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“You know, in the future – ” Booster began.
“Save it,” Ted said, holding up a hand. “I don’t want to hear about how you all order presents from the internet installed in your brains, or have them automatically pooped out by the household present-bot, or whatever. I just want to get this over with as painlessly as possible.”
Booster glared at him. “I was just going to say, a lot more people are atheists and Christmas isn’t such a big deal. And you never have to deal with a mob scene like this.”
He sighed and surveyed the crowd around them. He and Ted had realized simultaneously that there were only two shopping day until Christmas and that neither of them had presents for the rest of the team, so they’d gone for what Booster had assumed would be a quick run to Macy’s to pick up novelty socks and ties and things. Unfortunately, Macy’s was full of New Yorkers who’d all apparently realized the same thing, and the place was jammed.
“Why didn’t I just have my secretary order gift cards for everyone?” Ted complained to no one in particular.
Booster avoided the sharp tip of someone’s umbrella. “Ah, yes, the gift that says ‘I’m too busy to remember what you like.’ A holiday classic. Why not just hand everybody cash?”
“Oh, like you’d turn it down, Mr. I Married a Hag for Money,” Ted drawled.
Booster sniffed, offended. “Hey, I divorced her.”
“No, she divorced you,” Ted pointed out. “Though why she ever married you in the first place, I’ll never know.”
“At least I can get a woman to marry me,” Booster shot back without thinking. Ted went red, and Booster remembered belatedly that the only woman Ted had ever proposed to had turned him down. Repeatedly. “Uh. Ted, I didn’t mean – ”
“Don’t.” They didn’t often talk about Melody. Ted liked to talk about women well enough – more than Booster usually wanted to hear from him, actually – but not the ones he’d been serious about.
“Sure.” Booster cast about for a change of subject, leaning in toward Ted to avoid a woman with five small children in tow. “Uh, so, we doing cookies and beer this year? Your place or mine?”
“I’m not really supposed to be eating cookies anymore,” Ted pointed out, tapping his chest in that annoying way he’d been doing recently. “Or drinking beer.”
“So we’ll get the kind made with Splenda. Come on, Ted, it’s a tradition!” Since Booster’s family wasn’t even born yet, and Ted’s dad was a jerk – and neither of them really celebrated Christmas anyway – they’d started a tradition years ago of spending the holiday together. They’d go see the what looked like the worst movie playing in theaters and mock it from the back row, then go home to drink beer and eat Christmas cookies – that last a tradition inaugurated when they’d stolen a plate left out for Santa, back in the old JLI embassy. They hadn’t done it last year – Booster had been a newlywed then, spending the holidays in Fiji with Gladys – but before that, they hadn’t missed a single year.
Ted raised an eyebrow at him. “Don’t you think it’s a little, I don’t know, childish?” he asked.
Booster frowned. “I can’t recall many childhood Christmases spent drinking beer, Ted.”
Ted sighed. “I dunno, Booster. I think cookies and beer may have run its course. And none of the movies coming out this season look that entertaining, even to make fun of.”
Booster stopped walking and stared at him. “You don’t want to do it?”
“You didn’t do it last year,” Ted pointed out.
“I was in Fiji! You’re going to be sitting in your apartment in your underwear!” Booster protested.
“I will have pants on!” Ted retorted. “I just don’t see the point, Booster.”
“You don’t see the point.” Booster couldn’t believe he was hearing this. “It’s hanging out, Ted! Hanging out on Christmas. Does it have to have a point?” He knew he was getting loud, but he couldn’t help it.
“Do we have to do this now?” Ted asked. “Look. Just…why don’t you go that way, and I’ll go this way, and we’ll meet up in an hour and compare what we’ve picked out. We’ll move faster that was, and maybe this day can end without one of us punching the other.”
“Chicken,” Booster muttered, but he agreed. They made plans for when and where to meet, and Booster stalked off on his own.
Again. It had happened again. Why was it that every time he’d hung out with Ted since Max had put the team back together, they’d ended up at each other’s throats – and Booster ended up feeling wounded? Booster had hoped, when Ted suggested they do their shopping together, that it was going to be like old times again, when they’d spent hours picking out the most ridiculous presents for all their teammates: a case of IcyHot for Bea and Tora, hair mousse for J’onn, a copy of Nine to Five for Max. But they’d bickered the whole way to the store and for the first 20 minutes of desultory attempts at shopping together, and it was becoming very clear that even after all these months back together, their friendship was not on the mend. And now Ted didn’t even want to spend Christmas with him.
It would have helped if Booster had had any real idea of what he’d done to make Ted so disgusted with him all the time. It wasn’t all this crap about being “mature;” Booster had used his very mature brain to get them out of the Power Posse universe, and Ted was still treating him with contempt. And Booster could admit to himself that it hurt.
Ted used to think he was funny. Ted used to be his best friend. Now…well, Booster wasn’t sure what they were now.
He threaded glumly through the crowd, dodging a couple in Victorian gear. They were probably part of a group of carolers the store had hired, though they were clearly missing some of their number. They looked about as happy as Booster felt about adding a live rendition of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” to this unpleasant afternoon.
Ted had been right about one thing: it was a lot easier to navigate on his own. Booster picked out presents for everyone on the team relatively quickly…everyone except Ted. He still hadn’t decided whether he even wanted to give Ted anything. And if he did, what would it be? A “best friend” present? A “we work together, so here” present? A “please stop hating me, or at least tell me why you do” present?
Well, at any rate, he obviously couldn’t pick it out while shopping with Ted. Besides, it was time to meet up again. Easing past the Victorians again – they still hadn’t found their partners? – he joined Ted in the menswear department.
“Find anything?” Ted asked.
“You bet I did,” Booster said. He laid out his selections. “For Ralph…” He held up a football jersey with a huge number 4 on it. Ted shook his head wearily. “Oh, come on! It’s Ralph! He’ll laugh!”
“I don’t think he will,” Ted said. “Next?”
Booster handed him a DVD. “For L-Ron.”
“Pinocchio? Booster, that’s mean.” But Booster thought he detected a hint of a smile on Ted’s lips.
“For Miss Beatriz…not that she deserves it after the way she’s been treating me…” Booster presented a red lacy thong and matching garter belt.
Ted stared at him, then put his head in his hands. “No.”
“Come on! You can’t deny it’s her style!”
“Bea will not appreciate you buying her skimpy underwear, Booster. Trust me.”
Booster stared at the garter belt, considering. “…Sue?”
“What is wrong with you?” Ted exploded. “I mean, did you even try? Or did you just let me waste my time actually shopping, while you picked out stupid gag gifts you knew I’d veto?”
“Okay, fine, let’s see what you picked out!” Booster shot back.
“Fine!” Ted presented his choices. “For Max.” A red tie. “For Ralph.” A lavender tie. “For L-Ron.” A tie with a pattern of cogs all over it.
“Oh God.” Booster stared at him. “You didn’t get the girls ties too, did you?”
“No,” Ted said. “Well, okay, yes, for Bea and Sue, but not Mary!”
“What did you get Mary?”
“…A gift card.”
“Ted!” Booster cried. At least Ted looked appropriately sheepish. “How is that any better than my stuff?”
“At least my presents show that I respect them,” Ted said, defensive.
“At least my presents show that I like them!” Booster replied. “What am I getting, a yellow tie?”
“Who says you’re getting anything?” Ted retorted.
“Oh, that’s nice, Ted, that’s real nice.”
“Well, you clearly wouldn’t appreciate it!”
“What, I should appreciate one of your ‘fuck you’ gifts?” Booster shook his head. “What happened to you? You used to have fun picking out gifts!”
“No, I used to have fun picking out gag gifts – years ago! Forgive me if I’m just a little too mature for that now!”
There was that word again. “You are not!” Booster snapped. He was dimly aware that they were shouting again, but the store also seemed to have gotten louder, so it hardly mattered. “You’re just saying that so that you can feel superior to me! And you’re picking on me because I’m not acting dumb anymore and making it easy for you!”
“Oh, don’t sell yourself short, Booster,” Ted shot back. “You have always made it easy to feel superior to you.”
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” a voice behind them shouted.
Booster turned to the voice, his anger at Ted making his annoyance at being interrupted irrationally intense. “Do you mind?” he started to say, before realizing that the person shouting was the woman in the Victorian costume. She was standing on top of one of the jewelry cases in the middle of the floor, holding a very non-Victorian megaphone to her lips.
And she had a gun.
“Crap,” Booster muttered. He ducked down behind the shelves in front of them, pulling Ted with him.
“I trust you’ve all been having a happy Christmas,” the woman went on, in a terrible approximation of a British accent. “Unfortunately, it’s about to come to an end.”
People were starting to notice the gun and there were little screams and panicked noises all around. The man in the Victorian gear also leapt on top of a jewelry case and fired a shot, deafeningly loud in the cavernous store. More screams.
“Please, don’t run around or make too much noise,” the woman went on. “We’ve already locked the doors. And if my partner sees somebody running, or if someone gets too loud…well, he might have to shoot them, and that would be terribly inconvenient for him. Don’t make him do that.”
Ted and Booster glanced at each other.
“Who are these clowns?” Booster asked.
Ted shrugged. “I don’t know, but they’re idiots. Robbing Macy’s in broad daylight during the Christmas rush? What are they thinking?”
“‘Muahaha, I’m a criminal mastermind and this outfit is super uncomfortable’?” Booster suggested.
Ted rolled his eyes. “It was a rhetorical question, Booster. Can you cork ’em up in your force field before they hurt anyone?”
“My force field’s part of my costume. I don’t know if it’s escaped your eagle-like gaze, but I’m not in my costume right now.”
Ted sighed. “I guess it’s up to me, then.” He crab-walked back towards a table of hats. Booster followed him.
“What are you doing?” Booster hissed as Ted sorted through the woolen hats.
Ted pulled on a ski mask. “You might not have a secret identity, but I don’t particularly want the CEO of Kord, Inc. to be shown using aikido to foil criminals on the news tonight.”
“Who says you’re going to get to do all the foiling?” Booster demanded. He pulled on a ski mask as well. “You foil Elizabeth Barrett Browning over here. I’ll take care of Charles Dickens.”
His guess hadn’t been far off, for: “I am Bah, and my partner here is Humbug,” the woman was saying. Squinting, Booster could make out antennae sticking out of the brim of his top hat. “We’re here to ruin your Christmas.”
“What, did they not read the end of the story?” Ted muttered. He started circling around to the left. “I’ll go this way, you go that way. Don’t get shot.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Booster muttered. He wiggled his way through the crowd, looping behind the jewelry section, trying to stay out of Bah and Humbug’s lines of sight.
Something here didn’t make sense, though. They were only on the first floor. Macy’s was huge. These two couldn’t possibly expect to hold the whole store hostage from here – how could they be sure what was going on on the other floors? If nothing else, they’d want to have someone in the security camera room monitoring the other floors, unless they really had no plan whatsoever.
So either the gang was bigger than just these two and Tiny Tim or someone was lurking elsewhere in the building, or they were dangerously insane. Either way, Booster wasn’t thrilled about facing them without his power suit, though he wasn’t worried either.
He managed to make his way through the crowd until he was behind Humbug, just a few feet away. He waited, choosing his moment. He did still have his flight ring on; hopefully when he sprang out of the crowd around him, Humbug would be too surprised to shoot. Either way, Booster would have to be fast.
Bah was still talking. “…so until Macy’s gives us ten million dollars, none of you are going home!”
A bit of movement by her foot caught Booster’s eye. Ted! Unfortunately, it had caught Humbug’s eye, too. “Bah! Look out!” he cried.
Ted sprang up onto the jewelry case before Bah could bring her gun around to bear on him. Booster seized his moment and flew up out of the crowd, snatching Humbug’s gun with one hand and punching him with the other. Humbug staggered under the blow and almost fell, giving Booster time to remove the magazine and toss the gun up into a chandelier for safekeeping.
Ted and Bah were struggling for control of her gun. Booster could already tell that Ted was at a disadvantage, since he didn’t want the gun to go off, and it was clear that Bah didn’t particularly care if it did. In their struggle, they turned to face Booster, and –
“Booster! Behind you!” Ted shouted.
Booster turned to see Humbug coming towards him. He ducked under Humbug’s wild swing – whoever these guys were, they weren’t very well trained – and punched him again, this time a nice clean right that laid Humbug out cold.
As Humbug tumbled off the jewelry case and onto the floor, Booster turned back to Ted – just in time to see Bah hit him over the head with the butt of her pistol.
“Beetle!” Booster cried as Ted slumped to the floor. He swung in before Bah could bring the pistol to bear on him and clocked her. The pistol went flying from her hands; he grabbed it, removed the magazine, and tossed it into the chandelier as well.
The police took that moment to burst in. Good – let them deal with the clean-up. Realizing the ski masks looked awfully suspicious, Booster picked Ted up and flew out the now-open door, into the cold night air.
Once they were flying above the skyline, heading back to Queens, Booster tugged Ted’s mask off. “Ted, you okay? Buddy? Come on, Ted, talk to me.”
Ted groaned and didn’t open his eyes. Booster’s heart seized.
“Ted, come on. You gotta tell me if we need a hospital. Wake up, Ted.”
Ted scrunched up his face, then opened his eyes, squinting them against the rushing wind. “Who are you?”
“Who am – oh.” He was still wearing his own ski mask. Juggling Ted carefully, Booster pulled his own mask off. “That was a nasty bump there.”
“What was?”
Booster nodded back towards the store. “Queen Victoria back there. Cops came, though, so they should be taken care of. You ought to put ice on that bump.”
Ted still looked kind of dazed. “You still didn’t tell me who you – ” He looked down, then suddenly grabbed Booster tight. “Holy jeez, we’re flying!”
“Uh, yeah? It was the fastest way out of there, and I didn’t want to pay for another cab…”
“How are we flying?”
“You know I always wear my flight ring, even without my suit,” Booster said.
“Flight ring?”
“Yeah. Ted, are you feeling – ”
“Where’d you get a flight ring?”
Booster paused. A warning signal was going off in his mind. “Ted, who am I?”
“That’s what I keep asking you!” Ted said. “And why do you keep calling me Ted?”
Booster groaned.
* * *
“ – so we flew out of the store, and that’s when Ted started pretending to have amnesia again.”
“I am not pretending!”
“Are too!”
“Am not! And what do you mean, ‘again’?”
“You did this with the Power Posse! Remember?”
“How could I remember? I have amnesia!”
“No, you don’t!”
“Enough!” Max snapped. He was wearing his overcoat and his limo was waiting out front. He had clearly been about to leave, and even more clearly was not pleased to have the majority of the team crammed into his office shouting at each other. Sue was perched on his desk with a disapproving look on her face, while Ralph stood behind her, looking amused. L-Ron also looked vaguely amused, though how Booster could tell that he wasn’t sure. Bea was sitting in Max’s chair. Only Mary was missing – it was probably past her bedtime.
“So you didn’t stop to give the cops a statement or even find out who the robbers were?” Max asked.
Booster shrugged. “In those masks we stood a pretty good chance of being arrested ourselves. Besides, I was worried about Ted.” He glared at Ted. “Not that I should have bothered.”
“Well, somebody threw down a smoke bomb or something after you left, and they got way,” Sue said. “Good job.”
“I don’t see you taking on two armed men with no gear and an faux-amnesiatic jerk for a sidekick,” Booster snapped.
“Hey, don’t talk to my wife that way, Gold!” Ralph said.
“Who are you calling a jerk?” Ted demanded. “No, really, I want to know. Is the robot your sidekick?”
“Well, I never!” L-Ron said, offended.
“People!” Max shouted. He was pinching the bridge of his nose, as if to stave off the nosebleed he could no longer get. Though he’d been a cyborg for years now, he still had all of his human mannerisms – and Booster had a feeling Max missed his mind-pushing power most at times like these. “It is late. I am tired. I don’t want to look at any of your faces any more today.”
“The view’s not any better from here,” Bea said from behind him.
Max gritted his teeth. “The point is – ”
“Hey, what’s all the shouting about?” Guy asked, sauntering in. “I can hear you losers screaming from next door.”
“Don’t we lock our door after closing to keep the riffraff out?” Bea asked.
“Picked it with the ring,” Guy said. “What’s all the racket? Gold break a nail again?”
“Who’s that?” Ted asked Booster in a stage whisper.
“As if you didn’t know,” Booster said. “He’s faking amnesia again,” he explained to Guy.
“I am not!”
“Are too! You – oh!” Booster gasped, outraged anew. “You’re totally doing this to get out of cookies and beer, aren’t you?”
“Since when has Ted tried to avoid anything involving the words ‘cookies’ and ‘beer?’” Bea asked.
“Since he became a boring old jerk who lies about having amnesia!” Booster said.
“I am not a boring old jerk!” Ted retorted. “At least, I don’t think I am. I can’t be sure, what with the amnesia and all.”
“You do not have amnesia!”
“Susan, can you do some research on…Bah and Humbug, was it?” Max said loudly, cutting them off. “When you come in tomorrow morning?” Sue nodded. “Ralph, maybe you can take a look at the crime scene.”
“Macy’s one shopping days before Christmas?” Ralph asked. “I suppose.” His nose gave a desultory twitch.
“Good. Bea, stop making faces behind me. Guy, don’t break into our building. And Ted…” Max looked as if dealing with Ted and Booster was the cruelest punishment an uncaring God could visit upon him. “Just…go home with Booster and try not to injure yourself, okay?”
“Okay,” Ted said. “Which one is Booster again? Cranky beefcake over here, right?”
Guy snorted. “What, you don’t even remember your boyfriend?”
Ted looked at Booster, startled. “You’re my boyfriend?”
Booster didn’t have the energy to argue anymore. “Yes, Ted. I’m your boyfriend,” he said, rolling his eyes as he put his coat back on.
Ted let out a low whistle. “Not bad! I got the hottest guy on the team. Pissy, but hot.”
Booster stared at him.
“Hey!” Ralph said. “Sue always tells me I’m the hottest guy on the team!”
Now everyone was staring at Ralph, except for Booster, who was still staring at Ted, and Sue, who was looking away uneasily. “Uh…come on, honey. Let’s go home.”
“Sue! Is Booster hotter than me?” he asked as she led him out of the office. “Sue, tell me! He’s not, right? Sue!”
“Well, you people are boring again,” Guy said, and let himself out. Bea followed, looking disappointed that there hadn’t been more yelling.
L-Ron handed Max his briefcase, and Max gave Booster a look. “Are you two going, or what?”
“Uh…yeah. Come on, Ted,” Booster said.
“Okay, honey.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Booster headed for the coat rack, his mind racing. This wasn’t Ted’s typical kind of joke. Sure, other people had accused them of being gay, and every so often he and Ted jokingly went along with it, but pretending to the team to be gay – even going so far as to call Booster hot – that was beyond the pale for him.
Could he really have amnesia? That would account for it. It would also mean that Ted thought Booster was hot. Booster wasn’t really sure what to do with that information.
No. This was just Ted playing his stupid amnesia card for all it was worth, trying to convince Booster that he really did have amnesia. Well, fine. Two could play at that game.
“This one’s your coat,” Booster said, handing Ted an extra coat of Bea’s that she’d left behind. It was bright red, ankle-length, and frilly, with a sash around the waist. “You have such a daring sense of style, honey bear.”
“You flatter me,” Ted said. Was he being sarcastic? Booster couldn’t tell.
Ted squeezed his way into the coat, which was more than a trifle snug on him, and followed Booster out the door. “We’ll have to fly,” Booster said. “Normally you bring the Bug, but we didn’t think we’d have to come to headquarters today…”
“What’s the Bug?” Ted asked as Booster scooped him up.
“Your ship.” Booster took off, getting enough altitude that Ted’s identity wouldn’t be spotted before pointing them towards Manhattan. “I wish we had it. It’s freaking cold out.”
“No kidding.” Ted burrowed in close to Booster, his head tucked under Booster’s chin. Booster frowned. This fake boyfriends thing could be trouble for him; Ted felt entirely too good in his arms.
Well, he could pretend not to be affected easily enough. He’d been doing it for years.
Ted’s penthouse wasn’t far as the crow – or superhero – flew, and soon Booster was letting them in through the roof access Ted had secured for just this purpose. “Wow, nice digs,” Ted said when they entered the apartment proper. “Yours or mine?”
Might as well have some fun with this amnesia racket. “Mine,” Booster said. “Though you’re the one who got it all slobbish.” Booster was actually living in a studio a ways downtown – a nice apartment, but nothing like this. He was just lucky that Gladys had been generous in the divorce settlement; she’d felt mildly bad about leaving him for an even younger man.
But Ted’s place took up the whole top floor of a sprawling skyscraper, with five bedrooms, two and a half baths, a library, a balcony, and even a small lab, in case Ted didn’t want to go all the way down to the basement, which he also owned. Booster was not above lying to get himself back into a building with a doorman, even if just for a little while. Especially when Ted knew he was lying.
At least, Booster was pretty sure Ted knew he was lying.
“Then why is all the mail addressed to me?” Ted asked, peering at an issue of Popular Science that was lying on the coffee table.
Booster thought fast. “Oh, we put your name on the mailbox to protect my privacy,” he said. “If my millions of fans knew where I lived, I’d never have a moment’s peace. Not to mention the paparazzi!”
Ted frowned. “Don’t you have a secret identity? Isn’t that a whole superhero…thing?”
“I don’t really go by my real name,” Booster said. “Like, even in civvies.”
“Why not?” Ted asked.
Booster looked hard at him. Ted was giving him the same blandly curious stare he’d asked all his questions with, but he had to know this wasn’t as innocent as his previous ones. “I’m not a fan of it, okay?”
He could have said more – how hearing someone call him Michael Carter brought back too many feelings of shame and guilt, how he’d spent so long in this time period that sometimes he wasn’t even sure if he was that person anymore – but he really didn’t want to get into it. Ted – who really did know better than to dwell on this subject – didn’t press him.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, heading for the kitchen. “I’m starved.”
“Hey, you remembered where the kitchen is!” Booster said, following him. Ha, got you now, Kord.
“Most kitchens are to the right-hand side when you enter an apartment,” Ted said. “It’s a statistical probability.”
Darn. “Even if that’s true, which I don’t think it is, how did you remember that ‘statistical probability?’” Booster asked.
Ted looked as wearily fed up with Booster as he did when his memory was working one hundred percent. Booster wasn’t sure if that made the amnesia act more or less convincing. “Amnesia affects my memory of my personal details, not the way the world works. I know that two plus two equals four, but not my middle name. Stuff like that.”
Booster remembered at the last minute not to scowl. He was doing the sympathetic boyfriend thing now, wasn’t he? “It’s Stephen,” he said, walking past Ted and into the kitchen.
“Hm?”
“Your middle name. Theodore Stephen Kord.”
“That’s a mouthful,” Ted said. “Are you sure my name isn’t something like…Trent Hammer? Or Jackson Hardbody?”
“Sorry to disappoint,” Booster said. They stood there for a long, awkward moment until Booster, who’d been waiting for Ted to open the fridge or pick up a delivery menu or something, realized that Ted was waiting for him to take the lead.
He opened the fridge. “What are you in the mood for?” he asked. “We have…” A sad Tupperware with leftover brown rice and a few wilted greens, a shriveled apple, and two containers of yogurt. This was the most depressing heart-healthy diet ever.
He straightened up. “We have takeout,” he said. He’d eaten at Ted’s enough times to know that the menus were always in the drawer closest to the fridge. Sure enough, the drawer in question was filled nearly to bursting. “What do you want? Chinese? Pizza? Oh, wait, you can’t have pizza, right?”
“Why not?” Ted asked. “Lactose intolerant?”
“No, you – ” Booster ground to a halt as he realized the trap Ted had deftly maneuvered him into. “You have a heart condition,” he finished bitterly.
Was that a faint hint of smugness in Ted’s face? “Is it serious?” he asked.
Booster concentrated on flipping through the menus in the drawer. “I don’t know,” he said. “We haven’t talked about it much.”
“…Oh.”
They wound up settling for a health food place that delivered. Ted had no beer in the apartment – and if Booster really hadn’t believed in the heart condition before, that would have been enough to convince him – but Booster found a dusty bottle of red wine in the back of a cabinet.
Ted smiled as Booster handed him his glass. “Well, this is romantic.”
Booster almost choked on his wine. “Uh, yeah. It’s great.” He swiped at the wine that had dribbled down his chin with the back of his hand. “So how are you planning on getting your memory back?”
Ted shrugged. “I’m the one with the head injury. Shouldn’t you be figuring out ways to fix it?”
“In the movies when someone gets amnesia from a blow to the head, they usually hit them on the head again and it knocks them back to normal,” Booster said. He looked around the kitchen, picked up a heavy wooden cutting board – why Ted had it when he could barely work the microwave, Booster would never know – and hefted it. “I can help.”
“I think I’ll pass,” Ted said dryly. “I guess I’ll wait a couple of days and see if anything comes back on its own. If not, I’ll go see a doctor.” Booster put the cutting board down and they drifted back into the living room. “Tell me something about myself, maybe it’ll jog my memory.”
“Uh…” Booster flopped down on the couch. “You’re three-time recipient of the award for foulest-smelling feet in the superhero community. And that includes Stinkman, who fights crime with the power of stink.”
“There is no such person,” Ted retorted.
“Sure there is! He puts his foot down on crime.”
Ted groaned. “Next you’ll tell me our teammates are called the Green Complainer. Or Elongated Man.”
Booster raised his eyebrows. “You think that’s bad? I know one guy who calls himself the Blue Beetle.”
“That’s bad, but not totally awful,” Ted said musingly. “I mean, it’s blue. It could be some flamboyant, trying-too-hard color like gold or something.”
Booster opened his mouth to fire back a retort, but the buzzer sounded. They looked at each other for a minute, then Booster remembered that this was supposed to be his apartment, and looked helplessly for an intercom before remembering that Ted’s buzzer system was hooked up to his phone. He answered it.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Kord?”
“Uh…yes, this is Mr. Gold,” Booster said, darting a glance at Ted. He hadn’t been around this particular apartment of Ted’s too often, certainly not as frequently as the places he’d lived when they’d been in the League together, but the doormen knew him.
Sure enough, the doorman took it in stride. “You have a delivery.”
“Great, send him up.” Booster hung up the phone and pulled out his wallet. “You got any cash?”
Ted pulled out his own wallet and flipped through it. “Nope. And I don’t remember my PIN, so I guess the next few days are on you, honey.”
Booster raised an eyebrow. Well played. “Fine. Don’t order any steaks, though.”
“I thought I couldn’t have them. Didn’t you say I have a heart condition?”
Oh, Ted was definitely gloating now. Booster ignored him as he walked to the door, reaching it just as the doorbell rang. He paid for the food, which wasn’t cheap – way to live in a ridiculously pricey neighborhood, Ted – and brought it back to the couch. “Want to just eat here?” he asked. “We can see what’s on television.”
Ted nodded and turned on the TV, leaving Booster to rummage through Ted’s mess of a kitchen for plates and things. When he came back into the living room, Ted was cycling through the guide. Booster leaned over the back of the couch.
“Ooh, is that a documentary about the history of football? Go back, go back.”
Reluctantly, Ted obeyed. “Football history? Really?”
“You love football,” Booster told him. “Seriously! You’re crazy about it.”
Ted gave him a dubious look, but clicked on the documentary and put the remote down. Booster handed him a plate and some silverware, and climbed over the back of the couch to sit next to him.
Ted started opening the food containers. “You’re sure I like hummus this much?” he asked.
“It’s your favorite,” Booster assured him, taking a big helping for himself. “You also enjoy spinach salad and grilled eggplant.”
Ted looked unconvinced, but he filled his plate and they sat back to watch the documentary. It had been a while since they’d eaten – since before they’d met up for their shopping trip, and that seemed like ages ago already. With food in front of him, Booster suddenly discovered that he was starving, and for a while they ate in silence.
The food was pretty good, and Booster allowed himself to feel smug as he chewed his spinach salad. He’d managed to stumble upon a pretty sweet deal. As long as Ted kept pretending to have amnesia, he’d have to let Booster dictate the food and television choices, boss Ted around, and lay claim to Ted’s fabulous apartment. All Booster had to do was keep one step ahead of Ted in the lying department.
If Ted was lying.
Booster pushed that thought away, uncomfortable, and focused on a peculiar sense of contentment. He didn’t think it was the food or the football, but it took a minute to figure out exactly why he felt so satisfied.
Then Ted shifted and stretched so that his thigh was pressed against Booster’s, and Booster knew what it was: he was hanging out with Ted, doing nothing at all, and they weren’t fighting. Booster couldn’t even remember the last time that had happened. But now, because they’d spent the entire evening telling each other ridiculous lies – probably – things were almost, sort of, kind of back to normal. And the level of contentment Booster was feeling over that was…downright pathetic, actually.
He felt uncomfortable again. But not so uncomfortable that he moved away from Ted.
Ted finished his food and put his plate down on the coffee table. Booster handed Ted his own plate. “It’s your turn to do the dishes,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”
Ted scowled at him. “You’re making me do chores? Most people would be a bit more sympathetic if their ever-lovin’ man fell victim to a head injury.”
“I was sympathetic the first time,” Booster said blithely, dropping his used silverware onto the plate. “Two comas later, I just want my dishes done. Besides,” he added as Ted got up, grumbling, “familiar routines might help you get your memory back.” Not that doing the dishes would be all that familiar to Ted anyway, but Booster was comfortable where he was. Ted had to figure out what sponges were for sometime.
When Ted was finished with the dishes, he flopped back onto the couch, sprawling against Booster again. “I don’t think I like football that much,” he said, eyeing the screen warily. “I think you might have been making that up.”
Booster placed an affronted hand to his chest. “Would I lie to you?”
“How am I supposed to know?” Ted groused.
Booster couldn’t help laughing. “All right, fine. Change the channel.”
Ted took the remote control, and started flipping channels, but he clearly wasn’t paying much attention. “You know, you never did tell me about myself.”
“True. Hmm, let’s see.” Booster folded his arms behind his head. “Your name is Theodore Stephen Kord, you’re forty-one years old, you’re a CEO-slash-inventor-slash-wannabe-Marx-Brother by day and a superhero by night. Your father’s name is Thomas, and he lives in Chicago, but you don’t talk to him because he’s a big fat jerk. Your mother’s name was Anya; she died when you were fourteen.” No joking about that. “You graduated high school two years early and went to Midwestern University, where you earned like seven degrees or something, and met Dan Garrett, the first Blue Beetle. When he died, you promised to take over for him.” No joking about that, either. “You have black belts in I think four different disciplines, and some you made up. You like Russian literature but you can’t hold your vodka. You hate people who say ‘I could care less,’ you can’t sing but you’re a pretty good juggler, and you own more newsboy caps than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Ted blinked at him. “That was a pretty succinct biography.”
Booster shrugged. “We’ve known each other a while.” He wondered how Ted would summarize Booster’s life, were their situations reversed. Probably not terrifically favorably, not these days.
Ted was still looking at Booster a bit too searchingly for Booster’s comfort, so Booster pointed to the TV. “You also like Honeymooners reruns.”
“I do?” Ted tilted his head and contemplated Ralph Kramden. “You know what? I think I do. More than the football, anyway.”
“Philistine.” Booster settled back against the couch. Ted put the remote down and settled back too, just a little too close. Booster wasn’t sure if it was the wine or the boyfriend act making him do so, but he decided not to comment.
About an hour into TVLand, Booster’s eyes were drooping. Ted yawned and groped for the remote. “I can’t be sure, but I have a feeling it’s past my bedtime,” he said, turning off the TV.
Booster stood up and stretched. “Yeah, mine too. Let’s hit the hay.”
Ted stood up as well. “Okay. Where’s the bedroom?”
“Yours…I mean, mine…” Booster fumbled a bit, unsure. “Our bedroom is down the hall.”
He led the way, mind racing. After all, they were supposed to be dating. Which meant they would naturally share a bed. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t slept in the same general vicinity or even on the same piece of furniture as Ted; they used to fall asleep on the couch together all the time when they were in the League, and he’d even napped in Ted’s bed when Ted was too busy working on a new invention to play with him.
But they’d never shared a bed while pretending to be lovers before.
The bedroom was a sty, of course. Booster pointed Ted towards the bathroom and started chucking dirty clothing off of the bed and in the general direction of the laundry hamper.
“Is this your toothbrush or mine?” Ted called.
Whoops. “Yours,” Booster called back. “Mine fell in the toilet this morning, so, uh, I burned it. And forgot to get a new one.” He also had no clothing at Ted’s, and nothing in Ted’s closet would fit him, even if he’d wanted to explore the wonderful world of sweater vests. Maybe he could sneak out before Ted woke up and fly home for a change of clothes.
He removed an empty box of crackers and a socket wrench from the bed and shook out the sheets. There, that was acceptable.
Ted emerged from the bathroom, and Booster knew there’d be no more delaying – he had to get into bed as if this was totally normal, or he’d forfeit the game. Taking a deep breath, he toed off his shoes and tugged his shirt over his head. It was ridiculous to feel weird about this – he’d been around Ted in his underwear plenty of times. Probably more times than Ted really wanted him to be. But like the sharing-a-bed thing, the larger situation here was weirding him out.
Ted paused, then started undressing as well. Again, it was nothing Booster hadn’t seen before, but with the low light and the quiet tension…
“Uh, your amnesiac virtue is safe, you know,” he said.
Ted looked up at him, halfway through struggling out of his pants. “Huh?”
“I mean, we won’t…I won’t…you know.” Booster flapped a hand at the bed, the two of them, trying to accommodate all activities that might happen therein. “Until you have your memory back. It wouldn’t be right. Sweetie.”
Did Ted look relieved? “That’s probably for the best,” he said, and kicked his pants off, leaving them in a crumpled heap on the floor. Booster carefully folded his own jeans and placed them in a neat stack with his shirt and socks. He might have to wear them tomorrow, after all. “I appreciate your restraint.”
“Oh, I’ll struggle through it somehow,” Booster said, trying to regain his equilibrium as Ted tossed his shirt in a general not-bed direction and stood there in his Powerpuff Girls boxers. “It’s you I feel bad for. Going who knows how many nights without me rocking your world.”
“Well, if I get desperate, I’ll let you know,” Ted said dryly. God, did he have to look so good? Clearly the low-cholesterol diet and being back in the crimefighting saddle again were working; he didn’t have the body he’d had ten years ago, but he looked fit and healthy and warm and…
Booster’s gaze snagged on the pale scar running down Ted’s chest. Ted followed his line of sight. “What…?” He looked down, brushed his fingers over the scar. “Is this because of my heart?”
Booster swallowed. “Yeah,” he said. A wave of panic was beating at the edge of his consciousness, threatening to overwhelm him. He’d never really thought Ted was lying about the heart condition, but it was easier to pretend he was, easier to hope that maybe Ted was just exaggerating for sympathy and the fun of complaining. But there was the scar, too thick, too long, firm proof that they’d cut open Ted’s chest and pried open his ribcage and…
Ma had died because of her heart, and that had been with 500 years of medical advances on her side. In this barbaric age where they still let clumsy humans put their hands inside your body to try to fix you, what chance did Ted have?
What would Booster do if he lost him?
“You okay?” Ted asked, seeing the look on Booster’s face.
Booster forced himself to calm down, to smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m just tired. Spaced out a little.”
Ted nodded, clear disbelief on his face. “Okay. You wanna get the light?”
“Uh, sure.” Booster turned out the light as Ted got into bed; then he crossed back to the bed and slipped between the covers.
And then there they were, lying side by side, staring up at the ceiling in the dark, breathing just out of sync and a little too fast. Booster could feel Ted’s warmth next to him, radiating out and filling the space between top sheet and mattress, and the entire bed smelled of Ted’s shampoo and sweat, and it would be so easy to just roll over and…and…Booster cut off that line of thought before it grew dangerous. Well, more dangerous than it already was.
As stupid as this fake boyfriends thing was, it was the best interaction he’d had with Ted in months. Maybe years. Jeopardizing that because of feelings he’d accepted years ago he could never act on would be phenomenally stupid, even for Booster.
“Well, good night,” Ted said suddenly, startling Booster, and rolled over onto his side. Away from Booster.
“Good night,” Booster said, and turned away as well.
He would never get to sleep.
…and he was wrapped around Ted, his head pillowed on Ted’s chest, their legs tangled together. He’d even drooled a little. Oh God.
Booster squirmed back a little as the events of yesterday came back to him. Oh, this was great. He’d promised not to take advantage of Ted’s amnesia, and here he was plastered mostly-naked against the guy in his sleep. If Ted really was faking, he’d assume Booster was carrying a desperate, pathetic torch for him; if he was telling the truth, he’d assume Booster was a molest-y creep. The fact that only one of those scenarios was correct didn’t make Booster feel any better.
True, Ted didn’t look displeased about the situation. In fact, he had one hand resting on Booster’s hip in a friendly fashion, just above the waistband of his briefs. Still, if he woke up and found Booster like this, he’d undoubtedly freak.
Booster began the painstaking process of unwinding himself from Ted without waking Ted up. Ted made a sleepy noise of protest and tightened his grip on Booster’s hip, and Booster’s heart stuttered with – nerves? Excitement? He couldn’t say. Carefully, he eased Ted’s hand off his hip, drew his legs out from between Ted’s, and slipped out of bed. Ted frowned and rolled over, into the warm hollow where Booster had been.
Booster just barely managed not to groan out loud in frustration and exasperation. It was taking everything he had not to crawl back into bed and snuggle up with Ted, common sense be damned.
This was what he got for lying, he thought as he snuck down the hall with his clothing – he’d use another bathroom so as to run less risk of waking Ted. But then, Ted was lying too. Shouldn’t he be suffering as well?
Or maybe Ted just wasn’t stupid enough to pretend to be in a relationship with the one person he wanted and could never have.
Booster used the bathroom for its official purpose, dressed, and tiptoed out the roof exit. The cold air on his face as he flew back to his own apartment woke him up properly, and made him feel a little better. He could do this. He’d hidden his attraction to Ted for years, and under equally ridiculous circumstances. To give up now would be to lose the game.
And Booster had always hated losing.
He reached his apartment, which looked even more pathetic than usual in comparison with Ted’s. He showered, brushed his teeth, and put on clean clothes with a feeling of relief, then threw together a bag with a few more outfits and some toiletries in it. He was not about to downgrade from his good hair products to Ted’s economy-size Head and Shoulders if he didn’t have to. As an afterthought, he threw his costume in the bag, too – who knew when Bah and Humbug might rear their top-hat-and-bonnet-clad heads again?
He stopped at a café on the way back to Ted’s and grabbed some breakfast. This turned out to be a good idea, because Ted was awake when he returned.
“Where’ve you been?” Ted asked, scratching his bare stomach. There was no good reason Booster should have found the gesture cute.
“Picked up some breakfast,” Booster said, holding up the paper bag.
“What’s in the duffel?”
“Left my costume at headquarters,” Booster explained, tugging it partially out so that the gold showed.
Did Ted look mildly disgruntled? Maybe, but it vanished when Booster handed him his coffee. “Mmm,” he said, eyes closed in bliss as he inhaled the steam rising from the little drinky spout. “I love you.”
Booster tried not to wince.
Luckily it was Sunday and Ted didn’t have to navigate the office in his faux-amnesiac state, but any hope that they could spend the day doing nothing vanished when Max called while Ted was in the shower. “Suit up,” he told Booster. “Ralph’s got some stuff on your Victorian pals.”
“They’re not my pals,” Booster said, but he tugged on his costume anyway.
Ted did a double take when he got out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his hips. “Is it Christmas or Halloween?” he asked.
“What are you – oh.” Ted-with-amnesia had never seen Booster in costume before. “Max called us in. You’ve got to suit up, too.”
“Are you sure?” Ted asked. “I don’t think I’ll look very good in spandex.”
A drop of water fell from one wet curl and made its torturous way down his bare shoulder and over his chest. Booster swallowed. “Trust me,” he said, “you’ll look fine.”
After some searching for Ted’s costume – Booster at first assumed that Ted had hidden it to protect his secret identity, but it turned out to just be beneath a pile of dirty clothes – Booster managed to wrangle Ted into it. They took Ted’s private elevator down to the Bug’s hangar.
“So what are my powers?” Ted asked as they descended.
“The ability to consume every cheesesteak in a twenty-mile radius without exploding.”
Ted scowled. “Seriously.”
“Seriously?” Booster was tempted to tell him he could phase through solid matter or something, just because Ted would be forced to try, but he thought the better of it. If Ted wasn’t faking, Booster didn’t want him to injure himself any worse. “You don’t have any powers. Like I said last night, you’re a martial artist and a gymnast, and you’ve got the BB gun there.” He nodded towards Ted’s hip. “And, of course, the Bug.”
The doors opened and they stepped out into the hangar. The Bug loomed in front of them, blue and gleaming and impressive. Ted’s eyebrows shot up. “I built that?” Booster nodded. “I’m amazing.”
“Eh.”
Ted shot Booster a look. “Okay, what are your powers?”
Booster began to tick them off. “Flight, strength…”
“Didn’t you say something about a flight ring?”
Booster made a face. “Okay, fine. The suit has super strength. Plus I have the flight ring.” He waggled his finger. “I personally just have above-average combat skills and catlike reflexes. Not to mention my devastating good looks and extraordinary charisma.”
Ted raised an eyebrow. “So without your suit you’d, what? Bat your eyelashes at crime?”
Booster scowled. “Get in the Bug.”
“Because I don’t know if I like the idea of you cheating on me with criminals…”
“Get.”
Ted got, and Booster followed him. Instinctively Ted sat down in the pilot’s seat. “Oh good, you remember how to fly it!” Booster said.
Ted stopped, looking uncertain. “Oh, I…uh, I think I…is it like a car?”
“Not really.”
“Maybe…” Ted squirmed. Booster watched gleefully. “Maybe you should drive her.”
Booster took over the pilot’s seat, hiding a smile. He knew it had cost Ted something to concede that; he hated letting anyone else fly his baby, and in fact only Booster even knew how to, in case of emergencies. Booster turned the Bug on and steered her through the various gates that led to the harbor and then up out of the water, watching Ted wince with every turn.
“Relax,” he told him. “I’m much better at flying the Bug than I am at driving a car.”
“Yeah, but how bad are you at driving a car?” Ted asked.
“They only took my license away twice!” Booster protested. “…And then refused to reissue me another one in the contiguous United States.”
Ted groaned.
Despite Ted’s fears, though, Booster did a perfectly capable job of flying the Bug to Super Buddies headquarters. His landing was maybe a tiny bit shakier than Ted’s would have been, but there was really no reason for Ted to be gripping the handrests like that. They’d only bounced once or twice.
“What the hell was that?” Bea asked, turning around in the computer chair as they descended into the main office. “It sounded like we were going to have a repeat of that time Scott crashed the shuttle through the roof of the embassy.”
Ted shot Booster an accusing look. Booster glared at Bea. “Oh, you weren’t even in the League then,” he snapped.
Max stuck his head out of his private office. “I should have known that racket was you two,” he said. “Ted still have amnesia?”
“Yep,” Booster said, and Ted nodded.
“Well, that’s not covered under our insurance, so hurry up and get him un-amnesiaed.”
“That’s what you said about my strep throat,” Booster said. “What is covered under our insurance?”
“Ringworm, canine distemper, and the pox.”
Ted raised an eyebrow. “I feel healthier already.”
“The coffee machine’s broken, so Ralph and Sue took Mary to Starbucks to get some for everyone. You two just sit over there and don’t break anything until they come back,” Max said.
“And then we can break stuff?” Booster and Ted asked in unison. Max ignored them.
“They’re not letting Mary drink the coffee, are they?” Bea asked.
“God, no,” Max said. “The last thing I need is a hyped-up Marvel flying around the neighborhood. Now leave me alone until they get back.”
He disappeared again. Bea turned back to the computer. From the bright green on the screen, Booster could see that she was doing something on BlazingFire.com. He resisted the urge to go peek over her shoulder, and pulled Ted over to the couch.
“I can’t remember anyone’s names,” Ted whispered as they sat down.
“Don’t worry, buddy, I got you covered,” Booster said. He ticked the names off on his fingers. “The stretchy guy is called Plastic Man. The woman over there with the green hair? She likes to be called Mrs. Gardner. The guy in the office…”
Ralph and Sue returned a few minutes later, laden down with coffee cups, with Mary pouting over her steamed milk. “But I like coffee!” she insisted.
“Sorry, kiddo,” Sue said. She and Ralph handed out the coffee, then plunked down into one of the armchairs, Sue on Ralph’s lap. Bea squeezed onto the sofa on Ted’s other side. Max came out of his office and took the other armchair, and L-Ron followed and stood beside him, while Mary sat cross-legged on the floor.
“Okay, Max, what’s the deal?” Booster asked.
“Susan?” Max asked.
“They’re total newbies,” Sue said. “They’re not profiled on any of the supervillain websites, and the only message board posts about them are from people who were at Macy’s last night. The bad news is that that means we don’t know who they really are, and they were wearing gloves so we can’t get any fingerprints on file even if the cops had been able to get the guns out of the chandelier.”
She shot a look at Booster. He hunched his shoulders. “Sorry.”
Sue went on. “The good news is that their relative inexperience means they should be pretty easy to take down.”
“Even if they did get the drop on Ted?” Bea asked, grinning.
Ted turned to Booster. “Remind me, am I friends with her? And if so, why?”
Bea stuck her tongue out at him. Max got that “I am ignoring you now” look on his face and turned to Ralph. “What have you got?”
“Well, the hundreds of thousands of shoppers walking in and out of the store all evening kind of destroyed any physical evidence, if there was any to begin with,” Ralph said. “And Macy’s security hates cooperating with the NYPD, let alone a private investigator – but they made an exception for a world-famous one like yours truly.”
“I take it you snuck under the door of the evidence room, Your Vaingloriousness?” L-Ron asked.
Ralph huffed. “Well, yes, but tell me that’s not impressive!”
“That’s not impressive,” said everyone in the room, even Mary.
“Thank you,” Ralph said. “Anyway, I waited until after closing time and got rid of the guard by making a distraction waaaaay down the hall with Lefty here.” He waved his left hand. “While he was gone I watched the footage from the stickup. Our perps came in in those costumes, milled around for a while, then climbed onto the jewelry cases and did their thing. The lovebirds over here broke it up – ” he jerked his thumb at Ted and Booster “ – and then took off as the cops came in.”
“We know all this,” Booster said. “Then what?”
“Then somebody in the crowd – hat pulled down to here, scarf pulled up to here, can’t see a thing – threw down a smoke bomb. Total pandemonium. It’s a miracle no one was trampled in all of that, although they were already evacuating, so the store wasn’t as crowded as it normally would be. Anyway, because of the smoke the footage is basically useless until long after our bad guys are gone.”
“But we know how they got out,” Sue added.
“How?” Bea asked.
“Janitor found the Victorian costumes under a rack of clothes,” Ralph said. “They just took the costumes off and evacuated with everyone else. Probably stole a couple of coats as they went, so they weren’t walking around in their shirtsleeves in December.”
“And there were no fingerprints or identifying papers on the clothing,” Sue said. “They’re running a DNA scan on some hair, but who knows if it’s even theirs? These clothes were on the floor. Besides, if they really are newbies, they won’t be on file.”
“So basically we know nothing,” Booster said. “Except that there are three people in on this.”
“Four,” Ralph said. “At least. Because while all this was going on, someone had knocked out the two guards watching the security cameras and tied them up. With Christmas ribbon, incidentally.”
Ted raised an eyebrow. “If they had access to the security cameras, why’d they leave the footage there?”
Ralph pointed at him. “And the award for Best Question goes to Forgetful Jones here.”
“They wanted to leave the evidence,” Sue said. “Why else would they try to hold up Macy’s two days before Christmas? There are much more efficient ways to rob a department store. They don’t want money. They want attention.” She grinned, spreading her hands to indicate the team. “And if there’s any team better equipped to investigate attention-seekers, I don’t know of it.”
Booster looked blankly at Bea. “What is she talking about?”
Bea shook her head. “No idea.” She glanced at Ralph, who shrugged.
“So they want attention,” Ted said. “How does knowing that help us?”
Max took over. “Because it’s a safe bet they’ll strike again. An attention hog doesn’t make one play and then give up.”
As if in answer to his words, the phone rang – the three short rings that meant “emergency.” L-Ron answered.
“Good morning! You’ve reached Super Buddies headquarters. This is L-Ron, formerly of the Cluster, speaking on behalf of His Snake-Oiliness Maxwell Lord, captain of this ship of fools.”
“L-Ron!” Max hissed, glaring at him.
“How may I help you?” L-Ron went on blithely. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay, thank you.”
He hung up and returned to his spot beside Max, arms folded behind his back. Everyone stared at him.
“Well?” Max demanded. “Who was it?”
“An NYPD officer,” L-Ron said. “Charming gentleman.”
Max looked like he was seriously contemplating strangling L-Ron, metal neck or no. “What did he want?”
“Oh, Radio City Music Hall has been taken hostage by terrorists,” L-Ron said.
Max’s annoyance vanished instantly, replaced with excitement. “Now that’s what I call good publicity.” he said. “Well? What are you all sitting around for?”
Mary leapt to her feet. “That’s right!” she cried. “We have to save the Rockettes! And Santa!”
“Does she know Santa isn’t real?” Ted whispered to Booster.
“SHAZAM!”
Ted jumped back as lightning rocketed through the office. “Yow! And did I know she could do that?”
The rest of the team was already running out the door. “Should we take the Bug?” Booster asked as Bea flamed on and lifted off.
“The way you fly it?” Ted asked. “Yeah, that’s a big no. Just carry me, and Pollyanna can carry Plastic Man.”
“Excuse me?” Ralph asked.
Booster hid a smile and scooped Ted up. “Aren’t Plastic Lass and Our Glorious Leader coming?” Ted asked, peering over Booster’s shoulder. “Or are they staying here with Red Tornado, Jr.?”
“What?” asked at least three voices.
“Let Booster and Mary schmooze the cameras,” Max told them as they hovered a few feet off the ground. “People like them the best!”
“I don’t know what ‘shmooze’ means, Mr. Lord,” Mary said. “Can I just smile?”
Guy came out of the bar. “I heard some shazaming going down. What’s happening?”
“We’re going to save the Rockettes!” Mary told him as they flew off. “Bye!”
“See you later, Hal!” Ted called.
“WHAT?”
Booster snickered. Bea, flying beside them, shook her head. “I hate to condone such immature behavior, but well played, Gold.”
Ted peered up at Booster’s face. “I’m beginning to suspect you’ve been deceiving me again. Honey.”
“Would I do that to you?” Booster asked. “Teddy Bear?”
Bea groaned. “I think I liked it better when you two were fighting.”
They quickly reached Manhattan, Booster and Bea pouring it on to match Mary’s speed. The streets around Radio City Music Hall were mobbed, which wasn’t unusual for this time of year, but the block it was situated on was cordoned off by the police, and news vans were everywhere.
They alighted in front of the cop who seemed to be in charge. “What’s the situation, lieutenant?” Ralph asked.
“Some lunatic’s in there threatening to burn the place down,” the cop said. “Apparently he’s got some kind of flame-retardant costume and a flamethrower. The matinee was just about to start, so the place is packed.”
“Has he made any demands?” Booster asked.
The cop shook his head. “Nah, he’s just rambling. Something about Christmas being a lie…it’s pretty incoherent.”
“Christmas isn’t a lie!” Mary said indignantly.
“Not now, Mary,” Bea muttered.
Ralph was frowning. “Flame-retardant costume…it’s not Heat Wave, is it?”
“Nah, new guy,” the cop said. “Black costume. We were hoping maybe you could sort of…slither in and get the drop on him?”
“Ha,” Bea said. “If he’s fire-based, he should be answering to me. I’ll show him what fire really is.”
“Yes, the woman on fire should go fight the man who shoots fire in a crowded theater full of wooden seats and children wanting to experience the magic of Christmas,” Ted deadpanned. Bea glared at him. “I’m just saying! Children are kind of flammable.”
“I got this,” she snapped.
Booster rubbed his chin. “That wasn’t a black Victorian costume, was it?” he asked the cop.
“Don’t think so. We don’t have a great visual, but it looks more SWAT team-y. He might have a bulletproof vest under there.”
“Are we going in or not?” Mary asked. She actually stamped her foot. The sidewalk beneath her cracked slightly. “There is a man in there trying to ruin Christmas!”
Bea set her jaw, or at least Booster thought she did. It was sometimes hard to tell under the fire. “Yeah, let’s do this. Mary and I’ll go in from either wing and get the drop on him; boys, start evacuating from the back.”
“Who put her in charge?” Ted muttered, but he followed Booster through the front doors of the theater.
“If he blasts at us, get behind my force field,” Booster whispered to Ted and Ralph as they snuck through the lobby. They paused just outside the doors of the theater proper, waiting to hear the fight start.
“You have a force field?” Ted asked.
“Really?” Ralph asked Ted, sounding annoyed. “You’re going to do this now?”
Before Ted could answer, they heard a crash from inside the theater. They snuck in as quickly as they could, ducking down so as not to draw the perp’s attention. Booster wished briefly that they’d gone more Batman-ish in the costume department; between his gold and the Easter egg pastels of his friends, they weren’t exactly dressed for skulking in the shadows.
“You were warned not to interfere!” the hostage taker was yelling. He waved his flamethrowers, which seemed to draw fuel from a pack on his back, at Mary and Bea, who were hovering on either side of him. “I’ll burn this whole place down, I swear!”
“You want to play with fire?” Bea shot back. “Just try me, buddy!”
Ted and Ralph started helping people in the back wheelchair row out of the theater. Booster kept an eye on the crowd, ready to quell any panic or throw up his force field if necessary.
Mary tried to swoop in on the bad guy’s left, but he saw her coming and sent a blast of flames towards the audience. Screams rang out. Mary shied off; it couldn’t hurt her, but she knew better than to imperil the civilians.
Bea flung out a branch of green flame, intercepting the bad guy’s fire and drawing it into her. His flamethrower fizzled out, and he stared confusedly at it, then at Bea. “You are totally outmatched, little man,” Bea said. “Why don’t you give it up before you get hurt?”
“Or before you hurt anyone else!” Mary said. Booster wasn’t sure if she was deliberately playing Good Cop to Bea’s Bad, or if she was just acting on instinct. “You don’t really want to hurt anyone, do you? Why are you doing this?”
“Why am I doing this?” he repeated. “Oh, you’ll know soon. You’ll all know soon! You’ll all be getting coal for Christmas!” Suddenly his glance fell on Booster, Ted, and Ralph, who had formed an orderly line of evacuees in the back. “Uh oh! I think I see some naughty children who should be getting coal right now!”
He shot a blast of flame at them. Booster flew up and intercepted it with his force field, and Ralph and Ted started hurrying the audience out at double-time.
The bad guy was out of control now, firing flame everywhere. Booster flew forward, trying to block him closer to the source, moving the force field at top speed to catch each blast. He could use his blasters, but the guy seemed to be a normal – if crazy – human; Booster didn’t want to hurt him that badly, though he would if he had to.
“Booster!” Ted shouted. “Bottle him up, you idiot!”
Booster nearly smacked himself. He was an idiot. He flew close enough to get his force field around the bad guy, and sealed it around him in a perfect golden sphere.
The force field allowed air and certain types of energy through, but there was enough pressure and fuel in the fire the bad guy was shooting out to cause it to ricochet off the curved wall of the force field and back at the guy’s unprotected face. Immediately he turned it off, but his clothing – flame-retardant wasn’t the same thing as fire¬proof – was already smoldering.
As he started beating at his jacket, distracted, Booster shut down the force field – and Mary flicked the bad guy in the forehead. He went over like a felled tree. There was a breathless hush from the audience; then they erupted in cheers.
Ralph cracked his knuckles. “Another job well done by the Super Buddies.”
“…That’s not really our name, is it?” Ted asked.
Booster sighed.
The management was so thankful that the Super Buddies had stopped the arsonist that they offered them dinner and free tickets to the evening performance. They’d tried to protest, but Mary had looked so excited – and given them such convincing puppy dog eyes – that they had to accept. The show was actually surprisingly enjoyable. Booster wished he could blame it on all the shapely female legs high-kicking in perfect unison, but when Ted’s hand slipped into his halfway through the first act, he found it hard to concentrate on the wholesome sex appeal of the girls onstage. Apparently he was just a sucker for a good song-and-dance – and Ted, smiling at him in the darkness between numbers.
Just for a moment, Booster allowed himself to wonder what would happen if Ted never did get his memory back. Would the lie become the truth? Would they just keep living together, eventually moving on to the next stage in their fake relationship, and the next, and the next? It was something he had to admit he’d always wanted from Ted, but knew he could never have.
But something in him recoiled at the notion. He didn’t want Ted on those terms. And he’d never be able to live with himself.
Maybe he should tell Ted the truth when the show was over. As the performers took their bows and Ted let go of Booster’s hand to applaud, he seriously considered it. Only the fact that he still wasn’t really sure that Ted wasn’t faking stopped him. If Ted was faking, and if Booster lost the game, Ted would be intolerably smug for basically forever.
But if Ted wasn’t faking…this couldn’t go on.
Being girls, both Bea and Mary had to use the ladies’ room before they left. Booster was about to complain before he realized that he had to go too. He parked Ted in the lobby while he and Ralph went to sniff out a men’s room.
“We’ll meet you right back here, okay?” he told Ted.
Ted rolled his eyes. “I have amnesia, Booster. I’m not twelve.” He squeezed Booster’s hand reassuringly. “I’ll be fine. You go primp. Not that you need it,” he added with a wink.
“Uh…yeah.” Feeling out of sorts, Booster headed into the bathroom. He did his business, zipped up, washed his hands, and gave himself a good, long look in the mirror.
“Nyaaargh,” he said, leaning forward so that his forehead thumped the glass.
“What’s the matter with you?” Ralph asked from the sink next to him.
“Nyrrgh,” Booster said, thumping his forehead against the mirror again.
“Okay, don’t tell me,” Ralph said.
Booster glanced at Ralph’s reflection out of the corner of his eye. “It’s Ted and this whole stupid amnesia racket. I don’t know what to do.”
Ralph raised an eyebrow all the way past his hairline. It was kind of gross. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I can’t keep pretending we’re dating if he really has amnesia, can I?” Booster asked. “It’s creepy.”
Ralph blinked at him. “Wait, are you kidding?”
Booster frowned. “What do you mean, am I kidding?”
“I thought this whole ‘amnesia boyfriends’ thing was a stupid gag you two were in on together. You really think Ted has amnesia?” Ralph sounded like he was trying not to laugh.
“I didn’t at first, but…I don’t know.” Booster stood up straight and turned around to face Ralph properly. “Wait. Do you know he’s faking it?”
Ralph snorted. “Of course.”
“How?”
“Well, for starters, retrograde amnesia doesn’t work that way,” Ralph said. “This isn’t a cartoon. Plus, he slipped up. How’d he know your force field was round?”
Booster’s eyes widened as he thought it over. Ted hadn’t seen the force field as a sphere since he’d gotten knocked on the head. And now that Booster thought about it, there’d been a few times Ted had reacted in a way that didn’t make sense if he’d really lost his memory, like with Booster driving the Bug, or his triumph at Booster’s confession of his heart condition. Booster had just been knocked so far off balance by Ted’s recent behavior that he’d forgotten or overlooked those times. “I’m an idiot.”
“No argument here,” Ralph said, reaching for a paper towel to dry his hands.
Booster scowled, then paused. “You’re…you’re sure he’s all right?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘all right,’ exactly, but amnesia ain’t what ails him,” Ralph said, tossing his towel in the garbage. He glanced back at Booster and his expression softened. “Booster, honestly. Do you really think Max would put one of us out into the field if he thought we were hurt?”
Now Booster felt even stupider, and vaguely guilty. Ralph gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and held the door open. “Come on, let’s go. Sue’s probably waiting for me at headquarters.”
Booster headed out of the bathroom. Ted was waiting in the same place Booster had left him, leaning against the snack bar and whistling. At the sight of his blissful unconcern, Booster felt the confusion and guilt of the past day or so transmuting into something else.
So Ted wanted to play games, huh? Booster could play this game. Booster could play this game so hard.
He must have been making a weird expression, because Ted frowned at him. “Everything all right?” he asked.
“All right?” Booster repeated. “Everything is wonderful! We saved the day, it’s almost Christmas, and I get to share it all with my special Teddy Bear.” He put an arm around Ted’s shoulders and squeezed. “What could possibly be wrong?”
Ralph rolled his eyes. “Has ‘Teddy Bear’ seen the girls? I’d like to get home before Christmas, if possible.”
“Untwist your panties, Ralph, we’re right here,” Bea said from behind him. “Let’s go.”
They flew back to headquarters, where Ted and Booster picked up the Bug and returned home. Booster made sure to pepper their conversation with insulting endearments and beam lovingly at Ted as much as possible. Annoyingly, Ted took it in stride, batting his eyelashes right back at Booster.
It was late, so they headed straight for bed. “So that’s crimefighting,” Ted said, wandering into the master bathroom as Booster undressed. “That doesn’t seem so hard.”
“Well, you didn’t really do anything,” Booster pointed out. “Which is actually pretty typical for you. I mean, I’m a world-famous hero – you’re really more of my sidekick than anything else.”
“Then why aren’t I called Kid Booster or the Golden Boy or something?” Ted asked.
“Believe me, I have lobbied for a name change,” Booster said as Ted squirted toothpaste onto his toothbrush. “You’re very stubborn. Sugar Lips.”
Ted mumbled something incomprehensible but probably sweetly insulting around the toothbrush. Booster ignored him and finished tidying up the bedroom. He’d managed to sort out Ted’s dirty clothes from the clean ones and shove all the dirty stuff into a hamper. He knew he should just leave Ted’s clothes alone, but dammit, if he was going to stay in this bedroom indefinitely, the bedroom was going to be clean.
He climbed into bed just as Ted came out of the bathroom. Ted paused to stretch and yawn, and Booster quickly averted his eyes from the strong, graceful arc of Ted’s torso as he stretched. Over-the-top endearments were one thing; obvious physical reactions were a whole ’nother story, and best avoided.
Ted got into bed, jostling the mattress. “You know, I’m not the least bit sleepy,” he said.
“Excited about Christmas Eve Day?” Booster asked.
“Do I usually get excited about Christmas Eve Day?”
“Not so much,” Booster admitted. “You’re Jewish. Ish. You don’t really practice.”
Ted yawned again. “Tell me some more stuff about myself. Maybe that’ll put me to sleep.”
“You are pretty boring,” Booster agreed. “Of course, I don’t think so, but most of my fans do. They wish I was dating Wonder Woman.” He shifted, getting comfortable. “So what do you want to know?” His eyes had adjusted to the dark enough that when he looked over at Ted he could just make out his profile – the shape of his lips, the curve of the nose that Ted jokingly lamented but that Booster had always thought was handsome.
He felt the mattress move as Ted shrugged. “I dunno. Uh…tell me about us. How did we get together? I mean, were we teammates first and then a couple, or what?”
Booster folded his hands behind his head. “Oh, you fell for me the day we met. There I was, a callow youth of 19…”
“‘Callow?’”
“…you a careworn old man-spinster of 26,” Booster went on. “One look at these gorgeous peepers and you were sunk.” Maybe he shouldn’t have hit so close to home. Booster could still remember the funny swooping feeling in his stomach when he saw the true color of Ted’s eyes. “Me, I’m just slumming.”
“And someday you’ll leave me for a supermodel?”
“And someday I’ll leave you for a supermodel,” Booster agreed. “No hard feelings?”
“Oh, not at all,” Ted said graciously. “Clearly man-spinster is my true calling in life. You’re just an aberration wrapped up in dimples and a tan.” He rolled onto his side and smiled at Booster. “Guess I better enjoy it while I can, huh?”
“Guess so,” Booster said, disgruntled. Teasing Ted wasn’t nearly as fun when he didn’t get mad.
He decided to up the ante. “Night,” he said, leaning in and kissing Ted on the cheek, catching a whiff of minty toothpaste aroma and the gentle scrape of stubble. “See you in the morning.”
Ted blinked at him, obviously startled, and Booster suppressed a crow of triumph. “…Night,” Ted said belatedly.
Booster smiled at him, then rolled over, facing away. That hadn’t been so bad. He could share a bed with Ted and not show anything. He could kiss him and play it cool. He could…
Oh, who did he think he was kidding?
Oh, right. He was in Ted’s bed, in Ted’s apartment. And Ted was…not there.
Booster sat up, frowning, and listened. He could hear faint noise down the hall. Getting out of bed, Booster followed the noise to the kitchen, where Ted was making coffee in his underwear.
“Morning, sweetie!” Ted said, smiling at him. “Merry Christmas! You look like you could use a cup of coffee.”
Booster sat down on a kitchen stool. “Merry Christmas. You – I mean, we don’t have any tea in the house, do we?”
Ted checked the cabinets. “Sorry. Beverage options seem to be water, coffee, milk, or wine.”
Booster wrinkled his nose. “Coffee then, I guess.”
Ted poured him a mug. “Milk? Sugar?”
“Both, please.”
Ted added them and handed the mug to Booster. “I take my coffee black, don’t I?” he asked. “I made a cup with milk and sugar first and had to pour it down the sink. I don’t know how you drink it that way.”
“I don’t, usually,” Booster said. “I’m a tea man myself. You must not have done the grocery shopping like you were supposed to.” He sighed. “Once again my man lets me down. My mama done told me...”
“Well, I assure you I feel just awful,” Ted replied, looking not the slightest bit sincere. “So what’s the plan for today? Big family dinner? You showering me with diamonds?”
Booster snorted. “No family dinner, unless you want to mend fences with your jerk dad.”
Ted made a face. “As appealing as that sounds, probably not.”
Booster shrugged. “Then…well, I mean, we have this tradition…that we’ve been doing for years, even before we were a couple…but I don’t know, maybe you’ll think it’s immature.”
He knew Ted well enough to know when he was uncomfortable, even when Ted was trying to play it cool. “Oh?”
“Well, neither of us is really into the traditional Christmassy stuff, so instead every year on Christmas we go see whatever looks like the worst movie playing in theaters, and then come home for cookies and beer. Which I guess we can change to wine for your heart if you want.” Booster traced his finger around the lip of his coffee cup with studied carelessness. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to. Even though we’ve been doing it for almost every year since we met. And it’s kind of our special thing. So we won’t be alone. On Christmas. But, you know. It’s up to you.”
Ted was cringing, and Booster suppressed another surge of triumph. Served him right for trying to weasel out of cookies and beer. Normally Booster would’ve felt guilty about bullying Ted into hanging out like this, but hey, Ted was lying about having amnesia. He figured it evened out.
“No, no, that sounds…nice,” Ted said, squirming. “We should…we should do that. Honey.”
“Thanks,” Booster said, and reached across the counter to squeeze Ted’s hand. “Christmas just wouldn’t be special without you.”
He had a sudden recollection of last Christmas: lying on a beach in Fiji, drinking something strong and sweet out of a coconut, the sun warm on his skin and not a care in the world. He’d had some kind of rare fish that cost over a hundred dollars for dinner, and Gladys had given him a car – and a driver to drive it.
But he’d have given it all back to be snickering in the back row of a movie theater with Ted.
“You sweet talker,” Ted said, clearly struggling to get back in control of the game. “Though that sounds like a pretty platonic Christmas to me.”
“Well, like I said, we were doing it before we were a couple,” Booster said, a little warily. Where was Ted going with this?
Booster’s hand was still resting on Ted’s; Ted turned them over so that Booster’s hand was on the counter, palm-up, and traced idly along his lifeline. Booster fought to suppress a shiver. “We don’t have any…other traditions? More recent ones?” He quirked at eyebrow at Booster – an expression that was more wryly amused than seductive, but one that still hit Booster right between the eyes. “No mistletoe or anything?”
He was trying to trip Booster up. Well, Booster could play along. “Not as such, no,” he said. He was more practiced at seductive looks than Ted, and he took the opportunity to shoot his best one Ted’s way. “Why? Got any ideas?”
“I could come up with one or two, if you wanted,” Ted said, still with that wry curve to his mouth. Booster wanted to trace it with his fingers. Or his tongue. “I’m just thinking…maybe familiar things will jog my memory.”
“Living in your own apartment and fighting crime in your own giant blue insectmobile isn’t enough?” Booster asked.
“Well, not if I’m not living in my own apartment the way I normally do,” Ted said. “I assume we’re not normally this chaste. Didn’t you say you rock my world on a regular basis? I’m pretty sure that’s the phrasing you used.”
Booster raised an eyebrow. “You want to do it?” Apparently Ted was playing hardball – or some other kind of really competitive game that wasn’t an awful pun, Booster amended mentally.
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Ted said. “But you don’t just have to kiss my cheek.”
He looked up at Booster, clearly waiting for Booster to either make an excuse, or admit the whole thing was a lie. Waiting for Booster to chicken out because of the grossness or weirdness or…whatever-ness of kissing his best friend.
Luckily, Booster had no aversion whatsoever to kissing Ted. Not that he expected Ted to let it get that far. “Well, in that case…” he said, and leaned in towards Ted.
Time seemed to slow. Booster had time to watch Ted’s eyes widen and then flutter closed, had time to appreciate the hint of auburn in Ted’s lashes and the smile lines around his eyes, had time to think this is really going to happen and close his own eyes and…
The phone rang.
They sprang apart like teenagers who’d been caught necking. Booster stared at Ted, waiting for him to answer the phone, then remembered that this was supposedly his apartment, and grabbed for it. “Hello?”
“Turn on the news!” Bea shouted.
“Ow!” Booster said, holding the phone away from his ear a bit. “Why?”
“Just do it, you idiot!”
“Okay, okay.” Booster trotted into the living room and turned on the TV, flipping channels until he got to the local 24-hour news station. Ted followed him.
“ – threatening to destroy the tree in Rockefeller Center,” the anchor was saying. “Jill?”
The scene cut to the on-the-spot reporter, who was standing in front of a police cordon, the massive trunk of the Rockefeller Center tree rising behind her. “I’m here at Rockefeller Center, where four terrorists have just threatened to blow up the famous tree,” she said, shouting into the mic to be heard over the crowd milling around her. “You can see it behind me, and…Frank, are you getting this? You should be able to see the leader up in the branches. The others are circling the trunk, which has been rigged with explosives…needless to say, an explosion of this size in such a crowded area would be disastrous. Police are trying to talk them down now, but everyone around me keeps asking the same question: Where is the Justice League?”
“Probably off being pompous somewhere,” Booster muttered. He squinted at the screen. “Is that…?”
“Yep,” Bea said. “Bah and Humbug and our buddy from last night. Apparently there was another smoke bomb escape around midnight.”
“Peachy,” Booster said. “So I take it we’re letting League handle this one?”
“You’re so funny. Suit up and meet us at the tree.”
Booster hung up and turned to Ted – and remembered suddenly where they’d left off. “Uh…Bea says – ”
“I think I figured it out,” Ted replied, nodding towards the TV. “We going?”
“Yeah. Get dressed.”
They suited up as fast as they could and headed for the roof exit. They didn’t bother with the Bug – Booster could fly more confidently than he could drive, and anyway they didn’t want to tip off the bad guys with a huge blue ship in the sky. It was just a quick trip down to Midtown, anyway.
Soon they could see the tall, clustered buildings of Rockefeller Center. “We seem to keep ending up here,” Ted called over the rushing wind.
“Well, we seem to keep fighting jerkbags who want to ruin Christmas, and all the New York Christmas stuff is in Midtown,” Booster pointed out.
He spotted Bea’s flame on a roof next to the tree, and touched down beside her. Ralph and Mary were there too. “Hey,” Booster said.
Ralph waved. “Check out the head honcho over there.”
Booster squinted. The leader was clinging to an upper branch, waving his free arm wildly and yelling. And he was dressed like…
“The Grinch,” Ted said. “Unbelievable. Well, now it at least kind of makes sense.”
“Is that so?” Booster asked, raising an eyebrow at him. “Care to explain it to the rest of us?”
“You said it yourself: they’re trying to ruin Christmas,” Ted explained. “So we have the Grinch, and Bah and Humbug, and I don’t know who the guy in the black is supposed to be. But they keep hitting Christmas spots with no very clear goal in mind, so either Christmas killed their dog, or they just really want attention.” He took another look at the guy in the fuzzy green costume and Santa jacket clinging to the giant tree. “My money’s on the latter.”
“Okay, I’ll take care of Grinchy up here,” Booster said. “Bea, Ralph, and Mary, you distract the others. Ted, you still remember enough science to defuse the bombs?”
Ted squirmed, and Booster hid a smile. He knew Ted wasn’t about to fake ignorance when thousands of lives were at stake. “I can figure it out,” he said finally.
“Good. Oh, and Bea – watch your flame around all this pine, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled. “Who died and made you leader?”
“Nate, almost,” Ralph pointed out. Bea and Mary rounded on him and Booster quickly intervened before they could start yelling and crying respectively.
“All right, people, let’s move out!” he said, and took off.
Mary scooped Ted up and the rest of his team flew down to the base of the tree. Booster headed out to confront the leader.
“Ah, so the superheroes finally arrive,” the Grinch said as Booster flew within hearing distance. “It’s about time.”
“Why don’t you pack up your sack and head back to Who-ville, buddy?” Booster asked, eyeing the Grinch’s hand nervously. There was something in it that looked a whole lot like a detonator. From the way the Grinch was waving it around, it didn’t seem to be the kind that detonated when the holder let go; still, Booster didn’t want to rush him and have him set it off before Booster could stop him. “There’s a lot of tourists down there who want to enjoy the tree without you uglying up the view.”
“Well, they don’t get to enjoy the tree!” the Grinch said. “They don’t get to enjoy any part of Christmas! Not if the Grinch Gang has anything to say about it!”
Booster raised an eyebrow. “The Grinch Gang? Really?”
The Grinch folded his arms. “And what’s your team called?”
“Never mind.” Booster had to keep him talking, at least until he got the signal from the others that Ted had defused the explosives. “So there’s you, and Bah and Humbug, but who’s the other guy?”
“Coal, obviously!” the Grinch said indignantly.
“Coal?”
“If you’re bad Santa gives you coal in your stocking,” the Grinch explained, clearly exasperated. “I can’t believe no one knows this.”
Booster shrugged. “I’m from the future. We kind of don’t have coal there, for stockings or anything else. So why are you trying to ruin Christmas? Never got that Easy-Bake Oven you kept asking for?”
“How dare you mock our glorious mission?” the Grinch cried. “These tawdry gifts are the problem! They cheapen this most loathsome of holidays!”
Booster frowned. “Wait. Do you like Christmas or not like it?” He could hear the others scuffling down below and hoped the Grinch couldn’t. He wondered if Ted was having difficulty with the explosives.
“I will destroy this tree to show the world the true meaning of Christmas: senseless destruction!”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not the true meaning of Christmas,” Booster said. “But hey, I’m an atheist, so I can’t be sure.”
“Everyone will respect Christmas again once I have destroyed it!”
Booster crossed his arms. “Okay, you know your whole mission statement is completely incomprehensible, right? Just thought I’d point that out.”
“Philistine! Base defiler!” the Grinch shouted. “I will – ”
There was a crash from below, and the tree shuddered. They both looked down. It was hard to tell through the branches, but it looked like Mary had thrown Humbug into the lower branches. Ralph seemed to have Bah all wrapped up, while Bea had made short work of Coal again. And Ted –
“So!” the Grinch said. “You think to distract me while your minions foil my plan!”
“Seriously, that’s not how the Grinch talks.”
“You shall not interfere with my grand design!” the Grinch cried, and – just as Booster realized what he was going to do – pressed the detonator.
There was an explosion from the base of the tree, and Booster’s heart stopped. Ted.
The tree itself rocked, and the Grinch tumbled from the branches. Booster’s body reacted while his mind was still reeling with shocked horror, and he snatched the Grinch out of the air, tucking him under his arm as he flew towards the ground.
Ted, no, please, please, I’m sorry I’ve been acting like an idiot, I’m sorry I got married, I’m sorry we’ve been playing this stupid game, please be okay. He tossed the Grinch at a startled Mary as he flew past. “Watch him!” Ted, oh God…
…And there he was, knocked back several yards from the tree, beating flames out of the sleeve of his costume with an annoyed expression. “I knew I’d missed one wire,” he said, sounding more disgusted with himself than bothered that he had just been on fire.
“T—Beetle!” Booster cried, and grabbed him. “I thought…I thought you were…”
He felt Ted tense, startled, then relax. “Hey,” he said softly, hugging Booster back. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”
“Ted, I don’t wanna do this anymore,” Booster said, pulling back to look at Ted. He was sooty and his cowl had been knocked askew, but he was obviously fine. “This stupid game – I don’t – “
“Um…Booster?” Mary called behind him. “Help?”
Booster turned. The explosion had knocked out a chunk of the tree trunk and it was wobbling dangerously. Mary was backed up against it, trying to hold it in place and hold on to the Grinch at the same time. Meanwhile, Humbug looked like he was about to either make a run for it or just plain fall out of the lower branches.
“Sorry,” Booster called, and grabbed the Grinch, leaving Mary free to hold up the tree with both hands. He snagged Humbug out of the branches with his other arm and brought them both over to the cops, who were just edging their way cautiously up to the tree. Ralph and Bea handed over Bah and Coal, while Ted went over to chat with the bomb squad.
Then Booster checked on Mary. “Sorry about that,” he said again. “You okay?”
She smiled at him. “Oh, I’m fine, thank you. I just didn’t have enough hands before. It’s not heavy.”
Booster glanced up at the eighty-two-foot tall tree. “Sure,” he said.
After that things wrapped up pretty quickly. Ted had gotten almost all of the bombs defused, so the explosion hadn’t been nearly as devastating as it could have been. There were just a few small patches of fire, which Bea took care of, and the damage to the tree, which was quickly propped up with a bit of scaffolding, giving Mary a break. (The Rockefeller Center folks promised to let Mary put the star on top next year in gratitude for saving their tree, which clearly made the whole debacle worth it in Mary’s mind.) The Grinch Gang was taken away to be locked up under maximum security, though now that they had the whole Gang arrested it was unlikely that they would be able to pull off another one of their escapes.
Once it was clear that they were no longer needed, Booster flew Ted home. His nerves were still jangling from the close call, and though Ted was putting a brave face on things, Booster was pretty sure he’d been a bit shaken up by the explosion, if not actually injured.
“You sure we don’t need to go to a hospital?” he asked as they entered Ted’s apartment. “Or Dr. Mid-Nite?”
“Dr. Mid-Huh?” Ted asked, still apparently committed to the amnesia game. He held up hand before Booster could speak. “Look, I’m fine. I just need to take a hot shower.”
Booster sighed and let him. He changed back into civvies while Ted was showering and slumped on the couch. Turning on the TV, he flipped channels vaguely, cycling quickly past any news coverage of the fight at the tree.
One long, hot shower later, Ted came out of the master bedroom in sweat pants and an old t-shirt. He was sporting a few new bruises that Booster knew would look worse before they got better, and examining his arm gingerly. “Do you know how to treat a burn?” he asked. “It doesn’t look too bad – it’s not blistering or anything – but it does sting.”
“You treat a burn by going to see a doctor,” Booster said sternly. Ted just looked at him. “Fine! I’ll get the first-aid kit. Did you run cold water on it?”
“Yeah, first thing. And I kept it out of the hot water as much as I could while I was showering.”
Booster fetched the first aid kit and returned to the couch. It was a bit disheartening to see how many supplies were in it, and to know that they’d both probably used all of them at some point. Well, one didn’t become a superhero if one wasn’t willing to get banged up on a regular basis.
Ted hissed as Booster spread the burn ointment on his arm. “Will I ever play the piano again, doc?”
“Let’s hope not,” Booster said, wiping his hand off on a paper towel and reaching for the light gauze. “You’re terrible at it.” He taped off the bandage. “How does that feel?”
Ted flexed his arm gingerly. “Much better. Thanks.” He picked up Booster’s hand with his own good one and squeezed it. “You’re so good to me, honey.”
Booster sighed. “Ted, stop it.”
“Stop what?” Ted wasn’t very good at looking innocent, but he tried.
“This whole…thing.” Booster pulled his hand away and waved it between them. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“But I thought you were going to…jog my memory,” Ted said, scooting closer. He was clearly not willing to let go of the game, or at least not willing to let Booster bow out gracefully.
Booster wasn’t sure what Ted expected to get from this anymore, but he was tired of playing around. “Fine,” he snapped. “You want me to kiss you? Fine.”
And he grabbed Ted by the shoulders, hauled him in close, and kissed him. He kissed him like he’d wanted to that morning, like he’d wanted to when he found Ted safe after the explosion, like he’d been wanting to since he was nineteen and so damn in love he thought he’d die from it. He kissed him through Ted’s squeak of surprise, through Ted’s hands landing tense on his chest – but not pushing him away.
He kissed him like he knew he’d never get to again.
When he pulled back, Ted was staring at him, eyes wide and cheeks flushed. “I…” He licked his lips and Booster’s head thudded. “I don’t have amnesia,” he said finally.
“I know,” Booster said. It was over now. He couldn’t blame that on the game. He’d gone too far; he’d given himself away. “Ted, I…”
“Booster.”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.” And Ted pulled him down for another kiss.
Stunned, Booster let him. Ted’s hands slid from his chest to the back of his neck and into his hair, and Booster whimpered and tightened his hands on Ted’s shoulders.
After a long, dizzying moment, Ted pulled back. Booster stared at him. “I…you said you were straight,” he said. “You’ve always said you were straight.”
“So did you!” Ted retorted.
“No, I said I wasn’t gay!” Booster said. “There’s a difference!”
Ted scowled. “That’s just semantics.”
“Well, you played the semantics game too!” Booster pointed out.
“Well, maybe articulating my sexuality isn’t so easy for me!”
“Why are we arguing?”
“I don’t know!”
“Can I kiss you again?”
“Yes!”
This time the kiss was longer, and when it was done they were both breathing hard, Ted half in Booster’s lap. “So why the amnesia thing?” Booster asked.
Ted shrugged. “I don’t know. Mostly to annoy you, at first.” Booster glared at him, but lost the expression when Ted nibbled at his ear. “Then…I don’t know. I didn’t want to lose. I wanted to see how far I could go. And…” He looked down, toying with the sleeve of Booster’s sweater. “I liked having you here.”
Booster kissed his temple. “I liked being here.”
Booster’s sleeve must have been fascinating, because Ted was still staring at it. “I missed you,” he said softly.
“Yeah, I know.”
Ted looked up, surprised. Booster grinned smugly at him. “Well, after all, I’m irresistible.”
Ted laughed, obviously relieved. “Is that so?”
“C’mere, let me show you,” Booster said, and pulled Ted in for another kiss. Later they might talk about this; later there might be apologies and explanations for insults and unreturned calls and marriages. But not today, and maybe not ever. Maybe they wouldn’t need it.
“So,” Ted said when he could speak again. “I’m still down for cookies and beer – well, cookies and red wine – but do you mind if we skip the movie?”
“Trying to weasel out of a tradition again?” Booster asked, but there was no venom in it.
“Well,” Ted said, and his smile held all the promise Booster could ask for, “I was thinking we could make some new traditions.”
“You know what?” Booster wrapped his arms around Ted’s waist and grinned right back. “That sounds like a great idea.”