Four Alternative Christmas Presents (2 page)

Jake swore and paced the perimeter of the alley. Matt stood for a moment, catching his breath. He was so thirsty. He’d been thirsty before—the dust in the warehouse, the battle to take down Dr. Destructo, the blushing that ensued. Now he was dying for a drink. Desperate.

“Where
is
he?” Jake whispered.

He kicked at a bag of trash, and a rat burst out of it as if it had been ejected. Matt snatched it. Snatched it right off the ground, just like that, as if that was the kind of thing he did all the time. One minute, empty hand; next minute, extra-warm squirming rodent body. Before he had a chance to register how gross it was to be holding a wild rat, he bit into it. Warm blood filled his mouth. Delicious. Like a glass of water after a night of partying, it was the single most refreshing thing he’d ever tasted. A part of him was horrified. A part of him wanted to start screaming.

He knew he should stop, he knew this was disgusting and Jake was staring at him, eyes
huge
and mouth hanging slack, but it tasted so good that he couldn’t bring himself to stop till the rat had been sucked into a crumpled husk. He dropped it at his feet. “Uh,” he said, because really, there wasn’t anything else he could say. He looked at Jake, afraid of what he would see.

Jake closed his mouth with a snap. He blinked once, hard, like he was trying to get the image of Matt sucking the blood out of a rat out of his head, and then he shook his head. “You know,” he said, “you could have shared that.”

Ew.

Behind Matt, something moved. He wheeled around and saw Dr. Destructo lurch up from under a heap of bags at the mouth of the alley. Rather than make a break for the street, Dr. Destructo threw himself hard against the nearest door. It resounded with a metallic
clonk
. Matt started toward the guy.

But Dr. Destructo jerked around, one arm flinging out, and Matt caught a glimpse of a silver cross before something struck him across the face like a backhanded blow. Matt reeled back, arms windmilling. Jake shouted, leaping forward to fist Matt’s shirt and haul him upright before he could fall. And Matt found himself wrapped in tight arms, as if Jake had already forgotten how extra strong he was, as if Matt had been about to fall off the roof of a building.

“Matt,” Jake whispered in his ear, arms tightening around him. “Oh my God, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart?
Matt’s head stopped, as if there’d been some kind of brain-based power outage.

“That was too close,” Jake whispered. He turned a little so Matt could see.

Matt looked. A sliver of yellow light had fallen across the mouth of the alley. Daylight. Death.

“Holy crap,” Matt said quietly. His brain was coming back online, but in pockets. First the pocket that controlled panic and terror. That was coming back in a rush. “Holy
crap
,” he said again.

Suddenly Jake stepped back, letting his arms fall away from Matt’s shoulders, and the part of Matt’s brain that was in charge of regret came online at about the same time.

Jake’s mouth half smiled, like it was doing that without Jake’s knowledge. “Sorry,” he said. “You just… you scared me a bit there.”

Matt nodded. Regret was definitely overpowering terror. In fact, terror and panic were subsiding altogether. He realized he was actually pretty calm, a little bit sad to have heard Jake whisper an endearment to him and then be embarrassed about it.
The mission
, he realized as the rest of his brain suddenly came back. He looked around. “Where’s Dr. Destructo?”

Jake nodded. “Yeah,” he said, as if reminding himself. “Yeah. C’mon.”

He started forward, and Matt started to follow him, only to find the world had changed. The door was painted wood, not metal, and the bricks were new and clean. He looked at Jake, who was dressed in a suit and wearing a trilby.

“What the hell?” Jake asked, looking down at himself and then at Matt.

“The machine,” Matt said. “It must still be affecting us.”

“But we’re nowhere near it.”

“Look, I don’t know, but he’s getting away.”

Jake’s jaw set, and suddenly he looked just like the old supers in comic books. Jake reached into the pocket of his jacket and drew out a gun. “Perfect,” he said. His voice had changed. Gone the soft, worried tone and back to his snarling old self. “I’ve had enough of this.” He nodded at Matt. “I’m taking Dr. Destructo back, and I don’t care if he’s dead or alive. C’mon.”

They went into the stairwell at a run. Something in the back of Matt’s mind whispered
Sweetheart, he called you sweetheart
, and he tried hard to ignore it. He must still be stunned. Maybe Jake was stunned too, didn’t mean to say that word, just wanted to say something nice and got that one. Like when you accidentally call someone “mom.” Weirder things had happened. After all, he had been a vampire a minute ago.

T
HEY
SPRINTED
down the stairs, big overshoes clattering on the concrete. He and Jake came to a door at the bottom of the stairs and stood for a moment, listening. Sure enough, Matt could hear the rapid footsteps and heavy breathing of Dr. Destructo in the room beyond. Villains never seemed to be as up on their cardio as their careers appeared to require.

“Together,” Jake whispered.

Matt nodded. They raised their guns. Jake stood back, and Matt kicked the door off its hinges. The two of them barreled through. Inside, Dr. Destructo, looking sweaty and uncomfortable in his cape, stood with his hands braced on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Destructo’s eyes went wide. He spun around and pelted for the exit.

“Don’t move!” Jake yelled. But the world was changing again.

Oh God no, not now
, Matt thought. Not that it helped. The world blurred and shifted. Dr. Destructo scrambled toward the exit. Jake shouted, “Stop!” and Matt didn’t bother to yell, just lined up and took the shot. The gun went
weh
. A thin stream of liquid shot out in a sagging arc and pattered to the floor. Matt looked down at it and then at his gun. Only it wasn’t a gun anymore. It was a squirt bottle that had a masking tape label that read “Bleach and Water Only” on it. He was wearing a black canvas apron with Bean There across the chest in white embroidery.

“What the
hell
?” he shouted.

He looked up and saw Dr. Destructo slipping through the door and Jake staring back at him. He was wearing an apron too. And carrying a mop.

“Oh my God!” Jake howled.

Suddenly a voice from somewhere above them shouted, “Jake, if you and Matt are fooling around down there again, I swear to God I will fire you both.” A voice he knew. A voice that was normally friendly and sweet. Fiona’s voice.

Matt and Jake shared a panicked look. “We’re not,” Matt shouted.

“Don’t come down here,” Jake called at the same time.

“I swear.” Fiona’s voice was getting closer, feet clumping on the steps. “If I see even a sliver of a naked ass again, you two are so fired.”

Again?
Matt asked himself. He looked helplessly at Jake. It was one thing to pine after your hero and know you could never have him, and something else altogether to pine after the guy that you could be having if you were only living in a different reality. He wanted to ask
How did I end up having sex with you at work enough for it to be a thing?
And he wanted to ask
What does this me have that the me in our real reality doesn’t?
And he
really
wanted to ask
How come
he
gets to be with you?

“We’re not doing anything, and don’t come down here,” Jake hollered.

“Hah,” she shouted back.

Jake spun on Matt. “I am gonna kill this guy when I get my hands on him,” he whispered.

“Get in line,” Matt snarled right back and led the way through the door.

They went through the door, and Matt expected to find himself in another alley, but it wasn’t that at all. Instead it was a stairwell, the mirror of the one they had come down. Dr. Destructo was running, stumbling, panting up the stairs. Jake was starting to flag and breathing hard too. Matt started up the stairs at his usual pace and realized, about one flight up, that he wasn’t superstrong in this reality, and if he kept running like this, he was going to faint on the stairs and probably give himself a concussion. He struggled up to the next landing and stood there panting while Jake sagged down on the top step. The world shifted and shimmered again and Matt’s breath was back, just like that. Jake straightened up, blinking.

“Are we back?” he asked, glancing at Matt. Matt shook his head.

“No idea,” he said, so glad to be done with being out of breath, so glad to feel his superstrength coming back, instead of the exhaustion he’d felt a moment ago.

The door to the stairwell opened then, and a familiar face stuck her head into the landing. Fiona. She smiled at them.

“Good job, guys,” she said. “We got him.”

T
HEY
FOLLOWED
Fiona through the door and out into the living quarters of a building that was decorated just like the League headquarters in Downtown Central City. Spare and modern and simple. It had to be simple. The League headquarters tended to be something of a target for villains, so it was best if everything was easy to replace.

There were three couches arranged in a
U
shape around a big TV, a kitchen and bar arrangement against one wall, and three doors. If this was the same layout as the reality Matt was from, one door led to bedrooms, one door led to a gym and, beyond that, a holding cell, and the third led to the elevator bank.

But it was clean, which was a thing that
never
occurred. A severe lack of an overflowing garbage can in the kitchen. A distinct absence of empty cookie trays on the coffee table. And there was no gaudily decorated Christmas tree—no decorations at all, in fact. None of those obnoxious lights that flashed and trilled crappy pop versions of Christmas tunes that Adam loved so much. He groaned at the sight of it, and he and Jake exchanged a glance.

“Not quite,” he murmured, and Jake sighed.

“So close,” Jake whispered back.

“Well, that was a clever trick, you guys,” Fiona called as she made her way into the kitchen. “Chasing him up to HQ where the security systems would detect him. Adam’s got him,” she added. As if on cue, one of the doors off the main room opened. Dr. Destructo, looking distinctly uncomfortable, marched through the door, and Adam followed, pinning the doctor’s arm against his back.

“Hey, nice job, guys,” Adam said, nodding at them. “Anything you wanna say before I take this guy down to supervillain holding?”

“Well…,” Jake said, sharing a faint smile with Matt. “Actually there is something.” He glanced at Matt and then at the others and sighed. “Uh, I don’t think any of us are who you think we are.”

Adam’s head came up, and his claws and fangs appeared just a little.

“Want to explain that?” Fiona asked in a very low and not altogether friendly voice.

“Well, we’re….”

Jake sighed. Matt licked his lips and cleared his throat.

“We’re chasing Dr. Destructo through multiple presents. We’ve been vampires, mobsters, coffee shop clerks, and now we’re superheroes again, but… things aren’t quite right yet. It’s Christmas in our present.”

“You’ve been chasing him through multiple presents,” Fiona said slowly.

Dr. Destructo laughed. “And a very merry chase I have led you on,” he said.

“We’re trying to get back,” Jake said, scowling at Dr. Destructo. “I don’t guess you guys could help?”

“You may never return to your original present,” Dr. Destructo said. “It may be that it is gone forever, and you will always be a stranger in a strange land.”

“Hey,” Adam said. “Zip it.”

Jake looked, Matt thought, as if someone had snagged the last cookie out of a box of shortbread he’d been hoarding.

“Okay, so, weirder things have happened. How do we get you back to the right present?”

For what Matt suspected was the first time ever in his career as secretary treasurer of the Organization for the Advancement of Evil, Dr. Destructo said nothing. In fact, nobody said anything at all.

Fiona tilted her head just a little and looked at Jake a moment, and then at Matt. “Star Wars,” she said.

“Pickle,” Jake answered right away.

Matt knew this one. Sign countersign. There had been a case with the Mirror, a villainess from before Matt’s time, who had pretended to be a number of superheroes before getting caught, and precautions had been put into place.

“It’s me,” Jake said, gesturing to himself. “And it’s Matt too. Is there… are there other us-es here?” he asked quietly, turning to look at Dr. Destructo. “I mean other versions of us, in this reality?”

“Perhaps if you were true to yourselves, you wouldn’t ask such stupid questions,” Dr. Destructo sneered.

Adam groaned and rolled his eyes. “You know what? If you’re just going to be cryptic, do everybody a favor and don’t talk.”

Fiona shrugged. “Well, I for one think better with a cup of tea in hand,” she said. “Who wants one? And biscuits. Logan, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to have yours in a paper cup.” She elongated her elasto-arm to grab the kettle from the top shelf and then shrank it back to size. “Who wants milk in theirs?”

“I want neither your milk, nor your tea, nor your wretched hospitality,” Dr. Destructo said.

She turned her head right around on her neck, rather than troubling to turn her whole body, and glared at him. It used to make Matt shudder, seeing her do that, but it didn’t really bother him anymore.

“Fine,” she said. “Go ahead, Adam—get him out of here.”

Adam nodded and turned Dr. Destructo on the spot, like a kid playing a game of Pin the Tail, and shunted him toward the door.

Matt plopped down on one of the barstools by the counter, and Jake came over and settled down too, one elbow on the counter, one hand resting casually on Matt’s knee. Matt glanced down. A plain gold band encircled his ring finger. And it matched one that Matt found himself wearing. Matt held his breath. A moment later, Jake seemed to realize what he’d done and snatched his hand back.