PROMETHEUS.

PLEASE TELL ME THAT SOME OF YOU HAVE SEEN THAT ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL MOVIE.

It's just so amazing and terrifying at the same time. As a huge fan of the ALIEN trilogy, I was in awe. (Resurrection doesn't... doesn't count. Neither does AvP.)

"Prometheus, are you seeing this?"

Fang's POV

I have officially decided that I am part of an extremely dysfunctional, unconventional family.

Extremely.

For one thing, we kids have got our respective pasts that we won't ever really forget and that make us a little more walled up, but that is a whole other story told in fragments that we really haven't put together yet. This is mostly the dysfunctional part. They both tie together in a way, but the other part, the unconventional part, is that our dynamics and the way we do things is just abnormal and generally strange. Not to mention untraditional.

And sometimes (don't tell anyone because I will kill you I swear to god) I like that. I like it a lot.

Especially times like right now.

The living room of Chris and Tania's tiny house has mountains of wrapping paper all over it and foil candy wrappers scattered around the pillows and it's pretty much a Christmas-colored pigsty, but that's completely okay with me because I'm a guy, and besides that it's Christmas Eve. And, surprise surprise, who woulda thought, I'm happy. There aren't a lot of times when I genuinely am, but this is one of them- partly because I don't have to worry about Max tonight because she's having good time too and not brooding- and I'm smiling a little and everything is blurring slightly because of wayyyy too much hot chocolate. I've decided that we're dysfunctional because generally people don't open presents on Christmas Eve, but whattheheck none of us even care because we wanna do Secret Santa right now and that includes the adults, because we got them all hyped up about it. Nudge was practically bouncing up and down. (Okay, maybe not practically, she was actually doing that, but whatever.) The only thing about the lack of planning that was kinda inconvenient is that Max was too lazy to wrap Iggy's present and it wasn't ready, so she stuffed it in some newspaper and stuck a bow on the top. It's not like he'll care anyway because he's blind, and in her words, "I do not owe Jeff Griffiths a thing, thank you very much."

And thus it began.

If any of us had expected all of the gifts to be completely serious they should have expected less of said dysfunctional family because the first gift opened was to Gazzy, and it was a mustache. Well, actually several mustaches in a fake mustache kit. (Somewhere deep in my heart where a dorky seven-year-old survived, I wanted one of those very badly so I could fiddle with it and look like a villain in a vaudeville.) It had the whole deal, pencil and handlebar and the one with the little curls at the end none of us knew the name of, and of course that was the one Gazzy put on first. Somehow he ended up with both a Dead Space 2 t-shirt and the mustache kit, because it's Gazzy and a 'stache and not even I could resist putting the two together. Then there was Nudge's gift of some department store gift card because she really really loved to shop there (I can't recall the name, because hello, I'm a manly man?)

And then Iggy opened his gift that I happened to know was from Max that was actually not a prank, which would have surprised everyone if they had known she was the giver, but telling who gave what went against the point. It was a shirt from EpicMealTime she'd picked up at Hot Topic that said Bacon Strips & Bacon Strips & Bacon Strips over and over again, and once someone told him what the words said he immediately shrugged it on over the long-sleeve shirt he was already wearing. Max seemed to deduce that he liked it, and I heard her firmly resolving under her breath never ever ever to tell anyone ever that she had done Iggy a kindness. (She'd even sent me away when she picked out the gift, but I couldn't curb my curiosity and I snuck a look.) Ella got a butterfly necklace made out of some bronze-looking metal that I grudgingly admitted was nice-looking. She gushed over it for a while and put it on while Iggy looked at the ceiling with a pink tinge to the tips of his ears, and I knew who'd drawn Ella's name out of that Yankees hat. Max flashed a little rare smile around when she pulled a new pair of expensive-looking earbuds from a nest of tissue paper in a gift bag. Angel got the ridiculously glittery new headband Nudge had helped me pick out for her in my state of manly helplessness, and I got a navy blue sweatshirt that I smiled down quietly at, because everyone knows that I seriously do not wear anything but black so that was probably a joke on me- but all my other sweatshirts were ruined or ripped so I would wear it anyway. Dammit. Then came Chris and Tania's fancy new wine bottle opener and Dr. M's Beatles CD which, as Max reported to me later, utterly shocked my best friend/thing/what the hell is she to me anyway/whatever because quote-unquote "Obviously since we're from different ends of the spectrum we're not logically allowed to have anything in common and oh my God Ella's mom does normal stuff like listen to music?" I found it amusing, because I was probably going to end up downloading the songs on that CD to my iPod. The Beatles are classic.

After a while the noise started dying down, and people trickled from the room, which left a few of us kids to clean up the wrapping paper, various plastic bits, and miscellaneous trash all thrown into a Christmassy hoopla thing. It took about, I don't know, three freaking hours to clean up our unconventional family's mess. By then it was around midnight, but teenagers have this remarkable talent for staying up late.

Sure, we were all a little bit tired, but only just coming down from sugar highs; or Ella, at least, had crashed in the juncture between the TV and the couch in a ball, and Max was showing signs of drifting off. Nudge, however, was very awake as always and very ready to bugger Max until she gave in to her demands.

"But Maaaax, I hafta look for my iPod. I dropped it in that chair," Nudge pleaded, clasping her hands and putting on the Disney-doe-eyed expression.

"I'm too American to get up," Max countered lazily with a sleepy yawn. "I don't wanna. And I'm tired."

"It'll only take a little biiiiiittttt..."

"Nah."

"Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaxxxxxxx-"

"Fine! Just stop that god-awful Maaaxing." Max clambered out of the chair and threw her hands dramatically up in the air with an indignant expression. At least she was in a fairly good mood, if not slightly cranky after a sugar and caffeine overdose and very, very tired.

She dropped the theatrics (well, mostly) and somewhat slid over to the couch, and without ceremony, threw herself down onto it with a whumpf, her head flopping onto my stomach which was basically parallel with the seat cushion due to my terrible posture. It pretty much looked like I had no spine, the way I was sitting. I stopped fiddling with the wads of tissue paper Gazzy had been throwing at me for the last five minutes and raised an eyebrow at her. "Yo, that's my stomach you're smashing your skull into. Watch it."

"Shove it. 'S my skull, I do what I want with it." Her tangled hair fanned out over my jeans a little, and she threw an arm over her face, yawning. I didn't see the pillow-like appeal of my abdomen, really. It was mostly a position born of familiarity. And that same familiarity bred her snappy comebacks.

Another good sign that she wasn't brooding about Aspen: the banter. We kept up an easy rapport, she laughed a little, I kept one eye on her mood. Not that Max needed my babysitting or my watch or whatever, but I just wanted to make sure that she was okay.

But the only problem with our position was that she was all splayed out like a Max-shaped bunch of spaghetti noodles, and her head was basically nestled into my stomach while her other arm was thrown across my, uh, hips. And the thing is, Max was a girl, and I wasn't really sure when that happened.

Yeah, I had always known that she was female, but there's a difference between girl and girl when it comes to her. It was a fact that stood off to the side and didn't bother me. The sky was blue, the grass was green, bacon was delicious and Max was a girl. And then, all of a sudden, everything was different.

It seemed like a few weeks ago, just after Thanksgiving. She was hanging upside-down on the couch and letting the blood rush to her head, because there was absolutely no question about the fact that she was bored out of her freaking mind. And then, much to my interest and weirdly perverted and guilty feeling, her shirt had ridden up a little. Actually, more than a little. Enough to expose certain attractive parts of her, which felt so wrong for me to be looking at, but as a teenaged guy I couldn't help it. At least she yanked it back up as soon as she noticed. I know I'm a hypocrite for this, but keep your mind out of the gutter- it only went to just above her ribcage. Because for a surprisingly small and lithe person, Max has quite large ribs when she's bent like that, so they acted as a block that kept her shirt up which was an impossibly good thing. And I was really really really trying hard not to think about her smooth flat stomach or her hips- especially not her hips, since as sort of a friend of some gender or another she was not allowed to have hips, and definitely not hips that looked as good as those. Because it made me realize that my best friend was not only a girl but a girl- a girl who most definitely had hips, and likely thighs, and probably boobs if I thought about it hard enough but I was not so jacked up that I would let my mind wander that far. (I'd never been more glad that Max doesn't ever wear tight clothing.)

So I fled the room and tried not to think about Max or Max's being a girl or girls in general.

Freakin' girls.

I'm totally smooth with the babes. Psh, you know it. But Max isn't a babe, nor is she ever likely to be such; because she's, y'know, her, and that's all there is to it. But now, in addition to being Max, she is also a girl, which is a problem. And since she has been recognized as having such gender for a few weeks, that gave me time to develop certain feelings- awkward feelings that I would like to banish from existence. So by the time she came to me on that day when she flipped her lid at Brigid, morose about going to Aspen and looking pretty lost on what to do with her messy wad of emotions, I couldn't resist it. I may have self control in many areas, my specialty being facial expressions, but this was Max this time, Max the girl that I was suddenly attracted to, and I couldn't do much less than lean over and kiss her on the forehead. I was at that point wishing that it had been somewhere a little lower on the face, but that was crazy and would likely get me killed, or worse.

So I restrained myself.

Again.

And now she was sprawled all over me.

I would like to be able to say again in italics, but I can't.

And all of this was making me want to flee the room.

AGAIN.

Although I think she was sleeping, so that was probably not happening any time soon. So I sat there, all the while contemplating and puzzling over the reason why this was happening to me and twisting tissue paper around and around in my hands. This swirling, roiling, bubbling feeling in my stomach, the whole entire thing about Max being so strangely female all of a sudden, even though it's not all about the physical aspect of it which freaks me out a little more, and what is probably a tiny little maybe possibly crush on her from me. Or, you know, maybe not a crush.

Probably a whopping infatuation that I will regret verily at some time in the near future.

But having a crush on Max was the weirdest of weird thoughts, somehow even weirder than any thoughts regarding the lack-of-hips-and-stomach-coverage incident, although maybe beaten by the "whopping infatuation" part, because that's even more severe.

So if it was that weird, logically it should not be allowed to exist. But it does, which sucks.

And in addition to that, she is still slouched against me and one of her hands just ghosted a little over my shirt when she moved in her sleep.

I began to concentrate very, very hard on that ball of tissue paper.

I repeat: Freakin' girls.

Third Person POV

"WAKE UP, SUCKERS! IT'S CHRISTMAS!"

"Shut up," came a groan from across the room, vaguely around the couch area.

"Dude, turn off the lights. I can't smell the music," slurred another voice.

"Whut," Fang muttered, sitting up as rubbing his head. There was this incredibly loud noise coming from something small and annoying at the foot of the stairs. Wait, he was in the basement? Last he could recall, he'd fallen asleep with Max on the couch upstairs.

Whoever the hell had moved him was in some deep shit for interrupting that.

"Come on! There's stuff under the tree! You know, presents!" Angel said whilst bouncing on the balls of her feet. So she was the intruder.Ten-year-olds.

"Angel, whatthefuck are you doing down here at seven in the morning?" Iggy stumbled up off the floor and pushed his hair out of his face. "It's like... The middle of the night. Go sleep."

"No it's not! It's Christmas Day, stupid," she scoffed. "I'll jack your presents if you don't make it up in time." Rubbing the crust out of his eyes, Fang observed that she was most definitely not innocent in any way. Oh my god, why are my legs so freaking cold?

"I dun care 'bout presents," Gazzy groaned, his head buried in the couch cushions. "Leave me 'lone."

"Fine, fatty," Angel said playfully, poking out her tongue at him. "No whipped cream for you. Fang, where are your pants?"

"I have no idea," he said hazily. "Leave."

The blonde kid rolled her eyes and danced back up the stairs. "Iggy, where the hell are my pants? Why am I down here?" Fang dragged a hand over his face and sighed. No mornings were normal. Ever.

"We took your pants last night in your sleep," Gaz said tiredly, nearly falling off the couch while he pulled a sweatshirt over his head. "Jesus, it's cold down here."

"Yeah, I know. Because all I have on is boxers, and I can't feel my legs." Cue Fang's famous glare.

"Your pants at in the freezer upstairs," Iggy said with a smirk, already dressed and finger-combing his messy mop of strawberry blonde hair.

"Fuck you."

"Gladly. I'll get the Vaseline."

Fang shivered at the thought and the cold combined and rubbed his freezing legs. Chris and Tania's fluffy orange cat, Jones, twisted around them with a meow, and he rubbed the cat's ears absentmindedly." Why am I down here? I don't sleep walk."

"We saved your ass from the wrath of women last night. Imagine how Max would feel waking up to being all warm and cozy against your chest. She loves to snuggle, I'm sure. You know, Fang, you make a great spoon," Gazzy said lightly.

"Oh, and you can't forget Dr. Martinez," Iggy snickered. "Let's watch her react to that."

"I could have taken care of it."

"Ah ah ah, you were out cold. Just being a bro." Gazzy shrugged. "Temperamental chicks are bad news. So in payment for our good deed, we froze your pants after we woke you up and made you walk down here."

Fang was going through his bag with narrow eyes. "Those are my only pair of jeans I brought, dipshits."

"You're welcome. Walk around in just boxers all morning, Max oughta like that. Since she didn't kill you this morning for cuddling with her."

"We weren't cuddling, for the love of God, and I have other pants." Yeah, Fang is definitely not a morning person some days. He looked flatly at the pair of black flannel pajama pants that were the only other thing he'd brought, since he's a guy and guys don't need seven pairs of pants like Nudge does. Guess it would be these until his jeans dried out. They were flimsy and not built to withstand cold, so no going outside today, apparently.

He slipped into them and in passing the twins up the stairs uttered a low and grudging, "Thanks." What they said was probably true, especially the part about Dr. Martinez, because she would go out back and get a shovel or something and hand it to Max who would beat him mercilessly with it, so at least Fang had had the good grace not to like Ella because then it would be a chainsaw. He had to hand it to Iggy and the Gasman- they played well.

And also froze his pants, for which they would pay dearly later.

Nobody fucks with Fang's pants.

"Seriously, what is her deal?" Nudge muttered, tapping away at Chris's laptop. "She's like me. All hyper and wacky."

"You're pretty dang calm, if I do say so myself," Gazzy said dryly. "Three sentences in one go. A new minimum."

"I'm concentrating and I'm tired, y'know? Give me an hour to get up to full speed. She's just crazy. I know it's Christmas and she's ten, but this is ridiculous." Angel had been so excited about the whole Christmas shebang that she'd been bouncing off the walls for at least three hours since she woke everybody up at six. Nudge, however, had absolutely refused not to get her sleep, and crawled out of her sleeping bag at ten.

"Hey, in her defense, the best Christmas present she ever got was a pack of bendy straws from our mom. She deserves some liberty," Gazzy replied with a shrug. "What are you doing on that, anyway?"

"Hacking," she said shortly. "Got bored, and I've had this idea for like, a month. I just needed the right computer."

"What's wrong with the ones at home?" Ella said, dropping down on the other side of Nudge. "They're not bad."

Nudge broke her focus for a second to give Ella a blank look. "You don't know anything about computers, do you?"

"Not at all."

"The Macs at home are some of the best around, but they've got blocks on them and they can't run some programs that PC's can, y'know? Like, Macs are way better as far as viruses and running time and resolution go, but-"

"Nudge, for once your rambling is informative, but I have no idea what it means," Gazzy said with a sheepish smile, and Ella nodded vigorously in agreement. "I grew up on electrical wire and batteries, not hard drives and motherboards."

"Oh. Right." Nudge shrugged awkwardly and returned her attention to the laptop. A loading bar popped up on the screen and began to make quick progress, the text underneath it reading Files Downloading. She bit her lip anxiously and tapped her foot in impatience at the loading time. "Come on, come on..."

"What are you hacking?" Ella queried suspiciously. "We're not going to get tracked down by the FBI, are we?"

Nudge snorted. "Oh, Ella, you're so bad with tech. I've covered my tracks, and besides, this was an easy job. I was just looking for... Some people."

"Like who?"

"Like, people." The download finished and a folder appeared on the desktop. Nudge tilted the screen away from Gazzy and Ella and began transferring it to her email account. "That exist. And have faces and stuff."

Ella poked her friend in the side. "You can tell me, Nudge."

Nudge's jaw set slightly. "Relatives."

"Why?"

"Gaz, did you ever wonder why if you had extended family they didn't take you in instead of giving you to foster parents? I wonder that like, all the time. It really bugs me, you know? I know my mom had sisters who had families, but I've never seen them. Why should I have been in the system for a few years if they were out there?"

The Gasman nodded slowly. "I see where you're coming from. I hate all my relatives and half of them are hicks down South or dead, so I can't relate, but I can dig it."

Ella's brow furrowed slightly. She never really had to think about stuff like this, as her mom was alive and well. Sure, it left her out of the conversation a little, but that was a small price to pay for living parents and a good life. It didn't bother her all that much. "Did you find anything?"

Nudge shook her head. "I haven't read them over yet, I'll do that when I get home. I just found a database like the world's biggest online secure phone book and used some keywords to narrow it down. I'm kinda hoping I'll find someone..."

"I would too," Ella said with a smile. "But hey, if you don't, you've always got us."

"Yeah. It's just good to have a backup plan, or like, another choice. Just in case." Nudge muttered something under her breath about giving some people some serious calls and shut the laptop. "Well, that was fun," she said more brightly now. Nudge certainly had her moments.

"Yo, Ella! Can you go find Jonesy?" yelled Chris from the kitchen. "He needs lunch, and I gotta feed him before we open presents. He should be out hiding in the shed." The fluffy orange cat for some reason always wanted to go outside in freezing weather for whatever reason.

"Sure, lemme grab my coat." Ella stood, stretched, and left to grab her shoes and rather fluffy winter coat. Angel, of course, immediately gasped and got huge-eyed at Chris's words, and everyone in the room prepared for hyper ten-year-old mode.

Iggy winced and stood as well. "Yeah, I think I'll go with. Not gonna stick around for your high, kiddo." He ruffled Angel's hair, grabbed a jacket, and followed Ella out the back door.

"Coming along?" Ella asked lightly as she stepped into the snow on the back porch. "It's too cold for just a jacket."

"I'm built for cold, Ells. Just look at me in my skinny white glory- I blend with the snow. You know that's why I won the snowball fight yesterday, right?"

"Sure, not like you were using your super-sharp hearing or anything or cheating and hiding the whole time," she said with playful sarcasm, tracking through the ankle-deep layer of snow to the shabby garden shed. "It's just your white people skills."

"Don't forget about my white people dancing skills."

"Right. Here, kitty kitty," Ella called into the shed. "C'mon, Jonesy, come get your food..." She peered around the cluttered shed, past shelves and tools and flowerpots, searching for the stupid orange fluffball.

Iggy made clicking noises with his tongue. "Jones, you stupid fat cat, come and get it." He winced as he knocked his head against a metal shelf, accidentally causing a pair of long and rather rusty hedge clippers to clatter to the concrete floor. "Oops?"

"S'okay," she told him just as there was a loud meow from the corner of the shed. "Wait, I hear him! Here, Jonesy, get your noms..." she clacked her fingers against the side of the bowl, attempting to draw him out.

Ig raised a finger to his lips and a hand to his ear, cupping it and cocking his head to the side, listening hard. "Stay here." He began slowly moving towards the sound of the meow, carefully feeling his way around his surroundings.

Ella watched for a moment, shivering in the chilly air, and ran her fingertips over frost on the small, cracked windowpane next to her. With her fingernail, she began to carve a small heart into the frost- at least Iggy would never see the initials she etched into it, a tall and slightly lopsided I plus an E-

"Gotcha!"

There was a clatter and a crash as Iggy landed with a huff on a pile of cardboard boxes, holding a wriggling and hissing swath of marmalade-colored fur. "Stupid- cat- stay still!" He struggled over to the door, tripping over his own feet while the cat flailed in his arms. "Aw, shi-"

Ella smothered a giggle as Jones positively flew out of Iggy's hands and towards the open door, yowling. "That was smooth."

He cast her the scowl-smile he had become extraordinarily good at. "Oh, just help me pick this up."

For a few minutes they cleaned up the mess they (well, mostly Iggy) had made- picking up tools, piling boxes, righting the shelf Iggy had managed to knock over. With an old broom, Ella swept up the spilled cat food and dumped it in the trash. And just as Iggy was putting the very last flowerpot in its rightful place, she quickly turned around to rub out the heart scratched into the frost, lest someone should come out here again and see it.

So in her concentration, she didn't notice that her blind companion had finished cleaning.

Ella turned, ready to go, and took two steps right into Iggy's chest. Her cheeks turned pinker than the cold had already made them.

"Sorry." She looked down, her breath turning to fog in the frigid air. It almost felt like he could see the blush on her face, like he knew how fast her heart was beating, how she inhaled his scent like the crust of freshly baked bread-

"Ella?" Iggy's hand tentatively reached out, his long fingers, just brushing her cheekbones.

"Yeah?" she breathed out, her mouth dry.

Iggy pointed a finger towards the ceiling, the hand on her cheek sliding under her chin to cup it. "Imaginary mistletoe," he whispered, leaned down, and kissed her.

HAVE YOUR ONE-SIDED FAX. TAKE IT ALL.

With a side dish of Eggy. Well, not really a side dish. WAS IT CHEESY? I've had that planned for months. I mean, I just thought it was cute... or whatever...

My brain is completely wired to Adventure Time. I can't draw anything but it. Maybe a fic soon? Oops, I didn't say that out loud. WINK WINK.

("It's Christmas, Captain, I want to open my presents." *lifts giant alien head* OH DR. SHAW, YOU DOG)

-Sierra

hahahahaha cliffhanger what now bitches