Many things in life excited Izzy; if there was any sort of element of surprise to it, she was on it like butter on toast, and if it was fun, then she would be there so fast that it would just make sense to invite her in the first place. She loved adventure, loved to explore, and most of all, loved to get to be the crazy girl she was. But something that she loved that she didn't always get to be a part of was the Christmas season, and everything that went with it. Maybe not everything, she thought, as she looked out at the greedy people in the mall, all fighting over what overpriced junk they wanted next. Maybe just the part that dealt with joy and happiness and things she was good at bringing to others.
The fake plant that she had taken refuge in shook, as someone down on the floor wanted to get her attention, and before she said anything she had to look to see if it was one of the mall security guards she had squirted with a water gun earlier in the afternoon. Nope, upon inspection, it was Noah, her ever-trusting and understanding best friend, other half, and probably soul mate in some form. "Izzy, are you still in there?" he asked, his voice low to not draw attention to the fact that he was possibly talking to an uninhabited tree. "Listen, if you are, you need to get out. They're calling for reinforcements to kick you out. If you're not, well, you probably knew they want you gone and are storming their office or something."
"Silly Noah, a good lookout never abandons her spot without warning!" she said in reply, jumping down the few feet from her vantage point to the floor, landing right next to Noah, who just shook his head at her. "Where'd you hear that anyway? Last I saw, the guards were too busy chasing someone who looks like me, and she wasn't very happy." She laughed, and he gently slapped himself on the forehead, muttering something under his breath that she didn't catch. "So, okay, if they are looking for me, why get me from the tree? They wouldn't find me there, you know."
"I've been walking the mall for six hours while you do this 'investigating' that you're doing," he replied, sliding his hand down his face. "They know I'm here with you, and they're out for your blood. You already got one kid banned today for stashing your water gun in his bag, do we really need to get banned too?"
She shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first place we're banned from. Which, uh, totally reminds me that maybe we should find a different place for our weekly burgers. Kinda set the manager of our normal joint's yard on fire when I saw his decorations. Guy can't pay his workers a living wage and yet he had inflatables in his yard!" Her rambling caught the attention of a passing guard—because talking about setting fire to someone's property was a big enough deal—and soon the duo was being escorted out of the mall into the snowy Canadian evening. "Oh come on!" she shouted, once they were outside. "Is it because of my story? Got a problem with someone wanting fair pay?"
"No, Izzy, they have a problem with you pretending to snipe them with a water gun, then hide in a tree for hours." Always the non-nonsense guy to her hilarious antics, Noah started walking through the snow out towards the bus stop. "Now let's get going before we freeze to death. Don't need you causing even more trouble out here, anyway."
After watching him take a few steps away, Izzy bounced after him, kicking snow everywhere as she did. "Don't be such a sourpuss, Noah!" she said as she playfully punched his shoulder. "Yeah, it's cold out, and yeah we have to walk in this, but what's got you so down?"
"Hm, could it be the fact that you just got us both banned from coming to the last mall within an hour of our place? No, of course it couldn't be. It's normal to be told you can't enter places." Every word he spoke was dripping with sarcasm and anger, something that Izzy noticed and felt slightly bad for. "And what's the reason for this? Right, right, you wanted to teach everyone a lesson, didn't you?"
"I did, but I don't think I can teach an entire mall's worth of people the lesson in one day. I'll need a smaller sample size." Izzy put a finger to her lips in thought, as they walked through untouched snow over to the closest bus stop. "Know anyone who needs a lesson in Christmas spirit?"
He was shivering by then, cold to the core from the snow that was still falling on them as they walked. "Depends on your definition of 'Christmas spirit', because if it's the one you're always using, then no."
"You're still being a sourpuss, Noah!" she chided, punching his shoulder once more, getting a yelp as a reaction from it, which she laughed at. "My definition is the one that everyone should be using. I mean, it's a time for happiness and fun, not people being obsessed with getting what they want!"
"Sure. And where did you get that? Clearly not every advertisement that airs this time of year." As he spoke, it was hard to keep his teeth from chattering, and he had to ask himself how Izzy, wearing a short skirt even with her snow boots and heavy jacket, wasn't freezing as well. "Face it, whatever you want to teach people is just going to be ignored, so why waste your time…and better yet, why get us banned from places, all for nothing?"
"Because people need to learn what Christmas really is about, and you're right about the ads not teaching it!" She fist-pumped into the air, answering Noah's question about how she was keeping warm; the sole amount of extra movement she was doing was probably enough to power a house for the season, let alone keep her tiny frame warm. "So I've taken it upon myself to teach people what this season means, not what they think it should be. Even though presents are totally great and all."
He snorted, unable to keep in one of his thoughts any longer. "Then maybe we should go skip on over to the house of the Spanish bastard and his manipulative sidekick and teach them this lesson, hm?"
"Who, Alejandro and Heather?" She said their names with curiosity, and as Noah watched her, horrified that she was actually considering his throwaway idea, the light in her eyes grew and she twirled on one foot, sending snow flying everywhere. "Yes! Best idea ever, Noah! Even better than the one you had about getting rid of the water gun!"
For the rest of the time they were out and he was unable to get away from her, he regretted so much as offhandedly mentioning going to see two of the most self-absorbed and greedy people they knew. All Izzy wanted to talk about was her plans for how she would be able to teach them the true meaning of the holiday season, figuring that they were most likely just as selfish as all those people at the mall combined, maybe even worse. She went on and on about how they could really make a change in their lives, annoying not just Noah but the other people who had the misfortune of riding on that bus with them. And all he could do was sit and pretend to listen to her as she came up with a plan that wouldn't work by any means, but that would get them killed in the process. "Don't you think this is a great idea?" she asked, catching his attention.
"Sorry, spaced out somewhere in the realm of going through their chimney to be Santa," he sarcastically replied, hoping that she'd get a giggle out of it.
"Yeah, figured that I'd lose you at that part. We'll just have to get Owen to do it. That guy, he'll do anything for friends like us, don't you think?" Noah hadn't expected for the sentence he had said to actually have been part of Izzy's master plan, and he just looked at her, shocked. "I'll ask him tomorrow! What do you think about the part where we burn their presents? I've always wanted to start a house fire!"
Without so much as a pause to think about what she had just said, Noah had a reply for her. "If you do that, you can consider what we have between us over, and I am not going to pay a cent to bail you out."
"Oh, really?" She put her hands to her cheeks and began to fake cry. "I thought we had something special! Don't your feelings for me say that you have to help me if I get busted for following my beliefs?"
"No, they don't. They say nothing about remaining in any type of relationship with a psychopath, either, and look at where I still am." He rolled his eyes and she laughed, dropping her crying act and promptly forgetting anything about the conversation they had just been having—something he had expected, because that was what Izzy did. "So, now that you're over that, what do you say we just forget that you want to teach the world a lesson, and do something more fun?"
Izzy wasn't one to just drop a topic in her heart, and although she told Noah that she was all for whatever he had planned next (which was to get home, order a pizza, tip the delivery guy extra well for having to drive in the snow, and watch horror movies all night), her mind was still on that lesson thing. Even when Noah was screaming like a girl at the movies, then acting like he was just pretending, she couldn't put her full focus on him. She had the best idea ever, the most foolproof of ways to teach some greedy people a lesson they wouldn't forget, and she was going to act on it.
First, though, she had to wait until Noah was asleep on the couch before she called up someone, asking them for their presence bright and early the next morning at a very specific location, not too far from where she currently was.
The glare of the sun reflecting off the snow made it much brighter outside than it needed to be, something that Noah grumbled about as he and Izzy were riding the bus once again, this time to some stop that he had never heard of until that morning when he had been rudely awoken by his sort-of girlfriend. "Come on, sleepy head, we've got places to go, things to do, people to teach!" she had yelled at him, as she threw pillows at him until he and the couch both were covered. It had, obviously, put him in more of a sour mood than normal, and she didn't seem to mind at all.
The bus stop that they needed was the last one on the line, and they were the only people aboard at that point, so it wasn't too much of a rush to get out into the bitter cold, but once they were out in the snow that covered their shoes, he was quick to look around and have something snappy to say on the situation. "Wow, out in the middle of nowhere, eh?"
"Shush it, you. Izzy has a plan, and Izzy knows that it's all going to be fine!" As the bus pulled away and they were left standing there, in the sunny cold, she began to look around much like he was, except while he had disgust in his eyes, she was cheerful. When a minivan came barreling their way, she clapped and bounced. "There! That's it! That's Owen and he's going to come help us out!"
"But Owen can't drive, Izzy…" Noah slapped his forehead, something that he did an awful lot around her. "If that's him, then who's behind the wheel?"
It was Owen's mom. Because Izzy had completely forgotten about the fact that, much like herself and Noah, Owen had never bothered to learn how to drive legally, they had to ride in a minivan with not just their friend, but his mom too. She was a jolly woman, and she seemed to not care that her son and his friends were in the back seats talking about less-than-legal plans, because all she did was play Christmas music and sing along to it. "Sorry that I couldn't get my dad to drive today, heh," Owen said, looking up at his mom where she sat. "At least she's leaving us alone."
"And she's taking us where we need to go! I don't understand why they need to live so far out in the middle of nowhere, but oh well. Greedy people need to pay." Izzy rubbed her hands together and laughed slightly maniacally. "You brought the Santa suit, didn't you, Big O?" He nodded and motioned to a bag on the floor next to him, and she laughed more.
Noah, however, wasn't laughing at all. "You're kidding me. Izzy, why didn't you tell me that you were really going to go through with this 'teaching those bastards a lesson' thing?"
"It never came up."
"Wow, Izzy, never thought you'd resort to wanting to break in to someone's house so that they could learn what Christmas really means." He shook his head at her, and she gave him a slightly hurt look. "Thought you had more class than this."
Her bottom lip stuck out a bit as she still looked at him, much like a sad puppy would look at the person who had just kicked it down the stairs. "I can't believe you think I'm actually going to break in to their house. Man, do you think I'm stupid?" Immediately, she perked up and it was Noah who began to feel bad, but that sad emotion was quickly erased when she followed her question up with: "No, we're going to have Owen break it. We're going in through the front door."
"Wait what?" Owen asked, right as Noah smacked himself in the head again. "Uh, I don't remember you telling me that part of the plan."
"Of course you're breaking in! Santa comes through the chimney, doesn't he?" Izzy started her laughter up again, and both guys took a moment to look at each other, varying levels of concern on their faces. While Noah was worried about the kind of stuff Izzy had planned if she was expecting to be allowed in through the front door, Owen was beginning to panic about having to fit in a chimney, dressed as Santa, to get into the house of someone that most definitely didn't like him.
When they got to the place, which was a rather large house situated by itself on an empty road, the van stopped at the end of the driveway and the music shut off, Owen's mother telling them to have fun, behave, and that she'd be back in a few hours. Izzy threw open the van's side door and jumped out, sending snow flying everywhere, but especially back into the van, where Noah was trying to get out. Owen got out last, bringing the bag that held the Santa suit with him, still very much regretting ever getting involved in this plan in the first place. He was made to regret it even more once his mom was long gone and Izzy was telling him to change into the suit, out in the snow and cold. He did it, but not without a little bit of outward wishing that he didn't have to.
She, of course, laughed and told him that once it was on, he needed to hide the bag and find a way up onto the roof of the house. "Aren't you going to help me get up there?" he asked, almost hitting the point of not being able to do what she wanted him to.
"No, me and Noah have got to distract them from hearing you get up there!" With that, she grabbed Noah's hand and started to drag him towards the front door of the house, while Owen dejectedly made his way to the side of the house, looking for a way up onto the roof, wishing that he hadn't said he'd do this without first knowing what he was going to be expected to do.
"Hold on a second," Noah said, trying to pull his hand away from Izzy, but her grasp was too strong and he ended up pulling her into him, sending them both into the snow, where he screamed. "Ugh! Izzy! What are we doing?"
"Uh, looks like we're laying in the snow," she said in response, before jumping up, shaking herself off all over him, and laughing. "But we're spreading Christmas joy and cheer. You know this!"
He stood up, brushing himself off and shivering as he did, "N-no, I thought w-we weren't going to d-do that anymore." His teeth were chattering and he couldn't help it, he was that cold even with all the layers he was bundled in. "You s-said…"
"I said a lot of things! Now come on, we've got lives to change!" She ran to the door, him begrudgingly following, still shaking and shivering, and once they were both in front of it, she began to beat on it, her hits making a hollow knocking sound that would be able to wake the dead, if there were any dead people around (as well as scare Owen into letting go of the gutter he had been grabbing).
The door didn't open, but they could see someone in the window next to it, glaring out at them in a manner that would have sent shivers down Noah's spine had he not already been shivering in the first place. Izzy, however, was not bothered at all by the glares, and upon noticing that someone was there, she knocked again. This time, the door did open, and standing on the other side of the threshold was a thin and spindly woman, with long black hair that cascaded down past her shoulders and met its end halfway down her back. "What are you two doing here?" she sneered, still giving that glare. "Can't you just leave me alone, crazy girl?"
"Yeah, I probably should leave you alone after the dressing room incident, but hey, when you tried to frame me for actually getting into the room, I sorta just kept track of your address. Y'know, in case I ever needed it." Izzy sounded so proud of herself, and as she started to head into the house, the closing door pushed her back out. "What, are you still mad about me switching out the clothes you wanted to try on for bigger ones?"
Opening once more, the person on the other side of the door went to speak, but she was cut off by Noah, who was most definitely still shivering as he spoke. "W-wait, what are you t-talking about?"
"I can't believe you'd come all the way out here just to remind me about that. Here I was, thinking that maybe I'd take some pity on you two for being out in the cold, but then you go and remind me that you did that." There was absolutely no love in that voice as they heard it, which was followed by the door slamming shut in their faces. But, before Izzy could move to knock again, they could hear that voice, plus a second one, having some sort of discussion that lasted a couple of minutes, time in which Noah felt like he was going to freeze and die. After everything fell silent, the door opened once more and the same person from before rolled her eyes and motioned for them to come in. "You guys are out here for something. Don't know what, don't really care what, but you're out here and I'm not so rude that I'll let you die out there. The last thing I need is that kind of publicity."
Waiting until he and Izzy were both inside the house, with the door closed and locked behind them, Noah had something snappy to say in response to the decision to let them in. "As if anyone would really care if you let us die. Seen the way people still think of you to this day? You're forever going to be a bad bitch, and that's how it is." He felt proud of himself for saying that, something that he had always wanted to say but just didn't care enough to do so, but the sound of someone cracking their knuckles next to him made him think twice on that pride. "Er, maybe I shouldn't have said that."
"That would have been a wise choice, unlike the one I may have convinced Heather to make when she had chosen to leave you outside. Maybe she should have never reopened that door." There was a small smile upon Alejandro's face, but it wasn't a cheerful one by any means, finding its roots in his disgust with what Noah had said about his girlfriend. "Now there must be a reason for why you came out all this way, and we are quite interested in it—it might just be why I convinced her to reopen the door."
"No, you told me to reopen it because the last thing you wanted your parents to hear was that we killed two people by letting them freeze," Heather corrected, which, for some reason, made Izzy laugh. "Hey, don't do that. Just because he wants you in here for something or other doesn't mean that I want to have to put up with you."
"He wants us in here, just like I want us in here too! How funny!" Izzy laughed more, bending over to rest her hands on her knees to collect her breath, while Noah stared at her and the other two looked between each other. "Oh man, this is going to be the most fun I've ever had, and I've had a lot of fun before!"
"I do not believe that your definition of fun is going to match up with what you will be doing, since you are in my house and must follow what I want you to do." Alejandro pointed over to an empty part of the room, a dark corner that looked like it would be cold and uninviting. "You two, go sit over there while Heather and I discuss what we are going to do with you."
They did just that, but no sooner than the moment those two were behind a wall where they couldn't see what Izzy was doing in that corner did she jump up and start inspecting the room they were in. "Iz, I know you think you're going to get to do some crazy teaching of your Christmas lesson, but I think we've gone too far. We should just go home, order another pizza, and spend the day watching something that isn't horror movies."
"No way, Noah!" She looked down on him, where he sat in the exact corner, his back pressed against both walls. "I've got a plan," she whispered to him, before she ran stealthily to the other side of the room, peeking around an open doorway and going through it. That left him in that corner, alone, with no one to interact with, and it gave him enough time to realize that doing anything with Izzy was going to lead to him getting in trouble, somehow.
When the others came back, he figured it had been five minutes since Izzy had disappeared, and he had no clue where she had gone, aside from through that doorway. Was he going to tell them that, especially when they asked him to? Never. "I suppose you are going to protect the location of your partner, which would be fine if we had not told you to stay in this corner, after letting you in from the cold. But, please, tell us where she is." He shook his head, knowing that nothing this man could say would get him to reveal that information, and Alejandro sighed in return. "Of course. I knew that telling you both to stay here while we discussed things was a bad idea."
"See, the problem is that we're dealing with Izzy. She likes to sneak and get into things that she doesn't need to get into, and—" Midway through her sentence, Heather abruptly stopped, before covering her face and screaming. "—she's probably going through my stuff now. Great."
"You act as if you have things you need to hide," Alejandro said with a bit of a smirk, causing his girlfriend to shoot daggers at him, which he shrugged off. "If you feel that you must go find her, do it. I will attend to our other dearest guest in the meantime."
Noah gulped, because the way that was worded made him think that he was going to be hurt in some way, and he wasn't feeling that. "Do I get any say in what you're going to do to me?" he asked, before being shushed and told to remain quiet for the moment. "Yeah, figured about as much."
"You and I will get to talking soon enough. Right now is not that time." He got the message and hushed up, which allowed Alejandro to once again get back to telling Heather what to do. "Now, mi amor, are you going to find Izzy, or are you going to stand there and act as if you want her to find ou—I mean, your most private of possessions?"
"She finds that stuff, I'm going to kick her out. You hear any breaking windows, that's me throwing her through one." After quickly kissing her boyfriend's cheek (which Noah watched and wished he hadn't had to see, as the one time he had been forced to watch them kiss had been enough of their romance to last him a lifetime), she was gone, leaving the two guys alone, one still seated in the corner and the other towering over him.
"Now that she is not here, you are welcome to speak again." Offering a hand to Noah, Alejandro actually seemed like he was being nice, and the illusion lasted until Noah was standing and they were able to see more eye-to-eye than before. Then things grew sour, starting with a question that had been asked before being repeated: "Why did you two come out here to visit us?"
Noah shrugged, because that was all he felt like doing to respond. After he was questioned once more, he figured it wouldn't hurt too badly if he gave some sort of an answer. "It was Izzy's idea. Like I know what she was thinking when she got us out here."
"Of course, how am I to expect to get the truth from you when you and she are so attached? You want to protect her, and I understand that." Alejandro moved a bit closer to Noah, making the smaller guy uncomfortable as this man of nearly-god-like physical status was quite literally close enough to grab and break him. "You can stop your denial now and just tell me why you are here."
"Dude, if I knew, I'd tell you. It's Izzy. She does what she wants first, explains later."
That reasoning was hard to argue against, especially since both parties knew that it was very much how that redhead operated, and so Alejandro took a couple steps back, giving Noah the space to breathe and feel less threatened. "I guess there is no way for me to say you are still lying now, but it still does not explain why you are here."
"Again, it's Izzy. She dragged me off of the couch this morning, made me get on the bus, and didn't explain a thing until we were on the way. Even then, it was a lot of 'hey let's do this' and not much in the way of why." Noah felt like if he was asked one more time about why he or Izzy were where they currently were, he was going to snap, and so he was thankful that after that answer, Alejandro decided that he wasn't going to get much better than the old "it's Izzy" reasoning. "So, you gonna let me just kick back and wait for her to get pulled down from whatever ceiling she's going to inevitably attach herself to, or what?"
"For being an uninvited guest in my house, you seem to think I wanted you here in the first place, which I did not. Why would I ever want someone who once referred to me as an eel to be in my presence?" It was a question not meant to be answered, and as the two guys kept their mini stare-down going, Noah was actually a bit thankful that he wasn't supposed to give an answer, because there really wasn't one to give. He knew he wasn't wanted around, and if it hadn't been for Izzy and her silly idea to teach them a lesson, an idea that he had accidentally sparked, then he wouldn't have been there in the first place. Going to say something about that, to clear the air and maybe get Alejandro to back away further, it was weird having his mouth open but the Spanish-accented voice speak. "Do not say anything more and follow me. It would be rude of me to treat a guest badly, no matter how unwanted he may be."
Of all the things that he had expected that day, one that Noah hadn't ever anticipated was being led into probably the biggest and nicest kitchen he had ever seen by one of the people on the planet that he hated the most. Why that was where Alejandro had taken him, he wasn't sure, and he wasn't exactly going to ask, but he wasn't going to complain, especially when he was told to sit down on one of the stools surrounding the island in the kitchen. "So, uh, nice place you've got here," he said, looking around and seeing yet another doorway to a darkened room. "Kinda big for just two of you, isn't it?"
"While I appreciate the fact that you are attempting small talk, I would rather it if you keep silent except when I ask you something." Alejandro actually cracked a bit of a genuine smile as he spoke, which worried Noah because of how rude he knew this guy could be. What was he thinking if he was finding something to smile about in this situation? He would get closure on that soon enough, when his "captor" went over to the fridge and opened the door, asking Noah if he wanted something to drink—and as he was expected to answer, he said the first thing that came to mind and was soon graced with a full glass of milk in front of him. "Would you like a cookie to go with that?"
"If you're offering, yeah." Noah looked at his glass and thought to himself about how great a cookie would be to dip into the milk. How cool was it that he wasn't wanted around yet still being treated somewhat decently after some initial problems?
Or maybe he was just falling for tricks a bit too easily. "Do you think that we would really keep such disgusting and unhealthy food items in this house? Not like you would understand what kind of poison cookies are, as you seem to rather enjoy things that are hazardous to your health."
"Okay, I know that's a dig at the woman I share a bed with, and while I agree that Izzy's probably going to be the death of me, I can say that you enjoy dangerous things too." After taking a sip of his milk, lamenting the fact that he wasn't going to get a cookie to go with, Noah was ready to continue what he was saying. "I mean, have you seen Heather? She looks at you like she wants to kill you all the time."
"Do you think saying that around me is smart? While I may have nearly died because of her, she does not want to kill me, not now and not ever. She just has the unfortunate curse of having a permanent glare on her face." That smile that had appeared moments before was long gone, replaced by a scowl that was doing a wonderful job of showing how displeased Alejandro was with what Noah had just said. "But at least she is gorgeous when she is glaring. Not like you would be able to comprehend her beauty."
"Trust me, I don't think I want to understand what attracts you to her, or what she sees in you. Sure you're being nice to me right now, somewhat, but you're still a terrible person and I still don't like you." Faintly, under his breath, Noah muttered something about the little cookie prank that had just been played on him, but before he could be asked to speak up, he drowned his sorrows in that glass of milk.
A loud thud sounded like it was coming from outside, startling him and causing him to drop his glass, sending milk and sharp shards everywhere. The mess coupled with the fact that the noise had no understood origin made Alejandro grumble something in Spanish, before grabbing a towel, throwing it at Noah, and walking towards the door out of the kitchen that they hadn't come in through. "Clean up after yourself, I am going to try to find what made that noise. I hope it was not your wild girlfriend harming a single hair on my girlfriend, or there will be consequences." He made sure that Noah had a grasp on the towel and left, leaving him alone in that large kitchen, cleaning up a milk and glass mess that wouldn't have even happened if he hadn't been offered a drink in the first place.
Owen picked himself up off of the ground, having fallen off the roof yet again. "Really wish Izzy would have told me I was going to be doing this, because I don't really like this at all," he said out loud, wishing that she could hear him. Of course, she was inside and he wasn't, so it was all for naught. "Well, gotta try again, I guess. Hopefully that's the last time I hit the ground like that."
It was a minute or so later when Alejandro came back into the kitchen alone, which Noah took to mean as that he didn't find anyone to blame for the noise that they had heard. It was a correct assumption, although he did have a bit of a smug look on his face when he returned, and from the looks of it, he seemed to be holding back laughter. "Uh, know you said I'm not supposed to talk unless you tell me to, but what's so funny?"
"You will see shortly." That was all he got in reply, and the first thought that crossed Noah's mind was that maybe Izzy had been responsible for the noise—as had been figured—and that she had been caught, and was about to be walked into the kitchen to receive her punishment. But as another minute passed and nothing happened to fill the silence, he started to wonder if anything was going to happen, and that was when Alejandro spoke again. "Did you clean up the mess you made?"
"Don't act like I had intended to break your crystal glass or whatever it was, but yes. I have indeed cleaned it up." The sass was strong in Noah, and he wasn't going to hold back if nothing was going to happen.
Except, right as he finished his sentence, something did happen, that being Izzy barreling into the kitchen, a pair of dark underwear on her head. "I can't believe she's that fast," Heather said as she entered the room, panting from chasing Izzy in. "And I can't believe she did what she did."
"Izzy, what did you do?" Noah watched Izzy running around the island in the kitchen, laughing like a loon and prominently wearing those underwear where they definitely didn't belong, only to be stopped by Alejandro sticking his arm out and catching her by her arm, yanking her "hat" off once he did. "Come on, tell me."
"No, she'll tell you what she thinks she did. I'll tell you what she did." Her voice was still heavy with attempts to catch her breath, but it seemed like Heather really wanted to be the one who recounted what Izzy had done. "She got into all the closets upstairs, looking for presents that she thinks she needs to find. And when she didn't find presents, she decided to raid what she did find instead."
"She's just mad that I didn't wear her undies on my head," Izzy giggled, still being held by Alejandro. "But, like, trust me, I tried. It's hard to do that when they're so tiny."
To Noah, getting to see how absolutely flustered Heather got by that was almost enough to be okay with seeing his lady friend being held by a man he hated. Almost. "Yes. Lovely. Now, uh, let go of Izzy and let us leave here in peace, will you?"
"No way. She's going to go back up there and clean up the mess she made, and she's going to fix what she wronged!"
"While I know that you and I both dislike having to clean up messes that are not our own, maybe having Izzy here clean is a bad idea." Alejandro waved what had been stated as his own unmentionables in his girlfriend's face, and she got even more flustered and red in the face. "We should let these two go before any more glasses get broken, any more closets get raided, and there is any more chance for me to hear you screaming out profanities at someone who is running through the hall."
"Whatever, we're not letting them leave." There she was, shooting those dagger eyes at him again, and for probably the only time in his life, Noah wished that Alejandro would come out on top in an argument that was inevitably about to happen. Except, what happened next wasn't quite the argument that he had been hoping for, and instead of just a verbal dispute, the arm of Izzy's that wasn't being held onto already was grabbed by a woman determined to make her clean up after herself. "Now let me take her back upstairs so she can clean. I promise it won't be a disaster."
"No, mi amor, I cannot let you do that. She must leave, right now." They began to pull Izzy back and forth between themselves, slowly building up to a yelling fight between them about what was going to happen—and although Izzy seemed to enjoy the metaphorical rope in this game of tug-o-war, Noah wasn't going to stand for it.
He jumped off his stool, walked to about the middle spot between the two combatants, and when Izzy was pulled from one side to the other and passed by him, he grabbed onto her and was promptly thrown off of her by a strong force. It sent him crashing into Heather, who in the shock of now having Noah touching her, let go of Izzy, which caused her to fly straight into Alejandro, knocking them both into a counter and then to the floor. "Ugh, get off of me, you nerd!" Heather hissed, pushing Noah away from her, but a laugh from the pile of people on the floor distracted her.
Izzy, once again wearing the underwear on her head, pointed to the ceiling above where Heather and Noah now stood. "Hey look, mistletoe! You know what they say about two people who stand under that, right?" she asked, drawing out the "i" in "right" several times more than it should have been. There was a muffled accompaniment to what Izzy said, but due to the fact that she was quite literally sitting on Alejandro's face, it was impossible to make out what he was saying, although it was easy to assume that it had something to do with the presence of that mistletoe.
"Sorry but that's there to give me and my boyfriend an excuse to kiss. It's not there so that some intruder gets to kiss up on me." Heather crossed her arms over her chest and turned her head so that she was not looking at Noah. "You're not even worth the time."
"Trust me, if this were my decision, I'd make sure that my lips never had to get close to your face, but if we don't do this, Izzy will never let us live it down. She will remind me every day that I ignored the rules, and she will probably make the trip out here just to tell you it too." Noah sighed, not wanting to say what he was going to say, but knowing that he had to say it. "Besides, if I don't want it and you don't want it, it's not like it matters."
"Sounds like you're eager to kiss someone that isn't miss crazy over there, huh?"
"No, not eager at all, actually. I rather like kissing Izzy. Has a bit of an element of surprise to it." He gave an awkward laugh, scratching the back of his head as he did. "But let me guess, you think that having to follow through with this will make you catch her crazy, since everyone knows that crazy is catchable through kissing."
She turned back to face him, rolling her eyes as she did. "I'm not stupid. I know that you can't catch crazy. I just don't want to have to kiss anyone that isn't as well-kept as Alejandro, that's all."
"Uh huh. Let's just get this over with so we can move on with our lives, shall we?" As Izzy cheered, still on the floor and still sitting on Alejandro's face, they locked lips for just a split second, breaking apart and both gagging once it was over. "Yep, taste exactly as I figured a bitch would," Noah sarcastically said, rubbing his lips to try and remove what felt like lip gloss from them. "Glad to see you've met expectations."
Before Heather had the chance to make some snappy reply about how much kissing Noah had sucked, the room filled with the sounds of horrified screaming turned into excited yelling, as Alejandro had finally had enough of Izzy sitting on him and pushed her off, sending her toppling backwards and rolling a few times. "I cannot believe that she insisted you two do such a thing while I was present," he said, getting up and actually kicking Izzy to try and get her to stop yelling about enjoying being forced to tumble. "You have touched sacred property to me, and you will pay for that."
"Chill out. He didn't like it, I didn't like it, and it's not like I hadn't kissed guys before I became solely yours." There was Heather's expected response, and it lived up to every expectation there had been for it. Problem was, her boyfriend wasn't going to accept it so easily and he quickly came over to her, grabbing her in a hug before passionately forcing his lips upon hers for a good twenty seconds.
"Way to show me that she's yours, Al." Noah stepped back, trying to remember which way out of the kitchen was the one that would put him by the front door. He was done with this nonsense, and he didn't care if going outside meant sitting out in the bitter cold until Owen's mom showed up. It would get him away from all the crazy people he was currently in a room with, and that was what mattered. As the two separated, he decided that then was his chance to make a break for it, and so he did—going straight into the room that wasn't the one he wanted.
This one, however, had something that was big, in the corner, and completely dark, but he knew exactly what it was and what finding it was going to mean for this adventure.
"Not so fast, little man." There was a firm hand on his shoulder, and when Noah looked, it was a fairly angry-looking Alejandro. "One, you do not get away with calling me that horrible name that easily. Two, this room is no place for you to be. And three, you are coming back into the kitchen and getting back into your seat, to remain seated silently until we all agree it is time for you to go."
He sighed, ready to submit to the wishes of the person sort of holding him captive, but a familiar blur running into the room made him change his mind. "Oh man," Izzy said with a definite cackle, "I came through here earlier and didn't know the presents were in here after all! It's a Christmas miracle!" Noah's shoulder was immediately let go of, as it became top priority to restrain Izzy once more, and everyone got so caught up in keeping her out of the presents that they didn't hear a faint voice calling their names.
Owen sat on the roof, having looked across every inch of the thing for what he was supposed to be finding. "Oh-kay, I know Izzy said I have to go down the chimney dressed as Santa to teach a lesson, but how am I supposed to do that when there isn't a chimney?" He took a deep breath in, before screaming out Izzy's name again, only for a few birds chirping to be his only response. "Guess that's a no on her coming up here to help me out."
Looking down the two stories to the snowy ground below, he groaned. "But I can't climb back down. Barely got up here in the first place. And if I fall again I think I'll die. But I can't let my mom see me up here, or she'll kill me, or worse! She'll never let me see Noah or Izzy again!" A second groan escaped him. "I'm so dead."
A lot happened over the course of an hour or so, most of which was supervised cleanup that Izzy had to do. The entire time she was refolding things and putting them back where she belonged, she was talking about how once she got the chance, she was going to "destroy all the presents" that she now knew the location of. No one found it very funny, especially not Noah, who was about ready to ring her neck to get her to stop with all of her talk of ruining the holiday for greedy people. "But, like, hear me out," she started, as she put several towels away that she had thrown out of their rightful place, "because man oh man do I have a great idea for why we're here."
"Yes, while I am sure that you do have a great idea, you have said many times already that you are here to destroy our property, and that is not allowed." Okay, maybe it wasn't just Noah who wasn't putting up with the talk anymore, as evidenced by Alejandro's reaction to what she was saying. "Now finish up so we can escort you out."
"No way, I didn't come all the way out here and parade around with your undies on my head to not teach you the lesson of Christmas." At mention of what she had done earlier, he became slightly less put-together than normal, asking her to not mention that action. "What, you got a problem with me having done that? Because wow it was fun, but it wasn't what I'm here for and so it's not good enough."
"We both have a problem with that." Heather, leaning against the wall and watching Izzy cleaning up, shook her head at what she had just heard. "Well, I have several problems with it, not just the one he has. He didn't have to hear you talking about what I heard."
Izzy laughed. "Like when I said that I couldn't wear your undies on my head because the lace would rip, right?"
"Ugh, yes, like that."
"Now I think that Izzy was quite considerate in choosing to wear something of mine rather than something of yours," Alejandro said, looking to his girlfriend who rolled her eyes. "While it was a bit of an, ahem, interesting experience seeing someone who is not the woman I share a bed with nightly in possession of my belongings, I would much rather her have something of mine that would not be so easily destroyed that see her ruin something of yours."
Again, Heather rolled her eyes. "Yeah, you don't want her to destroy it. We both know that you're the one who wants to be responsible for ripping those—"
"Okay, thank you very much for that mental image that I'm going to never forget," Noah interjected, stopping that conversation from getting where it was going to end up. "Let's stop talking about your bedroom activities and get back to talking about how you're going to let us leave, hm?"
"We weren't even talking about that to begin with." Not even slightly mad at the fact that she had been interrupted, Heather made sure to set Noah and his ideas on what was happening straight. "And we aren't going to. As far as I care, you guys are staying here until we send someone out to come get you. Which is never going to happen."
"Maybe it would be for the best if we did let them leave soon, or else they might go through with what Izzy seems to want to do and destroy the gifts we have bought for each other." This was the part where Alejandro looked to where Izzy had been doing her cleaning, but she was nowhere to be found. He made sure to look away and do a double take, to make sure that his eyes weren't lying, but she really was gone. "That rat! She used us talking about private matters to get away!"
Under his breath, Noah cursed Izzy, because by her doing that, it was just going to keep them in this house longer. To the others, he said, "Yep, look what you've done. Let her go, yet again. What, twice now in the time we've been here? You really should keep a better watch on her."
"Except this time we know where she is." They spoke at the same time, which they glared at each other for, but within a split second they were gone, headed back downstairs to see the damage of what Izzy could have done in the little time she had found to be alone. The results weren't very impressive for her standards, just a knocked-over Christmas tree and presents moved to the middle of the room, but the worst part of it all was that she was gone when they got to the scene.
That meant that she could be anywhere, doing anything. "How could we let this happen?" Alejandro asked, looking at the room and its state of disarray. "I could have sworn we had discussed that you would be watching her while she cleaned, and I would be watching the one who would never do this!"
"Yeah, see, I never agreed to that plan, and I was the one who had to watch her earlier when she went through our closets!" Stepping closer to the present pile to see the damage, it only took a second for Heather to realize that something was missing. "She took one of the things I got you. That little bitch, she thinks she's going to ruin our holiday for some reason? I'm going to make her pay for this!" For the second time that afternoon, she was chasing after Izzy, and as she left the room Noah entered it, seeing the ruined scene he had seen in its original pristine glory earlier.
"Are you going to make a comment about how funny this is to you? Maybe about how much we deserved this, letting your insane girlfriend into our home so that you and her were not left to freeze outside?" He was picking up the toppled tree as he spoke, and so it was a big surprise to Alejandro when he saw Noah shrug and come to help him fix what was wrong. "Oh, let me guess, you are tired of all of this nonsense too, and wish nothing more but to make things better. Is that correct?"
He shook his head, trying his hardest to help right the tree, but it was incredibly heavy for a festive decoration and he only had so much arm strength. "No, I don't want to make things better. I've heard a lot of what Izzy says during the holidays, and while she's right that people like you guys need to stop being so greedy when it comes to the presents, it's not our place to decide how that should change. I came along because, hey, she's my other half and I've got to support her sometimes, but I didn't come to spread her message, and I didn't come to fix what she did either. I just came because she needs a level head around sometimes."
"Then why did you make no effort to stop her from doing any of this?" Letting go of the tree, sending it back to the floor with Noah underneath it, Alejandro motioned to the moved presents before seeing that who he was talking to was currently being crushed by the other problem. Once he picked the tree back up, and Noah dusted himself off and silently wished that the impact had killed him, he continued to speak. "Or did you not know what she was going to do?"
"All I knew was that she was looking for presents. Had no idea that she would do anything but find presents, gloat that she had found them, and do what she does to the people at the store and yell at you that presents are bad and not part of the holiday." Preparing for the tree to fall again, Noah stepped back to avoid it hitting him a second time, but it was quickly put back to standing and the new job became redecorating it with what had fallen off of its limbs. "If I had known she was going to try to destroy your Christmas, I would have talked her out of it."
"You could not have done us a favor and talked her out of it anyway?"
Noah laughed, before getting serious. "No. I like watching you suffer."
"The same goes for me watching you." Alejandro make a threatening motion towards Noah and the smaller guy jumped, clearly not prepared to receive the payment for his fighting words quite yet. There was a second where they stood still, one nearly trembling in fear as the other towered over him, before all hell broke loose as Izzy barreled into the room, carrying with her a package that was neatly wrapped in one hand, and a lighter in the other. Following soon after was Heather, screaming something about how if she burned that present, she was going to be killed, and after that display of insanity it was hard for the guys to keep up their little fight.
Things were going to be more interesting if the ladies were involved anyway. "I'm going to show you guys that greed doesn't make this holiday great, it's spending it with loved ones that does!" Izzy screamed, still running with the present and lighter in tow. "And when you watch this burn, you'll get what I mean!"
"I've been telling you, don't burn that! You can open it, ruin the surprise of what it is, or anything like that, but don't burn it, please!" For being someone who heavily relied on her bossy nature to get anything done, it was a bit odd to hear Heather asking nicely for something, and the shock of it was just enough to get Izzy to slow her running for a moment. That moment was all that was needed, because she was able to be caught when she wasn't running at breakneck speeds, and soon enough, Alejandro had a firm grasp on one of her arms while Heather snatched the present back. "There we go, that's much better."
"You know," Izzy said, trying to squirm her way out of her current predicament, "you signed that present as 'Santa' but you bought it. That's lying and you should be very, very ashamed of yourself for that."
"You act like Santa's real, which he's totally not." (Up on the roof, at the same time that Heather said those words, Owen felt sort of like his day had lost all meaning and decided it was about time to try his hardest to find a way back to the ground.) "He's just a lie that poor parents tell their kids to explain their terrible gifts, or one that rich people use to mark the gifts that aren't the best."
Izzy's eyes widened and she stopped squirming. "So you use his name to say that your gift isn't very good? Why wouldn't you let me burn it then?"
"I couldn't let you burn what's in this." She cradled the present close to herself, before tossing it back into the pile as if it meant nothing. "It has to be intact for whenever Alejandro opens it and sees what my 'cheap' gift for him is this year."
"Wow, you really are greedier than I thought!" Resuming her attempt to get free, Izzy remembered that she had two arms and one was currently holding a lighter, and she was mere inches from the Christmas tree. An idea sparked in her head, and she moved to set the tree aflame—but was stopped by Noah, who yanked the lighter from her. "Uh, what are you doing? Aren't you supposed to be on my side?"
"Probably, but I'm tired of this nonsense and I really just want to go home. If you start a fire, we'll be here forever sorting out who gets the blame for what, and really, that's not what the holiday season is about." Noah fiddled with the lighter, starting its flame a few times, before dropping it beside him. "So maybe you do have a point that these two are greedy bastards that need to learn a lesson, but they're just celebrating the holiday the way they want to. If they want to feed the world's hunger for commercialism, that's their decision. It's not your place to tell them not to do it."
She blinked a few times, looking at him with a confused expression on her face as she did. "Um, that's cool and all, but you were totally for this idea on the way over here."
"Was not. I haven't been for this since I mentioned these two yesterday and you came up with this idea." There he was, implicating himself in this whole ordeal, but after the day he had experienced, it really didn't matter to Noah anymore. It wasn't like he was going to be coming back to this house on the regular, anyway. "You went way overboard this time, and I'm glad that we've all managed to work together to stop this holiday spirit-crazed woman before anything really got damaged."
He had spoken too soon, as a loud crash that made the noises from earlier in the day sound like whispers filled their ears. Dust filled the room, coming from the doorway that wasn't to the kitchen, and they all went to go see what had happened. Once the room cleared of the dirt and wood bits that had impeded their sight, everyone was blessed with the vision of Owen's bottom half, sticking in through the ceiling. "Okay, who is going to explain how that happened?" Alejandro asked, looking at Izzy, whom he was still holding, and Noah, both of which looked to each other for that same answer.
"I think my mom's here," was the muffled sentence they could hear from the man in the ceiling. "Guys, I don't think I want to tell her why I'm dressed as Santa and on the roof and oh man, she's going to kill me." She really wouldn't kill her own son, but there were two unhappy people who owned the house that had been partially destroyed that would have loved to do the honors.
A few weeks later, on Christmas morning, Noah woke up to see that the other side of the bed, where Izzy typically slept and had been when he fell asleep, was empty and cold. The sheets were in place, and it looked like she hadn't been there at all in the night, even though he could remember talking to her as he had drifted off to his dreams. But sometimes, he noted, she did get up in the night and go to sleep on the couch, and so maybe that was what was happening.
It was not the case. Once he had thrown some clothes on and readied himself for the day, he made his way to the living room, which had no sign of life that wasn't his own, and there definitely wasn't a redheaded beauty asleep on the couch. What there was, however, was a pile of presents topped with a card, and none of those had been there the night before. What had Izzy been doing overnight?
He opened the card first, as was the way he had been taught, and he was quite surprised to see that it was from the woman he was looking for. "Hey there Noah!" it read, written in curly letters that seemed happy enough. "By the time you read this, I'm going to be long gone. Got something in the mail yesterday about wanting to be seen in court for what had happened over at that mansion, and you know me. Just can't take the law seriously.
"But okay, so you're probably sitting there, mouth open and just wondering when I'm gonna say this is a joke and that I'll be home soon. Uh, well, keep wondering that, because I don't know when I'm gonna be back." He was doing exactly what she had figured he would be doing, and for a moment, his heart hurt that the person who had become his other half in so many ways was gone. "Don't start being sad that I'm gone, though! It's just until those two decide to leave me alone about what happened at their house. Apparently when I threw their presents from under the tree, I broke like a bunch of stuff. Some crystals, maybe an electronic thing or three."
He looked to the presents that had been sitting under the card, wondering if, or when, the note in the card was going to explain them. "Oh yeah! I might have also been hoarding some things for you over the past couple of months. Sucks that I won't be there to see your face when you open the presents, but I bet you'll tell me all about it when you see me next!" The note abruptly ended there, with no signature and no way to really tell that it had been Izzy who had left it, which Noah assumed was in case someone who was looking for her found it and tried to figure out where she was with it.
With that out of the way, though, it was time to break into the pile of gifts, and a sense of curiosity and excitement filled him. There were never presents between them on Christmas. It fed into the corporate greed that Izzy hated so much, so they just skipped the whole thing and waited until random days throughout the year to give gifts to each other. Just as he started to think that maybe, even with Izzy disappearing, it was going to be a good Christmas, he picked up one of the gifts and saw that it had a tag attached to it.
Now Noah may have been focusing more on getting Owen out of the roof back at the mansion than he had been on what Izzy was doing, but he was pretty sure that he would have remembered her swiping a present from the place. Or two, or maybe more. As Noah looked through the stack, he realized that it wasn't so much that Izzy had broken gifts in her raid on the house, but rather that she had stolen them and expected him to open them for himself.
Most of the day was then spent calling around until he could get through to them to let them know that he had their stuff, even though he hadn't wanted it in the first place, and that they were welcome to come by and get it if they so desired. Because the contents of the presents meant oh-so-much to the two, it meant a visit from them at dusk, and there was nothing less in the world that Noah had wanted that day than to see those faces again.
Once they left, their rightful gifts in hand and not even a thanks to him for giving them back, he thought to himself, so much for a good Christmas. In fact, it was the worst Christmas ever. And Izzy, wherever she was, was probably frowning that she hadn't been able to teach greedy people a lesson about the holiday after all.
A/N: So this is a thing that I wrote and published. Was originally going to split it into two parts, but figured that it would ruin the flow of the whole story if I did that. Besides, isn't it more fun to get to read an entire thing at once?
Thanks to my friends who suggested the pairings for this fic, hope it was worth it to y'all.
And I hope everyone who reads this enjoyed it and has a wonderful holiday season!