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“Why do they call it caroling anyway?” Ezreal asks.
Aphelios pauses where he's helping to zip up his coat so Ezreal doesn't have to remove his mittens, and arches an eyebrow.
Sett, who is on the floor pulling on his boots, shrugs. “Dunno. Maybe some annoying lady named Carol was singing at her neighbors a lot and they didn't hate it?”
The disbelieving eyebrow arch gets turned to the big man, who appears entirely serious, before finally landing on Kayn, who at least shares the incredulous gesture.
“ What?” Kayn scoffs from where he leans against the door – because he's been ready to go for the last three minutes at least. “A lady named Carol? Are you serious?”
Aphelios has to agree with the sentiment.
“Sounds plausible,” Ezreal pipes up with a little frown, swooping in to defend Sett's right to be wrong. “And I don't hear you coming up with anything better.”
“It fuckin-” Kayn stops, squinting between the two, and shakes his head. “No.”
Aphelios snorts quietly and continues zipping all the way until it bumps Ezreal's scarf. Sometimes he thinks it's a shame he can't zip it right over his mouth and save them all inevitable shitshow this is going to become.
“You can't just say no!” Ezreal scoffs right back, thumping his mittens onto his hips. “That's not how arguments work.”
“I'm not arguing with you,” Kayn grunts and turns to the door, pulling his hood over his head like he can block Ezreal from talking to him with such a flimsy barrier. “It's like fist-fighting a monkey.”
“How big is the monkey?” Sett wonders aloud.
It gets Kayn to turn back around with an expression so affronted it makes Aphelios wheeze into his own scarf. “It doesn't matter, I'm not gonna fight it!”
“Kaaayn's afraid of a mooonkeeyyy-” Ezreal sings, dancing from foot to foot in clunky red snow boots. They jingle with each step.
“Wha- I'm not afraid- ”
“It's okay, dude.” Sett claps a massive hand on Kayn's shoulder, staggering him. “Monkeys are pretty scary – did you hear about that one that bit that lady at the zoo like a billion times?”
That gets Ezreal to stop jingle-hopping, his impish grin melting into horror. “At the zoo?”
“Yeap.” Sett nods at him, looking grim. “Cause she smiled at it.”
“Wha- but I smile at things all the time!”
Kayn drags a hand down his face and opens the door. “How are you this stupid?”
“I'm not stupid!”
Aphelios watches as he stomps out to the driveway, Ezreal jingling after him, and Sett bringing up the rear with a shrug. None of them grab the keys from the hook.
“You don't even like the zoo! Why are we even talking about monkeys!”
“ You started it!”
Kayn throws both hands in the air, whirling on Ezreal – who looks about as wide as he does tall all bundled up like that – and leans down to sneer in his face. “ How?”
Sett, ever the peacemaker, comes up behind Ezreal and helpfully pushes Kayn back upright with a finger on his forehead.
“To be fair, you did say you were gonna fight a monkey.”
Aphelios locks the door behind them and shuffles over to the car.
“No, I was comparing Ez to a monkey, because they're both too stupid to argue with-”
“Not cool dude, monkeys are pretty smart-”
“Okay, so maybe it's unfair to the monkey to be compared to Ez-”
“Hey!”
The godawful cacophony of the car alarm interrupts their very important discussion, and Phel lowers the keys in his hands.
“ Oops.” He clicks the button to unlock it twice and slides in the passenger seat before tossing the keys to Kayn – surprisingly the least likely to kill them out of everyone present.. “ Must've hit the wrong button.”
Kayn snorts but gamely circles the front of the car and slides into the driver seat. Aphelios can see the war waging on his face as his finger hovers over the lock button for a moment before the other two can get there, but he's good and decides not to shit-stir for once in his life.
Of course, that doesn't last long when Ezreal slides into the seat behind him and immediately kicks at the back of Kayn's seat.
“Anyway, I bet there'll be someone there named Carol and you'll feel so stupid.”
Kayn's hand twitches on the steering wheel, and the odds of them surviving the trip to meet Yone and K'Sante at the plaza for their weird little caroling thing plummet.
Aphelios reaches over to pat his thigh, hoping a little solidarity will help keep Kayn from driving them off a cliff just to kill Ezreal in the process.
“ Bleugh – PDA .”
Or maybe it would be worth it.
“Aw, c'mon Ez, don't tease them.” Sett nudges Ezreal from across the car – though he's so big he really takes up the middle seat too so it's more like a twitch of his elbow. “It's cute and stuff, ain't it? Plus I saw like half your ass at a party last weekend.”
“Half of twitter saw his ass,” Kayn mutters as he pulls out of the driveway – which is probably true actually, the algorithm loves Ezreal, and the salacious pictures had gone viral.
“Yeah, well, at least I don't canoodle in the front seat.”
Kayn snorts, rolling his eyes before cutting a smirk over to Aphelios.
“I'm impressed he even knows what that word means if 'caroling' was too big for him.”
Aphelios doesn't fight his quiet huff of laughter – or the way it gets louder when Ezreal whistles like an offended teakettle behind him.
“I knew what it meant- ”
“Uh-huh, that's why you thought we were going to visit a bunch of middle aged ladies, right?”
To be fair, there probably will be a bunch of middle aged ladies there, but Aphelios is loyal enough not to point that out.
“I'm gonna make Sett jam you in a dumpster when we get there,” Ezreal growls, his boots jingling with every kick to the back of Kayn's seat.
“Hold on now, when did I agree to that?” Sett grumbles, drawing the full force of Ezreal's pouting face onto himself.
“He's being mean to me!”
“Mean?! I'm literally driving your useless ass to this thing-”
“And he never lets me drive!”
“-you don't even have your driver's license!”
“-and he hurt my feelings, Sett! Isn't that a good enough reason?”
Aphelios can see Sett squinting between them in the rearview mirror -ears pressed flat to his head- and fishes two sets of ear plugs from his pocket, twisting to hand one back with a commiserating glance.
Sett fist-bumps him and pops them in. “Owe you one, Phel.”
He owes him several, but that's fine. He'll collect eventually... like the next time he needs Ezreal and Kayn suplexed into the nearest dumpster.
The rest of the ride there is blissfully quiet – though he can still see Kayn's chair jolting and both of their mouths moving non-stop.
They're practically chewing on each other like a couple of puppies by the time they all pile out of the car, held apart by Sett, who has the back of a jacket in each fist.
Aphelios pops his ear plugs out as Yone and K'Sante approach, offering them a wry smile.
“I see you all survived the trip,” Yone chuckles as Ezreal gives up trying to windmill at Kayn and has instead shifted to chewing on Sett's wrist. “Ready for the caroling?”
Aphelios nods, shaking his backpack full of various percussion instruments – jingle bells and wooden blocks and other things to make noise that he sure as hell wasn't telling anyone else in the car about until he was out of a confined space.
“Perfect, time to go make some old people happy.”
And they do – coming together like a choir of angels, all sweet faced and fooling the elderly. Even Kayn is patient and kind to the old lady that pats his cheek and tells him he should get more sleep for his red eye. The whole thing goes off without a hitch – a little jingling, some good publicity, and they're back in the van again – this time with K'Sante driving and Yone beside him, leaving him and Kayn to curl up drowsily in the back row for what would probably have been a peaceful nap.
And then, of course, Ezreal.
“Soooo, Kayn... I don't suppose you caught that nice old lady's name, hmmm?” he turns around in his seat, eyes glimmering with impish glee, and Aphelios thunks his skull into the window in a futile attempt to knock himself out. “What was it again? Caroline? Carolina? Caro-”
Yone – wonderful, perfect Yone – turns up the radio, and Aphelios lets himself succumb to the dulcet blare of shopping-mall hits, and the steady swipe of a thumb across his knee… and hopes K’Sante drives them right off a cliff.