Happy Boostlethon, emilee!
Title: The spirit of the season
Author: frimfram-sauce
Recipient: Emilee
Rating: PG
Prompt: "Superbuddies Christmas party shenanigans."
Notes: This is some lovely AU where Ice really came back with the team following their quick trip to Hell! Boom.
Four hours before the start of the Superbuddies Christmas party, the halls of their strip-mall HQ echo to the holiday season's most distinctive sound: bickering. Down a corridor glinting with tacked-up tinsel, Booster Gold scurries after the distinctive form of a Blue Beetle with a grudge.
"Ted, wait up," says Booster, shifting in his arms a Hefty bag that bulges with something with a white fur trim that spills out toward the floor. "I don't get why you're being so... snippy."
Ted laughs a bitter laugh that doesn't break his stride. "This you call snippy? This is me feeling festive. Keep following me, and I'll show you snippy."
"It's just a bit of fun!"
"Give it up, Booster. I'm not doing it, and that's all there is to it." They reach the vestibule by the building's back exit, and Ted stops at last. "You know, some of us have serious crime-fighting careers to worry about. You want to spend the day lollygagging with Max and the rest of this shower, you go nuts. I'm going to do my job."
Booster tries again, leaning against the coat stand beside the rear door, almost making it topple. "Okay, I do get it. You're method acting as Batman."
Ted shoulders his way into a thick coat, plucking an angry red scarf off a hook. "So long, Booster. Happy holidays."
"Ted, stop! I don't get it!"
Ted turns on his heel, mouth set, and jabs a finger into the center of Booster's chest. "Oh, you don't, don't you? Missed the memo, did you? They only want me to do it because I'm the jolly, roly-poly, fat guy!"
Booster blinks at him. "Aw, buddy, no. Everyone knows those days are behind you. You're... well, you're fighting fit now!"
"Laugh it up, Booster." Ted turns his back and starts winding the scarf around his neck with the verve and precision of someone performing a mummification.
"C'mon, buddy!" Booster spreads his hands. "Anyone can see you're back in shape now."
"Not listening."
"Svelte."
"Hmph."
"Toned."
"Whatever."
"Buff."
Ted stops winding. He raises an eyebrow, and says through the scarf "Is there something you need to tell me?"
Before Booster can begin to reply, the interior door beside them bangs open and Guy Gardner's head juts out into the hallway. "Jeez, ladies, would ya keep the noise down?"
Scowling, Ted folds his arms. "Interrupting your private time, are we?"
Booster leans into the doorway. "Ted won't put on the Santa outfit," he tells Guy, unbundling a very large red and white jacket from the Hefty bag and holding it up for inspection. "He's meant to be wearing it for the Christmas party. He promised Max."
Ted snorts. "I did not promise. I was tricked."
"Max left out a glass of milk and a bunch of cookies on a 'Santa Claus, please stop here' plate," Booster tells Guy. "When Ted ate them, Max said it just proved that this is the part he was born to play."
Guy snorts with laughter. "C'mon, Kord. Even I get into the spirit of the season."
"Anyone with half a heart gets into the spirit," says Booster.
"Well, half a heart is about all I have left in working order," says Ted. "And I'm not going to waste the extra hours of life it's given me on cosplaying as a creepy, obese personal shopper."
Guy looks the costume up and down, tapping his chin. "Say, if you dress up as Santa Claus, the Marvel chick might sit on your knee."
Booster stops futzing with the fur trim on the jacket, and shoots a sideways look at Ted. "You know what, Beetle ol' buddy - I'll do it. Always happy to help a friend out of a jam."
Ted rolls his eyes. "You'll bring just the touch of class the role demands."
"Where are you hustling off to, anyway?" Guy asks Ted, taking the Santa suit from Booster and examining it critically.
"Work," says Ted, pushing open the door and stepping out into a bitter flurry of snow. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."
"Jeez," says Guy. "Don't strain nothing, Mister Scrooge."
*
By five in the afternoon the Superbuddies Christmas party is in full swing. The whole storefront is decked out like a scene from a greetings card: Tora's spun real snowflakes, the size of dinner plates, that cling in a chilly frieze to the windows. Bea has a hearty emerald blaze crackling in an impromptu grate, with candles and stockings hung over the mantel. There's a green glowing tree, trimmed with lantern-construct tinsel and stars, and Guy's nearly earned himself a swift and bloody death by inviting Power Girl to "hang her baubles" on it. Ralph is slow-dancing with Sue while a highly-polished L-Ron renders a more-than-realistic impersonation of the little drummer boy. Mary Marvel leads a group of maybe twenty neighborhood kids in a chorus of carols, though it's hard to make out any voice but Mary's own.
In fact, the only thing that's really missing is a Santa to occupy the red plush chair that stands by the crackling fire, and some gifts to heap under the gently glowing tree. Max, five glasses of eggnog the worse for wear, slides up to Booster, proffering the outsized Santa outfit still in its sack. "Booster," he says, "time to step up. It's your solemn duty to fill in for the other half of your comedy double-act whenever he gets into a snit."
Booster bridles. "Comedy double act? I'll have you know we're a heroic crime-fighting duo."
"He's right," says an eavesdropping Bea, biting a mince pie in half. "In a comedy double act, there'd be a straight man."
"Santa suits aren't my thing," Booster sniffs, ignoring Bea. "I hate the commercialization of Christmas."
Max goggles. "You hate the commercialization of Christmas?"
Bea snorts, puffing her bangs up off her brow. "Only because it puts his own operation in the shade."
"Say what you like," says Booster, folding his arms. "Booster Gold-themed festive jockey shorts are selling like hotcakes this holiday season."
Taking a break between carols, Mary Marvel joins the group beside the punchbowl. "Do they celebrate Christmas in your century, Mister Gold?"
"Sure we do. But it's not like this."
"Oh no?"
"No. It's a sombre celebration of the birth of Santa Claus."
Max groans and retreats into another glass of nog.
"Why don't you ask Mister Gardner to wear the suit?" says Mary, holding up the pair of red fur-edged pants and chewing her lower lip.
"Oh, he did," Bea says. "Guy said it wasn't the kind of trim he's interested in." While Mary frowns, Bea adds "And forget about Ralph. Sue's banned him on the grounds that crimson clashes with his hair."
"Fine; give me the pants," Max says, setting down his sixth glass and swaying visibly. "If I'm the only one prepared to enter into the spirit of the season, I'll do it." There's a tinkling crash as one of Mary's little chorister charges bashes the head of another against the glass top of the reception coffee table. "The young people of this borough would clearly benefit from a bit of festive guidance from Santa Lord."
"Oh, no," says Sue, wading in to take the suit from Max's hands and replace it with a glass of water. "The spirit of the season could not survive the lawsuits."
Mary wrings her hands. "But you can't have a Christmas party without Santa Claus!"
That's when, upon the roof, there breaks a sound that's almost completely unlike the clattering of reindeer hooves.
The last few of the neighborhood kids stumble in their rendition of "Christmassacre", and everyone looks up.
"Invading Khunds?" suggests L-Ron.
"Overfed, vengeful pigeons?" ponders Ralph.
"Santa Claus!" gasps Mary, clutching her hands in front of her chest.
Max puts down his water and pours himself another eggnog. "Someone better go investigate."
"I've always loved how you lead by example," says Bea dryly.
"I try, but apparently there'd be lawsuits."
Mary jumps to her feet. "I'll go!"
"No chance," says Max, shaking his head. "I need you to corral these little angels." He gestures at the young members of her ersatz choir, several of whom have started trying to disassemble an indignant L-Ron.
"I'll do it," says Booster.
"After all, " says Bea, "there might be a photo op in it."
*
Even before he reaches the top of the fire stairs, Booster knows what he's seeing. Mounted on great silver sleigh-runners, piled high with gifts that threaten to spill from an enormous hessian sack, the craft perched on the flat roof could be only one thing. Ted's Bug, tricked out as Santa's sleigh.
The door in the side cranes open, and out steps a cuddly, but far from roly-poly, figure. He's dressed in a red jacket and pants far less comedy-clown-like than the ones Max has downstairs, and his full white beard is on slightly askew. "If you even think of laughing," the figure says, "you'll get a lump of coal, and you'll get it somewhere where the sun doesn't shine."
Booster grins. "I think you're meant to lead with 'Ho, ho, ho.'"
Santa Ted adjusts the fit of his beard. "If I'm remembering this right, the last time anyone used the word "ho" within fifty feet of our Ms. DaCosta, they got most of their eyebrows burnt off."
"I deserved it."
"Richly. Give me a hand with these things, will you?" Ted gestures to the enormous postal courier sack lashed to the back of the dolled-up Bug. It's brimming with gifts for the team, for the neighborhood kids, and for anyone else who's likely to drop by.
Booster hoists down one side of the sack. "I thought you thought this was all lollygagging, and wanted to spend the day fighting crime?"
"I fought against the criminal holiday price-gouging tactics of Messrs. Macy and Bloomingdale," says Ted. "But they won."
Booster inspects Ted's new attire as he helps him split the gifts between two smaller sacks to carry downstairs to the party. "You found a better Santa suit."
"This one isn't cut for Jabba the Hutt, if that's what you mean."
"It was all just about the suit, then?"
Ted shrugs, futzing about with the Bug's door so Booster can't see his face when he says "I just didn't want people to laugh at me."
Booster joins Ted, throws an arm around his shoulder. "People? Laugh at you? The very idea."
"Bwa ha ha," says Ted, one skeptical eyebrow raised.
"Those days are as far behind us now as the roly-poly days," Booster assures him. "We're pillars of the Serious Crime-Fighting Community nowadays, you and me. Sober and serious. Grim and gritty."
Ted shakes his head, fishing a final bag out of the Bug. "Well, that's too bad."
"It is?"
"It sure is. Because I don't think the Serious Crime-Fighting Community will hold up without its pillars, and I'm pretty sure a pillar wouldn't wear this." Ted opens the bag, and pulls out a bundle of something brown and fluffy. He hands it to Booster. "Merry Christmas, Boost."
Booster unfolds the bundle. It's an adult-sized onesie, made from brown velour fur, with a short white tail on the ass and a proud pair of felt antlers on the head.
"Where would Santa be without his reindeer?" Ted asks.
Booster groans.
"C'mon," Ted says. "You can choose to be Dasher or Dancer or whoever, but I also brought you this." He holds up a plastic red nose.
"Do I have to?"
"Anyone with half a heart gets into the spirit," Ted informs him. "Now, giddy up. Or whatever you say to reindeer."
Bea turns out to have been right about the photo op. When Booster and Ted join the party in costume, the bwa ha ha echoes all the way to the North Pole.
Author: frimfram-sauce
Recipient: Emilee
Rating: PG
Prompt: "Superbuddies Christmas party shenanigans."
Notes: This is some lovely AU where Ice really came back with the team following their quick trip to Hell! Boom.
Four hours before the start of the Superbuddies Christmas party, the halls of their strip-mall HQ echo to the holiday season's most distinctive sound: bickering. Down a corridor glinting with tacked-up tinsel, Booster Gold scurries after the distinctive form of a Blue Beetle with a grudge.
"Ted, wait up," says Booster, shifting in his arms a Hefty bag that bulges with something with a white fur trim that spills out toward the floor. "I don't get why you're being so... snippy."
Ted laughs a bitter laugh that doesn't break his stride. "This you call snippy? This is me feeling festive. Keep following me, and I'll show you snippy."
"It's just a bit of fun!"
"Give it up, Booster. I'm not doing it, and that's all there is to it." They reach the vestibule by the building's back exit, and Ted stops at last. "You know, some of us have serious crime-fighting careers to worry about. You want to spend the day lollygagging with Max and the rest of this shower, you go nuts. I'm going to do my job."
Booster tries again, leaning against the coat stand beside the rear door, almost making it topple. "Okay, I do get it. You're method acting as Batman."
Ted shoulders his way into a thick coat, plucking an angry red scarf off a hook. "So long, Booster. Happy holidays."
"Ted, stop! I don't get it!"
Ted turns on his heel, mouth set, and jabs a finger into the center of Booster's chest. "Oh, you don't, don't you? Missed the memo, did you? They only want me to do it because I'm the jolly, roly-poly, fat guy!"
Booster blinks at him. "Aw, buddy, no. Everyone knows those days are behind you. You're... well, you're fighting fit now!"
"Laugh it up, Booster." Ted turns his back and starts winding the scarf around his neck with the verve and precision of someone performing a mummification.
"C'mon, buddy!" Booster spreads his hands. "Anyone can see you're back in shape now."
"Not listening."
"Svelte."
"Hmph."
"Toned."
"Whatever."
"Buff."
Ted stops winding. He raises an eyebrow, and says through the scarf "Is there something you need to tell me?"
Before Booster can begin to reply, the interior door beside them bangs open and Guy Gardner's head juts out into the hallway. "Jeez, ladies, would ya keep the noise down?"
Scowling, Ted folds his arms. "Interrupting your private time, are we?"
Booster leans into the doorway. "Ted won't put on the Santa outfit," he tells Guy, unbundling a very large red and white jacket from the Hefty bag and holding it up for inspection. "He's meant to be wearing it for the Christmas party. He promised Max."
Ted snorts. "I did not promise. I was tricked."
"Max left out a glass of milk and a bunch of cookies on a 'Santa Claus, please stop here' plate," Booster tells Guy. "When Ted ate them, Max said it just proved that this is the part he was born to play."
Guy snorts with laughter. "C'mon, Kord. Even I get into the spirit of the season."
"Anyone with half a heart gets into the spirit," says Booster.
"Well, half a heart is about all I have left in working order," says Ted. "And I'm not going to waste the extra hours of life it's given me on cosplaying as a creepy, obese personal shopper."
Guy looks the costume up and down, tapping his chin. "Say, if you dress up as Santa Claus, the Marvel chick might sit on your knee."
Booster stops futzing with the fur trim on the jacket, and shoots a sideways look at Ted. "You know what, Beetle ol' buddy - I'll do it. Always happy to help a friend out of a jam."
Ted rolls his eyes. "You'll bring just the touch of class the role demands."
"Where are you hustling off to, anyway?" Guy asks Ted, taking the Santa suit from Booster and examining it critically.
"Work," says Ted, pushing open the door and stepping out into a bitter flurry of snow. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."
"Jeez," says Guy. "Don't strain nothing, Mister Scrooge."
*
By five in the afternoon the Superbuddies Christmas party is in full swing. The whole storefront is decked out like a scene from a greetings card: Tora's spun real snowflakes, the size of dinner plates, that cling in a chilly frieze to the windows. Bea has a hearty emerald blaze crackling in an impromptu grate, with candles and stockings hung over the mantel. There's a green glowing tree, trimmed with lantern-construct tinsel and stars, and Guy's nearly earned himself a swift and bloody death by inviting Power Girl to "hang her baubles" on it. Ralph is slow-dancing with Sue while a highly-polished L-Ron renders a more-than-realistic impersonation of the little drummer boy. Mary Marvel leads a group of maybe twenty neighborhood kids in a chorus of carols, though it's hard to make out any voice but Mary's own.
In fact, the only thing that's really missing is a Santa to occupy the red plush chair that stands by the crackling fire, and some gifts to heap under the gently glowing tree. Max, five glasses of eggnog the worse for wear, slides up to Booster, proffering the outsized Santa outfit still in its sack. "Booster," he says, "time to step up. It's your solemn duty to fill in for the other half of your comedy double-act whenever he gets into a snit."
Booster bridles. "Comedy double act? I'll have you know we're a heroic crime-fighting duo."
"He's right," says an eavesdropping Bea, biting a mince pie in half. "In a comedy double act, there'd be a straight man."
"Santa suits aren't my thing," Booster sniffs, ignoring Bea. "I hate the commercialization of Christmas."
Max goggles. "You hate the commercialization of Christmas?"
Bea snorts, puffing her bangs up off her brow. "Only because it puts his own operation in the shade."
"Say what you like," says Booster, folding his arms. "Booster Gold-themed festive jockey shorts are selling like hotcakes this holiday season."
Taking a break between carols, Mary Marvel joins the group beside the punchbowl. "Do they celebrate Christmas in your century, Mister Gold?"
"Sure we do. But it's not like this."
"Oh no?"
"No. It's a sombre celebration of the birth of Santa Claus."
Max groans and retreats into another glass of nog.
"Why don't you ask Mister Gardner to wear the suit?" says Mary, holding up the pair of red fur-edged pants and chewing her lower lip.
"Oh, he did," Bea says. "Guy said it wasn't the kind of trim he's interested in." While Mary frowns, Bea adds "And forget about Ralph. Sue's banned him on the grounds that crimson clashes with his hair."
"Fine; give me the pants," Max says, setting down his sixth glass and swaying visibly. "If I'm the only one prepared to enter into the spirit of the season, I'll do it." There's a tinkling crash as one of Mary's little chorister charges bashes the head of another against the glass top of the reception coffee table. "The young people of this borough would clearly benefit from a bit of festive guidance from Santa Lord."
"Oh, no," says Sue, wading in to take the suit from Max's hands and replace it with a glass of water. "The spirit of the season could not survive the lawsuits."
Mary wrings her hands. "But you can't have a Christmas party without Santa Claus!"
That's when, upon the roof, there breaks a sound that's almost completely unlike the clattering of reindeer hooves.
The last few of the neighborhood kids stumble in their rendition of "Christmassacre", and everyone looks up.
"Invading Khunds?" suggests L-Ron.
"Overfed, vengeful pigeons?" ponders Ralph.
"Santa Claus!" gasps Mary, clutching her hands in front of her chest.
Max puts down his water and pours himself another eggnog. "Someone better go investigate."
"I've always loved how you lead by example," says Bea dryly.
"I try, but apparently there'd be lawsuits."
Mary jumps to her feet. "I'll go!"
"No chance," says Max, shaking his head. "I need you to corral these little angels." He gestures at the young members of her ersatz choir, several of whom have started trying to disassemble an indignant L-Ron.
"I'll do it," says Booster.
"After all, " says Bea, "there might be a photo op in it."
*
Even before he reaches the top of the fire stairs, Booster knows what he's seeing. Mounted on great silver sleigh-runners, piled high with gifts that threaten to spill from an enormous hessian sack, the craft perched on the flat roof could be only one thing. Ted's Bug, tricked out as Santa's sleigh.
The door in the side cranes open, and out steps a cuddly, but far from roly-poly, figure. He's dressed in a red jacket and pants far less comedy-clown-like than the ones Max has downstairs, and his full white beard is on slightly askew. "If you even think of laughing," the figure says, "you'll get a lump of coal, and you'll get it somewhere where the sun doesn't shine."
Booster grins. "I think you're meant to lead with 'Ho, ho, ho.'"
Santa Ted adjusts the fit of his beard. "If I'm remembering this right, the last time anyone used the word "ho" within fifty feet of our Ms. DaCosta, they got most of their eyebrows burnt off."
"I deserved it."
"Richly. Give me a hand with these things, will you?" Ted gestures to the enormous postal courier sack lashed to the back of the dolled-up Bug. It's brimming with gifts for the team, for the neighborhood kids, and for anyone else who's likely to drop by.
Booster hoists down one side of the sack. "I thought you thought this was all lollygagging, and wanted to spend the day fighting crime?"
"I fought against the criminal holiday price-gouging tactics of Messrs. Macy and Bloomingdale," says Ted. "But they won."
Booster inspects Ted's new attire as he helps him split the gifts between two smaller sacks to carry downstairs to the party. "You found a better Santa suit."
"This one isn't cut for Jabba the Hutt, if that's what you mean."
"It was all just about the suit, then?"
Ted shrugs, futzing about with the Bug's door so Booster can't see his face when he says "I just didn't want people to laugh at me."
Booster joins Ted, throws an arm around his shoulder. "People? Laugh at you? The very idea."
"Bwa ha ha," says Ted, one skeptical eyebrow raised.
"Those days are as far behind us now as the roly-poly days," Booster assures him. "We're pillars of the Serious Crime-Fighting Community nowadays, you and me. Sober and serious. Grim and gritty."
Ted shakes his head, fishing a final bag out of the Bug. "Well, that's too bad."
"It is?"
"It sure is. Because I don't think the Serious Crime-Fighting Community will hold up without its pillars, and I'm pretty sure a pillar wouldn't wear this." Ted opens the bag, and pulls out a bundle of something brown and fluffy. He hands it to Booster. "Merry Christmas, Boost."
Booster unfolds the bundle. It's an adult-sized onesie, made from brown velour fur, with a short white tail on the ass and a proud pair of felt antlers on the head.
"Where would Santa be without his reindeer?" Ted asks.
Booster groans.
"C'mon," Ted says. "You can choose to be Dasher or Dancer or whoever, but I also brought you this." He holds up a plastic red nose.
"Do I have to?"
"Anyone with half a heart gets into the spirit," Ted informs him. "Now, giddy up. Or whatever you say to reindeer."
Bea turns out to have been right about the photo op. When Booster and Ted join the party in costume, the bwa ha ha echoes all the way to the North Pole.