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As Christmas Eve approached the Xavier Institute, the youngsters inside were looking forward to hosting some very special guests. On more than one occasion, the teenagers could be spotted freezing their noses at the windowpanes as they attempted to feign patience while they watched for any sign of their guests’ arrival. After all, it wasn’t every day the Fantastic Four dropped by your boarding school for a social visit.
Last year, the Four had invited them all to the Baxter Building for the holidays. Now, the merry mutants returned the favor in kind: they lent the sort of excitement only teenagers could as they streamed out the front door to greet their friends before they’d even made it up the full length of the driveway.
All told, it was a spectacular get together. Ben and Hank carried an enormous tree into the foyer, and everybody had a hand in decorating it. Meanwhile, there were spirited discussions about physics, space exploration, political progress, and battle tactics. When they couldn’t fit another festive trimming on the boughs, board and card games were played inside; while snowball fights, ice skating, and sledding took place outdoors.
Despite numerous sweet offers from the men, Jean Grey and Sue Storm insisted on preparing dinner almost entirely by themselves. In truth, they were both thrilled to have another superheroine around to discuss their unusual lives with and to do shamelessly girlish things with each other. Neither minded living in a house where they were the only woman around, but they took the chance to revel in each other's company while they had it. For both of them, it was novel to have someone around who could have a sincere discussion about fashion, feminism, and their love lives. Sue had recently married Reed; Jean was dating Warren, but harboring a crush on Scott. Such a topic wasn’t the easiest to discuss when half of her housemates were those same suitors.
With finished dishes staying warm in their crockery, simmering kettles on a low stove, and a main course continuing to brown in the oven, Sue and Jean had a spare moment to go change out of their messy work clothes, gossiping merrily. Neither of them noticed that two scoundrels had been lurking just outside the kitchen, waiting for it to be unattended.
When their voices faded down the hall, Bobby Drake and Johnny Storm sauntered in on a quest to devour as many of the chocolate and peppermint sweets as they could fit into their greedy teenage stomachs.
For the first few minutes, this went perfectly fine for the two friends. Despite their opposite powers, Iceman and the Human Torch had similar personalities. Bobby was a little more reserved and shy than the attention-magnet that was Johnny. He wouldn’t have come up with this plan by himself, but he was all too happy to go along with it once Johnny roped him in. So they happily devoured sweets and shared conspiratory glances at each other, thinking they had gotten away with something.
When they got into the large Christmas cookies, fate intervened. Each one had been made from scratch, hand-rolled and cut by Sue, then decorated by Jean: one cookie for every person in the mansion. But with Charles, his students, the Fan Four, and Ben’s girlfriend Alicia, there were eleven cookies between them. And when Johnny set his sights on it, Bobby wasn’t going to stand for it.
“No way you get to have more than me! Fair is fair!” Bobby exclaimed, turning the snowman shaped cookie into a literal snowball.
“Jerk! Now you’ve totally ruined it!” Johnny punched Bobby in the arm, and burned the frozen cookie to ashes.
Bobby gave Johnny a receipt for the punch. Then Johnny hit back, and so did Bobby, and soon they were scuffling all over the kitchen. With the combined maturity of a ten year-old, the two boys went at each other tooth and nail. As any fracas between mutants and metahumans is wont to do, it quickly got out of hand–Johnny set the candied yams ablaze, Bobby frosted over the honey ham. Every few seconds, some other food item was ruined beyond repair. The only thing that stopped their grudge match was a pair of furious voices.
“Jonathan Storm!” Sue shouted from the doorway.
“Robert Drake!” hissed Jean not a second later, placing her hands on her hips and tapping her shoe against the tile floor. In tandem, Sue crossed her arms and scowled fiercely at her younger brother.
“He started it!” both Johnny and Bobby protested–from the floor.
The boys stopped wrestling each other and got to their feet. Bobby scraped cranberry sauce off of his Chanukah sweater, while Johnny wiped mashed potatoes off of his Santa Claus pajamas. They frowned at each other, but that didn’t satisfy their mutual annoyance for long: Bobby stuck out his tongue at Johnny, who reciprocated in kind. Before long, a battle of tongue showing was breaking out.
“Stop that, both of you!” Jean declared with a snap of her fingers, wrenching their attention back to her.
“I can’t believe you, Johnny,” Sue grumbled, surveying the collateral damage of their battle. “Everything is ruined! What on Earth were you two fighting about?”
“Johnny was trying to have six cookies when I only had five!” Bobby accused, even now feeling that this injustice should not stand.
“Shut up, you little twerp!” Johnny growled. Though he did have two years on Bobby, he was only seventeen and thus quite fit the twerp description himself.
“You two ate all of the Christmas cookies? I only made one for each of us!” Sue wailed, tugging on her golden locks and gritting her teeth.
Jean looked like she was about to develop a migraine. “Do you have any idea how long we worked on this meal? The two of you ought to be ashamed of yourselves!”
There was an awkward silence for a moment as the young women waited for any kind of apology.
None came.
Jean and Sue’s brows furrowed into downright murderous glares.
“Aren’t you going to apologize?” Johnny demanded after a moment under those lasers, nudging Bobby’s shoulder with his own.
“Me?” Bobby said incredulously. “This is all your fault, you apologize!”
“No, you!”
“You!”
Before the two of them could start shoving and choking each other again, Jean used her powers to pull on Bobby’s collar and get him safely out of Johnny’s reach. Then she grabbed his ear in a stern pinch.
“You are being ridiculous. I think we should go straight to the Professor and talk about this,” she told Bobby, causing him to blush and squirm in her grip.
Johnny started laughing, but was promptly cut off when Susan walked over and hooked his left arm with her own.
“Hey come on! What are you doing?” he asked as she dragged him around.
“I don’t need to talk to Reed or Ben about what to do with you,” Sue stated simply, pulling out one of the chairs from the kitchen counter and taking a seat. “You’re getting your bottom spanked for this, you incorrigible brat!”
“What? No, sis, you can’t! Not in front of them!”
Jean’s eyes widened and Bobby gasped as Sue yanked Johnny right off the ground, bending him over her lap. Before Johnny could even plead his case, Susan was smacking his pajama covered rear with the flat of her palm. And, judging by the whimpering following every loud cracking sound, she was doing a very good job.
“Oh my god, get me out of here,” Bobby begged, trying to run out of the kitchen, ear be damned.
“Actually, I think Susie has the right idea,” Jean declared. Like most of the X-Men, she’d had an occasion to spank Bobby before, and it seemed like the time was right to do so again. “If you two can’t get along and can’t even be man enough to apologize, then you can be punished together.”
“Jeannie, no!” Bobby wailed. He might as well have whistled into the wind for all the good it did. Jean echoed Susan’s actions, and soon enough, she had the fifteen year old over her knee, peppering his bottom with a veritable blizzard of spanks. While Sue was deliberate and stern in her practiced technique, Jean made up for her comparable lack with the speed of her brisk hand.
Like Johnny, Bobby’s pajamas offered little protection. After about two minutes of smacking, the two women had two kicking, pouting, fussy little boys over their knees begging to be freed from their consequences.
“Stop it! This is humiliating!” Johnny hollered.
“You deserve it,” Susan assured him.
“No more, please! It stings!” Bobby begged.
“It’s supposed to!” Jean reminded him.
Susan was the first to stop spanking, setting her younger brother on his feet. Jean continued to spank, since she’d taken almost thirty seconds to follow Susan’s lead.
“Go put your nose in that corner, Johnny,” Susan instructed. “You’re not done, but I haven’t decided what all you deserve yet.”
“Aw, shoot. Susan,” Johnny protested, but he obeyed after being spurred on by another hard swat.
“And you too,” Jean ordered Bobby only a moment later, pointing at the other corner with one hand and maneuvering him upright with the other. “Not a word out of either of you while you’re in time out, or I’ll call Scott in here to take a belt to both of you!”
“No! Not that!” Bobby pleaded as he was finally set down. He scurried off to his designated corner, getting there before Johnny, who was much more inclined to dawdle.
Once again, there was silence in the room. It seemed even more uncanny after the last few minutes had been filled with smacking noises and pitiful cries from naughty boys. Jean massaged her temples in frustration, while Susan started pacing a clean patch of floor as she considered what to do.
“I can’t believe you would do this at this party, Johnny,” Susan scolded. “We’re guests in this house, and you’ve ruined our Christmas dinner by being petty and immature! I can’t believe I have to lecture you about this, just two days after I spanked you for speeding! I’m so tired of having to punish you all the time.”
Johnny grumbled and balled his hands into fists, clearly embarrassed to be tattled on while he was in the corner with a bottom that wasn’t burning because of his powers.
“Bobby, I’m disappointed in you,” Jean started. “We’ve all told you that you need to cut back on sweets, and start acting like a grown up. Do you want even more cavities? Judging by how you were acting when the Professor and I took you to the dentist, I don’t think that’s the case. Are you even going to listen to a thing that any of the X-Men tell you?”
Bobby slumped against the wall, almost ready to melt into a puddle.
After they finished scolding, Sue and Jean looked at each other. There were a few moments as they read each other’s expressions. Then they both smiled devilishly, filled with the same terrible idea for how to deal with the naughty children they were currently babysitting. Sue felt as if she could read Jean’s mind.
“Well, if he won’t listen to the X-Men, perhaps he’ll listen to me,” she declared. “Especially when he’s over my knee.”
“A brilliant idea,” Jean agreed. “And if you’re so tired of having to spank Johnny, I can do it for you!”
“What?” the boys said in unison. “You two can’t be serious!”
Jean and Sue saw no issues with their plan. Indeed, they were quite pleased with themselves. Sue went to each corner in turn and grabbed the boys by the wrists, pulling them back to the center of the room. While she fetched the unfortunate spankees-to-be, Jean retrieved two identical wooden spoons from the counter to mete out punishment with.
“Oh, we’re very serious,” Susan declared, handing Johnny off to Jean and taking her spoon in return. “There’s nothing you boys deserve more than a proper, humiliating little paddling.”
“Jean! You can’t let her do this!” Bobby protested, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Clearly, the prospect of being spanked by someone who wasn’t even his teammate was too much for him to bear; he had already started to cry.
“Oh, I can,” Jean said, wagging her finger at Bobby. “Naughty boys get their bare bottoms spanked. Even on Christmas Eve.”
In spite of himself, Johnny had an impish little smirk for Jean when she turned to face him. She glared daggers at him. If he thought the prospect of being paddled by a beautiful redhead was something he might enjoy, he was in for a nasty surprise.
This time, Susan and Jean acted in unison. They pulled their chairs out and sat so they could face each other. They pulled their exchanged brats over their laps with little struggle, and as promised, yanked their pajama bottoms down to their knees. Jean could see that Bobby’s bottom had turned pink from her ministrations, while Sue was unsurprised to see her cherry handprints still decorating Johnny’s cheeks.
With their spoons at the ready, the girls held their charges tight and silently counted to three. Once the number was reached, they started teeing off, soundly smacking the boys. They watched each other spank, Jean making Johnny swear and Susan driving Bobby to kick with abandon.
“I’ll wash that mouth out with soap, young man!” Jean promised, laying in slower, harder smacks in imitation of Sue’s more practiced style.
“If you kick my arm I’ll paddle your thighs, little mister,” Susan threatened, lightly tapping Bobby’s exposed legs until he forced himself to be still.
As the boys whined and wiggled and promised to be good, the girls continued to waylay their vulnerable posteriors with abandon. Indeed, the spirit of the season had seemed to strike them both, and they were gleefully generous in the amount of wallops they dished out. Every once in a while, one would feel guilty, only to look up and see the other smiling as she administered discipline. The sight of another woman relishing the chance to put a bratty young man in his place would spur the other to redouble her own efforts. Before long, the thunderous clatter of spoons warming flesh were joined by the smug giggles of the spankers and the woeful tears of the poor miscreants at their mercy.
But such a din could not go by unnoticed. Susan and Jean were so deeply distracted by their reverie that they did not hear even the heavy earthen steps of a large, stone man coming into the kitchen to investigate what was making two teenagers cry like babies. When Benjamin Grimm heard the unmistakable sounds of spanking, he had an idea of what was going on. But when he heard what was obviously feminine laughter, he was sure that Medusa or Enchantress had snuck into the mansion, and whatever femme fatale had darkened their doorstep was now making herself merry by tanning the hides of the youngest superheroes in arm’s reach.
Fully prepared to clobber a lethal lady, Ben was flabbergasted to find who the villainesses truly were; sweet, innocent little Jean Grey and gentle, dainty Susie! And while Iceman and the Human Torch getting spanked was not a sight that surprised him, the juxtaposition of each woman spanking the other team’s pet brat was enough to leave him dumbfounded. It was an even more ridiculous sight than an orange golem in a Santa Suit–which was what Mr. Grimm was at that very moment.
But the unmitigated delight in their voices as they scolded the boys and whacked their scarlet, scorching bare bottoms? That was enough to bring The Thing back to his senses.
“What’s going on here?” he shouted, loud enough to be heard over the cacophony of discipline that had turned into bullying.
At the rumble of his accusing voice, both Jean and Susan stopped smacking. They looked at Ben, and then at each other. Then they looked down at the fiercely crimson bottoms Bobby and Johnny now sported, and gulped. While neither boy was going to be permanently injured, it was evident to both women that they had made their point a few minutes ago, and had simply been dragging out the punishment for the sheer schadenfreude of seeing these miserable punks finally being forced to behave.
“Oh, um, nothing you need to worry about, dear Bean,” Susan explained through nervous chuckles. She hid her spoon behind her back and started lifting Bobby’s pants back to their rightful place. “Jean and I were just teaching these boys a little lesson in manners. That’s all.”
“Right!” Jean echoed, following suit by hiding all of the evidence that she’d paddled Johnny until he lived up to his codename. “They came in here and ate all of the sweets, and then had an argument that ruined everyone’s dinner. So they’re just getting what they deserve.”
Ben was not impressed. He crossed his arms and grumbled, saying nothing as Johnny and Bobby got to their feet. While he’d turned Johnny over his own knee several times, he’d never seen him blubbering like this. As for the icy mutant? He looked like he was about to drown in his own snot, and his face was at least as red as his bottom.
As for the women, they were nervously shuffling their feet and avoiding Ben’s eye contact while they adjusted and smoothed out the skirts of their fancy party dresses. They looked rightly ashamed of themselves, but Ben wasn’t about to let them off the hook.
“I think you’ve more than taught them their lesson, gals,” Ben stated plainly. “In fact, I daresay you’ve both over-done it. These boys belong on Santa’s naughty list, no doubt, but I don’t think they’re the only ones.”
Both women blushed furiously, and shook their heads. The reality of what was about to happen to them seemed to sink in all at once.
“Wait, Ben! You can’t be thinking–” Sue began, waving him off as he started coming closer.
“Sir, you can’t mean to -” Jean stammered, but was interrupted when Ben grabbed each of the women’s wrists in one of his massive rocky mitts.
“Yep,” Ben cut them off. “It’s spankerin’ time, girlies.”
“Nooo!” Both women wailed as Ben dragged them to a chair. He took a seat and hauled both heroines over his left thigh. While they were both rather petite, it was a setup only someone of the Thing’s size could have achieved comfortably. His arm held them securely in place while the boys who had just been rescued had their eyes glued to the events unfolding before them.
“Now, lucky for you dolls, Ben Grimm is too nice of a guy to discipline you with my bare hand,” Ben started as he lifted each skirt and revealed two sets of frilly, fashionable panties. He ignored their complaints about how improper this all was and started to unbuckle the massive belt from his giant coat. “Unfortunately for you, that means I’m about to give you both a good hiding with Santa’s belt.”
“No, Ben!” Susan shrieked, appalled that she was about to get what was coming to her. “If you do this, I’ll never forgive you!”
“Mr. Grimm, you can’t be so mean!” Jean squeaked, already tearing up in anticipation of her richly deserved chastisement.
But Ben could be that mean, and he knew they would forgive him after they had time to think on their misdeeds. So without further ado, he swung his mighty leather strap and left a brilliant pink stripe across each woman’s bottom. Another followed, and another, and still more after that, as Ben swung the scales of justice back into balance.
Four naughty legs kicked as four naughty cheeks were reddened and blistered. Shoes were kicked from furious struggling, puddles of tears were formed on the kitchen floor, and promises to never spank Bobby and Johnny for their own satisfaction were made. Once they were whipped quite soundly, Ben freed them from his grip and allowed himself the small, simple pleasure of watching two sorry young ladies rubbing their bottoms and whining woefully.
“Now. Have all of you merry brats learned your lesson?” he asked. “Or am I gonna have to leave a bunch of coal in your stocking to get the message across?”
“I’ll be good!” Bobby sounded off.
“Yes, I’ve learned my lesson,” Jeannie promised weepily.
“Ben, I’m sorry–and I forgive you!” Susie blubbered.
Lastly, Johnny yielded as well. “Yeah, I’ll behave, I guess.”
“Good. Now we can all join everyone and have a proper merry little Christmas,” Ben scoffed. “Come on, let’s go.”
“But what about the food?” Susan asked mournfully, gesturing at the carnage that had started this series of spankings. “It’s all ruined.”
“What are we going to tell everyone else?” Jean whimpered, feeling mortified.
“Calm down, girls. Old Ben Grimm’s got you covered,” he promised. “It’s Chanukah season, too, you know. I’ve got my favorite Chinese place on speed dial.”
And so it came to pass that two naughty girls and two naughty boys spent their Christmas Eve sitting on pillows and being suspiciously saintly little angels, while everyone (other than our clay-clad Santa Claus) wondered what on Earth had convinced them to behave so well.