In his sleep, Tony Stark vaguely felt someone shoving him.
"Wake up, Tony!"
"Huh...?"
Tony forced his eyes open and saw Pepper standing there holding a stack of documents. She looked exhausted as she stared at the playboy who seemed destined never to grow up, her voice filled with helpless frustration.
"Wake up! That SHIELD guy—Calson—is here looking for you again."
"He says it's urgent. Something about national security."
Agent Phil Coulson stood politely outside the living room and corrected her:
"It's Coulson, ma'am."
Even if names in his line of work were basically just codenames, Coulson still happened to like his current one quite a lot.
Still groggy, Tony rubbed his numb face and looked toward the unexpectedly returned Coulson.
"Alright, Calson, what now?"
"Didn't you just leave not long ago?"
"What, changed your mind and decided to have that drink after all?"
"No, Mr. Stark. I didn't leave 'not long ago.'"
Coulson looked rather speechless as he stared at the completely time-blind drunk in front of him. Only sheer professional discipline kept his expression under control.
"That was yesterday."
"Yesterday?!"
Tony instantly sprang up from the couch and looked around frantically, unable to find the person he was searching for.
"Where'd Joey go?"
Right. Coulson had been waiting specifically for that sentence.
He immediately strode forward, pulled a photograph from his coat, and shoved it in front of Tony.
"The 'Joey' you're talking about..."
"Is it this person?"
Tony focused on the photo.
In it was a red-caped figure holding up an old-fashioned car.
Tony took the picture and fell into deep thought.
"Hmm..."
After a long silence, Tony finally looked back up at Coulson with complete confidence and absolute sincerity in his eyes.
"Nope."
"I've never seen this man in my life."
---
Meanwhile, Joey and Starfire were wandering aimlessly through the streets of New York.
Fortunately, it was winter.
The near-subzero outdoor temperature gave the two of them the perfect disguise.
Joey wore a thick short winter jacket along with the same jeans he used to wear back in Kansas. A pair of plain black glasses rested symbolically on his nose to partially obscure his face as he casually strolled through the city in broad daylight.
Starfire's outfit was far more elaborate.
She wore a long purple down coat over an orange turtleneck sweater. A gray scarf and a wide-brimmed sunhat concealed her distinctly non-human orange skin, while dark sunglasses hid her emerald-green eyes.
Only her smooth orange-red hair remained visible.
"I'm telling you, you probably didn't even need all this disguise."
Joey glanced at the seventeenth woman dressed as a Christmas reindeer who had walked past him today alone, then politely turned down another female Santa Claus trying to ask for his phone number.
"It's Christmas. Even if you dress weirdly, nobody thinks it's weird."
Sweating nervously, Joey grabbed Starfire's hand—which had already started heating up to several thousand degrees Celsius—and hurriedly dragged her into a nearby alley with fewer people before she exploded in anger.
He had brought Starfire out to help improve her mood.
Not make it worse.
"Fine then."
After being pulled into the alley and away from the crowds, Starfire softly huffed, then removed her oversized hat and sunglasses, finally revealing her true appearance.
Unlike Joey's concerns, Starfire was not actually upset about random girls on the street flirting with him.
She simply had trouble adapting to the new environment.
Although spending private time alone with Joey felt wonderful, ever since her homeworld had been destroyed, she had spent the last year or two wandering deep space alongside the Green Lantern Corps.
Because of that, the overwhelming crowds and noise of civilization made her instinctively feel distant and uneasy.
Only now, standing in the alleyway, did she finally manage to catch her breath.
After calming her heartbeat and breathing, Starfire began asking about the customs of this planet.
"So Christmas..."
"It means exactly what the name suggests? A holiday created to commemorate some kind of saint?"
"Originally, yeah. Then it kind of drifted away from that."
"In reality, hardly anybody actually cares which day that carpenter buddy was born on, or all the complicated religious customs."
"Most people just use it as an excuse to reunite with family or relax a little."
Because of the nature of his work, Joey had spent most of his life constantly drifting from place to place.
His impression of Christmas had long since been reduced to group dinners, raised glasses, drinking, and the bizarre custom of apples somehow being reverse-exported back into Western culture.
Yes.
Back in Joey's previous life, some of his foreign coworkers had also started buying absurdly overpriced apples on Christmas Eve for no apparent reason.
Joey suspected that if he hadn't been blown away by that artillery shell, then in another few years he probably would've witnessed those whimsical foreigners randomly start eating dumplings too.
It turned out that when people finally had time to breathe, they inevitably started overthinking things.
With no life-or-death crisis currently chasing after him, Joey found his thoughts drifting further and further into old memories because of Starfire's casual question.
His mood gradually became melancholic.
"...Sigh."
Hearing Joey softly sigh, Starfire instead began relaxing more and more.
She had finally started adapting to the noisy crowds outside the alley.
Tightening her grip on his hand, she leaned closely against Joey's side.
Only this made her feel an inexplicable sense of security.
Right now, she didn't need some holiday in order to relax.
Simply standing beside Joey was enough.
It was difficult to imagine that only one or two weeks ago, she had been desperately trying to kill him.
And now she was leaning against the son of her sworn enemy, comforting each other's loneliness.
Joey still had his cousin, his father, the House of El, and the entire Kryptonian race.
Yet Starfire—who could sense emotions—could still feel the endless loneliness buried deep within him through their physical contact.
As the final survivor of her own people, Starfire understood exactly where her loneliness came from.
But she had never understood where Joey's loneliness originated.
Just like how she deliberately avoided prying into the rest of his secrets, Starfire suppressed her curiosity and chose not to dig deeper.
If the time was right, someday Joey would tell her himself.
As for now—
Starfire suddenly raised her hand and pushed Joey deeper into the alley until his back touched the wall.
She truly didn't care much about Christmas.
But she could pretend she did.
"Merry Christmas."
"Wanna... relax a little?"
"Why not?"
Far away from that other world where he constantly had to keep his nerves stretched tight, Joey finally allowed himself to relax again.
One arm wrapped tightly around Starfire's waist while his other hand slowly drifted downward.
Their lips moved closer and closer.
"In a bit, we could—mmph!"
Joey had originally intended to suggest taking Starfire to see the real Santa Claus and magical reindeer afterward.
Unfortunately, Starfire had already leaned forward and sealed his mouth with her own.
Just as the inseparable pair prepared to deepen their intimate exchange further, a loud shout instantly shattered the atmosphere.
"H-Hey!!"
The owner of the handgun shakily pointed his weapon at Joey and Starfire, who were still passionately kissing under the gun barrel as though nobody else existed.
Then he shouted again:
"You two over there! Hands up!"
"Hand over your wallets!"
A sharp 'click-clack' followed as the robber disengaged the safety and cocked the trigger, fully demonstrating his determination.
"Are you kidding me right now?!"
His romantic moment interrupted, Joey reluctantly separated his lips from the still-unwilling Starfire and turned to stare at the armed thug.
For a moment, he genuinely had no idea how he was even supposed to react.
"Seriously, dude?"
"It's fucking Christmas!"
What else could Joey even say?
He could only sigh at how unbelievably 'simple and honest' New York's local customs truly were.
Christmas still held at least a little special meaning for most Westerners.
Among all yearly holidays, it was arguably the most important one.
Translated into Chinese cultural context, this basically amounted to robbing people during New Year.