When the lights came up in Tony's home theatre this night, the scene was a very different one than any other before. The only one who looked fine was Peter, who was obliviously eating a gingerbread man. Everyone else, though, had varying expressions of horror, confusion, and near insanity.
"What in the name of the Force did we just watch?" Tony asked Pepper.
"I'm not even going to answer that question directly," she intoned in a dead voice. "I'm officially calling this this 'The Holiday Special That Must Not Be Named.'"
"Dear god," Clint said, his hand over his mouth in horror.
"What?" Loki snapped at him. "I'm experiencing complete mental disintegration at the moment and am not in the mood to deal with mortal supplications."
Clint didn't seem to have enough stamina left to respond to that, so he just waved a hand at him limply in a gesture that might have been an attempt at dismissing him or could have been a poor attempt at swatting a mosquito.
"Peter?" Bruce said quietly. "Why did you do this to us?"
"Huh?" Peter said, looking up from his cookie. "Oh! Right, Ned and I watch this every year. He's a big Star Wars fan."
"I've… seen… Star Wars…" Steve managed to get out, leaving long pauses between each word. "It was… a lot… better… than this."
Bucky, his expression one of abject confusion mixed with repulsion, nodded in silence.
"Yeah," Peter agreed, prying an M&M button off the gingerbread man and popping it in his mouth. "It's really, really old."
"We've watched things a lot older than this," Natasha said. "The age is not the problem."
"Yeah, the problem is Chewbacca named his kid Itchy," Clint said.
"No, no, that's the grandfather's name," Thor said with a woeful shake of his head. "No, the child is Lumpy. Like poorly made porridge."
"Or maybe the random cooking show with the four-armed chef is the problem," Bucky said.
"Or the weird virtual reality pseudo-porn with Diahann Carroll," Nick Fury said from the back of the room.
Everyone's head swiveled in the direction of the voice.
"When did you get here?" Tony asked, staring in disbelief.
"Right about the time Boba Fett showed up, the only decent part of this travesty," Nick said, walking over to the table set up with snacks, a surprisingly small number of which had been eaten. He picked up a popcorn ball and took a bite.
"Yeah, this introduces him," Peter said. "That's why Ned's so keen about watching it every year."
"Someone is requiring you to view this annually?" Loki said, his features twisting in disgust. "Peter, that should be against your world's Geneva Convention."
"I'm picky about my sci-fi, more with Star Wars than anything else because I feel a certain level of personal interest in it," Nick said, "and Loki's right, though I don't believe those words just came out of my mouth. Even Bea Arthur couldn't save this thing."
"Bea Arthur?" Steve said, rallying slightly. "Who?"
"Oh, come on, people," Nick said, shaking his head at the whole room. "This man has been out cold for seventy years and when he finally wakes up, none of you introduce him to The Golden Girls? Now, that just ain't right."
Steve wearily took his notepad out of his pocket and wrote down yet another cultural phenomenon he needed to study.
"Okay, Nick's got a point," Clint said. "That's a bad oversight."
"We haven't gotten up to the 1980s yet," Natasha said, patting Steve's arm. "We only did Star Wars last week, along with Welcome Back Kotter and The Carol Burnett Show."
"You're getting Steve reacquainted with the world?" Bruce said, smiling, but just the slightest note of jealousy might have been noted by a careful observer, and as Loki started to grin, perhaps one careful observe was indeed present. "That's, uh, that's really great."
"Me, too," Bucky said. "I'm still trying to comprehend disco."
"Wait," Tony said, smiling deviously, "I just realized you haven't seen The Empire Strikes Back yet, and that means you two are the only people on the planet who don't know that Luke's father is—"
Pepper slapped a hand over Tony's mouth.
"Not one word," she said to him warningly, giving him a stern look.
"Who?" Thor asked, bewildered.
"Okay, possibly four people on earth," Bruce said.
"Oh, don't include me," Loki said, finally taking a single Rice Krispies treat from the table and smelling it experimentally. "I'm fully aware of the various branches of the Skywalker family tree. I shall, however, remain silent."
"Luke's father isn't C-3PO, is he?" Steve said, looking weary.
"No, no," Loki said, "but eventually we do find out Darth Vader is C-3PO's father."
Natasha buried her face in her hands and started to laugh.
"For a second I thought you were going to say something else," Nick said, "and I would have had to hurt you, which wouldn't have been very Christmassy of me."
"What?" Loki said, looking far too innocent as he bit into the sugar bomb of a treat.
"Well, I mean, technically, he's right," Peter said with a shrug.
"Okay, so now that Leia has sung the most non-denominational holiday song in history and we're all in dire need of therapy, except possibly for Peter, who has far greater powers to resist torture than I suspected, I think we're done for the night," Tony said. "Have we bonded enough yet to earn your approval, Fury?"
"For now," he said, taking another bite of the popcorn ball, "but I expect all of you to continue with this mandatory team enrichment exercise."
"Yeah, yeah," Clint said. "How about next time you show up, you bring Krispy Kreme?"
"If I do, I may," Nick said, grinning, "but you'll never know when I'm liable to drop in, so don't hold your breath."
"What's a Krispy Kreme?" Bucky asked.
"You've never had one?" Steve asked. "How did we skip that?"
"Steve, you nincompoop!" Tony mock yelled. "How could you miss introducing poor Slot Machine over here to that. That's it. I was about to throw all of you out of my house, but we are now taking a field trip to the 24-hour Krispy Kreme on the corner. And we are waiting for the red light to come on, and that's an order."
"Does this red light involve the woman Roxanne who appears in one of your ballads?" Thor asked.
Loki gave him a look of utter disbelief and smooshed chocolate frosting from a remaining brownie into his brother's hair from behind, licking his fingers with a grin.
"Slot Machine?" Natasha mumbled to Bucky as they all obediently stood and started looking for coats, not so much because of Tony's order but because everyone suddenly found they wanted donuts.
"I'm guessing it's a one-armed bandit reference," Bucky said rolling his eyes.
"Good catch," Tony said, smiling. "Okay, off we go. Nick, you're paying. Nick?"
But Nick Fury had once again disappeared, leaving the rest of the heroes (and Loki, for some odd reason) to pile into the elevator and out into the night, desperately trying to blot out the image of Chewbacca's family from their collective consciousness through a liberal application of donuts.