The Very First Fite Christmas
---
Disclaimer: I own Young Justice, and, secretly, unknown to all mankind, Elvis Presley lives in my dresser! And if you couldn't smell the sarcasm a mile away, that's okay. It's hard to smell Internet data.
Feedback: Or I write Ishido/Bonnie lemons to the tune of Michael Bolton!
Summary: Anita Fite's very first Christmas ever. Includes, but is not limited to: Ishido and Bonnie's Christmas Eve date, the Fite parents arguing over which Claymation video is best, and, yes, Slobo in a blinking Santa hat. Not intended to be ingested in large quantities or with a spork.
Influences: A hilarious Spudverse Tim/Cassie Christmas fic, the mental image of Slobo dressed as the Santa-boxers/dancing-dude from the Sears commercial (still not sure if that's good or bad), the oddity of Anita raising her own (super-aging) parents, and my overall giddiness about correctly assuming, during issue 51, that Ishido and Bonnie liked each other.
Key: ||the month and date: day of the week||
--- [transition to a new day]
+ [same day, later time]
*emphasis*
---
||December the Twentieth: Friday||
She never really had anything against large wreaths of holly, thousands upon thousands upon bajillions of tiny glowing Christmas lights, or giant prop-up Santa Clauses (Santa Clausi?). Even if she wasn't Christian, she always found the holiday to be particularly heartwarming (other than the fact that it was impossible to buy anything at the mall and the A.P.E.S. people kept sending them fruitcakes even though they had e-mailed, lettered, begged, and threatened to have them stop), and it was somewhat nice to know at least one thing had a happy origin. Even if its original date had been paganistic...
However, Anita did not take kindly to coming home from her last day of school to find *her* duplex sporting two wreaths on every window, door, and possible outlet to the outside world, and enough Christmas lights to provide electricity for a third world country and its four neighbors strewn over every naked surface of the Fite family's half. And, o-dear-merciful-Oya, now she understood why no one in their sane mind wanted a lit Santa Claus firmly stationed in the middle of their front yard (which was small enough as it was, and now nonexistent according to her eyesight). The shame was overwhelming and it very nearly killed her right then and there. She was temporarily unable to decide between being happy or incredibly depressed over her ability to survive almost anything (up to and including being seen naked by every guy on the Young Justice team, from Tim-the-Man-of-Stone to Slobo-the-Sorta-Kinda-Maybe-Love-Interest), but settled for tossing her backpack to the ground and hurling herself headlong through the slightly open front door, tackling her beloved surrogate uncle to the ground and proceeding to throttle him.
"*Bad* Uncle Ish, *bad*!" she screamed, wishing she had her emperor's stick to knock him upside the head with. The Maad part of the Fite'n'Madd team looked dazedly up at her through his crossed eyes and the little Impulses running slipshod around his head and tried to come up with a reasonable explanation.
"Um," he said, feeling that he had something else he wanted to say, but couldn't remember due to the sudden lack of oxygen. It occured to him that *he* was the parental figure around here and thusly it wasn't entirely legal for his own niece to be expressing her homicidal tendencies on him.
"Rudolph!" came the scream from the living room, and Oshi, in every drop of her pristine four-year old glory, ice cream stained t-shirt and all,came running out, hands clenched tightly over her ears as she yelled something resembling an off-key yodel.
"I'm not listening!" she cried before resuming the yodeling. Anita released her Darth Vader grip on her uncle's throat and allowed his head to smack the tiled floor with a sadistically satisfying crack.
"What did he do now?" she demanded in an exasperated tone as Don came out of the living room next, still bellowing "Rudolph!" at the top of his lungs every ten seconds. "Quiet!"
Don, noting that his daughter (he felt, for sure, that there was something weird about his daughter being older than him) had obviously experienced a great deal of strain thus far, wisely shut his trap. It wasn't so much wisdom, of course, but the inate sense of a toddler to shut up when the older kid has assaulted an adult (who was growing increasingly aggravated with the mini-Barts) and turned their rage toward said toddler. Never let it be known that Don didn't know when to let the women in the house get their way. Which was, of course, almost all the time, but still.
"What," Anita continued in a very low voice, standing up and resting her hands on her hips as she glowered down at her parents, "happened?"
Oshi replied by turning to Don, sticking her tongue out, and stating proudly, "Frosty's cooler!"
"Of course he is!" the five-year old shot back quickly. "He's a snowman!"
Anita's eye twitched.
---
||December the Twenty-First: Saturday||
This was not how Anita had envisioned spending her first day of winter break: shopping at the mall for Christmas gifts, for her toddler-ized parents who stated that it was *imperative* to their existence that they own no less than ten presents on Christmas Day, come heaven, hell, high water, and this month's Being of Ultimate Doom and Apocalyptic Power (to be continued in the 'JLA' monthly). Of course, she had no idea where to shop at, except for the vague idea that a toy store might be good, and then the thought had struck that Uncle Ish was the one who started the whole thing, so therefore he must have gotten some of the decorations from Bonnie (having seen the several hundred boxes labeled with 'King-Jones' currently shoving the family car out of the garage and onto the driveway), which meant Cissie knew the Fites were celebrating Christmas, which meant Young Justice knew, and *that* meant she had to buy somewhere between fifty and four thousand presents.
She'd already gotten the gifts for her child-like parents (and, in the same token, Bart) over and done with, and that had been a relatively bizarre adventure on its own. She had tracked down a toy store in the middle of the mall, asked if they had that you-gee-oh card thingy that seemed to popular, and the desk clerk had wigged out. Something like, "Oh, God, make it stop! Please, I swear, they're all we have left in stock, o-God-o-God-o-God!" She had blinked, purchased the cards, and very slowly edged out of the store. Beanie Baby flashbacks were entering her mind right about now...
"But what to get everyone else," she muttered, shifting her purse and her bags somewhat as she stared blankly at the directory. "Bath and Body Works, I guess..." The mental image of Superboy opening a lovely basket of assorted shampoos, facial cleansers, and soothing candles was entertaining enough to distract her from her very limited budget. The sky was definitely not the limit; the limit was more around two inches above her head.
Something elctronic-y and with a lot of complex buttons and a manual large enough to beat someone to death with would probably suit Tim just fine, so long as it didn't exceed $5.95 (plus tax). The same could apply to Ray, who was just as nerdy-but-cool as the Boy Wonder (no longer with short shorts), and she assumed the sports store would be a good shot for Kon. There was no way in hell that she would buy some perverted magazine for him, so a Nerf football would have to do. What with his tactile telekinesis and the weird stuff Bart came up with out of nowhere, she figured it would have a jet engine on it by Friday. Slobo would be a little more difficult, of course, but as he was the closest thing to a best friend she had with the Young Justice crew, it shouldn't be too hard. She hoped.
+
"Are you sure it costs that much?" she pleaded with the cashier. He glared at her through his grungy bangs, which, according the laws of physics and personal hygiene, shouldn't have been possible, and merely pointed at the exit. It was a reasonable thing for him to do, seeing as she *had* been standing in front of him for the past eleven minutes trying to compromise the four dollars in her wallet with the five dollar anime video she held in hand. He really didn't have the heart to tell her that the Slayers TRY tape was supposed to be marked at the horrifically obscene price of twenty dollars and had been erroneously given the (probably illegal) highest possible price of the Battlefield Earth video.
Anita sighed, sadly placed the VHS on the counter, and said, "It's probably better, anyway. I haven't bought his gift yet." With that apology made (to the tape, not the cashier), she scanned the bargain items displayed under the counter and chose an Invader ZIM style 'Best Friends' keychain. She assumed the image of Gaz choking the life out of Dib would placate Slobo's disappointment at not getting something dangerous enough to cause untold amounts of property damage.
She still would have liked to have bought the video all for herself. Quite a few of the characters reminded her of her friends...
---
||December the Twenty-Second: Sunday||
"Deck the halls with gas-o-lee-ine!" came Oshi's joyful voice, at precisely 9:00 P.M. on Sunday. A "Falalalala-la-la-la-la!" echoed from the confines of the bathroom, where Don had been holed up for somewhere around an hour. Anita wasn't exactly sure what in the name of Oshun would take so long for him to do in there, except for a bath (and that usually involved her, Uncle Ish, several threats/bribes, and sometimes Slobo, who Don had taken an inexplicable liking to, and it was mortifying as all be to contact Slobo and ask him if he would *please* help Anita's dad get in the frickin' *tub* *ALREADY*!) , and she didn't really care at this point. There were a total of two bathrooms in their duplex, one of which was downstairs and jammed full of the fruitcakes from Office-Christmases past (the theory being that the toilet bacteria would eventually decompose the nigh indestructible things, and it wasn't working yet), and the other that was full of a slightly hyperactive boy named Donald Jeremiah Fite singing the chorus of a mutilated Christmas carol.
"Light a match and watch it gle-eam!" continued Oshi as she leapt out of her room (read: Anita's room) with a pair of pajama bottoms swathed around her waist and a pair of underwear planted securely over her mass of tiny curls.
"Falalalala-la-la-la-la!" added Don and Anita lifted her foot, fully prepared to knock the door down with force. (The last time she'd tried teleporting into a bathroom situation, Oshi wouldn't talk to her for two days.) At least he'd have three or four seconds to jerk his boxers up or whatever as the dust from the door smashing free from its hinges and breaking through the floor of the bathroom cleared.
"Wait!" Ishido yelped, stumbling over a heavy piece of wood (Oshi smiled triumphantly and declared, "The stumbling block of truth detects your lying heart of darkness!") and coming very close to falling face first onto the carpeted floor. "Don't go in there!"
Following Oshi's unique 'reason' for the log's presence in the doorway, Don sang, in a very confused voice, "Falalalala-la-la-la-la?"
"Open the door!" Anita cried. She was sick of watching her parents acting like complete nuts (regardless of the fact that they weren't even hitting the preteen stage yet) and she didn't know where the hell the wrapping paper had gone, and she couldn't touch her favorite couch anymore with mental images of her uncle and Cissie's mom having 'fun' on it, and she wanted to grit her teeth and scream and punch something. Maybe Slobo, seeing as he wouldn't feel it and would probably think she was hitting on him in a completely different way. Instead, she adopted the more-or-less dangerous look that had caused a werewolf to wet himself and a genocidal bounty hunter to fall in lust/like/love with her.
"Anita!" Ishido warned, and she raised her leg again defiantly.
The door opened and Don, his arms stacked high with a lopsided pile of barely wrapped presents leaning dangerously to his left, stepped out carefully. He smiled around the stack up at her and he chirped, "I wrapped all my presents, Anita!"
She blushed, then, embarrassed and feeling guilty, deciding to make up for her dark thoughts, she plucked his gifts out of his arms and hugged him tightly, singing something. Oshi scowled and ran forward to join in the impromptu hug as Don tried to figure out what had just happened. Ishido was gearing up to finish the family hug when he heard what Anita was singing.
"--mobile lost a wheel, and Joker got awa-ay!"
"Jingle bells, Batman smells," Oshi interjected all too eagerly, and Don added the next, "Robin laid an egg!"
Ishido decided to refrain from joining.
---
||December the Twenty-Third: Monday||
"Yer kidding," Slobo said in a remarkably serious, gravelly voice, the affect of which was completely ruined by the bowl of popcorn in his lap and 'The Princess Bride' playing on the large TV in what Impulse had lovingly dubbed 'Slobo's Rec Room of Stuff,' where few dared to tread and none touched the Stuff. Except, of course, for Secret, Anita, and Cissie, all of whom were aware of (and, by default, sworn to absolute secrecy about) his unwilling affection for romantic comedies (also known as, in the words of the majority of American males, 'chick flicks'). The Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan collection in and of itself was inspiring, with a copy of every VHS edition made and the DVDs lining their own private shelf.
"Does this look like the face of one who is kidding?" Cissie questioned, raising a thin blonde eyebrow and pointing at her face, which she pulled into as mature an expression as she could upon hearing, "Mawwiage. Mawwiage iz vhat bwings us togevaw todaaay." Slobo was not convinced and she shot a glare at the movie, mentally reminding herself to track down every person associated with that film and ask Bart to give them a lecture on the finer points of the MechWarrior series and how, in precise terms, the latest installment compared to the previous three. Or was it four? She couldn't remember.
"Tell me again how 'zactly this is s'posed to e-ffect me," he said dryly, eyes slowly drifting back to the movie, for the call of Wesley and Buttercup was too strong for his willpower. "My name iz Inigo Montoya," he muttered, flipping several pieces of popcorn into his mouth and swallowing the majority whole. "You smeared my father, prepare to be fragged."
Cissie blinked and shook that image away as best she could, folding her arms over her chest and glaring down her nose at him in an uncanny imitation of Max-Pissed-Off-At-Bart-Mode (copyright, tm, r-in-a-circle), which succeeded in making her feel dizzy at the sudden double-vision and complete Slobo's return to screwed-up-fantasy-land. Finally, she tossed her hair over her shoulder, corrected her eyesight with some effort, and, picking up a pencil and throwing it with deadly accuracy, hit the power button on the TV. Inigo Montoya was plummeted into 'TV-OFF' oblivion, and Slobo's jaw would have hit the floor had he been an anime character.
"No!" he snarled in not-quite-anguish, the popcorn flying into an area of the unexplainably impeccable room (the closet door nearly buckling on one side of the room spoke volumes about the cleanliness of the rest of his space) as he jumped to his feet and prepared to frag Cis--well, okay, he reconsidered the fragging and decided instead to jab an albino finger into her face. It wouldn't pay to hurt someone Anita was friends with, and, to a degree, the former archeress was his friend. Sorta. Maybe. Hell if he'd tell.
"You will listen to me, you stupid jerk!" Cissie snarled as ferociously as she could right back (this was somewhere up in the list of scariness by bunnies and Rin). He was taken aback for all of one second, but, being a girl raised to take advantage of every possible millisecond, Cissie had enough time to smack his finger out of her face and jab hers into his. "My mom and Anita's uncle are going out for Christmas Eve, which means they won't be coming back until sometime next *March* for all I know, and because her parents are in the destructive phase they want two people to babysit, and I swear to God I can't!"
Once he managed to get her fingernail away from his cheek where she had almost busted a capillary, he scowled at her. "Yer jus' wantin' to skip out and go t' sum crazy teen party, and leave poor 'Nita on her own t' deal with 'er parents!" he replied eloquently, as Anita was, after all, his main crush, and, therefore, Cissie's actions were condemnable.
"I will have you know," Cissie said airily, "I am spending Christmas with the Garricks."
"The whozits?" asked Slobo, thrown for a temporary loop. Who the frag were the Garricks?
"They're speedsters," she mumbled.
Slobo's eyes lit up like they did when he was destroying something, talking to Anita, or arguing physics with Robin. "Ahhhh," he nodded in understanding. "Y'wanna get in good with Bart's legal guardi--"
Cissie was not known for her excellent reflexes and timing because of a few flukes.
Slobo hastily agreed to let the subject drop and assist in babysitting the Fites, though he was none too happy when Cissie showed him, very proud of herself, the apparel he was meant to wear on his head.
Well, if it helped out his 'Nita, any amount of shame could be sustained.
Maybe.
---
||December the Twenty-Fourth: Tuesday||
"Ishido Maad," Oshi thundered in her soprano voice, arms folded forebodingly over her thin body and her startling purple eyes narrowed as she prepared to pass judgment. "Thou shalt verily," here she paused to wrinkle her nose, trying to decipher what she had said and giving up, "wear what you have on!"
"I don't wanna see no more," Don moaned from where his face had collapsed in a pillow on the couch (the one Anita swore by all the deities she had ever heard of, deeply or in passing, that she wouldn't touch unless it was disinfected thrice and then coated in ten layers of plastic). "You're worse than Oshi."
Oshi jumped off the back of the couch and landed on his rear end, feet planting painfully. "Stop being a pain in the butt," she said snobbily (and ironically), as Don yelped and sat up, tossing her to the floor. She landed gracelessly, the bathtowel wrapped about her head unraveling and flopping resignedly beside her. "Ow," she said calmly, then reached up and grabbed her husband-to-be, jerking him to the floor beside her.
"Help!" Don begged. "Oshi's gonna beat me up like a *boy*!"
"What?" she asked, confused. "I'm gonna beat you up like you're a boy?"
"No," he said in a tone of voice that stated very plainly what he thought of her intelligence, "you're gonna beat me up like *you're* a boy."
She gasped in indignation and drove her fist into his stomach in rage. "I'm beating you up like I'm a *girl*!" protested Oshi, leaping off of him and running behind Ishido, who was checking his tie for what had to be the matillionth time, she thought.
"Oof," muttered the boy, turning to his side and curling up. "Do all girls hit like that?"
"Only the girls we know," Ishido said absently, and Anita, walking into the room, smacked him with a wet washcloth. He felt the back of his head and simply smoothed the few unruly strands that had been wettened down. "Thanks," he called, and she dropped the washcloth in the empty crystal candy bowl set on the coffee table. Anita frowned; there had been an entire bag of Dove mint chocolates in it the night before. She remembered putting them in place herself, as she wanted to have some gabbing, movie-watching, chocolate-eating fun with Cissie (as they were finally starting to become semi-normal teenage friends).
"What happened to the chocolates?" she asked carefully, her voice neutral.
"A squirrel," Don said immediately and Oshi nodded solemnly.
"A squirrel," Anita repeated slowly.
"Yeah," Oshi piped, "the window was open, and there was a squirrel there, and it just came in and ate all the chocolate."
"A squirrel," said Anita again, her eyebrows slowly lifting to meet with her hairline.
"A beautiful blonde squirrel," Ishido said dreamily, feeling along the wall, which was liberally decorated with wreaths and other festive monstrosities, and deftly pulled several roses from a recently purchased display.
Oshi made a face. "Are all boys stupid like that?" she asked Anita, sticking her thumb in the direction of Ishido, who was arranging the roses into some pointless shape that looked no different than the original form.
"Only the ones we know," Anita answered indifferently.
There was a knock at the door, one that was strong, yet hesitant, powerful, yet gentle, beautiful, yet---
"Would you just answer the door?" Anita demanded, shoving her beloved (yet very, very romantically inept) uncle toward said door before he started spouting Shakespearean poetry, shaking her head in a 'why me' manner. "Why is it that everyone I know is so dense when it comes to love?"
Oshi, Don, and Ishido (nearly at the door, but realizing this opportunity was too good to let go) all shared looks and, as one, snorted.
"Right," said Oshi.
"Everyone *you* know," said Don.
"Haven't told Slobo," said Ishido.
He wasn't sure where exactly she pulled it from, but Ishido Maad was suddenly made aware that the emperor's stick was in her hands, split into its two ornately carved dagger pieces. Wanting to keep various parts of his body where they were, thank-you-very-much, he opened the door.
Bonnie King-Jones, the first (and somewhat goofy) Arrowette, mother of Cissie (whose father was a running debate between various members of the speedster community), and the recent lady in Ishido's life, was dressed in a very pleasant red dress that smoothed along her long legs and revealed no cleavage at all (which had been to Cissie's untold relief), as it had a sporty turtleneck and a black jacket. She smiled, every bit the regal lady, and hell if he noticed the small wrinkles lining her face.
"Cissie isn't coming," she said pleasantly, and Ishido smiled, then thought on what she said. Alarm shot into his eyes, and she winked down at him (for she was a good five inches taller than him, to estimate). "But don't worry, her substitute should be coming along soon."
"Who is it?" Ishido asked, not so much suspiciously as perplexed. Anita, in the background, was straining to listen without being noticed, and Oshi was running from Don, who was waving the wet washcloth like a banner of war.
Bonnie made a 'come hither' motion with her fingers.
Anita had a very chilling feeling in her stomach when he guffawed, closing the door behind him.
"Forsooth!" Don struck a daring pose as Oshi cracked up in the background. "What blight through yonder window streaks? It is the yeast, and Anita is its..." He broke off, pausing thoughtfully to review his disturbingly extensive vocabulary. His eyes shone after a moment with mischievous glee and he repeated the entire thing, then added loudly, "...and Anita is its bon-bon!" Oshi fell off the stairs laughing.
"You sit in the corner, Dad!" she ordered and, after a brief moment of surprise, he slipped, sulking, into the offered corner. Briefly, she had the feeling that being the surrogate mother to her own father was wrong.
+
"God, I know You exist," Slobo muttered from where he stood before Anita's front door, eyeing the decorations that had reached critical mass in holiday cheer overload. "An' even though ye said I can't go t' heaven or t' hell, I'd really, really like it if y'would, I dunno, strike me dead with that lightning trick." He waited for several seconds, then slipped in, as an addendum, "Please?" Other than snow clouds, there was a suspicious lack of stormy weather, and he supposed that meant the whole lightning strike cliche was out of the question. Damn. Maybe the ground would open up and swallow him...
Still, he looked down at the trio of presents he'd bought and stuffed into small gift bags, and sighed. If he could survive every possible death known to man, he could live through the humiliation he would experience in the introduction. Raising his hand, he went to push the doorbell, but found it was no longer where it had been; a horrendously large wreath of mistletoe was in the way. "Uncle Ish has probl'ms," he noted, then slammed his palm against the wreath until the chime of the doorbell went off inside. Checking his accursed Christmas attire, he steeled himself for the inevitable.
"Slobo!" Oshi cheered when she threw the door open, her violet eyes aglow and brilliantly happy. He melted slightly at those eyes. After all, Anita had the same beautiful shade in hers, and Lord knew he needed a lobotomy if he was going to go soft at an eye color. "*You're* gonna help Anita!" She hugged his thin leg happily and he felt slightly overwhelmed by the radiating cuteness.
"We're manly men!" Don crowed, and he thrust Oshi aside and punched Slobo in the knee. A vast nothing happened and he frowned, horribly disappointed.
And then Anita came to the door, her thick, dark red locks tangled and hanging haphazardly over her shoulders, bared by her pizza-stained spaghetti strap top, her bottoms merely a pair of worn pajams, and he prayed very, very, very hard for the ground to swallow him whole.
Anita took one long look at his green pants and the sweater sporting an emblem of reindeer (and, as if to be defiant of Christmas spirit, the words 'Grandma got runover by a reindeer' were written right below the beast), but it was the large Santa hat with the blinking red lights along the rim and the large green orb at the top of it that sent her into spasming laughter.
"Ho, ho, ho," he said sarcastically.
---
||December the Twenty-Fifth: Wednesday||
Around five in the morning, Anita stumbled down the stairs to locate her hairbrush, having woken up and felt the undeniable urge to reclaim it as she had finally remembered where she had put it. Don was asleep in the hallway upstairs, curled up slightly with his mouth hanging open. Down here, of course, were Slobo and Oshi, both passed out in one of the armchairs, Slobo's lankiness tossed in every direction possible with Oshi sprawled half on the chair, half on the floor, her chubby fingers brushing the carpet.
A swelling of affection rose in her chest and she plodded into the room, forgetting her personal vow to never touch the couch and sitting on it quietly. Then, with a grin, she said, "Wake-up, Czarnian." He was a light sleeper, she knew, so she wasn't surprised when he cracked one eye open and scowled at her. He wasn't serious, though, and she smiled genuinely. "Uncle Ish and Bonnie didn't come back," she said in a low voice and he smirked. "Pervert."
"'Course," he said amiably. "Oh," he said then, reaching behind the armchair and pulling out a small bag and tossing it at her, "here's yer Christmas gift."
She blinked, then grinned, and dug under the coffee table, amongst the leftover decorations Ishido hadn't managed to squeeze in the inch between the television and VCR. She pulled out a small object and tossed it at him, emptying the contents of her bag. As Slobo studied the black 'Best Friends' charm (Invader ZIM style, of course, with red lettering), she lifted her own keychain. It was rather unnervingly cute, with two teddy bears, one white and one brown, hugging each other with a bright red heart above them saying 'Best Friends.'
They shared a grin.
"Let's have Christmas every year," Slobo said happily.
"Go to hell," Anita replied.
---
Author's Notes: What started as comedy very nearly became sap at the end. Curses. I must write love stories! Away, Ryan, to write ourselves into a brain-dead coma!
References: Invader ZIM, Valentine's Day 'matching teddy bears for the one you love!', 'The Princess Bride,' Slayers, 'Robin Hood and the Men In Tights,' Beanie Babies, Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game, a reference to YJ issues 33-34, Microsoft's MechWarriors computer game series (which my brother loves), and everyone who has ever had to live with a glowing pop-up Santa in their front yard. I was also thinking of that stupid Tickle-Me-Elmo craze from a couple years ago when I typed the Yu-Gi-Oh! thing.
Loopholes: Scenes with Anita and without Don and Oshi (such as the shopping scenes) - Ishido's watching them. Where YJ's presents went - she has addresses. She mailed them.
Would Like To: Write an Ishido/Bonnie story, but I suspect the demand is very, very small. If not nonexistent.
Feedback: You just *think* I'm kidding about the Michael Bolton thing, don't you?
---
Disclaimer: I own Young Justice, and, secretly, unknown to all mankind, Elvis Presley lives in my dresser! And if you couldn't smell the sarcasm a mile away, that's okay. It's hard to smell Internet data.
Feedback: Or I write Ishido/Bonnie lemons to the tune of Michael Bolton!
Summary: Anita Fite's very first Christmas ever. Includes, but is not limited to: Ishido and Bonnie's Christmas Eve date, the Fite parents arguing over which Claymation video is best, and, yes, Slobo in a blinking Santa hat. Not intended to be ingested in large quantities or with a spork.
Influences: A hilarious Spudverse Tim/Cassie Christmas fic, the mental image of Slobo dressed as the Santa-boxers/dancing-dude from the Sears commercial (still not sure if that's good or bad), the oddity of Anita raising her own (super-aging) parents, and my overall giddiness about correctly assuming, during issue 51, that Ishido and Bonnie liked each other.
Key: ||the month and date: day of the week||
--- [transition to a new day]
+ [same day, later time]
*emphasis*
---
||December the Twentieth: Friday||
She never really had anything against large wreaths of holly, thousands upon thousands upon bajillions of tiny glowing Christmas lights, or giant prop-up Santa Clauses (Santa Clausi?). Even if she wasn't Christian, she always found the holiday to be particularly heartwarming (other than the fact that it was impossible to buy anything at the mall and the A.P.E.S. people kept sending them fruitcakes even though they had e-mailed, lettered, begged, and threatened to have them stop), and it was somewhat nice to know at least one thing had a happy origin. Even if its original date had been paganistic...
However, Anita did not take kindly to coming home from her last day of school to find *her* duplex sporting two wreaths on every window, door, and possible outlet to the outside world, and enough Christmas lights to provide electricity for a third world country and its four neighbors strewn over every naked surface of the Fite family's half. And, o-dear-merciful-Oya, now she understood why no one in their sane mind wanted a lit Santa Claus firmly stationed in the middle of their front yard (which was small enough as it was, and now nonexistent according to her eyesight). The shame was overwhelming and it very nearly killed her right then and there. She was temporarily unable to decide between being happy or incredibly depressed over her ability to survive almost anything (up to and including being seen naked by every guy on the Young Justice team, from Tim-the-Man-of-Stone to Slobo-the-Sorta-Kinda-Maybe-Love-Interest), but settled for tossing her backpack to the ground and hurling herself headlong through the slightly open front door, tackling her beloved surrogate uncle to the ground and proceeding to throttle him.
"*Bad* Uncle Ish, *bad*!" she screamed, wishing she had her emperor's stick to knock him upside the head with. The Maad part of the Fite'n'Madd team looked dazedly up at her through his crossed eyes and the little Impulses running slipshod around his head and tried to come up with a reasonable explanation.
"Um," he said, feeling that he had something else he wanted to say, but couldn't remember due to the sudden lack of oxygen. It occured to him that *he* was the parental figure around here and thusly it wasn't entirely legal for his own niece to be expressing her homicidal tendencies on him.
"Rudolph!" came the scream from the living room, and Oshi, in every drop of her pristine four-year old glory, ice cream stained t-shirt and all,came running out, hands clenched tightly over her ears as she yelled something resembling an off-key yodel.
"I'm not listening!" she cried before resuming the yodeling. Anita released her Darth Vader grip on her uncle's throat and allowed his head to smack the tiled floor with a sadistically satisfying crack.
"What did he do now?" she demanded in an exasperated tone as Don came out of the living room next, still bellowing "Rudolph!" at the top of his lungs every ten seconds. "Quiet!"
Don, noting that his daughter (he felt, for sure, that there was something weird about his daughter being older than him) had obviously experienced a great deal of strain thus far, wisely shut his trap. It wasn't so much wisdom, of course, but the inate sense of a toddler to shut up when the older kid has assaulted an adult (who was growing increasingly aggravated with the mini-Barts) and turned their rage toward said toddler. Never let it be known that Don didn't know when to let the women in the house get their way. Which was, of course, almost all the time, but still.
"What," Anita continued in a very low voice, standing up and resting her hands on her hips as she glowered down at her parents, "happened?"
Oshi replied by turning to Don, sticking her tongue out, and stating proudly, "Frosty's cooler!"
"Of course he is!" the five-year old shot back quickly. "He's a snowman!"
Anita's eye twitched.
---
||December the Twenty-First: Saturday||
This was not how Anita had envisioned spending her first day of winter break: shopping at the mall for Christmas gifts, for her toddler-ized parents who stated that it was *imperative* to their existence that they own no less than ten presents on Christmas Day, come heaven, hell, high water, and this month's Being of Ultimate Doom and Apocalyptic Power (to be continued in the 'JLA' monthly). Of course, she had no idea where to shop at, except for the vague idea that a toy store might be good, and then the thought had struck that Uncle Ish was the one who started the whole thing, so therefore he must have gotten some of the decorations from Bonnie (having seen the several hundred boxes labeled with 'King-Jones' currently shoving the family car out of the garage and onto the driveway), which meant Cissie knew the Fites were celebrating Christmas, which meant Young Justice knew, and *that* meant she had to buy somewhere between fifty and four thousand presents.
She'd already gotten the gifts for her child-like parents (and, in the same token, Bart) over and done with, and that had been a relatively bizarre adventure on its own. She had tracked down a toy store in the middle of the mall, asked if they had that you-gee-oh card thingy that seemed to popular, and the desk clerk had wigged out. Something like, "Oh, God, make it stop! Please, I swear, they're all we have left in stock, o-God-o-God-o-God!" She had blinked, purchased the cards, and very slowly edged out of the store. Beanie Baby flashbacks were entering her mind right about now...
"But what to get everyone else," she muttered, shifting her purse and her bags somewhat as she stared blankly at the directory. "Bath and Body Works, I guess..." The mental image of Superboy opening a lovely basket of assorted shampoos, facial cleansers, and soothing candles was entertaining enough to distract her from her very limited budget. The sky was definitely not the limit; the limit was more around two inches above her head.
Something elctronic-y and with a lot of complex buttons and a manual large enough to beat someone to death with would probably suit Tim just fine, so long as it didn't exceed $5.95 (plus tax). The same could apply to Ray, who was just as nerdy-but-cool as the Boy Wonder (no longer with short shorts), and she assumed the sports store would be a good shot for Kon. There was no way in hell that she would buy some perverted magazine for him, so a Nerf football would have to do. What with his tactile telekinesis and the weird stuff Bart came up with out of nowhere, she figured it would have a jet engine on it by Friday. Slobo would be a little more difficult, of course, but as he was the closest thing to a best friend she had with the Young Justice crew, it shouldn't be too hard. She hoped.
+
"Are you sure it costs that much?" she pleaded with the cashier. He glared at her through his grungy bangs, which, according the laws of physics and personal hygiene, shouldn't have been possible, and merely pointed at the exit. It was a reasonable thing for him to do, seeing as she *had* been standing in front of him for the past eleven minutes trying to compromise the four dollars in her wallet with the five dollar anime video she held in hand. He really didn't have the heart to tell her that the Slayers TRY tape was supposed to be marked at the horrifically obscene price of twenty dollars and had been erroneously given the (probably illegal) highest possible price of the Battlefield Earth video.
Anita sighed, sadly placed the VHS on the counter, and said, "It's probably better, anyway. I haven't bought his gift yet." With that apology made (to the tape, not the cashier), she scanned the bargain items displayed under the counter and chose an Invader ZIM style 'Best Friends' keychain. She assumed the image of Gaz choking the life out of Dib would placate Slobo's disappointment at not getting something dangerous enough to cause untold amounts of property damage.
She still would have liked to have bought the video all for herself. Quite a few of the characters reminded her of her friends...
---
||December the Twenty-Second: Sunday||
"Deck the halls with gas-o-lee-ine!" came Oshi's joyful voice, at precisely 9:00 P.M. on Sunday. A "Falalalala-la-la-la-la!" echoed from the confines of the bathroom, where Don had been holed up for somewhere around an hour. Anita wasn't exactly sure what in the name of Oshun would take so long for him to do in there, except for a bath (and that usually involved her, Uncle Ish, several threats/bribes, and sometimes Slobo, who Don had taken an inexplicable liking to, and it was mortifying as all be to contact Slobo and ask him if he would *please* help Anita's dad get in the frickin' *tub* *ALREADY*!) , and she didn't really care at this point. There were a total of two bathrooms in their duplex, one of which was downstairs and jammed full of the fruitcakes from Office-Christmases past (the theory being that the toilet bacteria would eventually decompose the nigh indestructible things, and it wasn't working yet), and the other that was full of a slightly hyperactive boy named Donald Jeremiah Fite singing the chorus of a mutilated Christmas carol.
"Light a match and watch it gle-eam!" continued Oshi as she leapt out of her room (read: Anita's room) with a pair of pajama bottoms swathed around her waist and a pair of underwear planted securely over her mass of tiny curls.
"Falalalala-la-la-la-la!" added Don and Anita lifted her foot, fully prepared to knock the door down with force. (The last time she'd tried teleporting into a bathroom situation, Oshi wouldn't talk to her for two days.) At least he'd have three or four seconds to jerk his boxers up or whatever as the dust from the door smashing free from its hinges and breaking through the floor of the bathroom cleared.
"Wait!" Ishido yelped, stumbling over a heavy piece of wood (Oshi smiled triumphantly and declared, "The stumbling block of truth detects your lying heart of darkness!") and coming very close to falling face first onto the carpeted floor. "Don't go in there!"
Following Oshi's unique 'reason' for the log's presence in the doorway, Don sang, in a very confused voice, "Falalalala-la-la-la-la?"
"Open the door!" Anita cried. She was sick of watching her parents acting like complete nuts (regardless of the fact that they weren't even hitting the preteen stage yet) and she didn't know where the hell the wrapping paper had gone, and she couldn't touch her favorite couch anymore with mental images of her uncle and Cissie's mom having 'fun' on it, and she wanted to grit her teeth and scream and punch something. Maybe Slobo, seeing as he wouldn't feel it and would probably think she was hitting on him in a completely different way. Instead, she adopted the more-or-less dangerous look that had caused a werewolf to wet himself and a genocidal bounty hunter to fall in lust/like/love with her.
"Anita!" Ishido warned, and she raised her leg again defiantly.
The door opened and Don, his arms stacked high with a lopsided pile of barely wrapped presents leaning dangerously to his left, stepped out carefully. He smiled around the stack up at her and he chirped, "I wrapped all my presents, Anita!"
She blushed, then, embarrassed and feeling guilty, deciding to make up for her dark thoughts, she plucked his gifts out of his arms and hugged him tightly, singing something. Oshi scowled and ran forward to join in the impromptu hug as Don tried to figure out what had just happened. Ishido was gearing up to finish the family hug when he heard what Anita was singing.
"--mobile lost a wheel, and Joker got awa-ay!"
"Jingle bells, Batman smells," Oshi interjected all too eagerly, and Don added the next, "Robin laid an egg!"
Ishido decided to refrain from joining.
---
||December the Twenty-Third: Monday||
"Yer kidding," Slobo said in a remarkably serious, gravelly voice, the affect of which was completely ruined by the bowl of popcorn in his lap and 'The Princess Bride' playing on the large TV in what Impulse had lovingly dubbed 'Slobo's Rec Room of Stuff,' where few dared to tread and none touched the Stuff. Except, of course, for Secret, Anita, and Cissie, all of whom were aware of (and, by default, sworn to absolute secrecy about) his unwilling affection for romantic comedies (also known as, in the words of the majority of American males, 'chick flicks'). The Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan collection in and of itself was inspiring, with a copy of every VHS edition made and the DVDs lining their own private shelf.
"Does this look like the face of one who is kidding?" Cissie questioned, raising a thin blonde eyebrow and pointing at her face, which she pulled into as mature an expression as she could upon hearing, "Mawwiage. Mawwiage iz vhat bwings us togevaw todaaay." Slobo was not convinced and she shot a glare at the movie, mentally reminding herself to track down every person associated with that film and ask Bart to give them a lecture on the finer points of the MechWarrior series and how, in precise terms, the latest installment compared to the previous three. Or was it four? She couldn't remember.
"Tell me again how 'zactly this is s'posed to e-ffect me," he said dryly, eyes slowly drifting back to the movie, for the call of Wesley and Buttercup was too strong for his willpower. "My name iz Inigo Montoya," he muttered, flipping several pieces of popcorn into his mouth and swallowing the majority whole. "You smeared my father, prepare to be fragged."
Cissie blinked and shook that image away as best she could, folding her arms over her chest and glaring down her nose at him in an uncanny imitation of Max-Pissed-Off-At-Bart-Mode (copyright, tm, r-in-a-circle), which succeeded in making her feel dizzy at the sudden double-vision and complete Slobo's return to screwed-up-fantasy-land. Finally, she tossed her hair over her shoulder, corrected her eyesight with some effort, and, picking up a pencil and throwing it with deadly accuracy, hit the power button on the TV. Inigo Montoya was plummeted into 'TV-OFF' oblivion, and Slobo's jaw would have hit the floor had he been an anime character.
"No!" he snarled in not-quite-anguish, the popcorn flying into an area of the unexplainably impeccable room (the closet door nearly buckling on one side of the room spoke volumes about the cleanliness of the rest of his space) as he jumped to his feet and prepared to frag Cis--well, okay, he reconsidered the fragging and decided instead to jab an albino finger into her face. It wouldn't pay to hurt someone Anita was friends with, and, to a degree, the former archeress was his friend. Sorta. Maybe. Hell if he'd tell.
"You will listen to me, you stupid jerk!" Cissie snarled as ferociously as she could right back (this was somewhere up in the list of scariness by bunnies and Rin). He was taken aback for all of one second, but, being a girl raised to take advantage of every possible millisecond, Cissie had enough time to smack his finger out of her face and jab hers into his. "My mom and Anita's uncle are going out for Christmas Eve, which means they won't be coming back until sometime next *March* for all I know, and because her parents are in the destructive phase they want two people to babysit, and I swear to God I can't!"
Once he managed to get her fingernail away from his cheek where she had almost busted a capillary, he scowled at her. "Yer jus' wantin' to skip out and go t' sum crazy teen party, and leave poor 'Nita on her own t' deal with 'er parents!" he replied eloquently, as Anita was, after all, his main crush, and, therefore, Cissie's actions were condemnable.
"I will have you know," Cissie said airily, "I am spending Christmas with the Garricks."
"The whozits?" asked Slobo, thrown for a temporary loop. Who the frag were the Garricks?
"They're speedsters," she mumbled.
Slobo's eyes lit up like they did when he was destroying something, talking to Anita, or arguing physics with Robin. "Ahhhh," he nodded in understanding. "Y'wanna get in good with Bart's legal guardi--"
Cissie was not known for her excellent reflexes and timing because of a few flukes.
Slobo hastily agreed to let the subject drop and assist in babysitting the Fites, though he was none too happy when Cissie showed him, very proud of herself, the apparel he was meant to wear on his head.
Well, if it helped out his 'Nita, any amount of shame could be sustained.
Maybe.
---
||December the Twenty-Fourth: Tuesday||
"Ishido Maad," Oshi thundered in her soprano voice, arms folded forebodingly over her thin body and her startling purple eyes narrowed as she prepared to pass judgment. "Thou shalt verily," here she paused to wrinkle her nose, trying to decipher what she had said and giving up, "wear what you have on!"
"I don't wanna see no more," Don moaned from where his face had collapsed in a pillow on the couch (the one Anita swore by all the deities she had ever heard of, deeply or in passing, that she wouldn't touch unless it was disinfected thrice and then coated in ten layers of plastic). "You're worse than Oshi."
Oshi jumped off the back of the couch and landed on his rear end, feet planting painfully. "Stop being a pain in the butt," she said snobbily (and ironically), as Don yelped and sat up, tossing her to the floor. She landed gracelessly, the bathtowel wrapped about her head unraveling and flopping resignedly beside her. "Ow," she said calmly, then reached up and grabbed her husband-to-be, jerking him to the floor beside her.
"Help!" Don begged. "Oshi's gonna beat me up like a *boy*!"
"What?" she asked, confused. "I'm gonna beat you up like you're a boy?"
"No," he said in a tone of voice that stated very plainly what he thought of her intelligence, "you're gonna beat me up like *you're* a boy."
She gasped in indignation and drove her fist into his stomach in rage. "I'm beating you up like I'm a *girl*!" protested Oshi, leaping off of him and running behind Ishido, who was checking his tie for what had to be the matillionth time, she thought.
"Oof," muttered the boy, turning to his side and curling up. "Do all girls hit like that?"
"Only the girls we know," Ishido said absently, and Anita, walking into the room, smacked him with a wet washcloth. He felt the back of his head and simply smoothed the few unruly strands that had been wettened down. "Thanks," he called, and she dropped the washcloth in the empty crystal candy bowl set on the coffee table. Anita frowned; there had been an entire bag of Dove mint chocolates in it the night before. She remembered putting them in place herself, as she wanted to have some gabbing, movie-watching, chocolate-eating fun with Cissie (as they were finally starting to become semi-normal teenage friends).
"What happened to the chocolates?" she asked carefully, her voice neutral.
"A squirrel," Don said immediately and Oshi nodded solemnly.
"A squirrel," Anita repeated slowly.
"Yeah," Oshi piped, "the window was open, and there was a squirrel there, and it just came in and ate all the chocolate."
"A squirrel," said Anita again, her eyebrows slowly lifting to meet with her hairline.
"A beautiful blonde squirrel," Ishido said dreamily, feeling along the wall, which was liberally decorated with wreaths and other festive monstrosities, and deftly pulled several roses from a recently purchased display.
Oshi made a face. "Are all boys stupid like that?" she asked Anita, sticking her thumb in the direction of Ishido, who was arranging the roses into some pointless shape that looked no different than the original form.
"Only the ones we know," Anita answered indifferently.
There was a knock at the door, one that was strong, yet hesitant, powerful, yet gentle, beautiful, yet---
"Would you just answer the door?" Anita demanded, shoving her beloved (yet very, very romantically inept) uncle toward said door before he started spouting Shakespearean poetry, shaking her head in a 'why me' manner. "Why is it that everyone I know is so dense when it comes to love?"
Oshi, Don, and Ishido (nearly at the door, but realizing this opportunity was too good to let go) all shared looks and, as one, snorted.
"Right," said Oshi.
"Everyone *you* know," said Don.
"Haven't told Slobo," said Ishido.
He wasn't sure where exactly she pulled it from, but Ishido Maad was suddenly made aware that the emperor's stick was in her hands, split into its two ornately carved dagger pieces. Wanting to keep various parts of his body where they were, thank-you-very-much, he opened the door.
Bonnie King-Jones, the first (and somewhat goofy) Arrowette, mother of Cissie (whose father was a running debate between various members of the speedster community), and the recent lady in Ishido's life, was dressed in a very pleasant red dress that smoothed along her long legs and revealed no cleavage at all (which had been to Cissie's untold relief), as it had a sporty turtleneck and a black jacket. She smiled, every bit the regal lady, and hell if he noticed the small wrinkles lining her face.
"Cissie isn't coming," she said pleasantly, and Ishido smiled, then thought on what she said. Alarm shot into his eyes, and she winked down at him (for she was a good five inches taller than him, to estimate). "But don't worry, her substitute should be coming along soon."
"Who is it?" Ishido asked, not so much suspiciously as perplexed. Anita, in the background, was straining to listen without being noticed, and Oshi was running from Don, who was waving the wet washcloth like a banner of war.
Bonnie made a 'come hither' motion with her fingers.
Anita had a very chilling feeling in her stomach when he guffawed, closing the door behind him.
"Forsooth!" Don struck a daring pose as Oshi cracked up in the background. "What blight through yonder window streaks? It is the yeast, and Anita is its..." He broke off, pausing thoughtfully to review his disturbingly extensive vocabulary. His eyes shone after a moment with mischievous glee and he repeated the entire thing, then added loudly, "...and Anita is its bon-bon!" Oshi fell off the stairs laughing.
"You sit in the corner, Dad!" she ordered and, after a brief moment of surprise, he slipped, sulking, into the offered corner. Briefly, she had the feeling that being the surrogate mother to her own father was wrong.
+
"God, I know You exist," Slobo muttered from where he stood before Anita's front door, eyeing the decorations that had reached critical mass in holiday cheer overload. "An' even though ye said I can't go t' heaven or t' hell, I'd really, really like it if y'would, I dunno, strike me dead with that lightning trick." He waited for several seconds, then slipped in, as an addendum, "Please?" Other than snow clouds, there was a suspicious lack of stormy weather, and he supposed that meant the whole lightning strike cliche was out of the question. Damn. Maybe the ground would open up and swallow him...
Still, he looked down at the trio of presents he'd bought and stuffed into small gift bags, and sighed. If he could survive every possible death known to man, he could live through the humiliation he would experience in the introduction. Raising his hand, he went to push the doorbell, but found it was no longer where it had been; a horrendously large wreath of mistletoe was in the way. "Uncle Ish has probl'ms," he noted, then slammed his palm against the wreath until the chime of the doorbell went off inside. Checking his accursed Christmas attire, he steeled himself for the inevitable.
"Slobo!" Oshi cheered when she threw the door open, her violet eyes aglow and brilliantly happy. He melted slightly at those eyes. After all, Anita had the same beautiful shade in hers, and Lord knew he needed a lobotomy if he was going to go soft at an eye color. "*You're* gonna help Anita!" She hugged his thin leg happily and he felt slightly overwhelmed by the radiating cuteness.
"We're manly men!" Don crowed, and he thrust Oshi aside and punched Slobo in the knee. A vast nothing happened and he frowned, horribly disappointed.
And then Anita came to the door, her thick, dark red locks tangled and hanging haphazardly over her shoulders, bared by her pizza-stained spaghetti strap top, her bottoms merely a pair of worn pajams, and he prayed very, very, very hard for the ground to swallow him whole.
Anita took one long look at his green pants and the sweater sporting an emblem of reindeer (and, as if to be defiant of Christmas spirit, the words 'Grandma got runover by a reindeer' were written right below the beast), but it was the large Santa hat with the blinking red lights along the rim and the large green orb at the top of it that sent her into spasming laughter.
"Ho, ho, ho," he said sarcastically.
---
||December the Twenty-Fifth: Wednesday||
Around five in the morning, Anita stumbled down the stairs to locate her hairbrush, having woken up and felt the undeniable urge to reclaim it as she had finally remembered where she had put it. Don was asleep in the hallway upstairs, curled up slightly with his mouth hanging open. Down here, of course, were Slobo and Oshi, both passed out in one of the armchairs, Slobo's lankiness tossed in every direction possible with Oshi sprawled half on the chair, half on the floor, her chubby fingers brushing the carpet.
A swelling of affection rose in her chest and she plodded into the room, forgetting her personal vow to never touch the couch and sitting on it quietly. Then, with a grin, she said, "Wake-up, Czarnian." He was a light sleeper, she knew, so she wasn't surprised when he cracked one eye open and scowled at her. He wasn't serious, though, and she smiled genuinely. "Uncle Ish and Bonnie didn't come back," she said in a low voice and he smirked. "Pervert."
"'Course," he said amiably. "Oh," he said then, reaching behind the armchair and pulling out a small bag and tossing it at her, "here's yer Christmas gift."
She blinked, then grinned, and dug under the coffee table, amongst the leftover decorations Ishido hadn't managed to squeeze in the inch between the television and VCR. She pulled out a small object and tossed it at him, emptying the contents of her bag. As Slobo studied the black 'Best Friends' charm (Invader ZIM style, of course, with red lettering), she lifted her own keychain. It was rather unnervingly cute, with two teddy bears, one white and one brown, hugging each other with a bright red heart above them saying 'Best Friends.'
They shared a grin.
"Let's have Christmas every year," Slobo said happily.
"Go to hell," Anita replied.
---
Author's Notes: What started as comedy very nearly became sap at the end. Curses. I must write love stories! Away, Ryan, to write ourselves into a brain-dead coma!
References: Invader ZIM, Valentine's Day 'matching teddy bears for the one you love!', 'The Princess Bride,' Slayers, 'Robin Hood and the Men In Tights,' Beanie Babies, Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game, a reference to YJ issues 33-34, Microsoft's MechWarriors computer game series (which my brother loves), and everyone who has ever had to live with a glowing pop-up Santa in their front yard. I was also thinking of that stupid Tickle-Me-Elmo craze from a couple years ago when I typed the Yu-Gi-Oh! thing.
Loopholes: Scenes with Anita and without Don and Oshi (such as the shopping scenes) - Ishido's watching them. Where YJ's presents went - she has addresses. She mailed them.
Would Like To: Write an Ishido/Bonnie story, but I suspect the demand is very, very small. If not nonexistent.
Feedback: You just *think* I'm kidding about the Michael Bolton thing, don't you?