Notes: Written for snowshus for Yuletide 2018.
A Snowball's Chance in Hell
The football team's winter blowout was still in full swing when Ben started squeezing his way back out to the door, hampered by a drunken arm that was slung around his shoulders on the way. "It's the Grimm Reaper!" Chuck Albright shouted, starting a chorus of 'woo!'s that would have been more heartening if the room hadn't been celebrating just about every statement that way for most ofthe past two hours now. "Mow 'em down, buddy."
In this case, the opposition he was being invited to annihilate appeared to be a row of shot glasses. "Yeesh. Looks like they've already lost," Ben said, surveying the empty bottles and dead kegs among the staggering wrecks of his teammates. "I think I'm gonna hafta show a little grace in victory." And get out of here before the drinking stage turned into the puking stage.
Chuck laughed uproariously and pounded him on the back before reeling off to collar another teammate. Ben finally escaped into the hallway, still and quiet and oddly bright for this time of the evening. He looked out of the windows and saw that the snow that had been a half-hearted sleet earlier had now begun to settle inches deep. Nice start to the winter break; crummy start to the road trip he was supposed to be off on first thing tomorrow to go stay with some of Reed's family.
How a Jewish kid from Yancy Street was meant to fit into his rich genius roomie's family Christmas in California was a mystery for the ages, but at least he could make sure Reed actually made it there himself. When Ben had left for the party ol' Brainiac had still been at work in the lab, making vague noises of agreement in response to the repeated reminders that he had to pack. Ben was willing to bet that he would still be there, and probably wouldn't have eaten anything since lunch, either.
"Genius my sweet Aunt Petunia," he grumbled to himself as he pushed the door open and stepped out into the wind. At least the cold chill would go some way towards sobering him up. Wouldn't be a bad idea to pick up some chow, either. Whether Reed had remembered to feed himself or not, there was always more room for pizza.
Ben turned his collar up as he trudged across the ESU campus to the pizza place on the corner. Despite the darkness, there were a few half-assed snowball fights in progress and one team effort to roll the base for a gigantic snowman, plus some drunken freshmen failing at sledding down a shallow hill on stolen cafeteria trays. All this festivity could make a fella feel like a Grinch for hoping the snow would clear some overnight so he could drive in the morning.
Ol' Benjamin J. Grimm was born with an overactive sense of responsibility, that was his trouble. "Look at me, twenty-one and a grandma already," he said as he made his way back to the science building with his pizza box in hand. If it wasn't for Ben prodding him into eating and sleeping Reed would probably pass out in the lab and then just start devising some overly-complicated nutrition-o-matic machine to feed him while he worked.
Of course, he wasn't the only one like that in nerdsville. Ben grimaced as he shouldered his way into the lobby of the science building and spotted none other than one Victor von Doom pouring himself a late-night coffee in the lounge room opposite. Figured that ghoul wouldn't have anything better to do with himself at the start of winter break than stay up all night tinkering with his killer robots or whatever the hell he was building.
Well, it being the holiday season, Ben might just give himself the Hanukkah present of avoiding old smilin' Vic's attention for once. At least, that was the plan until the door behind him slammed open and a girl ran in with a shriek, chased by a cackling boy with an armful of snow. "Kevin, no!" she yelped as he dumped it down the back of her neck. "Kevin!" They dashed off down the hallway laughing together.
Victor emerged from the lounge with his coffee and that dark scowl that Ben knew so well. "Imbeciles," he said, curling his lip.
"Look, I know this may be a foreign concept to ya, Doomsy, but they're having fun," Ben said. "Geez Louise, would it crack that face of yours ta try enjoyin' the season once in a while? It's snowing!" Who didn't love a chance to make like a kid again and romp around in freshly fallen snow?
Old von Doom 'n' Gloom, that was who. He turned the fierceness of his glare on Ben. "I might have known that such moronic antics would be at your subterranean level," he said.
Ben refused to rise to that kind of bait at the start of his vacation. "Come on, Vic, weren'tcha ever a kid?" he said, gesturing with the pizza box. "Didn't ya ever run around in your monogrammed mittens making your armies of snow robots?" Nobody could be born a Victor von Doom.
"Grimm, when I was a child we spent our winters digging graves for all the people in the camp who starved or froze to death. Forgive me if I have no time for your country's puerile fantasies of a jolly holiday."
Geez. With Vic and his taste for melodrama there was no way of knowing if that was the literal truth or wild exaggeration, but either way, he wasn't the only one who'd ever suffered through a hard winter.
"Look, maybe there ain't nobody ever froze ta death on Yancy Street - though I wouldn't bet on it - but I know what it's like to grow up in a house where sometimes you gotta choose between heatin' or eatin'," Ben said. "We still managed to find a way to squeeze some good times in beside the bad." His brother had always done his best to make those early winters magical, even if it wasn't by strictly legal means.
"You know less than nothing," Victor said. But for once he hadn't yet stormed away, and it occurred to Ben that whether he gave a damn about the holiday season or not, he was still stuck spending it alone on a college campus in a foreign country, thousands of miles from any family or even memories of them he might have left.
Of course, it might have been a little less lonely if he didn't treat all his classmates like something he'd walked in on the bottom of his shoe, but all the same, it was still kinda sad.
"You gotta have one good memory about bein' a kid in wintertime," Ben said. "You're the one who's always going on about how we uncultured Americans ain't got nothing on Latveria."
He expected no more than the usual sniping in return, but for a moment Victor's gaze went slightly distant as he stared out onto the snow. "Honey gingerbread," he said, as if mostly to himself.
"Yeah?" Ben said, feeling strange and alarming new worlds yawn before him at the revelation that Doomsy might ever have eaten anything that contained sugar, never mind actually enjoyed it. Boy, a few more crazy ideas like that and you might start mistaking him for a human being.
"My mother used to make it." Then his face abruptly hardened. "Before she was killed." He whirled around to stalk away.
Well, that was a nice moment thoroughly stepped on. Still, in the spirit of goodwill, Ben made an effort to extend the truce, holding up the pizza box as he called after him. "Hey! You want some of this pizza?" he asked. The only answer was a contemptuous snort before Victor swept off around the corner.
"Yeah, well, nuts to you too, pal," Ben said to the empty hallway. That was what you got for trying to extend a hand of friendship to a vicious beast with no interest in anything except biting it off. He turned away and headed on up the stairs to find Reed.
What Victor von Doom got up to wasn't their problem.