12 Days of Fic-mas: Day 01 - Bells
Fic Title: Seen In A Holy New Light
Chapter title: Church Bells
Characters: Danny Fenton, Paulina Sanchez, Sam Manson, Tucker Foley
Word Count: 1194
Summary: There's an odd new trend at Casper High.
You can read on AO3 of below the cut
If Sam hadn't pointed it out, Danny might have been blissfully unaware all day.
Unfortunately now he was hyper-aware.
Apparently, the A-listers had decided today was a good idea to try a ridiculous new game or trend. He wasn’t actually sure what the reason was, just the result.
That being, ring a bell at every opportunity.
He would ask, but that would probably result in him being laughed at for not knowing something they all did. He really didn’t feel like making himself a laughingstock just before winter break.
By the time lunch rolled around a few people had been asked by the teachers to not ring any bells during class, but they didn't get taken away. Danny just rolled his eyes knowing that if he or his friends were in on this bell-ringing thing they would have lost their bells and gotten detention by now.
He was in line for lunch when a jingling sound approached him.
On instinct, he turned to see who it was and found it was Paulina. She made a jingling sound whenever she walked due to the clips in her hair today.
Despite hearing bells all day, her bells were nice. It was a sweet sound and wasn’t all that loud either.
"Hi Danny," she said with a wave.
Danny quickly looked around as if there might be some other Danny nearby that she would be talking to.
There wasn’t.
"Hey, Paulina, what's up?" He waved back, unable to hide his confusion as to why she was talking to him.
"Do you have a minute? I have a question for you, but I think it’d be better if we talked in private."
Danny looked back at the line and shrugged, it wouldn't be the first time he missed lunch. "Lead the way."
"Great! Follow me!" Paulina happily led the way out of the cafeteria and down the hall.
It didn't take long to reach their destination, but it certainly wasn’t where he was expecting to have a conversation.
"Uh, why are we going in here?"
"Why not?"
"Because it's the girl's restroom?"
"Oh please, we were literally talking in here last week."
Danny felt his cheeks get a little warm at the reminder. He had almost forgotten about that.
"Anyway, I just wanted to know if the bells were helping or not."
She didn't give him a chance to ask what that meant before she continued.
"Because I was trying to be nice, but then I got asked why I was wearing bells. I knew I couldn't tell them the real reason because I promised you I wouldn't. So I said it was a new trend. Of course, everyone jumped on board, but it's starting to feel like too much. Is it too much?"
Since Danny was beyond lost in the conversation, he decided to just go with it and hope it all worked out.
Surly that wouldn't backfire at all.
"I appreciate the gesture, but yeah, it's a bit overkill with everyone doing it pretty much constantly."
"Yeah, I was afraid of that. So did it work?"
Danny wasn’t sure what the correct answer was and ended up taking too long to answer.
"Oh darn, well I’ll let everyone know the trend is dead anyway. See you later!"
Then Danny was alone in the bathroom.
And somehow even more confused than when he entered.
He stood there for a minute trying to process what happened but then remembered he was missing lunch.
A quick speed-walk back to the cafeteria and he was able to get a plate thanks to a conveniently timed rumble from his stomach while the lunch lady was about to put everything away.
"Hey man, where have you been?" Tucker asked as Danny approached the table.
"Paulina needed to talk to me about," he hesitated as he say down, "something."
"Are you gonna tell us what it is?" Sam asked with a quirked brow.
"I would if I could, but I'm not entirely sure."
"You don’t know what you just had a conversation about?"
"Not really? Well, sort of." He took a bite of his lukewarm mashed potatoes before continuing, "it was about the bells. She said she's going to call that off now."
"Why is she telling you that?"
"Because it was for me? I guess?"
"The bells are for you?"
"Apparently?" Danny shrugged and then tried to eat a little faster because the period was already half over.
"I think you're going to have to tell us exactly what happened, Danny," Sam said as she finished her meal.
Danny gave them a quick recap of the conversation and how he assumed it had to do with her theory that he was an angel.
Sam seemed to be just as confused as he was, but Tucker’s snickering broke her out of her thoughts.
"Oh my god, I know what she was doing." He snickered a bit more and then added, "and you two would never figure it out."
"You mind sharing with the class?" Sam asked, no doubt annoyed that Tucker was able to figure something out before she did.
"I wonder if she knows it's from a movie?" Tucker pondered out loud making everything that much more confusing.
"What movie?" Danny asked. He was pretty sure he'd seen everything Tucker had, but he couldn’t think of anything that made sense.
"It’s a Christmas movie."
"Oh." Danny slumped in his seat and dropped his fork. He wasn’t really hungry anymore.
"Ah, well that still doesn't explain anything."
"Do I need to remind you that you’re Jewish and he hates Christmas?" Tucker asked, clearly missing the point.
"Bro, no. What's the movie say about angels and bells?"
"Oh, right. 'Every time a bell ring an angel gets its wings.'"
"You know, I think I've actually heard that before."
"Well, it is this super famous quote. Everybody knows the quote. Even if they haven't seen the movie," Tucker explained.
"I can't believe this was because of a stupid Christmas movie."
"I have a feeling she has no idea it's from a movie," Sam said.
"Yeah, she probably looked up angel lore on google and saw the quote."
"How old is the movie anyway?"
"I'm not sure exactly, but it's some old black-and-white movie. So probably the ‘80s."
"The ‘80s?" Sam asked incredulously. "When do you think color film was invented?"
"The ‘90s?"
"The ‘90s?!" Danny busted up laughing.
"What?"
"I know, for a fact, that you've watched movies from before the '90s that were in full color." Sam challenged.
"Oh yeah? Like what?"
"Back to the Future."
"Oh yeah, that’s super 80s," Tucker muttered to himself.
"So you wanna try and answer that color film question again?" Sam teased.
"Alright fine! It was like the '70s or whatever."
Danny did his best to contain himself because he had to add to this. It was way too funny to pass up. "Tuck, I'm going to have to revoke your nerd card."
"What? Why?"
"What show aired in 1966?"
"Star Trek." He answered automatically and then realized his mistake. "No! I'm a fool!"
Sam and Danny high-fived across the table as Tucker wallowed in despair beside them.