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The question that started it had been simple enough. Teddy was working on an assignment, books and papers piled high on the little table that they’d managed to squash into their only-slightly-larger kitchen, threatening to topple and swamp his laptop with the first wrong move. He was staring at his textbook for Human Sexuality (“easy A course,” Pete had said. “Talk about sex for eleven weeks and walk away with a higher GPA,” Pete had said. The next time Teddy saw Pete, he kept complaining to Billy, Pete was going to eat his fist) with a frown on his face. Billy leaned over his shoulder, ostensibly to see what Teddy was working on, but the feel of Teddy’s broad shoulders and the long line of his back against Billy’s chest was a much greater motivator.
Teddy leaned back against him for a moment, then looked up through his bangs. “When did you know?” he asked conversationally, apropos of absolutely nothing.
Say what? Billy glanced at the book, in case the answers to Teddy’s train of thought derailment would be printed there. It was, sort of. The chapter header read Homosexuality, Bisexuality and Society, which at least gave him something to go on. “That I was gay?” he asked, just to be sure that was where this conversation was going. Teddy nodded. “Dunno,” Billy shrugged and stood up, letting his hand rest on Teddy’s shoulder. “Always, I guess. I never really thought about it, never had a grand epiphany. It’s just... something that I am.”
“Even though you’ve never been with a girl, just to be sure,” Teddy asked, his tone of voice somewhere between a statement and a question. Billy leaned back against the kitchen counter and Teddy turned in his chair to look at him, something speculative in his eyes. “Have you ever thought about it?”
“About sleeping with girls?” Billy was dumbfounded by the question, considering the last four years of his life, and the part Teddy had played in them, how he had immediately become the centre of Billy’s world. “Not... really? It’s not like I have a lot of experience with guys, either. You were my first, and I’ve only ever kissed one other guy – not including that time with Nate and the CPR,” he grinned, though the memory was far more bitter than sweet, these days.
The dark thought hit him, then, and he swallowed hard against the knot of anxiety that had begun to tie itself up into a hard lump in his chest. “Why? You thinking about defecting to the other team, Altman?” He tried to keep it a joke, but there was always that fear, lurking-
“What? No,” Teddy shook his head vehemently, reached out to grab Billy’s hand and kissed the middle of his palm. “It’s this assignment, that’s all. I have to write six pages about gender and the fluidity of human sexuality and, well...” he shrugged a bit helplessly. “Skrull. It’s not as abstract for me as it is for, say, Xavin, but I’m pretty sure I don’t count as baseline human for these stupid reflection papers.”
The relief flooded over Billy at the explanation, and it was easy from there to start cracking jokes about egg laying and alien pride parades, and drop the subject of hetero-sex by the wayside.
Except that he couldn’t forget it; not completely.
*
The next time it came up was at midterms. Billy was sprawled on the floor of their living room doing battle with the endless reams of paper that media courses seemed to generate just by existing. Teddy was sitting cross-legged on the dingy old couch behind him, textbook in his lap and his highlighter jammed firmly in his mouth. It was distracting, in the same beautiful way that had resulted in Billy forbidding Teddy from eating popsicles around him during spring exam week.
“Kinsey scale,” Teddy announced, in that voice that meant he was trying to memorize something. “First published in Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male in 1948. A seven-point continuum that goes from zero, meaning totally heterosexual, to six, for totally homosexual. Kinsey’s original reports said that about ten percent of the men surveyed were exclusively homosexual, but more recent studies have changed that number to... crap.” He opened his eyes and scrabbled through the pages to find the reference. “Six percent.” He groaned and flung the book aside, then poked Billy in the shoulder with his toe. “What are the odds that the Wrecking Crew or AIM will attack in the middle of the exam and get me out of this?”
“About the same as always,” Billy rolled over onto his back, let Teddy poke at the hem of his shirt with his toes. “They’ll show up in the middle of the one you were going to ace, not the one you didn’t study for.”
“Supervillains need to be a lot more accommodating.” Teddy managed to get Billy’s shirt rucked up far enough to leave most of his stomach exposed, and he wriggled his toes on Billy’s abs. “So where do you think you are on the Kinsey scale? One of the famed six percent?”
“What are my options?” Billy stalled for time.
“You’re not bi-“ Billy shook his head vehemently before Teddy could even finish the statement, and got a grin in response. “So from four and up - predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual; predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual; or exclusively homosexual.”
There was only so long Billy could stall before Teddy would pick up on it, and considering how well Teddy knew him, that span of time was just about negligible. “Bee?”
“What does ‘maybe a little curious’ count as?” he tried to keep his tone casual. “Not that I’d ever do anything, but it’s not like I want to throw up at the idea.” Not that he’d thought about it, except maybe as an intellectual thing. There had been the whole incident with the Enchantress, but that counted for anything just about as much as Nate had – that is to say, not at all. But after Teddy’s question weeks back, he’d maybe wondered. Just a bit. Not so much about actually doing it, but if it would feel that much different. Well, obviously it would, but-
“Bee?” Teddy was giving him an odd look, and then he was sliding down off the couch to sit on the floor, his back against the couch, and hook his legs over Billy’s hips. “Talk to me.”
And right about now would be a great time for one of those supervillain attacks. “It’s nothing,” Billy replied, running one hand along Teddy’s leg, feeling the bunch and play of the powerful muscles underneath his skin. No, he definitely liked that. This was not an identity crisis situation. “It’s just… after you asked, about knowing that I was gay without ever being with a girl? It got me a little bit curious, that’s all.” And he was flushing red and flustered, the heat rising to his cheeks betraying him as he made his confession. “What about you?” he looked up at Teddy with a frown.
“Seven minutes in the closet with Julie Sutton in eighth grade was about six minutes more than I needed to be really, really sure,” Teddy replied lightly, but his eyes were still fixed on Billy. “Bill, if this is something you want to figure out-“
“No,” Billy replied immediately, shaking his head. “I’m yours, you’re mine. I’m not interested in anyone else, not even as a one-time thing.”
“I wasn’t talking about that,” Teddy looked a bit uncomfortable, but also... intrigued? What was he suggesting? Billy’s confusion must have been obvious, because Teddy leaned over and kissed him, rolling to straddle Billy’s hips with his thighs. “Shapeshifter. Duh?”
“Oh.” It took Billy a half-second longer than it should have to realize what had just been put on the table. “Oh. Um. Maybe.” A pause. “Yeah?”
*
And that was how they had ended up here, in bed, Billy looking pretty much the same as he always did – a little more filled out than he had been in high school, but overall pretty much the same – and Teddy shifted into a lithe, busty blonde, pinned to the mattress underneath him.
It was still Teddy, but that didn’t make it any less weird.
Billy buried his face into the join of Teddy’s neck and shoulder, but instead of the broad expanse of chest and muscle that was supposed to be there under his hands, he kept running into breasts instead. At least he – she – smelled the same, which helped.
He ran a tentative hand down Teddy’s body, skimmed over the new curves and squishy bits where Teddy was usually firm. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, in so far as skin was skin, he supposed. He tried sucking at her breast for a minute; Teddy arched up into it, so that was good – it wasn’t too far off from what Teddy normally liked Billy to do, anyway. Except the breast part.
“Here, let me-“ Teddy rolled him over when Billy paused, and ran her mouth down along his body. That was good; that was familiar, if lacking the rough edges of Teddy’s stubble. Teddy was getting off easy on this one, Billy decided. He didn’t have to learn anything new about Billy’s body. He groaned as Teddy’s mouth closed around his half-hard cock, felt himself start to respond to the sensation, to Teddy’s lips and clever tongue- Teddy cupped Billy’s balls in her hand, teased him with her tongue, sucked him down - then pulled off with a gasp and a choking cough, rolling away to sit up. Billy bolted upright, splayed a hand across Teddy’s slim shoulders while she coughed.
“Hey, hey – what-?”
“Proportions are all off,” Teddy was red in the face, the blush creeping down her neck and chest. “Sorry. I can-“
“No, don’t,” Billy pulled her in for a kiss - this is Teddy. No different than kissing him when he’s Hulkling, just… smaller. Not as green. “Do you want me to-“ then he thought through what he’d been about to offer, and his entire body went into recoil mode. Nuh-unh. Not going there; not a chance. “Never mind.”
Teddy turned into the kiss, kissed him again, but it was hard to respond with the kind of fire that Teddy’s kisses usually built up in him. “Come on, Kaplan,” she teased. "Think sexy thoughts." She slid her hand down against his crotch, and that- yeah, that wasn’t too bad. Teddy pushed him back, the shape change not affecting her super-strength in the slightest, and Billy let himself be manhandled back against the pillows.
“Is that any good?” Billy frowned up at Teddy, her hair brushing against his sternum as they moved, his hand moving carefully between her thighs.
“Um. Maybe?”
“Shit. Here. What if I do-“
“Ow!”
“Sorry! Sorry, shit.”
“You need to cut your nails.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, do you want to try- maybe if I’m on top.“
"Maybe if you had a strap-on-"
"That would be cheating."
“There are rules for this? Here; you get on top. No, not like that. Seriously? … No jokes about bossy bottoms, Altman, or I will end you.”
Teddy propped herself up on one arm and wrapped a lube-slick hand around Billy’s cock. Billy closed his eyes and tried to relax into it. Hands were hands, even though they were smaller and softer than he was used to. But the movement was still definitively Teddy, with that little flick of the wrist and squeeze when she stroked her hand up over the head of his cock, and it was easier to picture Teddy – the proper Teddy – pressed up above him, the broad planes of his chest running down to the slim taper of his waist and hips, the faint scattering of blond hair that Billy would feel under his tongue when he dragged it slowly across one of Teddy’s nipples-
His cock responded to that, swelling and filling past the half-hard mark it had been sort of sitting at so far. "You like that better?" Teddy's voice and her laugh were too high-pitched, too far from the usual dark growl that Teddy had when he was turned on.
Billy rolled his hips up into it, into Teddy's hands, waiting for the drag of those smooth, large fingers - "they’re still your hands," he shrugged and smiled, made the mistake of opening his eyes. The blue eyes staring intently into his were still Teddy's though, and as long as Billy focused on them, on the familiar, loving, vaguely exasperated expression, on the sensation of fingers circling his balls, stroking the seam between them, slicking down further to circle his hole- "Yeah," he breathed out.
Teddy moved, and instead of a hard cock where a cock should rightfully be, Billy rocked up against slick heat. The sight of Teddy straddling him was supposed to be sexy, and he ran his hands up her thighs in an effort to find that thought again. Or not. Teddy pouted, that familiar oh-fuck-here-we-go look of determination in her eyes that meant that she wasn't even close to giving up on this. All Billy felt was dismay. And the slow return of blood to his body as things wilted a little.
"Hang on," Billy apologized with his hands, propped himself up on his elbows to kiss her, tried to will his body back into behaving.
"Maybe if I hold the base, you can stay hard long enough-"
He wanted to punk out, really, to say 'the hell with this' and beg Teddy to be himself again. But they'd come this far, sort of. Billy nodded. May as well try and see it through.
Teddy's hands were on him again and he relaxed, closed his eyes, tried to think about Teddy - in the shower, water sluicing down his back; smoke-stained and sweaty after a fight; splayed open under Billy on their bed, cock hard and leaking against his stomach. Teddy sank down on top of him and Billy kept his eyes shut, kept his hands on Teddy's hips, on her thighs; Teddy had given him - herself a fantastic ass, at least, and grabbing on to that helped. Some.
"Ow," Teddy complained, shifted on top of him. "Hang on."
"What's wrong?"
"I think the angle? Wait. There." She moved, slipped off and reseated herself, the momentary hit of cold air an extra edge against his nerves. "Move? Can you-"
Billy bent his knees, braced his feet against the mattress and rolled his hips up again. On a purely nerve-ending basis this wasn't entirely bad. Teddy was slick and hot and sheathed tight around Billy’s dick, and Billy rocked his hips up, again, just to see- yeah, okay. Maybe. This is Teddy, this is Teddy, I can do this. Think sexy thoughts.
Except that Teddy wasn’t really moving with him; she was staring down at her chest and frowning. She did some weird kind of up-and-down shimmy that really did nothing at all for Billy, and he stared up at her in puzzlement. She did it again. What the hell? “What are you doing?”
“They bounce,” Teddy muttered, her brow furrowed and shoulders tense. “It’s distracting.”
"Hang on." Billy slid his hand down between their bodies, instinctively groping for Teddy's cock, to fill his hand with silk-over-iron and stroke Teddy, help him relax- where Teddy's cock should have been there was only void, a handful of tight curls, and a slickness spread where their bodies joined. Billy's eyes flew open, the last of the fantasy gone. Teddy was sleek and pale in the light of their bedside lamp, sinuous curves and pink nipples riding high on full, firm breasts.
Billy lost his hard-on pretty much immediately. "Fuck, I'm-" he slipped most of the way out, soft. “Dammit.”
"Do you think we should be using a condom for this?" Teddy sat back against Billy's bent knees, drumming her fingers on his lowest rib.
"Why?" Billy laced his fingers behind his head, tried to remember the feel of Teddy's cock in his mouth, the way Teddy jerked up when Billy pulled off, the whimpers he made low in his throat when Billy would flicker his tongue over the crown. Billy's dick resurrected slightly at the memories, tried half-heartedly to get back in the game. "We don't usually. I don't have anything, and you couldn't catch it even if I did."
"-dunno. Just, sex ed and all." Teddy was pouting again, and even though her face was finer featured right now, the expressions were still the same.
And there was his out. "Oh shit," Billy breathed out, carefully schooling his own expression into one of horror. "You don't think I can get you pregnant like this, do you?"
Teddy rolled off of him with a yelp, flinging herself backwards so firmly that she teetered, then plummeted backwards off the edge of the bed. He was himself again when he reappeared half a second later, grabbing a pillow and forcing it down over Billy's face to cut off the peals of laughter.
Billy magicked the pillow away with a whisper of a thought, still laughing. And Teddy - real Teddy - was above him now, knees on either side of Billy's hips, his biceps firm and hands broad and the line of his strong, slightly-stubbled jaw firmly set. Billy was hard instantly, achingly, brain-meltingly hard, and he grabbed for Teddy to pull him close.
The kiss was better than anything, Teddy's mouth big and wet and hot inside, and the taste was the same but the shape was right again. Billy broke off after a minute, nipped and bit and sucked along Teddy's jaw and up to his ear. He slid his hands between them again as he closed his lips around Teddy's earlobe and sucked.
Teddy was hard as well and Billy groaned aloud when he wrapped one hand around Teddy's gorgeous, thick length. "There you are," he sighed with contentment and relief. Teddy started to laugh, his shoulders shaking where they were braced above him even as he thrust up into Billy's fist. Billy closed his hand tighter, squeezed and tugged, Teddy's cock hot in his hand and slick with pre-come. "Don't ever leave me again," Billy crooned. Teddy lost it, shoulders shaking in hysterical laughter, eyes wet, his whole body rocking down against Billy's to hold him, rut against him, cover him in kisses and nips of his teeth.
Billy kept a grip on Teddy's cock as they moved together, rubbed himself against Teddy's hip, sweat and pre-come making it just slick enough to be on the good edge of too rough. Teddy's fingers wrapped around his cock, he rolled his hips to align them and then Billy's cock was sliding against Teddy's, clasped tight in the linked rings of their interlaced fingers.
He was hard and everything was wet and Teddy's thumb caught him just under the ridge where touch was so sweet and this, this, and this was what Billy needed. He needed hard muscle and sharp angles pushing him down into the bed, broad hands stroking him, the taste of salt-sour sweat on his tongue when he sucked a mark onto the thick arm braced at the side of his head. He needed cock and strong thighs pinning his hips and the dark smell of musk filling his nose.
"Come on, Billy, come on-" Teddy panted, and there was the growly voice, and everything was good and everything was hands and tongues twisting around each other and Teddy, and Billy shattered into pieces.
Heat splashed wet across his belly and his hand, sticky and familiar. He pushed into the mess, dragged his cock through their fingers as Teddy thrust against him, keening softly with need. Billy wrapped his hand around Teddy's cock and jacked him, fast and tight at the top of each stroke, the way Ted needed it, the way he touched himself. Teddy curled in, arms shaking, and shot across Billy's stomach, his come mingling with Billy's across their skin.
Teddy wrapped himself around Billy, tangled their fingers together despite the mess on their hands, bodies, sheets.
"Never doing that again," Billy murmured against Teddy's shoulder, once their heart rates had settled and the drying sweat - among other things - had started to itch.
"Ending was pretty good," Teddy muttered into Billy's hair, but he sounded more relieved than anything.
Billy looped his ankle over Teddy's knee, burrowed down into the safe circle of his arms. "Better ways of getting there."
Teddy rolled back on his elbow and bumped his nose gently against Billy’s ear. “Verdict?” As if he didn’t already know. “Kinsey six?” he teased.
“Altman six,” Billy reached up to brush Teddy’s bangs back from his forehead, golden tendrils stuck to his sweat. “Exclusively Teddy-sexual. And I like you best exactly the way you are.”