Christmas at the Lang's: Book Four

10

It was a great karaoke session. They worked their way through "The Boys Are Back," or rather, Scott, Loki, Cassie and Stephen sang this one, the others not wanting to try it in fear of being humiliated by the dream team that was those four. They did this verse by verse instead of line, as it was easier, and Scott, Cassie, Loki and the cloak started doing the dance, to much applause, while Stephen stood watching very awkwardly. (If he was going to take Cassie on later on Just Dance, he better not be this shy then.) Scott wasn't too bad and thankfully didn't humiliate himself with the whole jumping around malarky, though he didn't dare try the backflip like Loki did. Things wouldn't have ended well.

They ended the High School Musical karaoke session on "Breaking Free". Unfortunately for Scott, his plan to get Stephen and Loki to do a duet totally backfired, because Loki suggested he and Hope did the song together and everyone was so excited by this idea, so they went on two player mode. He was Gabriella and she was Troy, accidentally, but that didn't matter. It was incredibly embarrassing either way, and Scott actually had a higher singing voice anyway.

They didn't do too badly, but the laughs being held in from everyone were very off-putting.

Once this was over and done with, they opened YouTube and Cassie searched for some pop songs from the 21st century – with her being the only one that listened to any form of modern music.

Scott had to say, as they went through the songs, he liked his daughter's music taste. He was particularly fond of "Say Something" by some guy called Justin (he forgot his last name) and "My Head and My Heart" by Ava Max, but he also liked "Levitating" by Dua Lipa and "Here With Me" by Marshmello. (OK, two questions. One, why would you name yourself after a s'more, and two, why wouldn't you spell it right?)

Once they'd finished the final song, everyone needed a quick drink break, so Scott got the kettle on and made a very large tea round. Luckily the magic ones helped him out escorting them to the living room – Scott could've swore Loki was like a professional waiter or something with his amazing dish-handling ability – and they sat there for a while sipping their teas, until Scott decided to get the Trivial Pursuit games out.

Scott supposed Loki was in a pretty chilled mood, so he might not get too competitive, and he was pretty much right. Thankfully he seemed to be able to restrain his temper at the moment, because, not being from Earth, he didn't know most of the answers. So every now and then he'd stab the carpet in anger, but Scott didn't care because he was getting a new carpet soon anyway.

It was quite amusing when someone got a question about space, actually. Because their knowledge of space wasn't the greatest, most of the stuff humans thought they knew was, in fact, wrong. Or at least according to Loki, but he'd had so much time in space in his life he was probably the expert. So he corrected everyone whenever they got them wrong (which was every time).

Things got confusing when Scott realised there were certain games that were a maximum of two players, or a maximum of six players. Being a bit of an idiot, he hadn't considered that nine people couldn't play these games, so he let the (boring) people that didn't want to play – aka Scrooge, Janet, Maggie and Paxton – watch and chat instead. Kind of annoying they didn't want to play games, but oh well. At least Hope was humouring him.

Which probably wouldn't last long, honestly. Hope liked to win, and Loki liked to win. Scott liked to win too, but he could take a loss, unlike these two. Unfortunately for Hope though, once Loki had absorbed all the rules, he was basically unbeatable, even though he'd never played human games before. Guess Who was easy, because Loki only had to read minds to know who it was. Kind of cheating, but guess who won?

Damn it, Scott thought to himself. You need to stop making dad jokes Lang.

Things got quite scary when Scott hesitantly got the Monopoly board out. He was having second thoughts at seeing how competitive Loki was already getting, but that was nothing compared to how he and Hank got during Monopoly. Seriously, Hank was almost a match for his temper at times. Scott, being the banker, just got scared and handed them both half of all the money each to them so they could end the game and declare them both winners. He and Stephen immediately put the game away and got more tea. Tea seemed to calm people down, but Loki and Hank still sat as far away as possible, glaring at each other over their cups. Stephen made sure to sit by Loki to keep an eye on him, and Janet and Hope did the same with Hank, just in case.

They all took a rest from the games for a minute, Cassie and Scott just making small talk with everyone to try to diffuse the tension a little, but the attempts were futile. So Scott was very, very glad when an unexpected van horn sounded outside.

Everyone dashed to the window to see what was happening outside. The majority of them knew that sound, and who it was associated with, so naturally, Hank sighed, "Oh no, not those three wombats."

"Wombats?" asked Loki, forgetting about their rivalry for a minute.

"Damn," Scott said. He wasn't sure whether he was happy or not to see the van pull up outside his house. He had thought it had been destroyed in the fight against Thanos, but clearly not. It beat him how Luis could have possibly got it back, never mind getting it to run. "Of all the days to give me a surprise visit, why today?"

He was happy to see them, obviously, but Scott couldn't help thinking how crowded it was going to get in here. Plus Hank wasn't exactly besties with them. Oh, and there was Loki and Stephen to think of too.

Well, Hank and Loki needed a distraction, and Scott personally couldn't think of anything more distracting than one of Luis's life stories.

"Who are these guys?" asked Stephen, peering over Loki's head, hovering about a foot over the floor to do so.

"My besties," Scott said. "C'mon, I'll let them in and introduce you all."