Twelve Days of Christmas

Sunday, December 17th

(Eight days until Christmas)

"Yeah, I don't think Skulker is going to be a problem for a while," Tucker was telling Sam as she picked at her soy melt. She'd agreed to have lunch with him, sans Danny, since Danny was freshly grounded. Only a day, and only because he refused to tell his mom where he'd gotten the cut on his jaw that had required five stitches.

Sam hated that she was grateful he wasn't there.

"He's really upset about this, isn't he?" she asked quietly.

Tucker gave a helpless shrug. Even his triple meaty cheesy (death) burger was being picked at. Part of that could have been due to the fact that he'd already eaten three, but Sam had never seen Tucker leave meat untouched, no matter how full he should have been. She often thought that he had some miniature ghost portal in his stomach that let him eat as much meat as he wanted. It would certainly explain where the lunch lady randomly found most of her meat.

"I've been telling you for years that Danny likes you," he told her, his voice subdued. "I'm pretty sure that he's been in love with you since we were juniors."

"That was just last year," she responded acerbically, unsure how to respond to Tucker telling her that Danny Fenton was in love with her. Especially when she'd barely seen any evidence that he might actually like like her, as opposed to liking her at all.

He rolled his eyes at her, and Sam picked up a fry and threw it at him. "Seriously, Sam. I know you've been practically living in denial—"

"I swear to whatever god you choose to believe in that if you make a bad pun about rivers I will kill you where you sit," she growled at him.

His hands came up defensively as Tucker leaned back in his side of the booth. "No bad puns here, at least not about rivers. This is too serious to joke about anyway."

Sam's shoulders dropped, because she knew that if even Tucker was admitting the seriousness of it, then her instincts weren't at all wrong. "I know," she told him miserably. "I feel so horrible, I can tell this whole Christmas thing—"

"Secret admirer thing," Tucker interjected.

"Is hurting him," she continued on with barely a pause. "But I didn't ask for this, and I don't know who's doing it."

In a rare moment of maturity, Tucker reached across the table and laid his hand over hers. "I know that. And Danny knows it, too. That's why this is so hard for him, I think. He needs someone to blame, and he hasn't got a person to lay it on except himself."

"If he'd said something…" Sam let the soft words trail off, but when she looked up at Tucker she knew he knew exactly what she was saying. She'd told him once, a long time ago, how much she cared about Danny. As young as she was she was sure that if she wasn't in love with him, she wasn't far from it.

"I think that's why Danny snapped last night. I told him that he should have made his move a long time ago, that he had no one to blame for this but himself." The guilt echoed through his words, but Tucker owned up to what he'd said.

"You shouldn't have done that," Sam told him without reproach.

Tucker shrugged again and resumed poking at his burger. "Yeah, I know. But it needed to be said. He felt better afterward, except for the whole needing stitches part."

Sam finally pushed her soy melt away, leaning back in the booth. "I wish I knew who it was."

Tucker chuckled a little. "You know I've set up book on it?"

She snorted. "Figures. How much is your kickback?"

"Ten percent," he answered blithely. "Right now half the school thinks that it's someone who isn't a student at Casper, and the other half thinks it's Danny." He twirled a finger through the air with a little frown. "I've had at least a dozen calls about changing or withdrawing their bets, though. Danny's losing his momentum in it."

"Oh," Sam said. For a moment she thought that maybe she might have missed something, that she could be wrong and it could still be Danny. Despite how the general population treated her and Danny, they had pretty good instincts about blossoming romances. If they didn't think it was Danny, then there was a good chance they were right, which went along with Sam's belief that it was someone else.

"Sam, chin up," Tucker consoled her. "Just because some bozo is dropping all this on you doesn't mean you owe him something."

"I—"

Sam stopped short as she looked towards the sound of jingling bells to her left. The fact that a group of five men dressed as elves had managed to sneak up on her and Tucker (or that they simply weren't paying enough attention to realize they were there) amazed Sam, and the first thing she could think was, Oh hell no.

"Sam Manson?" the one nearest to her asked, green eyes sparkling with good cheer, something that Sam was beginning to really hate, had her shaking her head no until Elf #1 held up a picture of her. She narrowed her eyes at it and then him as he told her, "We were warned that you would probably try and deny it."

"Warned by who?" She leapt on the chance to get an answer without having to continue the farce that was being perpetrated on her unwilling person, but all five elves simultaneously shook their heads.

"My apologies, miss, but anonymity is part of our holiday service."

"Service?" Tucker asked as Sam thought she might should try to make a hasty exit. But it was too late even before Tucker finished his single word query.

As one they began singing. "You've got my heart on Christmas, inside my soul your love remains, love's in our hearts on Christmas day…"

While she could appreciate music other than her preferred genre, and even had the highest respect for a cappella performances, Sam could only bury her face in her arms on the table wishing that whatever the sappy song they were singing was over and done with. She'd never been more mortified in her life, and Sam had lived through some harrowing experiences, up to and including wearing hideous dresses she'd prefer to be dead rather than don. And yet here she was being serenaded by five grown men wearing red and white striped tights in the middle of the Nasty Burger with too many of her schoolmates to think that no one would hear about this latest Christmas stunt.

Honestly, if whoever was doing this was into his twelve days of Christmas, why couldn't he just buy her five golden rings instead of forcing her to submit to this humiliation? It wasn't like he wasn't interested in spending money on the scheme.

She could feel Tucker's foot tapping frantically against hers as the song wound down, and it was all she could do to force herself to lift her eyes. Sam wasn't a coward, but right now, she was feeling really damned close to one. As one their voices faded into silence before each one presented her with golden note cards, each one bearing a single ring etched into it. She almost laughed at it, since she'd known that sooner or later the card (cards in this case) would be presented, with nary a clue to who was doing this.

With a tip of pointy little elfin hats four of them began leaving, humming a Christmas carol as they did, the last smiling at her.

"Merry Christmas, Miss Manson," he said as he handed her a small box that was wrapped in green and red striped paper.

Then he was gone and Sam was staring at the latest gift, since apparently being humiliated in the Nasty Burger wasn't gift enough. Her fingers didn't tremble this time as she worked the paper loose to find a CD case inside, a festive homemade label on it bearing her name.

"A CD, Tuck. He gave me a CD," she told him numbly as she flipped it over to look at the back. There were songs listed, several she recognized, some that she didn't. Possession, done in an excellent cover by a band she was vaguely familiar with called Evans Blue. Your Guardian Angel, which she knew to be by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, since she had the CD that it was from. Her eyes skimmed the list, taking in the next nine songs and artists with ease, recognizing most, until she came to the final one.

One Sweet Love, by Sara Bareilles.

She didn't know the artist or the song, but only took a moment for Sam to make the single common thread between all twelve, and when she did she turned hesitant eyes to Tucker.

"I might owe him something, Tuck." She handed him the CD. "I think he's in love with me."

xXx

The lyrics are from Love's in our Hearts on Christmas Day, by N Sync. Yes, I know I should be ashamed. But it worked.