InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Oneshots ❯ My Blue Christmas ( One-Shot )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

“Daddy!”

& #8220;Yes, Evan?”

“Da-a-a-addy!”

“Yes, Evan?”

“Da-a-a-a-add-dy-y-y-y-y!”

“. . . Yes, Evan?”

“Daddy-Daddy-Daddy-Daddy-Dadd—”

Dropping the paint brush that he’d been cleaning, Cain Zelig reached for the rag cloth to wipe his hands.  “I’m right here, Evan,” he stated loudly enough to be heard over Evan’s nearly-six-year-old chatter.  “So what do you want?”

Scampering across the floor as he tried to run and hike up his jeans at the same time, Evan nearly fell flat on his face.  Cain barely had time to drop the cloth and grab his son when the child launched himself at his father.  With a grunt, Cain caught him and sat him on the work table.  “I need a word!” Evan announced very matter-of-factly.

Cain blinked and stared at his son for a moment before slowly shaking his head.  “A word . . .?” he repeated.  Sure, he was used to weird and sometimes outrageous requests from this particular spawn of his.  This one, however, was a little more bizarre than usual, mostly because the lad hadn’t shut up since he’d learned to talk long ago.  “What . . . What kind of word . . .?”

Evan crossed his wiry little arms over his chest and pinned his father with a ‘duh’ kind of look.  “A word that rhymes with ‘hajimemashite’.”

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but that one was something new.  “Hajimemashite?” he echoed.  “Why do you need a word that rhymes with that?”

Kicking his legs to and fro, the boy was constantly in motion, and Cain had to step back to avoid Evan’s feet since the table he was sitting upon was thigh-high.  “I’m writing Mama a Christmas song, and every other line is in Japanese,” he explained simply.

“Ah,” Cain intoned, giving a curt nod.  “I see.”  Drawing a deep breath, he rubbed his forehead as he considered Evan’s help request.  “It’s hard enough to rhyme in one language, don’t you think?” he pointed out.

Evan giggled.  “I can do it!” he insisted.

“Okay, but I’m not sure how much help I can be,” Cain remarked.

“But you’ll help me?”

Breaking into a wan little smile, Cain nodded.  “All right, Evan,” he allowed.  “I’ll help.”


“That was how it started.”

Valerie Denning Zelig blinked and accepted the mug of steamy hot cocoa from Evan just before he plopped down on the sofa beside her.  “Because you wanted to write a Christmas song for your mother?”

Evan’s grin widened as one of his triplet siblings—Hayden—crawled into his lap with a plastic Mickey Mouse guitar in his hands.  Valerie held the mug out of her reaching son’s grasp and tried to sip from it at the same time.  Cain Jackson Zelig—Jack—uttered an irritated sound and stretched upward in an effort to snag the drink.  “It’s hot, sweetie,” she informed eight-month-old child.

“Want!” Jack insisted.  It was his newest word, and one that Valerie had told Evan more than once she could have waited to hear.

“Mama said ‘no’,” Evan informed his son seconds before turning his attention back to his brother once more.  “Ouch!”

Valerie set the mug on the coffee table and tried to preoccupy Jack with a stuffed reindeer.  “Problems?”

Evan chuckled and pulled his knuckle out of Hayden’s mouth.  “Hayden thought I was a chew toy.  It’s fine,” he remarked.

Valerie leaned toward him to get a look at the injury.  A tiny droplet of blood was forming on the surface, but Evan had been bitten much worse by Jack just last week, and he’d laughed that off, too.  Haden and his triplet siblings, Daniella and Connor, were a few months older than Jack and had therefore outgrown the biting phase a few months ago, but for reasons that no one quite understood, Hayden seemed to like to gnaw on Evan in particular . . . “I think you’ll live,” Valerie pointed out dryly.

That earned her a goofy grin.  “Yeah, I know.”

She shook her head since Evan rarely took anything seriously these days.  Deliriously happy, or so everyone said, ever since they’d gotten married.  Valerie just figured that it was normal for him.  He was born goofy and hadn’t outgrown it—and she doubted he ever would.  “So you’re saying that you decided to write a song for your mother for Christmas when you were five?”

“Yep.  Actually, I was almost six,” he went on.  “It was the birth of Zel Roka.”

Raising an eyebrow, Valerie broke into a little smile.  “You called yourself Zel Roka back then?”

He laughed.  “Well, no, but I did record the song and made a video for it.”

“Is that right?”

He leaned forward to snag a cookie off the tiered stand in the middle of the coffee table.  It never made it to his mouth, though.  Hayden spotted it and took it before Evan could even get a bite.  “Yeah . . . You want to see it?”

“Of course I do,” Valerie said as Jack wiggled off her lap and toddled off to locate the source of the voice he heard in the distance—Uncle Bas, the boy’s favorite walking, talking jungle gym.  Hayden must have decided that he’d rather follow Jack than hang out with Evan, and he quickly followed suit.

“Okay, okay.  First, though, I think I should get Mama.  She doesn’t like it when we watch the video without her.”

“Watch what?” Gin Zelig asked as she waltzed into the room with Daniella, fresh from her bath and snuggled in a thick, fluffy pink towel, in her arms.  The instant Daniella clapped eyes on Evan, however, she pushed against her mother and struggled to get down, reaching out with her free hand toward her older brother.

Evan chuckled and intercepted the girl before she toppled right out of Gin’s arms.  “The song I wrote you for Christmas, Mama,” Evan explained after pausing long enough to plant a very loud kiss on Daniella’s cheek.

The smile on Gin’s face positively glowed, and she veered off toward the entertainment center to queue the video in question on the home movie interface.  “Oh!  Let me go get everyone,” she said, clapping her hands in sheer anticipation.  “They’ll all enjoy it; I’m sure!”

Evan laughed as Gin hurried out of the room to round up the masses.

“Is that wishful thinking on her part?” Valerie asked as she watched her mother-in-law hurry out of the living room.

“Actually, they all do like it,” Evan told her.

“Even your brother?”

Daniella reached out and grasped a handful of Valerie’s hair before heaving a sigh and snuggling closer against Evan’s chest.  Evan kissed his baby sister on the forehead before grinning at his wife once more.  “Well, yeah . . . I mean, he did help me out.”

Valerie rather enjoyed hearing stories from way back when the brothers actually got along, and the expression on her face said as much, so with a soft chuckle, Evan shifted slightly, facing Valerie more fully.  “Like I said, that’s where it all started . . .”


“Okay, Evan.  Whenever you’re ready.”

Cain settled back in the utilitarian office chair and waited while Gus MacCready, the professor in charge of the performance arts department at the University of Maine, fiddled with a few of the sliders on the mixing board.  After promising a healthy donation to said-university, he’d been able to talk Gus into letting them bring Evan in to record the song the boy had written for Gin, and then he’d paid a few students to come in to help out with the drums and guitar, though Evan himself had managed a pretty good play-through on the harmonica and that ass-monkey of a brother of Gin’s had agreed to tag along to provide piano tracks.  It was rather funny, really.  Evan had listened to the makeshift session musicians very critically and had then proceeded to tell them what he did and didn’t like about their rendition of his song.  In the end, though, Evan seemed happy enough with the background track, and in Cain’s opinion, that’s all that really mattered.

Now Evan was sitting on a high stool in front of the microphone in the small adjacent room with a pair of oversized earphones on his head and looking surprisingly focused upon what he was doing.  Beside him sat Jillian on another stool, also with a pair of headphones on.  Evan said she could sing the song with him, but Cain figured that wasn’t likely to happen.

Evan reached up to press one side of the headphone more firmly against his ear, pointing a finger at the sound booth to indicate that he was ready, and Cain chuckled to himself.

Gus hit the button to begin the background track and to record Evan’s vocals, then he shot Cain a knowing look.  “That kid’s a natural if I’ve ever seen one,” Gus remarked candidly.  “He’s, what?  Six?”

“Almost,” Cain replied.  “Well, he’ll be six in April.”

Slowly, Gus shook his head and whistled low.  “You ever had him in a studio before?”

“Nope,” Cain admitted.  “First time.”

“And he wrote this song himself?”

“Yes, he did.”

Gus didn’t comment on that, but he did look duly impressed.

“Let me have that!”

“Shut up, Morio,” Bas grumbled as he slowly shifted the hand-held camera around the room.  Cain had talked the boys into coming along to get some video of the process.  It wasn’t that difficult.  Bas rather enjoyed messing around with the camera, and the cousins tended to hang out, and it didn’t seem to matter to any of them where they were, so Morio and Mikio had agreed readily enough.  No, the hardest to convince had been Gunnar, and that was only because his father, Toga was holed up in Cain’s office with Sesshoumaru, talking shop.  At fifteen, Gunnar was a little too concerned about tai-youkai business.  After all, he had years to look forward to that kind of thing later on down the road.  For now, Cain figured that he ought to be more concerned with girls or video games or something like that.  Even so, Gunnar had finally agreed to come along, too, so the long and short of it was that the small recording studio area was pretty damn crowded at the moment . . .

“Aww, c’mon, Bas,” Morio prodded.

Kichiro slipped back into the room with a steaming Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand.  “Forget it, Morio.  You just want to sneak out and film the college girls.”

Morio didn’t deny the charge.  In fact, he grinned unrepentantly at his uncle.

“There’s something wrong with you,” Gunnar muttered, crossing his arms over his chest as he scowled at Evan through the window.

“Yeah, well, just keep him out of there, if you know what’s good for you,” Mikio remarked mildly as he sat off to the side, fiddling idly with his twitching ear.  “Nee-chan won’t be impressed if you let him in there to sing.”

“What?  I sing good!” Morio insisted haughtily.  His cousins all turned to give him their versions of ‘The Look’.

“No, you don’t,” Bas muttered, dismissing Morio’s claims quickly enough.

“You really don’t,” Gunnar agreed.

“Be glad he’s never dragged you off to do karaoke,” Mikio said, unable to keep from making a face to show his general disgust.  “It hurts.”

Morio laughed good-naturedly.  “I’m not that bad, am I?”

Kichiro snorted.  “Almost as bad as your old man,” he stated.  Then he shifted his gaze back to the boy in the sound booth.  “That one . . .” he said, nodding at the window.  “That one’s pretty damn good.”


“Here.  I’m pretty sure that this is yours.”

Cain glanced up from the cup of coffee in his hand, only to blink when Bas strode across the kitchen to deposit Evan onto the floor.  He was carrying the boy under his arm like a football, and when he let go of Evan, the child plopped with a dull thud and a giggle.  “Nope, I’m pretty sure that’s your mom’s,” Cain replied dryly as Evan scampered to his feet, hiking up his jeans yet again.

“Yeah, well, he woke me up by trying to gouge out my eye.  Maybe you should trim his claws.”

“What?  Did the caps come off?” Cain asked, his gaze shifting to Evan’s little hand.  From where he stood, he couldn’t quite tell whether or not the little clear rubber claw caps were still there or not.

“They’re still pokey, even if they were still there—which they aren’t,” Bas pointed out.

“I had to take ‘em off to pick your lock, Bubby,” Evan said.

Bas snorted and rolled his eyes. “Ever think it might have been locked for a reason, Evan?”

Evan looked duly befuddled by this idea.  It had obviously not occurred to him that Bas might have actually wanted to keep him out of his room . . .

“Daddy said you’d help me make a music video,” Evan insisted, darting around Bas and ferreting his way between his brother and the refrigerator.

“I will?” Bas asked, turning his head to address his father.

Cain chuckled.  “Sure.  Why not?  Take him out and shoot his video for him.”

Bas stared at him for a long moment before reaching for the bottle of orange juice and effectively ignoring Evan’s interference.  “Why can’t you do it?”

“Because I’m going to be busy designing the cover for his CD,” Cain replied simply.

Bas rolled his eyes but smiled at his father.  “All right; all right.”

“Daddy!” Evan suddenly exclaimed, pushing past Bas in favor of skittering over to stand in front of Cain instead.

“What?”

“I need rockstar clothes!” Evan insisted.

Bas snorted.  The sound was muffled by the bottle of juice since he hadn’t bothered to get a glass out of the cupboard.  “Five year old rockstar clothes?”

Cain considered that then shrugged as he dug a credit card out of his wallet.  “Here,” he said, handing it over Evan’s head to Bas. “Take him to the store and let him get his rockstar clothes.”

Bas’ expression stated quite plainly that he thought Cain might well have lost his mind.  “You’re not serious, right?”

Shrugging again, Cain emptied his coffee cup in one long swallow.  “Sure.  Why not?  In for a penny, in for a pound, right?  Take the snow mobiles.  I’m sure you boys won’t mind.”

No, they wouldn’t mind taking the snow mobiles out for a ride, but what they would mind was dragging Evan along with them.  ‘Why couldn’t Evan be normal and want to get Mom a scarf or something?’ Bas wondered as he slipped the card into his wallet without complaint.  After all, he was trying to talk his dad into buying him a car as soon as he turned sixteen, so going along with this whole thing was only going to help him in the long run . . .

It took about an hour to get his cousins and Mikio up and moving, and by then, the whole venture was looking worse by the moment.  Evan’s best buddy, Madison had arrived with her parents—her mother was there to visit Bellaniece, and her father was in the study with Cain, probably talking shop.  Evan had decided that Madison needed to come along to help him pick out his ‘rockstar clothes’.  Not only that, but Isabelle insisted on coming along.  About the only good luck they’d had was that Lexi was helping Gin in the kitchen, and Jillian was preoccupied since Gavin and his mother were spending the holiday here, too.

So Bas rode to town with Evan on the back of his snow mobile while Madison rode with Mikio and Isabelle rode with Gunnar.  No one thought that letting Morio tote anyone was a good idea in general, but they made it with little incident—if one discounted Evan hollering when he accidentally dropped the candy cane he’d pilfered off the tree in the hallway.

Isabelle seemed to be enjoying helping Evan pick out suitable clothes, and somewhere along the line, Evan had decided that he needed Isabelle, Jillian, and Madison to be his ‘rockstar hunnies’, so they were also looking for clothes.  Bas figured it was a good thing that Isabelle had come along since he had no frigging idea what size anything Jillian might wear.  All in all, Bas and the other boys were content to stand back and let the three of them have at it.

Whatever Evan wanted, that’s what Cain had said, so Bas didn’t even blink when Evan proclaimed that he needed a black leather jacket because, “all rockstars had those!”  Then Isabelle had talked Evan into getting a pair of black shit-kicker boots to complete the ensemble.  Luckily for them all, Evan had decided that he’d rather wear black jeans than leather pants—did they even make leather pants that small?

It wasn’t all bad, though.  They’d taken a break for lunch at the food court, and Bas had seen a number of his school friends.  Morio had spent a good hour trying to get a phone number from the girl manning the cash register at the Chick-fil-A.  Gunnar had gotten hit on by a few of the girls from Bas’ trig class, much to Gunnar’s absolute irritation.  Mikio had just sat back and watched it all with a rather bemused smile on his face—until those girls noticed him, anyway.  For some reason, girls always just seemed to think that Mikio was the cutest thing since puppies.

“I’ll rip ‘em up when I get home!” Evan announced happily as Bas struggled to fit the bags and packages into the small compartments on the snow mobiles.  He had a feeling that ripping up a brand new pair of jeans wasn’t going to sit well with their parents, but Cain did say, ‘whatever Evan wanted’ . . .

Bas nodded and forced the compartment closed.  He’d had to ditch the box that the boots had come in to get them to fit.  “Yeah, well, you realize that your video’s going to have to wait till tomorrow, right?”

Evan blinked and stared at Bas for a moment. “Why?”

“Because it’s already getting late,” Bas pointed out reasonably.  “We’ll film your video tomorrow, okay?”

Evan didn’t look entirely pleased, but he nodded.  “Oka-a-a-a-ay,” he drawled.  If he’d had hanyou ears, they’d be flattened, Bas figured.


“What about here?”

Evan crossed his arms over his chest and surveyed the area with a critical eye as he considered Bas’ question.  “Okay, but can we film down by the pond, too?” he asked hesitantly.

Bas shrugged as he set the camera’s tripod up.  “All right,” he allowed.  “But you know, we’ve already recorded your performance about fifty times.”

“Yeah, and it’s not like it’s fucking freezing out here or anything,” Morio pointed out, opening and closing his hand around the drumsticks.  He looked pretty silly—they all did.  Evan had decided that he needed to have his backup band in the video, so he’d managed to cajole Morio, Mikio, and Gavin into helping him out.  Gavin had only agreed when Evan had promised that he’d leave him alone and let him play video games for the rest of his visit.  Mikio looked pretty goofy since the guitar in his hands had a picture of Perry the Power Puppy painted on it.  Gavin had an Evan-sized, electric blue keyboard that he was pretending to play in the video, and Morio?  Well, he’d claimed the snare drum from Evan’s drum kit he’d gotten last year for his birthday—the dumbest present ever, if one asked Bas . . .

And they had been at it for hours already.  Evan had decided he wanted to have some footage taken while the sun came up, which might have been all right had the sun actually been visible.  True to form, however, it was overcast and pretty gloomy-looking, but at least it hadn’t started snowing.  Yet.

Isabelle, Lexi, Jillian, and Madison huddled together just off center.  At least they were being good sports about the whole thing, even if they were freezing.

“Here,” Gunnar said, shrugging off the backpack that Gin had given them earlier in the kitchen.  She’d made sure to pack a couple huge thermos jugs of warmed apple cider along with some heat-packed caramel buns.  He filled a plastic mug with cider and handed it to Isabelle then repeated the process for the other girls, too.  “Hurry it up, Evan, before the girls freeze,” he growled.

Evan looked rather put out by the interruption, but he spent the down-time scoping out the area, trying to decide which angle would be best for his video.  Bas poured himself some cider and rolled his eyes as he watched his younger brother.  It surprised him that Evan was so into the whole thing.  Oh, sure, it didn’t surprise him that Evan was gung-ho about recording a song.  He’d been singing since he had learned how to talk.  But he tended to be very easily distracted, so his level of concentration was almost commendable.

“How ‘bout over here, Bubby?” Evan finally said, gesturing at the crumbling wall that disappeared under the snow after the first twenty feet or so.  To Bas, it looked pretty much the same as every other area they’d shot today, but he would be the last one to burst Evan’s proverbial bubble.

“Looks good to me,” Bas allowed.

Evan shot him an almost timid sort of glance, only to break into a smile when he decided that Bas wasn’t simply humoring him, after all.  Then he ran over to Bas and kind of hopped up and down.  “You think Mama will like it?”

Bas snorted and handed Evan the rest of his cup of cider.  “Mom likes everything you do, Evan,” he pointed out.  “She’ll love it—and we’ll never hear the end of it, I’m sure.”

Evan giggled and sucked down the rest of the cider.  “Okay!” he hollered, clapping his Power Puppy mitten-covered hands—very ‘rock’, absolutely.  “Come on, people! Back to work!”

Rolling his eyes again, Bas fiddled with the camera tripod while Evan herded everyone else back into their assigned places.

“What a little tyrant,” Gunnar remarked as he stowed the rest of the cider and the empty mugs into the backpack again.

“You have any idea how funny that statement is, coming from you?” Bas countered mildly.

Gunnar sighed—well, sort of sighed.  It was about as close to a sigh as Gunnar ever uttered.  “I hope he’s had enough after this take,” Gunnar went on, ignoring Bas’ bald statement.  “The girls are freezing.”

Bas was inclined to agree with Gunnar, mostly because said-girls were wearing their ‘rock hunny’ clothes, and their coats just didn’t fit into the arrangement.  Still, they were all youkai—or half, at least, and they’d be just fine.  “Okay,” he said after pressing the ‘record’ button on the camera, nodding at the Gunnar to begin the audio so that Evan could get this take done.  “Evan, this is going to have to be the last take.  We’re almost out of memory.”


“Well, what do you think?”

Evan scrunched up his face and tilted his head to the side as he regarded the picture with a critical eye.  Cartoon-ish Santa holding a very buxom cartoon-ish Gin on his lap.  She’d taken his hat and perched it atop her head, not that the old guy seemed to mind.  All in all, Cain figured it was as cutesy as he could manage and not at all even remotely close to anything that he usually did.  But it was for a good cause, and if he were to admit as much, he’d have to say that it wasn’t bad . . .

“Mommy’s got a big head!” Evan said, evidently pleased by Cain’s drawing.

“You said you wanted her to look cute,” Cain reminded him.

Evan nodded.  “I like it!” he decided.  “Evan Zelig . . . My Blue Christmas,” he read.  Then he shot Cain a rather anxious look.  “Mama will like it, right?”

Sparing a moment to ruffle Evan’s hair before he leaned down to put the blank-surface CD into the ink screener, Cain chuckled.  “She’ll love it, of course,” he assured the boy.  Gus MacCready had given him five copies of the CD, but they weren’t printed, which was fine since Cain hadn’t done the art at that time.  He’d gone out of his way, though, to make sure that it was all done as well as the professional releases, right down to the musical credits inside the cover folder.  Besides, he really ought to send a copy of the song to the copyright office . . .

Bas stuck his head into the studio and glanced around.  When he spotted Cain and Evan over by the desk, he stepped into the room.  “Here,” he said as he crossed the floor and held out a small memory card.

“What’s this?”

Bas shrugged.  “It’s all the video footage,” Bas explained as though Cain ought to have known.  “I don’t do editing.  Oh, and Evan, Mom’s looking for you.  She said it’s time for your bath.”

Cain chuckled and took the card while Evan wiggled off his father’s lap and scampered toward the door.

“Good luck with that,” Bas said as he headed out after his brother.

“What do you mean?”

Bas shook his head.  “That card’s full,” he explained simply.

“Oh . . . wow . . .”

It took a while for Cain to scan through the various location shots, and he chuckled at the child’s idea of ‘rock n’ roll’.  He wasn’t sure which was more amusing: the actual video shots or the sight of the older boys, holding toy instruments, though he suspected that it might be the latter.  He’d dragged the girls out to the video shoot, too, and Cain shook his head slowly.  Those poor girls were probably frozen, solid though they all seemed to be I good spirits when they’d finally filed back into the house hours ago.  At least Evan had worn a jacket, which was more than could be said for his female posse.

Add to that, the footage that Bas had gotten in the recording studio, and Cain figured that there had to be at least eighteen-plus-hours of video.

He was by no means a specialist in this kind of thing, and he might well be in over his head . . .

A curt knock on the studio door drew his attention, and Cain glanced up from the computer long enough to nod as Moe Jamison strode into the room.  “Gin said you were up here,” he said, skipping over the pleasantries.  He’d been out on a job to hunt down a renegade thunder youkai who was wanted for a string of murders that spanned over fifty years.  Cain was relieved that Moe was back, and in time for Christmas, too.  The thunder youkai had proved elusive in the past, which was why they’d invited Moe’s family to Maine for the holiday this year.

“All taken care of?” Cain asked.

Moe grunted and nodded.  He wasn’t exactly a huge talker—none of Cain’s top three hunters really were.

“Thanks.”

Moe nodded as he dropped heavily into the chair across from the desk.  “What’s that?” he questioned, nodding once at the crystalex television that spanned the wall.

Cain sighed.  “Evan wanted to write a song for Gin for Christmas,” he explained.  “That’s the footage Bas shot for the video.”

“What?  You’re making a music video?”

“Something like that.  I don’t even know where to start though.”

Scratching his chin thoughtfully, Moe gave a little shrug.  “I can do that for you if you want,” he offered at length.  “Wouldn’t be too hard to do.”

“Really?” Cain asked.  The offer surprised him though it probably shouldn’t have.  After all, Moe had an affinity for anything electronic in origin.  “You wouldn’t mind doing it?”

Moe shook his head and frowned for a second.  “Nope, not at all.  Send me the files, and I’ll get the video back to you tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Cain said, sending the video files and the audio track to the secured network that he usually only sent digital files to the hunters through.  But he couldn’t be sure that Gin wouldn’t accidentally find it if he put it up on the shared house network, so . . .

Hauling himself out of the chair, Moe stretched and stifled a yawn.  “I’ll get right on it . . . Well, maybe after a quick nap . . .”

Cain chuckled, lifting a hand and nodded as Moe slipped out of the studio.  He got ready to close out the video editor.  Then he stopped with a frown.  It seemed like a waste, didn’t it?  There was so much footage that cutting it all down to two and a half minutes would be kind of silly.  Clicking on the video files from the recording studio, Cain leaned forward and scanned through the first ten minutes.  He’d just put together a making-of video.  Rockstars did that, right . . .?

He heard the door open and close again, but he didn’t look away from the video.

“Are you working on my video, Daddy?”

Cain reached down and scooped Evan into his lap without looking away from the television.  “Moe’s going to do that for you, Evan.”

Evan considered that for a moment but must have decided that it was all right with him.  Tucking his head a little closer under Cain’s chin, he pointed at the television.  “What are you doing, Daddy?”

“Well, I was going to make a documentary of the making of your song and video,” Cain admitted.  “What do you think?  That’s a pretty good shot of you in the studio, huh?”

Scrunching his face up in a thoughtful scowl, Evan slowly nodded.  “Yeah!” he agreed.  “I look busy!”

Cain chuckled and backed up the feed to select a length of the video.  “You can give it to your mama, too.”

“Because she’ll love it!”

“Of course she will,” Cain agreed.

“Don’t forget Bubby!” Evan insisted, sitting up quickly and jacking Cain right in the jaw.

“Ow,” Cain groaned, shifting his jaw back and forth.

“Sorry, Daddy, sorry!” Evan exclaimed, rubbing the top of his head where he’d collided with his father.  “You okay, Daddy?  You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Cain said, sparing a moment to ruffle Evan’s hair.  “Help me pick out your favorite stuff, okay?”

Satisfied that he hadn’t caused his father any serious damage, Evan settled back against his chest and sighed.  “All right,” he said, tugging the blanket he’d dragged into the studio with him—his Power Puppy blanket that had been washed so often that the red puppy was starting to look a little pink instead, and the yellow puppy had faded to white about fifty washes ago . . . But he loved that blanket.  It matched his Power Puppy footy-pajamas, he said.

There were precious few moments, Cain thought, when Evan willingly chose to be with him instead of hanging around his mother.  No matter how much he’d spent on studio time, not to mention the new wardrobe and things like that, this whole song-thing . . .

It was definitely worth it.


“And that’s how I came to record my first song,” Evan concluded.

Valerie laughed and settled closer against his side with Jack in her lap once more, and just in time, too.  Gin set a tray of cheese and crackers on the table and settled down on Cain’s knee, which was about the only place left.  Gavin and Jillian were sitting on the floor with Hayden and Connor.  Daniella was still resting comfortably against Evan’s chest.  Bas and Sydnie were sharing one of the oversized chairs.  Bailey, Olivia, Tanny, and Takara were still upstairs playing, though Valerie figured that it was almost time for the four of them to sneak back in the room for another round of cookies and milk, especially since Tanny had already stripped the tree in the upstairs hallway off all the candy canes.

InuYasha and Kagome were also settled on the floor.  It never ceased to amuse Valerie, just how dog-like InuYasha tended to be.  Evan had his moments, sure, but InuYasha?  No contest.  Not even close.

Isabelle and her husband, Griffin sat on the other sofa with Samantha and Kurt, who hadn’t spoken more than a few sentences the entire weekend since their arrival.  She knew damn well that he was friendly enough, just really quiet, though Evan had told her earlier that it was probably because of Kichiro’s presence.  They had a cautious understanding that they’d be civil to one another when they were in the same place, but that was about the extent of it.  Of course, knowing the story behind the tension, Valerie could understand just why Kichiro wasn’t too gung-ho about his youngest daughter’s husband.

Kichiro wasn’t in the room at the moment, however.  According to Kagome, he, Ryomaru, and Toga, and their wives were all out together doing some last-minute shopping since none of them had brought along gifts.  They’d bought gift cards for the adults, but children didn’t exactly appreciate that kind of thing.

“Should we watch the video first or the documentary?” Gin asked.

“The video, Mama,” Evan replied, pulling Valerie a little closer against his side.

Gin giggled and held up the remote control to start the play back.

It was cute.  There was no other way to describe it.  Alternating between ‘location’ shots from all over the Zelig estate and with some studio footage thrown in, Valerie had to admit that the best parts were the other kids, ‘playing’ along with him.  Morio was hamming it up—he and his wife weren’t able to make the trip this year, which was a shame.  Valerie rather liked Meara a lot.

By the end of the song, everyone was laughing.  It seemed the entire song revolved around everything bad that Evan had done during that year, all leading up to why Evan was expecting ‘My Blue Christmas’.

“Did you really do all of that stuff in one year?” Valerie had to ask when the video ended.

Evan grinned unrepentantly.  “There was more, but the song wouldn’t have ended if I’d added them all.”

Bas snorted as Gunnar handed him a beer and moved off to slouch against the wall.  “Oh, there was definitely more, but those were the highlights.”

Valerie shook her head but couldn’t contain the giggles that welled up and out of her.  “You were really a rotten kid, weren’t you?”

“Oh, I thought that the song was so sweet!” Gin argued as the making-of video started.

“In a kind of twisted way,” Valerie allowed.

“And you married him willingly,” Cain reminded her.

Valerie heaved a sigh but leaned up to kiss Evan on the cheek.  “Yes, I did.”

“Aww, look!  You were so sweet!” Jillian piped up, pointing at the screen as she positively beamed at her mate.

Valerie blinked and shook her head in confusion as she turned her attention back to the video.  It was Jillian, all right, in the recording studio where she was sitting beside a small boy no bigger than she was.  Well, maybe slightly bigger, but not by much, if any.  He looked vaguely familiar-ish.  “Who’s that?” she asked without turning to face Van with her question.

Evan laughed.  “That little squirt?  That’s Gavvie!”

“Wh—What?” Valerie blurted before she could stop herself.  Now that he mentioned it, okay, Valerie could see the resemblance, but it just didn’t make sense.  Gavin Jamison was easily almost as big as Bas, very nearly as wide if not slightly broader in the shoulders.  “No way . . .”

Gavin heaved a sigh, his cheeks pinking slightly.  “Yeah, that’s me,” he muttered.

Valerie still wasn’t entirely sure she could believe that, but no one admitted that it was some kind of strange joke, either.

The scene cut to what must have been a planning session for the video.  All the kids were sitting around while Evan drew out the ideas on a huge tablet of paper with a bright green marker.  One in particular caught Valerie’s attention, and she leaned toward Evan.  “Whose girlfriend is that?”

Evan turned to face her with a marked frown.  “Girlfriend?”

Valerie nodded. “Yeah, the pretty black-haired girl.”

Evan blinked once, twice, then shifted his gaze back to the television again.  Then he choked.  And coughed.  And choked again.  “That . . . That’s not a girl,” he said.  “That’s Gunnar.”

Valerie gasped and smashed a hand over her mouth.  “No!” she hissed, trying not to look at the man in question.

“Yeah,” Evan replied.

Gunnar snorted from across the room but remained silent.

“But he’s so pretty!” Valerie protested.  “I mean—”

“Don’t worry about it, V,” Evan laughed.  “From what I understand, you’re not the first to have mistaken him for a girl when he was a teenager.”

“Shut up, Evan,” Gunnar remarked, still looking entirely bored despite the hint of irritation in his voice.

“Just think, Valerie, you’ve got all that to look forward to,” Bas pointed out, nodding at a dozing Jack in her arms.

Valerie laughed and kissed her baby on the head.  Jack yawned but snuggled closer against his mother.

“Merry Christmas, V,” Evan murmured, giving her quick squeeze.

“Merry Christmas,” she replied.  “And sorry about the girl comment, Gunnar.”

Gunnar didn’t answer.  Instead, he uttered a terse grunt and pushed himself away from the wall to stalk out of the room with laughter trailing after him in his wake.