Page 12 of After the Fade, Vol. 1 (Asheverse: B-Side)

The Adventures of Holloway Holmes: Holmes tries to guess his Christmas presents.

Holmes weighed the present in one hand, studying the TNMT wrapping paper as though it might hold a clue. Then he looked up and said, “A wireless charging device.”

“H!”

“Am I wrong?”

“Give me that!”

I put the present back under the tree and scowled at him. I tried to remember I was happy. I was happy that I was here, now, and it was Christmas, and Holmes was with me. He’d chosen to spend the holiday with us, although it wasn’t clear to me how much of the choosing was actually his—he and Dad had several long conversations about it (quite rudely, I’ll point out, without me), and I got the vibe that going home for Christmas, whatever that meant for Holmes now, might not be an option. When I tried to weasel information out of Dad, though, he’d dodged and ignored and finally told me (again, super rude) to mind my own business.

And I was happy to be here, and happy to have Holmes with me. Really with me. Last Christmas, when I thought grief and pain would literally kill me, felt lightyears away. The cottage was warm, even with snow piling up around us (it was still coming down, actually, and it made the late afternoon feel like evening). Holmes had helped me decorate the tree, and he’d loved the ornament I’d bought for him last year—a Double Double from In-N-Out, with a tiny frame where I’d put a picture of us. It was a goofy one. Dad had taken it of us when we’d been studying, and I had devil eyes and Holmes looked like if I got one more chemistry equation wrong he’d levitate off the couch and burst into flames. I was obsessed with it. So, yes. I was happy. Very happy.

Admittedly, it was getting harder to remember how happy I was when Holmes got bored and kept guessing all his presents.

“Keep your hands off them,” I told him. And, just to be safe, I scooted the presents deeper under the tree. They had a huddled, fugitive look that wasn’t quite in the Christmas spirit.

“I don’t need to touch them, Jack,” H said with bizarre earnestness. “Also, I think the organization of the presents would be more pleasing if you put that Xbox controller—”

“Ha! Why would I get you an Xbox controller when you don’t have an Xbox?”

“I was going to say you could put that Xbox controller with the Santa presents hidden in your father’s room, and then tomorrow, he can bring it out when you surprise me with the Xbox.”

I didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

“Jack?”

Somehow, I got to my feet. I stalked over to the kitchen. Dad was pretending to read the paper while he baked cookies. When I got closer, he said, “Deep breath.”

“Do you hear what I have to put up with?”

Dad flapped the paper and held it a little higher, but it didn’t hide his smile.

“I’m glad you think this is amusing.”

“Only a little.”

“I’m glad watching your only child be devastated at Christmas brings you such boundless joy.”

“Holloway, was he always this dramatic?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Moreno.”

“Traitor!”

Holmes’s smile was there and then gone again, a breathtaking cut-glass happiness. I decided to stomp around some more.

“Maybe Holloway doesn’t like surprises,” Dad said. “Did you think about that? This is his first Christmas with us. Maybe he always guesses his gifts.”

“In my family, we don’t give each other gifts,” Holmes said matter-of-factly.

Dad lowered the paper long enough to give me a look. I’d gotten enough of them in my life to recognize the I-expect-better-of-you dagger to the heart. I made a face. Dad made a face back. I made a worse face. Dad pulled the paper up. That’s the thing about Dad: he’s a sore loser.

I went back to the living room. “Do you like surprises?”

He considered the question. “I think so. I don’t know. I’ve never been surprised.”

It was hard to tell sometimes when he was joking. “I know you’ve been surprised. I’ve seen you be surprised.”

“Yes, but I meant—”

I waited.

“I choose not to complete that sentence,” Holmes said.

I scowled some more, but my heart wasn’t really in it; he was just too damn cute. I pointed to a present under the tree.

“Lip balm,” he said.

“That was easy. The only reason you guessed that was because I asked you the other day what flavor you liked.”

He gave me a slightly pitying look.

I pointed to another present.

“A hoodie.” He paused. “No, I was wrong.”

“Ha!”

“A Dodgers sweatshirt.”

“What the actual fucking hell?”

“Language,” Dad said.

“Are you listening to this?”

“I certainly heard something.”

“I’ll stop,” Holmes said.

“Oh no,” I said. “No goddamn way.”

We went present by present, and he guessed them all: the box of See’s caramels, the bracelet, the world’s most amazing socks, the cologne. I shit you not, he even guessed the brand.

“I think I’ll like it because I know you like it,” he said. “And I want you to like whatever I’m wearing.”

How in the hell was I supposed to be mad after that?

But Holmes had already moved on to the next present. “Underwear.”

“No, I didn’t get you—hey, wait! That’s my present!” And then, channeling my inner nine-year-old: “Dad!”

“You’ve got holes in your trunks, buddy.”

“My underwear is fine, thanks.”

Holmes gravely shook his head, but that wasn’t as bad as Dad, who said, “When you were walking around the other day, it was like a window onto the Forbidden City.”

“I’m done. I’m leaving. I’m going to find a new family who won’t judge me based solely on my underwear.”

“Jack,” Holmes said, “we don’t judge you solely on your underwear. We judge you on so much more than that.”

Dad actually burst out laughing, and then those two treacherous mofos gave each other a high five.

“Don’t tell Jack his presents, please,” Dad said as he headed for his bedroom—where he’d hidden the Santa presents, the way he always did. “He likes surprises.”

“I don’t like getting underwear for Christmas,” I called after him. “That’s a bad surprise. That’s a disappointment.”

Dad’s only answer was a grunt. A moment later, the sound came of something sliding across the floor. Then Dad pushed a box out into the hall. It was just a cardboard box. No shipping labels. Nothing identifying on the outside. He left it right there, and as he went back to his seat, he tousled Holmes’s hair—which, from anybody else, would have earned an immediate broken wrist. “I think you like surprises too. All kids like surprises.”

Holmes barely seemed to have heard him. He was staring at the cardboard box, eyes narrowed. The last time I’d seen that level of predatory focus, it had been on a velociraptor, and honestly, it was a bit terrifying on Holmes’s face.

“Well,” I said. “Go on.”

Slowly, Holmes got to his feet. He was still staring at the box.

“You can touch it,” Dad said. “But you can’t open it.”

“No,” Holmes murmured as he stalked down the hall, “of course not.”

“What’s in it?” I asked.

“His present.”

“I got him his presents.”

Dad gave me a flat look and went back to his paper.

At the end of the hall, Holmes was circling the box, still staring at it with that unreal intensity. He put a hand on the box. That was all, just laid a hand on it.

“Come on,” I said. “What is it?”

He ignored me. He rocked the box slightly. Something thunked, and Holmes startled back a pair of steps.

“What in the world is going on?” I asked.

“He’s trying to guess his present,” Dad said. “Now help me make dinner.”

“He’s going to guess it in, like, five seconds.”

“That’s great, Jack, but we still need to eat dinner.”

“He’s about to guess it. He’ll get it. Like, right now, he’s going to look up and tell us what it is.”

Holmes’s head did come up. His eyes were wide and a little wild, and he didn’t seem to be seeing me. His voice cracked as he blurted, “A mummified llama.”

Dad burst out laughing and eased himself off the stool. “You’re on chopping duty,” he told me as he moved around the counter to get started on the meal.

As Dad and I cooked, Holmes poked and prodded and jostled and, eventually, shook the box. He made considering noises. He did searches on his phone. He shouted out guesses.

“Bulk toilet paper.”

“Papier-maché decorative element.”

“A Bastet statue.”

Sometimes, Dad laughed, but most of the time he just said, “Good guess, Holloway,” and kept working.

When I went to get Holmes for dinner, he looked like he was starting to come undone: somehow, his hair was sticking up in back, and he kept rubbing his hands on his chinos as he tried to use his X-ray vision on the box.

“No more guessing,” I said as I took his arm.

“I’ve almost got it.”

“Dinner,” I said. “And then it’s family time.”

“Interesting,” Dad said from the kitchen. “The last time I told you we were having family time, you escaped out a window.”

Holmes was trying to slip free. “Jack, I really do almost have it.”

“H, it’s a stupid box with a stupid present inside.”

“Hey,” Dad called.

“We’re spending Christmas Eve together. Who cares about it? You’ll open it tomorrow.”

For a moment, Holmes didn’t seem to have heard me. Then some of the crazy went out of his face. “Right. Of course. Yes, Jack, you’re very right. I’m so sorry.”

So, we went to eat dinner. Dad had done ribeyes, which were definitely not built into the grocery budget, and garlic mashed potatoes, and I ate mine and half of Holmes’s before Dad could stop me. Holmes was never much of an eater, but tonight, he barely even touched his food. He didn’t look at the box, but I could tell where a hundred and ten percent of that giant brain was focused. He ate when I nudged him. Finally, with something like despair, he looked at Dad and moaned, “If I could have a scale.”

Dad pretended to consider it. I’d seen him do that look too. Then he shook his head and said, “Sorry, buddy. I don’t think so.”

Holmes looked like he might cry.

I refused to let him go back to the box, although a couple of times he tried to sneak away, and once I caught him prowling around it after he’d gone to the bathroom. I gave him jobs to do. We moved the furniture out of the living room and made beds on the floor next to the tree. That had been one stipulation for Holmes being allowed to spend the night: we would not be sleeping in my room. Holmes did everything I told him to, but his movements were mechanical and automatic.

When I cornered Dad in the kitchen, I said, “You broke his brain.”

“Are you kidding? He’s loving this. He’s been bored to tears, and this is like catnip for him.”

“He hasn’t been bored to tears! And he should be hanging out with his boyfriend, not thinking about some stupid box.”

“Sounds like someone is a little jealous of that box.”

“You’re goddamn fucking right I’m jealous!” It got a little screamy at the end.

Dad just grinned. Then the grin faded. He checked behind me, where I could hear Holmes puttering about with the blankets, and put a hand on my shoulder: heavy, a hard grip. He looked me in the eye. And then, in a low voice, he said, “Son, I am not an idiot. And I am well aware that I can’t control what you and Holloway do when you’re alone.”

“Oh my God,” I muttered.

“But this is a small house, and I am a light sleeper, and that boy is tremendously vulnerable right now.” His fingers bit into my shoulder. “Do I make myself painfully clear?”

“Yes, God, yes!” I twisted out from under his grip. “And now I’m going to need shoulder surgery and physical therapy—”

Dad crossed his arms.

“—and therapy-therapy for the trauma of having you talk about that in, uh, here.”

That didn’t seem to shake him. He stared at me a little longer and then, to add insult to injury, said, “A very light sleeper, Jack Sixsmith.”

“I said okay!”

Eventually, Dad went to his room. I turned off all the lights except the tree, and Holmes and I merged our makeshift beds and got under the blankets together. His body was stiff, and I could feel the nervous energy running through him. I tried snuggling up to him. I tried sending psychic commands like Cuddle! and Cuddle now! He was still thinking about that stupid box.

“All right,” I said. “Tell me about it.”

The words tumbled out of him. “It might be a television. Even though your father won’t allow me to use a scale, I have a rough estimate of the weight, and for a TV that size, the weight might be right. But then one must consider the dimensions of both the box and the object inside, which we know do not conform precisely because the object is able to shift inside the box.”

He went on like that for a long time.

After about eight minutes of listening to Holmes analyze the sounds he had been able to hear from the box, I texted Dad: Please tell me or I’m never going to get to sleep .

Composition bubbles appeared. Disappeared.

I thought, with something like a wail of horror building inside me, that this was how my sex life died. My father had just invented the ultimate cockblock.

But then the bubbles came again, and a moment later, a message appeared. A jerky pinata.

I stared at the message for what felt like a long time. You have got to be shitting me .

Dad sent back the emoji with the swear word thing over its mouth. And then a second message came through. Go ahead and tell him.

“Jack, I just had the most marvelous thought.” Holmes propped himself up on one elbow. “What if the object I can hear inside the box is simply a vessel for something else? All my guesses could have been wrong. What if it’s something quite small. For example, a brass button. Or a bottle opener. Or a fountain pen!”

I thought of all the nights I’d stayed up as a kid, dreaming about what I was going to find when I opened my presents. Fountain pens had never made the list, but I thought maybe the feeling was the same. And I thought about how Holmes had said, In my family, we don’t give each other gifts . I smiled at him as I put away my phone and said, “Fountain pen is a good guess. What else do you think it could be?”