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Simon was never huge on Christmas before the war. Growing up he did Hanukkah with his father’s side of the family and a little Christmas at home for his mother’s sake that tended to involve the families of friends that she made when she immigrated. It was important to his parents that he be exposed to both cultures for when he was an adult. He’d enjoyed it just fine, but it wasn’t his favorite holiday, he was more partial to the spooky pagan origins and strangeness of Halloween. When he’d gotten more into the study of the supernatural he’d only gotten more interested, but that was beside the point. The antiquarian wasn’t big on Christmas until he’d picked up Marcy and he’d had a little child in his care who was devastated when the time that was probably December came around and she thought Santa wouldn’t visit because he wouldn’t know where she was, she couldn’t send a letter- ‘and what if he’s dead, Simon!?’. Soothing her and assuring her of Santa’s magic and safety while trying to figure out what the fuck he was going to do for Christmas in the Apocolpyse. He’d managed two years before he had to fess up because he couldn’t scavenge anything nice enough to give her and they’d started giving each other handmade garbage.
When he’d been brought back, the human’s had brought their holiday’s back to Ooo and Marceline had been over the moon to get to share proper Christmases with him and her friends. Christmas was always the best day of the year when she was little and her joy for it was infectious and now a regular old holiday was now also one of his favorites as well. Even with his gradually declining mood the last several years, Christmas was always a high point. That said, the last few were a bit of a blur that he’d mostly drifted through just by virtue of the fact that was just how he’d been living at that point, so he was extra excited for this year as his first Christmas since his new lease of life after his little multiverse adventure.
‘Merry Christmas, Simon!!! ｡*ﾟ✲*☆(๑òᆺó๑)｡*ﾟ✲*☆’
His phone lit up with a message from Fionna and he couldn’t help but smile as she kept going.
‘Hope u get LIT 4 Christmas! U deserve it, old geezer!!!
⋆͛*͛ ͙͛ ⁑͛⋆͛*͛ ͙͛ ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ✩‧₊˚⋆͛*͛ ͙͛ ⁑͛⋆͛*͛ ͙͛ ‘
Ah, that was Fionna for you. Well, time to answer.
‘I hope you and Cake have a good Christmas too.’
That seemed a bit formal.
‘:)’
There, that was better.
‘GAWD U TEXT LIKE AN OLD FART LOL’
Or not. He tried to remember some of the little faces that Fionna had told him about. The fancy ones. (When did emoticons get so complicated, anyway?)
‘Sorry.
Hope u have a LIT X-mas, Fi! ´･ᴗ･`
Is that better? Is that less old?’
There was a small crash in the kitchen and Simon really hoped that Bubblegum and Ice Thing weren’t destroying the kitchen too bad. He almost wanted to interfere but he could already hear Marcy scolding them.
‘I can’t even wth u, ur too much lmao
Skrunkly ol m ewundwjedrbfyehdbb-’
‘Hey, this is Gary, sorry if Fionna was bothering you. Her, Ellis, and Marshall Lee got day drunk in the park for Christmas.’
Simon is vividly reminded of the two hours ago of Finn and Marceline trying to get him to take a swig of candy whiskey they’d been passing back and forth. Though, Huntress had stopped Finn a bit ago and Marcy couldn’t really get intoxicated from human booze (she just liked the burn and feeling included. She says if she gutted a whole bottle really quick she could get a maybe thirty minute buzz and he always talked her down from trying). It wasn’t difficult to imagine what sort of situation Gary was dealing with, regardless.
‘It’s fine, hope you have a nice Christmas. Good Luck.’
“YOU WILL OBEY- wenk - M-” Screeching and the sounds of magic came from the kitchen and the older man felt himself cringe a bit. Looks like today was going to be one of Ice Thing’s bad days. He wouldn’t be surprised if they left early.
“Calm down, sweetheart.” Came the soft voice of Turtle Princess, but Simon was still getting up, because he knew what was probably coming next based off experience.
“But- wenk - sweetie-shell, she’s stepping on my authority in front of- Gunter? Where’s Gunter? Son!”
“I’m right here, Ice King.” He answered as he stepped into the kitchen, sure enough, there was ice on the ceiling.
The antiquarian had no idea how he’d ended up as Gunter, but he’d been slotted into that role in the creature’s mind whether he wanted to or not. It wasn’t really a problem for the moment, most of the time Thing was lucid enough to not track him down, at least for now. The ice wizard hugged onto him.
“There you are, my boy! Pops- wenk - was just laying down the law. Also, I know you’re adopted and- wenk - live away from home, but you can call me Dad.” Crystal glinted at him from above the pointy grin.
“Sure.” It didn’t escape him how goddamned weird this was, sort of messed up, really, but there was no time to dwell on it. “You did damage to the ceiling. You’ve promised not to blast the ceiling with Ice Magic.”
“They were questioning my authority!” The creature puffed up like an animal trying to make itself look bigger. Damn. Just like he thought, it was one of those bad days.
Like when he was Ice King, Ice Thing seemed to have two main flavors of episodes. The first being more classic depressive episodes with crying and paranoid delusions about other people’s opinions of him, and the second being a lot more… tyrannical flavor. Delusions of power and authority, more prone to violent outbursts. Visions seem to get worse. It wasn’t often he had the second, but it did happen. It was a shame that this had happened during a holiday, though. They wouldn’t be able to stick around long. That was fine by the graying man, being around Ice Thing made him… uncomfortable. It was a reminder of a thousand years of suffering and jackassery that Simon just didn’t need most days, but the others liked him. They’d made friends with Ice King at the end, and having a piece of him around was nice for them.
“You know you don’t have authority in this part of Ooo.”
“I am the ICE KING- wenk - I HAVE AUTHORITY EVERYWHERE! WITH THE POWER OF ICE AND FROST I-”
“Hey, Ice King,” Thank the philosophers, Finn had heard them from outside and rushed in to handle things. The blonde was a great Ice Thing handler, which tracks since he was also a great Ice King handler. “What are you killing the vibes for, man?”
“I’m not! I’m cool, I’m the king of cool, King of Vibes!”
“Look, if you can’t calm down, I’m going to have to ground you.”
“What!? You can’t do that! It’s- wenk - the holidays, I’m with the wife and kid. Don’t - wenk - do this to me, man.” The transformed eldritch horror started to de-puff himself, starting to slide into a more goofy persona, which Turtle Princess took as her cue.
“Honey, I’m really tired. I know you like spending time with your friends, but I think I’ve had enough people for the day.” The reptile put a hand on the thing’s shoulder, which prompted him to finally stop touching Simon to smile at his wife. The Thing bomb was defused.
“Awh, anything for- wenk - my little book-turtle. We can go home and put on bad holiday movies while you read you a book. Does- wenk - that sound good?” Whatever had worked him up had been completely forgotten, an Ice King classic.
It didn’t take that long for the couple to collect their things and leave.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out this year, I know you like spending time with him.” He didn’t like or understand how they’d developed any fondness for his psychotic alterego, but they had, and sometimes the group clearly missed the chaotic presence of the least harmful mood of the Ice King.
“Eh, probably for the best. I know you don’t like them.” Marceline shrugged and he couldn’t help but be embarrassed at being read so easily.
“It’s not so bad.” It sort of was, but he couldn’t admit that. While most of the time he was fine, but there were times being around the thing really sunk into his mind and made his thoughts just a repeating loop of every evil/jackass thing he remembered doing that he couldn’t escape and it was sort of nice to have that possibility taken off the table for today.
“Sure, old man.” The vampire queen snickered, clearly not believing him. “Go back to reading your books, it shouldn’t be much longer before Minerva gets here so we can do our pre-party gift exchange.”
“I’m not that old.” He sniped back, going back to the living room anyway.
“Hope she gets here quick so we can finally see who got Simon the best gift.” Princess Bubblegum’s face didn’t need to be visible to him for him to know that Bonnie was smugging at Marcy.
“There’s no way, I totally nailed it!”
Simon had no idea how on Ooo the girls had worked themselves up into some sort of contest about who got him the best gift. It wasn’t uncommon for the girls to start up random, stupid competitions just because they were bored or antsy, but this was the first time that it’d been centered on him and it was something. At this point he was getting a little scared about what on earth the girls had gotten because they’d hyped it up so much that part of him was worried that something insane was going to happen.
“This is the first time that Finn has brought me to one of these things.” Huntress Wizard’s voice came from behind him, startling him a bit. When in the devils did she come inside? Even though she’d ceased her use of magic sometime very early in her pregnancy, he could swear the woman could still teleport. “Maybe you could tell me a bit about the holiday. We don’t really celebrate it in the woods, practice is limited in the magic community.”
“Of course I can.”
It was difficult to suppress the instinct to help someone visibly pregnant sit down, even if she really wasn’t big enough to need it yet, as they went back to the living room to sit down. He’d seen the consequences for Finn whenever she thought he was babying or mother henning her and wasn’t eager to have it pointed at him, so he’d managed to keep his hands to himself and watch her sit down maybe a little too hard with a muffled ‘oof’ to herself.
“So, where do you want to start?” He asked as the mutant/wizard settled herself down, clearly having trouble getting comfortable even on Marceline’s new ‘mortal friendly’ couch. It was probably back pain from the pregnancy. From cursory research he’d done (because Finn could use all the help he could get) it was a little early, but the fetus seemed to be a bit… big, from the ultrasound print he’d seen and what Finn and his mother had told him. And had some really healthy kidneys, according to Minerva, since they’re making lots of fluid. Minerva talked about her developing grandchild’s kidney functions like most grandmothers probably talked about how early their grandbabies were hitting their milestones, but the fetus being large and making a good amount of fluid had to be rough on the green woman’s back. He slid a throw pillow behind her as subtly as he could and the hunter settled.
“What’s up with those?” Huntress asked, pointing to where they had hung three stockings that were appropriately labeled ‘Simon’, ‘Marcy’, and ‘Bonnie’. Simon grinned as he got to dive into an explanation.
############################################################################
“-And then there was Krampus, who came into town the day before St. Nicholas and swatted naughty children with birch branches. Now, I know they sound different from the others I’ve listed, but they are important, because it establishes punishment for bad behavior in children, which became a large part of the idea of Santa Claus going forward. As time went on Saint Nicholas fused with Father Christmas, Krampus, and several other northern european and viking folklore to become Santa Claus, A fat jolly man who knew if you good or bad, and came into your house and punished you with coal if you were bad and rewarded you with gifts if you good. It’s honestly fascinating how Christians took bits and pieces of folklore and cultures that they were trying to establish themselves in and grafted them onto a gift-giving bishop. The name Santa Claus actually descends from a Dutch figure that arose when Christians went to the area with stories of St. Nicholas. And that all is just the excepted canon of Santa and Christmas, that doesn’t even include the real Santa Claus, who was a crown user. The fact he took on that name suggested that the figure already existed and the madness of the crown grafted onto it, but it had to be helpful to the establishment of the legend that they were an actual man. I do wonder how far his gift giving radius actually was… were there elf ice constructs? Hm. Maybe I sh-”
“Hello?” A knock at the front door and the voice of Minerva cut him off as the robot woman finally arrived. She peaked her head into the living room and was promptly dragged into the room by Finn.
“You’re here!” The big blonde hugged his robomom, who hugged back.
“I told you I would be- but careful dear, if you damage the signal in my backpack this unit will shut down.”
“Right, whoops.” And down she was sat. “You’re just in time, we are about to do gifts, but I didn’t want to start before you got here.”
“Simon was just telling me about the origins of human Christmas traditions-” Huntress said like it was a form of greeting and the antiquarian was ready to dive right back in as Minerva’s brows rose in interest, but was dashed as the adventurer started to holler.
“OKAY, EVERYBODY, IT’S GIFT TIME!!! GATHER IN THE LIVING ROOM, LETS GO! TIMES-A-WASTIN’!”
He felt himself blush a bit. He must have been boring the blonde man to death with his little Christmas lecture. Oops.
The way that they did presents with this lot was, they went by person. Someone would pass out all their gifts to be opened, and once they were all open, the next person would pass out theirs. This year Peppermint Butler volunteered to go first. The minty magic user made good use of his access to wizard city, since outside of a very fancy paperweight for Minerva (she knows just which of her hundreds of desks she was going to put it on), his gifts definitely had a… magical/occult theme. Marceline had gotten a skull of a dead monster that Pep had found on the road outside Wizard City (“This is going to look sick above the front door, dude!”), Finn and Huntress got magic arrows and a copy of ‘Baby’s First Cantrips’, Bonnie had gotten a kit of spell ingredients that Pep knew were useful in the Princess’s more out there experiments, and for him? Magic eyedrops, to charge his wizard eyes so when he’s crawling around ruins he can peak into the spirit realm to make sure he’s not about to do something stupid. It was a bigger bottle too, and Simon was more touched then he probably should be.
Minerva went next, giving out mostly clothes that she thought suited the group, just a shirt of dress for most of them. Huntress and Simon were the exceptions. Huntress got a huge box of maternity clothes that the robotic help thought matched the young woman’s aesthetic, with the exception of one baby blue maternity shirt that had been hers when she’d been pregnant with Finn. Now, one would think that this would make the lady hunter cry, given pregnancy hormones but no, the one who ended up on the verge of tears was the blonde adventurer. The antiquarian used the attention being drawn to the younger man to open his own ridiculously heavy box. Books! Just like he’d expected. One on legends of Ooo, another on quantum entanglement (one he hadn’t even read yet!!!), one about human history on the islands, and to top it off, a self help book with the glib title ‘How Not To Kill Yourself’ that made him choke out a laugh before he could stop it. Leave it to his therapist to get what he needs and his sometimes dark/dry sense of humor. He hid the book away before Marcy could see it.
“Thank you for the books, Dr. Campbell- er, Minerva. Thank you, Minerva. Should be a good read, these.”
“Yes, I thought so.” She seemed very pleased with herself. She knew what she did.
“Our turn!” Finn hollered, having bounced back from whatever sentimental fit he’d thrown himself into. “It all sort of matches, so you can all just go at once-”
A wrapped box that was just the size that one knew they were getting a shirt was put in his lap as the blonde walked around and put gifts of the same size in the other’s.
“We were on a walk on the beach, just vibing, and we got to this little pier thing that had some sort of mega-rad market on it, and I saw these and had to get some.”
Opening the gift led to a vibrant assault on his eyes, as swirls and loops of bright green, yellow, blue, and black screams up at him in the form of an airbrushed t-shirt proclaiming ‘Grunkle Simon’.
“Golb, I had hoped these things perished in the war.” He blurted before he stop himself, making Marceline break into laughter at the blunt statement.
“Do you not not like it…?”
“No, no, this is the most hideous thing I’ve set my eyes on, I love it.” And he meant it, on both accounts. The t-shirt was lifted to judge the fit. “Grunkle?”
“Y’know, like Great Uncle? ‘Cause you’re old.” Ouch. Fair, but Ouch.
“I should have known.”
“Oh- Grandma Minnie! I’m Grandma Minnie, I wish this unit could cry, this is so sweet.” Sure enough, in disgustingly bright shades of blue and black, ‘Grandma Minnie as splayed across the chest of her gifted shirt. The blonde robot looked like she’d be crying happy tears if she could do such a thing. “I’ll give it to my main hospital unit to wear, we’ll wear it all the time.” That t-shirt was going to get passed around every Minerva bot in that city.
He sort of understood where she was coming from, he was touched by being identified as a surrogate family member. He had a t-shirt and everything to prove it. It’s the sort of thing that both warms and fills the heart.
After the mother and son pair finished gushing at eachother and Simon had passed out his own meager gifts, it was time for the main event, as it were. Marcy called dibs on going before Peebs, to which she made a remark about saving the best for last that went over about as well as it could have. When everybody else got a gift placed in their lap but him and the young vampire went to dig something out of a backpack leant against the wall, anxiety started creeping up his spine. What on earth-
“Okay, so Simon’s gift can be shared with everybody, so everybody be quiet during our presentation.” Glob, what? She put a holoprojector on the floor and popped in a disk before standing up straight. “Now, when our old antiquarian decided to pick up traveling and expeditions again, I got a bit inspired to try and find some artifacts of my own. Now, Simon, you had scavenged some stuff from yours and Betty’s apartment before you lost it all the way and lost where it was, but it was sparse and sort of random. You lost a lot of your history with that apartment.”
With all the shifting of the plates and the flooding, he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t underwater.
“Well, I went on an expedition of my own when I was on tour last month, and I found some treasure. Some big ass photo albums and even the harddrive of your home computer.”
His heart stopped for a second as he absorbed that information. It couldn’t be, there was no way.
“Marceline.” His voice croaked out in an unbelieving soft tone.
“So, I’d like to share in the ancient human practice of showing off old photos and videos.” A click of a button and the holoscreen burst to life. “In accordance with the season, here’s what looks to be Simon Petrikov’s first Christmas.”
It may have only been an educated guess, but by the great philosophers, she was right.
It was sort of grainy and in black and white, but it had scanned clear enough. There was scattered wrapping all across the floor, where his mother was knelt down by the armchair in what Simon knew had been a red dress. She was shown in profile, waving some toy that was too blurred to be seen clearly to a little baby him, who was absolutely enraptured and wearing a too big santa hat. He was being held by his father, letting him grip one of his large fingers in his tiny baby hand. The russian factory worker absolutely dwarfed his infant, making the already very small child look positively puny, but he was wearing a hideous Hanukkah turtleneck and was smiling down at them- wait, his father- that was his father-
He remembered what his father looked like, that was him.
Memories that had been blurred before the war and had only become more fragmented and mixed up in the years following suddenly had this one piece slot back into place. In the broken up and distant memories of his childhood, relatively few as they were, where there used to be a blur over his father’s face, it'd been clicked right back where it belonged.
The antiquarian promptly burst into tears.
“Shit- I’m sorry, dude, is it too much? I should have just-” Marcy put herself bodily between himself and the image and his heart ached a bit at the loss. She was projecting guilt in waves from her young face and that just couldn’t stand.
“I’m- snnnfff- I’m okay, it’s okay, Marcy. Happy tears, it’s okay, sweetheart.” The tears didn’t stop, couldn’t stop, but the vampire girl hugged him, which both let him try to sooth her panic but look back over her shoulder to try and commit the photo to memory. The logical part of his mind told him he didn’t need to, Marcy said that she found the albums, she’d likely give him the physical copies later, but that part of his mind was swept away by the part of his mind that was paranoid that if he didn’t do it right now the memory of his father’s face was going to slip away. “It’s fine- just- ah- snff- I had forgotten. I take after my mother, I remember that because people told me all the time growing up, but… I have his nose. I couldn’t- but I remember, thank you so much, Marcy.”
“Simon, what?”
“He never told you that he’d forgotten his father’s face?” Oh, opps, right, Minerva was here.
“Glob no, dude, what the hell?”
“Dr. Petrikov, you told me you were going to try to practice openness with your loved ones. You need people outside of therapy that you can talk to. Do we need to go back to weekly-?”
“No no no! We don’t! I have, just… not about that. I meant to get around to it.” He honestly thought it would never become an issue, but look how that’s turn out, eh?
“That’s actually you?” Finn, ever the hero, jumped in, pointing at the photo and clearly trying to get this gift train back on the tracks. “I know everybody is a baby at some point, but it’s weird seeing an oldie like you as one.”
“Yeah, that’s me.” He was such a small baby. “I wasn’t even a year old yet, here.”
“You were cute…” Huntress noted in a soft voice, leaning against Finn on the couch and instinctually putting a hand on her baby bump. “Your mother was very pretty.”
“She was.” His mother might not have gotten the slavic/balkan height, but she was very pretty. Very tiny, but very pretty and deceptively strong.
“I’m sorry, but that sweater your father is wearing looks hideous.” Princess Bubblegum threw into the discussion, completely on board with getting things back on track.
“Bonnie!” Marceline finally properly let him go to scold her girlfriend.
“It was!” The older man laughed, tears finally drying up. “He wore it every year, it was blue and my mother hated it. What’s next in your little presentation, Marcy?”
“Are you sure…”
“Absolutely. Is it really a family gathering if somebody doesn’t get horribly embarrassed? You’ve got pictures from when I was a toddler and when I was teen, yeah? Those would do perfect.” He tried his best for a jokey tone and it seemed to work as she smiled and went back to her projector.
“Of course. Okay, so it turns out that PeePaw's eyes went early and he was always a huge nerd.”
Next was a quick barrage of images that he recognized as being him when he was around three or four. His hair was to his chin but unstyled and he had his newly acquired glasses, which were stupidly large and literally strapped to his head so they couldn’t fall off when he was running around. In most of the pictures he was wearing his signature, at the time, shorts and suspenders with a variety of hideously patterned button ups. The pictures were in color now, so it was hard cringe seeing his young face grinning and holding up a children’s book while wearing the ugliest floral print shirt he’d ever seen with dark brown suspenders and khaki shorts. Luckily it was breezed over quickly in favor of an image that he remembered well . Little Simon, four years old, head and shoulder barely above the hole he was standing in, that he was digging in the flowerbed, looking curiously in the direction of the camera.
“Baby’s first Dig Site!” He proclaimed automatically, as that had been what the picture had been deemed when he’d gone into the field of archeology. Before that it was just ‘That time Simon killed the roses digging in the backyard’ (He’d damaged the roots).
“Oh, so that’s what this is?”
“I wanted to find dinosaur fossils. I’d just seen a documentary on the tv about them. I was four. The digging damaged the rose bush’s roots and killed it.” He rubbed that back of his neck as if the others could see the embarrassment creeping up his neck and that would block their sight. “Would be worse, when Betty was seven she tried to dig down to the devil and busted her house’s water line.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. She regretted nothing.” According to Betty, the digging stuff was put behind a locked door until she was old enough to not try again.
“Sounds like Betty.” Marceline nodded before grinning in a way that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. She was planning something. “And now onto the embarrassing part of our program-”
Those giant strapped on glasses and hideous clothes weren’t the embarrassing part?
“-Lets fast forward to Simon’s teen years.” Ah, right.
Click
“Woah, bro, you were a fat kid?” Finn didn’t seem to know whether to be curious or amused and he didn’t really care where the blonde landed to be honest.
“I wasn’t- I was just a little pudgy, and it was only the last two years of highschool. It’s when I picked up stress eating.” He didn’t pick up stress fasting or start hiking until freshman year of undergrad.
The picture on the projector wasn’t the most flattering because he was slouched over a Christmas gift and it made him look heavier than he had been. Little miracles, this was after he’d gotten his smaller, round lens and not from the brief period of time where he had that long hair he didn’t know how to take care of, that weight, and grod above that acne , with his bigger lens. A small mercy from his girl, because she’d no doubt found pictures of that particular horror.
“Why?”
“College prep kicked my butt.” Was the answer and he saw Minerva nod in understanding.
“I was the same, when I was preparing to start my assignment. Helpers rarely respond to training well enough to become doctors, so I had offers from every island. I was so stressed I put on ten pounds until Dr. Gross saw me and uploaded something in my implant to help.”
“Oh, how handy, I had to kick the habit the hard way.” By not really kicking it and having it haunt him like the ghost of EDs Past.
“I could give you an implant, if you-”
“No no- No.” Maybe Betty had just made him watch too many sci-fi horror films, but no part of him trusted having cybernetics installed in his personhood. No way. When he went in the ground he was going in as human as possible at this point. (farest he’d go was replaced knee or hip.)
“ANYWAY-” Marcy cleared her throat after bellowing to get everyone's attention back.
And so it went on, a parade of fond memories and terrible fashion choices (Why did he go stag to prom? Why did he go stag to prom in that baby blue monstrosity? ), and just when Simon thought he was going to get overwhelmed by the memories and the recovery of his history, to start crying again, that grin came back with a vengeance. The pictures had reached his thirties, they should stop soon.
The projector came to life with the start of a video, made obvious by the little play button at the bottom. Worse, the antiquarian knew what video it was from the first frame. Right, the vampire had found their harddrive.
“Now onto the video part of our presentation. Since we are limited on time, I’ve only put two in here, but I had to share with the group and we are starting with something domestic. To set the scene for this first vid, it’s the first holiday since Betty and Simon moved in together. Simon is stressed, Betty is silly, lets see what happens.”
The handheld camera wobbled back and forth as the user struggled to voom in on the subject, the subject being a very fussy Simon in a red turtleneck, hair pulled up best could at that length, standing on a step stool, moving things around at the top of the tree. The apartment walls were yellow and the tree barely fit into room, nearly scrapping the ceiling with topper no matter what the antiquarian did.
“And here we have Simon Petrikov in his natural habitat, obsessively focusing in on details nobody else will notice or care about. They say that when the Petrikov enters this state, its range of hearing drops by as much as eighty percent, making them effectively dead to the world.” The voice of Betty came from behind the camera, low in volume and in her best impression of a nature documentary voice.
“I can hear you mocking me, Princess, and I don’t appreciate it.” An ornament got moved to a branch directly next to it and back. No attempt to look away was made to look away from his work.
“You don’t even like Christmas that much, we’re barely celebrating this year. One gift each and then all day in bed. Do we really need to do all this because your mother is visiting?” The camera shakes as it zooms back out to reveal the stacks of boxes around the main room, mostly full of holiday junk. “And I know you say you’re more Jew-ish than Jewish, but isn’t your Aunt coming over with her? If we are doing all this just because of a visit, maybe we should track down some Stars of David or Menorah ornaments to hang on the tree.”
He finally turned away from his work on the tree, looking just above the camera at Betty with an expression so shocked and distressed you’d think she’d just called him a bunch of slurs.
“Are you crazy?” A hand was put on his chest like he was scandalized victorian woman. “And have Doda pretend to have the vapors and tell me about my father and grandparents rolling in their graves? And then having my mother start the religious freedom fight again . Risking a fist fight or the neighbor’s calling the cops? On the Christmas Tree- absurd.”
“A fist fight? Your sweet little mother? The five foot one housewife? I know I’ve only seen her a few times, but it’s sort of difficult imagining her being angry… ever.”
“A nice little housewife who escaped the Soviet Union , sweetheart.” Simon’s face scrunched up and he went back to work. “Yes, she’s the sweetest woman in the world. I can count on my hands the amount of times I’ve heard her raise her voice. But I’ve seen her make grown men cry. When my father hurt his shoulder, she took up chopping wood for the fireplace like it was nothing. One time when I was little, we had a little problem with someone in the neighborhood who… took issue with my father, they got one vocal warning and then she knocked their front teeth out. She’ll absolutely choose violence. Regardless, I’m prepared for Doda, there is a menorah in… one of those boxes.”
A vague gesture towards one of the box stacks. He was fiddling with the topper again.
“I just think you’re maybe a little too wound up about this visit, if you wear yourself out like this, you won’t be able to enjoy it. She only shunned you for six months when we moved in together, she’ll get over a substandard tree.”
“The visit needs to go perfectly, Betty. You could stand to take this more seriously, at least one of our parents should like us. It’s bad enough your parents hate me-”
“They don’t hate you-” A deadpan look over his shoulder stopped whatever she’d been saying. “Okay, they hate you, but they’ll get over it! Probably soon, even, they’re really chill. Our parents are nice people, they’ll adjust eventually.”
“Maybe.”
A sigh of frustration, Betty had given up on getting him to take a break. A pause, and then a hum from behind the camera as the antiquarian stepped one foot down on the ladder and reached over to hang something a bit lower than where he’d been working. The camera promptly zoomed in on his ass.
“Betty, can you- are you filming my butt again!? We’ll never have videos we can show people, you keep doing this.”
“It’s a nice ass! Hiking ass. Traveling ass. It needs to be immortalized, like art.” A shaky voom a bit closer.
“Please, Princess-” The Simon in the video huffed, giving up and seeming to go back to his work on the tree. The camera creeps closer, bouncing up and down with the steps of it’s user until a pale pink-ish hand reached out to the clothed buttcheeks taking up the screen to-
Squeeze
“Betty!” Was shrieked and the video became incomprehensible as the woman behind the camera started cackling and the tape finally cut out.
The graying antiquarian wanted to burrow down to the center of the earth and live there. Never to be seen again. With how much he romanticized their academic and emotional relationship, he’d forget sometimes how… frisky that they could be. They were obsessed with each other in any way that they could be, it was as mortifying as it was sweet. He covered his face and groaned.
“Wow, you guys were so normal.” Finn quipped and- what?
“I’m sorry??? What does that even mean? Of course we were normal.”
“I mean, you, both of you are a bit…”
“Crazy. You and Betty’s assembly kits were missing a lot of screws in the first place, dude.” Marceline put forward as gently as the vampire could, but ow. She wasn’t really wrong, but ow . “It’s kinda weird to think that you two ever did normal couple stuff. And it’s cute. Kind of gross, I really didn’t need to see that close up to your ass, but it’s still cute.”
“Did you at least stop hyperfocusing on the tree after she groped you?”
“I did.” Boy, did he ever. “She was always very good at making sure I didn’t get too wrapped up in things and neglect myself or create a problem by accident. Her methods were as varied as they were effective.”
“I’d like to put a pin in some of the things you discussed in the video about your parents, for next month’s session.” Minerva chipped in and yeah, that tracked. Oops.
“Yeah, that’s fair.”
“Speaking of, I found on their harddrive a file just labeled ‘The Wedding that made My Family Tolerate Simon’. This next video is from that file.”
He didn’t need to see or hear any of the clip to know exactly what video it was, if the goal was to embarrass him. The graying man hid his face in his hands as if if he didn’t look, it would disappear the image of him and Betty at her cousin’s wedding reception later in the evening. Betty in no shoes with his white button up draped over her shoulders, calling for him as the sound of two girls shit talking another girls butt came from the loudspeakers. Him with his tie tied around his head like a headband, shirt and vest gone, but his tuxedo jacket was on with the Wedding Garter (that he had caught earlier) hanging out of the breast pocket. Very drunk. The fact that everybody else in the video was in similar states didn’t make him feel any less mortified, a thing that had been true when he’d woken up the next day and continued to be true to this day. He didn’t need to see, it was seared into his cortex for all times.
At some point, in the laughing and giggling and the sounds of cheering and ‘Baby Got Back’ coming from the projector, something flat and light bumped into his elbow. Simon seeked over to see a file being handed to him by Princess Bubblegum, who looked as amused as she was chaffed.
“I figured I’d give it to you now, since I already lost. I can’t beat sentiment like this.” Another nudge with the folder. “Your gift isn’t here, but this file has all you need to know about him.”
“Him?” What, had she made him some sort of pet for when his new home was done? He took the folder and- what?
“I made you a coworker. A lab assistant for now, just until they get more caught up. I know you’re bummed about the lack of interest in historical study in modern humans, so I thought you could use a friend.” The casualness with which Bonnie sometimes spoke about creating life would never not freak him the hell out. “In the file is his likes and dislikes, personality traits, and a short list of materials that I put in his knowledge base. His name is Tomas Taffy.”
Marceline had given him the gift of history and memory and Bonnie had literally made him a friend. He’d gotten Marcy a guitar pick and PB a new set of safety goggles! As embarrassing was it was strange.
He knew there was a reason he didn’t like Christmas before.