oogle at Danny. Danny could always feel those aged teal eyes staring at him while he tried to put all his focus on his school work.

Like now as Vlad taught a more lively lesson about Nathaniel Hawthorne, a much more interesting author to the population of students sitting in their desks. The majority could handle sitting through a lecture about someone whose works they understood, better than of those they had to dissect and figure out literately. But Danny wasn't paying much attention.

He knew without having to look up, his creepy uncle was staring at him. He could just feel it, the feeling was as real as the shiver that ran down his spine.

He chanced a glance up to confirm his suspicion and almost shrank in his seat at the look he was getting from Vlad.

The only way to describe it was evil.

His toothless smirk, while he spoke about an author Danny, didn't care about made him look creepy, and his narrowed eyes reminded Danny of a horror movie. He wanted to get out of that room, remembering a time a few months ago when Vlad came over to visit for a weekend.

Vlad and his dad were old College friends who's studied marine biology and mythology, the used to research merpeople together, but the stopped twenty years ago. Danny never knew why, but if he had to guess, Vlad just couldn't handle Jack's obsession with mermaids. But they still saw each other on occasion, Vlad would come to visit, or Dad would haul Danny and the rest of his family over to Wisconsin for the weekend.

But whenever the 48-year-old man came around, Danny was always uncomfortable.

His friends Sam and Tucker were the only other people who noticed the stares that Vlad would give Danny constantly whenever he was around.

Danny hated it, he felt like Vlad was always undressing him with his eyes, and it drove him mad. In a really bad way.

The last time he came to visit, Danny was so sure that he was going to try to do something if he had the chance. His parents were clueless idiots who didn't pay much attention to Vlad's creepy behavior around their son, so Danny knew he would have to take care of himself. Vlad was no idiot and was very crafty, so Danny would have to be smarter and protect himself.

That weekend, he hadn't gone to the restroom, he stayed in his mom's field of vision. And at night, he locked his bedroom door and held it shut with a chair.

He was so glad he did.

He honestly wasn't sure what happened that last night Vlad visited those months ago. All Danny remembered was laying in his bed, half asleep at three in the morning. He had his blankets up to his chin, and his legs bent 90° as he hugged a second pillow to his chest. He was comfortable, and felt safe behind a thoroughly barricaded door, alone in his room where nobody could hurt him.

Until he heard something outside his bedroom door.

It wasn't exactly a knocking, more of a few light thumps and some rattling by the doorknob. Danny remembered sleepily sitting up and looking at his door, but the noises disappeared just after he connected the dots. He had waited there for a full ten minutes, waiting to see if the noises would continue, waited to see if whoever was on the other side of his door would continue to pursue entrance. But nothing came after that, and against his better judgment, Danny passed out soon after that.

But every time he thought about Vlad, he remembered. He had tried to get into his room that night. Had tried to enter his room to do who knows what. Danny didn't want to know what Vlad was planning on doing if he had been able to enter his room that night, but the boy felt it in his gut that he saved his skin that night for locking the door shut tight.

Danny was dreading the thought of Vlad spending the next weekend with them, the raven was sure the 48-year-old man would have figured out a way around a locked door by now. Danny figured that was why he was visiting, especially with him looking so smug like he won some hidden battle that Danny wasn't aware they were fighting.

He just wanted to get through the rest of the day without getting beat or hit on.

...

The bell that signaled the end of the 8th period was the loudest noise heard by every student in the school. It triggered a hectic response of pushing, running, and shoving. The joy everyone felt to be free of the white walls, the fluorescent lights, the endless lockers, and the excruciating lectures was like a bird flying for the first time.

"Danny don't worry, you can call us to sleep over if you want?" Sam said as Danny took his homework out of his locker.

Danny looked at Sam and Tucker and smiled. It wasn't weird for them all to have sleepovers together at one of their houses, they had been friends since they were three. Their parents literally could not separate them, one of them was hardly ever seen without another. They had been best friends since they were toddlers and had shared beds many times. It wasn't at all odd for them to have sleepovers together, so Danny knew that they would stay true to their word if he did ask them. He just needed to say the words and they would be there for him.

And Danny wasn't sure he wanted to be alone with Vlad in the same house all weekend.

"I'll call you guys if I need you," Danny said.

Tucker didn't feel right, as he looked at the fear hidden in Danny's expression. To anyone else, he hid his fear well, but Tucker's known them for over a decade and knew what Danny's fear looked like. He knew Danny was afraid, but-

"Ow." Tucker was suddenly shoved to the side, face planting into a locker, as he felt a large body mass charge passed him faster then anyone could react.

Danny was too shocked by how quickly the atmosphere changed to avoid the stiff punch Dash threw at his face. The impact of the hit caused fireworks of pain to blast across his right cheek, the force of it was so strong that he fell backward into Sam. Luckily she was strong enough to catch his weight, not that there was much to catch, Danny was basically just as scrawny as she was, and she was barely a healthy weight, leaning more on the light side of the scale.

"That's what you get for embarrassing me in front of authority, Fen-turd." Dash's red and angry face said where Danny was standing just a couple minutes ago.

The bully turned, Tucker was unfortunately in his way, so the jock flipped off his hat and shoved him into the locker for a second time. Tucker hissed, the cold blue metal bruising the right side of his head. Dash disappeared as fast as he arrived, and Sam allowed Danny to stand on his own feet, cradling his cheek in his hand. Dash missed his eye, but he would still probably have a nice purple one on his cheekbone. He was gonna have fun explaining this one to his parents.

Tucker picked up his hat, feeling a small bump on his head and giving himself a diagnosis, he would be fine in a couple hours. Danny was the one who really got hurt. He turned and flicked Danny's hand out of the way so he could see the abuse himself. Danny blushed and looked away, embarrassed that his friend put so much attention into his pain. Not even his parents did that anymore, they were too obsessed with Mermaids and building hunting equipment to notice when Danny got hurt at home.

In fact, he somehow doubted they would even notice the bruise.

Neither of his friends asked if he was okay, it was kind of a stupid question to ask at that point. Instead, they just picked up his forgotten folder off the floor, which had been dropped in the middle of the blow he took and handed Danny his things.

"Such a pity." A voice that Danny would have rather never hear ever again.

They turned around with narrowed eyes at Vlad, who stood behind them in his expensive suite with his hands behind his back. That same, smug smirk was there to irritate them all.

"Leave Danny alone, Vlad." Sam threatened with a hiss, taking a step slightly in front of her friend.

"Yeah, what she said," Tucker tried to sound as scary as Sam did, but striking fear was typically her job.

"Aww, but I'm just here to tell him about the phone call his father gave me a few days ago in Wisconsin." His smirk only grew as he shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, I don't have to tell you the plans we made this weekend, I much prefer the people I greet at their homes to be... Surprised."

Danny growled, "stay away from my house, Master's." He angrily yelled at the creep.

But his anger only seemed to fuel and tempt the devil, "My dear boy, you can't keep me away." He turned to walk out the door to his limo, "Ta, I'll see you at home."

Danny sighed, it had never been confirmed that Vlad Masters was an offender, nowhere on his record did it say so, Tucker looked to be sure. But Danny, Sam, and Tucker could just feel the air that Vlad breathed. It was in his demeanor, the way he spoke and looked at Danny that worried them. It made their skin crawl, and they continued to feel that Vlad was capable of attacking at any moment.

Tucker turned to Danny, "you don't have to be alone, Danny. Let us stay with you. Or better yet, tell your parents how you feel about him." Tucker was very persuasive.

But Danny refused, "no that's Dad's college friend, about the only one on the earth that gets him out of the lab." Danny said sadly, he wished he could be the one to do that, have some father/son bonding time. But whenever he tried to talk to his family about how he feels, they always ended the conversation quickly to talk about mermaids.

Danny's friends called it neglect, but Danny thought of it like parents who worked hard to keep a roof over his head and food in his stomach.

They were great scientists, despite their obsession for mythical creatures. Danny and everyone else in the world with a brain knew that mermaids didn't exist. But his parents were so sure that they did, that they dedicated their lives to building equipment to capture them, and to prove their existence.

Danny shook his head at Tucker, despite his fear of Vlad, whenever he was around he could actually talk to his parents for more than five seconds about something other then merpeople.

He wanted that more than anything nowadays.

"But Danny!" Tucker exclaimed, but his facial expression changed from that on surprised anger to a forlorn acceptance. Tucker knew Danny so well, that he knew that Danny was the most stubborn person in existence. If Danny didn't want to tell his parents, then he wouldn't. So Tucker decided he would have to make a deal with Danny then.

He looked Danny in the eye, knowing that the raven would be caught, tied around his finger, under his thumb, or however you put this.

"Okay Danny, you don't have to tell your parents. I won't make you." He smiled sweetly, and Sam looked at him angrily in disagreement. Tucker winked at her and waited to see the relief on Danny's face, and then he attacked.

"Because I will tell them myself if you don't let us at least stay with you."

There it was, there was the catch.

Danny's horrified expression was so visible, Tucker and Sam could practically see the bright colors of alarm behind his head. The thought of his friends telling his parents about his fear of Vlad was petrifying.

He immediately agreed, knowing that Tucker would most definitely tell his parents if he had to.

Sam and Tucker nodded in satisfaction, and they all headed over to Danny's house, well aware that Vlad was most likely already there.

Danny was actually happy they made him let them come, the dread he felt of going home to see Vlad sipping tea with his parents in his living room, wasn't so bad anymore now that he wasn't alone.

But that didn't mean he wasn't afraid. Especially when he got home to find that his family and Vlad were all arguing with each other.

Or more like Vlad was arguing with Jack, and Jack was blathering on happily without acknowledging Vlad's distaste on the matter.

"But, Jack! You called me all the way from Wisconsin so we could spend the weekend together!" Vlad was angrily saying. He glanced over to where Danny and his friends were entering the room anxiously, unaware of what they just walked into.

Jack smiled when he noticed his son in the house, "Danny! I'm so glad your home."

"What's going on, Dad?" He asked as his father put both hands on his shoulders excitedly.

"It was just posted on YouTube that there was another mysterious sighting in the cove nearby." The big smile on his face made a little bit of joy erupt in Danny. If he wasn't talking about Mermaids, he probably would have shared the expression

"Okay, and?"

His father put a hand to his head, "well, Danny-boy, your mom and I think that you and I need to spend quickly father-son time together. So I arranged for a fishing trip!" He hugged the side of Danny's body and aimed him to look in the direction his outstretched hand was pointing. Danny saw a whole pile of fishing gear in the corner of the room.

"We're going fishing, and my man Vladdy over here is going to keep your mom company while we're gone!"