And he probably continues to think nothing of it until a person who looks like a twentysomething human-- except for his large, pointed ears-- appears with a pop inside his bedroom.

"What the fuck on a pogo stick!?" Bruce inquires. At least he sleeps in sweatpants and a Star Trek: The Next Generation shirt, so he's not particularly less dressed than he usually is.

"--uh, I've never actually been the one who has to do this before-- um, you're the new Santa Claus?"

"This some kinda campus event? I didn't sign up for anything. It's not even Christmas yet. And why are you my room instead of my email about it?" His phonological loop has decided this is a good time for the Bed Intruder song, but it is mistaken and should shut up. He isn't even opposed in principle to LARPing Santa at a bunch of visiting elementary schoolers or whatever, but this is not how you get volunteers for things.

"No," Lev says, "you're literally Santa Claus. The guy with a sleigh and reindeer who brings joy to the children of the world? You're him."

"No, I'm Bruce Banner. And Santa doesn't exist. And you're still breaking and entering." This is only making less and less sense as it goes on, isn't it.

Lev thinks about this for a minute, snaps his fingers, and teleports them to the moon. 

He's on the moon.

He's on the moon.

It's instantly recognizable from the pictures, and if he can't believe the evidence of his eyes it would be hard to disbelieve the reduced gravity. He turns, bouncing a bit on unsteady feet, and--that's the Earth. Just like the photographs but a thousand times more overwhelming. There it is, the blue marble where every human who ever existed was born and grew up. 

He's distantly confused about how he can breathe, about how he isn't freezing or choking or anything else, but mostly he's staring at the rising Earth with eyes like saucers, experiencing.

...oh no he's cute.

Bruce kneels on one knee and runs his fingers through the moon dust. He'll eventually recover enough to ask a million questions. But it'll be a couple more minutes.

NEW SANTA CLAUS IS VERY CUTE AND THIS IS EXTREMELY PROBLEMATIC.

Bruce stands up, puts a hand on his head like he's trying to hold his mind on, and manages to get his eyes at least mostly focused on the stranger.

"How did you do that? How can I breathe here? What does it mean that I'm Santa? Can I learn to teleport too? What other things that everyone believes are actually wrong?"

"Magic. I'm not going to teleport you without air because then you'd die. Mostly that the Christmas spirit is set by your own sense of what Christmas ought to be, but you also have thousands of powerful magical slaves and some flying reindeer. No. The Cry Babies Kristal Interactive Baby Doll breaks really easily, you're better off with one of the ripoffs from Amazon."

Bruce needs a minute to play his memories back a few times and match up questions with answers and determine that if the thing about the doll is important he's not going to figure it out right now and--"Wait, magical slaves?"

"...yeah, we elves are your slaves."

"Can I--not? Is that an option? Are you okay, should I be doing something about that?"

"...why would we not be okay?"

"Because being enslaved sounds like it sucks? I just--look, what are you hoping I'm going to do, I want to do a good job here but I don't know what doing a good job looks like."

"Spread the Christmas spirit into everyone's hearts and bring joy and cheer to the children of the world?"

"Joy and cheer sound good, I'm in favor of those. Wait, does this mean Christianity is true, that seems like an important thing to know going in."

"We became the spirits of Christmas when St. Nicholas became Santa Claus. Previously, we were the spirits of Yule."

"Okay, I guess that's probably fine then. Uh, I'm not religious at all, does that make you spirits of the winter solstice or of American secular Christmas or what? Also, why me, do you do a random draw every four years or something? Also also if I got your name I forgot it, sorry."

"I'm Lev and, uh, you killed the last Santa Claus."

"I never killed anybody! Unless this is like a Peter Singer type of situation where I was supposed to save him and didn't?" Shit, he got someone killed, shit.

"You told him that the view from the top of the Green Building is awesome if you can fly. He could fly well enough to get up there, but then he fell off."