Chapter Text
“This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I'm stepping through the door
And I'm floating in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today.”
—Space Oddity, David Bowie
“I should know who I am by now.
I walk—the record stands somehow.
Thinking of winter;
Your name is the splinter inside me.”
—Winter, Joshua Radin
**
Now:
**
“You could have gotten people killed!” Billy snapped. There was something cold about the way he said it—something cold, and hard, and right. Inevitable, in its own way; they’d been barreling toward this moment for what felt like forever. “You could have killed people, Teddy, all because, because you want to be liked? Because some asshole will like you better?”
“You don’t know anything about it,” Teddy countered. He was still buzzing with adrenaline, and it felt like his thoughts were tripping over themselves as he fought to find the right explanation, the truth buried in the mess he’d made of his life. He dragged his fingers through his hair; just over ten blocks away, flames licked across the sky.
This wasn’t the time for this; this wasn’t the place. He opened his mouth to say as much, but the look Billy shot him froze him in his tracks.
“No,” Billy said. “No, you’re right, I don’t know anything about it. And I don’t want to.”
“Billy,” he began, stung.
“No. My dad was right. Being friends with you, having…having some kind of crush on you…it’s me saying I’m okay with who you are, what you do. And I’m not. It’s not okay. It’s not okay to use your mutant gift to trick people, and to put them in danger, and to pretend to be a hero when you’re not, you’re not at all. And I’m not going to—I’m not. I’m out. I’m done.”
“Billy.”
Billy took a step back, palms lifting. “Goodbye, Teddy,” he said.
Teddy watched in rapidly growing panic as Billy turned his face away. Anger and fear had burned away, leaving him shaken, shaking. Please, he wanted to beg. Let me explain. You’re right about me, I know you’re right, but you don’t understand.
Billy’s eyes were fixed on his battered sneakers, as if he couldn’t even look at him. That, more than anything, kept Teddy’s mouth shut. He clenched his fists, digging his nails into the meat of his palms when Billy turned and stumbled for the door. Even then, there was some small part of him that hoped…but no, Billy’s hand was on the doorknob, he was stepping through.
He was gone. Just like that, he was gone.
And Teddy…Teddy didn’t know what he was. Everything had been tilted on its axis, as if this latest shock had knocked something vital out of alignment. He thought maybe he wanted to cry. He was pretty sure he wasn’t going to let himself.
“Jesus,” Teddy mumbled, dragging his fingers through his hair again. His hand was shaking. He’d been trembling for what felt like hours now, from that first moment the sky had exploded. And now what? Was he supposed to just go home? Wash the blood and ash away? Maybe pop in a TV dinner and check the DVR and fuck, fuck.
Oh, fuck, Billy.
Teddy spun away from the door with a choked noise, eyes casting helplessly over the rooftop bar. Tables and chairs and huge, multi-striped umbrellas crowded around him. They loomed close in an Escher-like trick of the eye. It was too much. He needed space; he couldn’t breathe. He pushed blindly toward the ledge, ignoring the chairs that toppled in his wake. He just, he needed to—
Teddy slapped his palms against pitted brick-and-concrete and leaned forward to rest his full weight on shaky arms. His breath hitched painfully in his chest.
“Stop, stop it,” he snarled. There was blood all over his white T-shirt, and he still smelled like burning engine fuel, and Billy knew. Billy knew and Billy hated him for it.
Teddy squeezed his eyes shut and leaned to rest his forehead against the half-wall. Several stories below, cars fishtailed as pedestrians poured down the streets. Red emergency lights pulsed like a living thing. A heartbeat. He could practically hear the pounding.
Slowly, folding in on himself like origami, Teddy dropped into an unsteady crouch. He pressed his fists to the worn brick and ignored the grit and tiny shards of glass that dug between his knuckles. He’d been injured somewhere along the way, he thought. The blood. The blood had been his.
Teddy brushed shaking fingers over his brow. It felt smooth, slick. His fingers came away tacky with drying blood. He drew in a serrated breath and tipped his chin, blinking open his eyes to stare across the tree-lined streets of the Upper East Side. Billy’s house was down that way. And beyond it, beyond all those too-similar brownstones, near the southeastern corner of Central Park, the Avengers’ mansion was burning. It looked like sunrise.
“Jesus,” he said again. None of it felt real.
He didn’t feel real.
But he had to get out of here.
Teddy slowly straightened, swaying against conflicting pulses of shock and adrenaline. He would have to go the way he’d come—he didn’t have any other choice. It was either fly home or stay staring down Billy’s street and he just couldn’t…
Come on, focus. He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes, willing himself to picture him as he was now. Blond hair, piercings—tall, athletic, because that’s who he wanted to be. It wasn’t him; there was no him. There was just this. And he could change this, if he wanted to.
He imagined colors blending, shapes melting together. Twin spikes of bone ripped through the back of his shirt, lengthening and splitting into branching quarters. Thin membrane wove the hollow bones together. He pictured his new wings spreading, stretching out wide as they arced from his back, glistening and new and—please, God—strong enough to see him away from here.
The weight of them was strange, throwing off his balance, but that couldn’t matter now. Teddy wet his lips and clambered up onto the ledge. He widened his stance, balancing carefully as he stared at the crowd so far below. His laces had come untied again. Somehow, that, too, reminded him of Billy.
Stop. Stop it.
It would all come apart if he gave himself time to think. He would come apart. A faint tremor rocked the building, the echo of an explosion heard all the way from Central Park. Teddy didn’t turn back to look. He wasn’t a hero. He was just some stupid kid.
He stepped off the ledge.
Someone screamed as he plummeted to the street below, and Teddy thought, dizzily, I probably should have climbed higher. But then his wings snapped open, catching the updraft; he angled away from the street and toward the sun, leaving the frenzy and confusion far behind.
Seven powerful strokes and he was rising above the crest of buildings and into the open air. The spring wind blew cool against his cheeks, peeling away the cloying scent of trauma. He shook hair out of his eyes as the longer strands whipped across his brow. His T-shirt snapped and furled around him, lifting away from his body with each gust. Finally, gradually, his erratic heartbeat began to even out.
Flying was like breathing—all instinct—and it felt so fucking good not to think right now. Teddy turned midair and moved east, following the currents he could feel playing across his skin. When he passed a skyscraper, his reflection was cast back at him, glistening and strange from a million tiny windows. This high up, the mass of traffic became threads of color and light.
The world below was surprisingly beautiful in its complexity.
He spread his wings, stroking the air, allowing himself to hover and just…take it all in for a moment. The Hudson wound slow and serene below him. Central Park was a green gash on a gray flank. Skyscrapers glistened like jeweled swords, and he was alone up here, a single speck on the horizon, looking down at the city with a baffled kind of wonder.
Goodbye, Teddy.
And—
“Crap. Crap!” Teddy dropped ten feet, the steady rhythm of his wings going ragged. He tried to clear his mind, but it was hard to be zen when he was tumbling awkwardly out of the sky like some kind of drunken seagull. “Crap, shit, shit!”
He reared back, wings snapping wide, and just barely managed to zig left then zag right to avoid knocking into a huge, peeling sign. Teddy angled toward the sidewalk, misjudged, and went tumbling down onto his hands and knees, skidding and rolling and hitting the street with a muffled grunt.
A car horn blared and someone screamed, “GO BACK TO M-TOWN!” Teddy folded his wings behind him as he scrambled to his feet. “Sorry,” he said, stumbling onto the curb. His forearms were bleeding, skin peeled from wrist to elbow with bits of grit and filth glistening in the bloody gouges. “Sorry,” he mumbled again, listing into a glowering older woman. He ducked his head, fiercely hoping no one recognized him, and staggered into a piss-stained alleyway.
Teddy closed his eyes as he waded through drifts of trash, wishing the wings away, picturing them disappearing in a blur of color. The sudden shift in weight nearly sent him toppling to the ground again. Teddy found his balance just in time, catching himself with his hands on his knees and leaving smears of blood along worn blue jeans. He stayed like that for several long minutes: hands on his knees, head down, back bowed.
Then, slowly, he straightened and forced himself to keep moving. The far end of the alley spilled out into the next street over. Teddy shoved his (slowly healing) hands into his pockets and wished he had a coat to cover up his blood-spattered shirt. He had no idea how bad he looked, but people were quietly stepping aside as he moved down the sidewalk, giving him a wide berth.
It’s not what you think, he wanted to say. I’m not what you think.
He hunched his shoulders and hurried his pace, fingers curling gratefully around his keys. He’d left his bookbag behind before heading out to meet Billy—
(Was it going to sting like that every time he thought Billy’s name, or would that eventually fade like a well-guarded bruise?)
—which was one small favor. He guessed he’d take what he could get.
Teddy hooked a left at the cross street, hurrying his pace. He felt all of nine again, rushing back to the quiet haven of his apartment, dirty-faced and scraped-kneed and nearly bursting with the need to be comforted. He murmured a quiet apology as he broke into a light jog, clipping the shoulder of a man backing out of another apartment complex. “Watch it,” the guy muttered, then, “Whoa, hey, Teddy—what the hell happened?”
“Sorry, nothing, just,” Teddy called back weakly, barely lifting his head. He wove through a small crowd of kids playing football on the cramped sidewalk, ducking under their lazy passes. If he glanced up, he’d just be able to see ugly salmon-colored brick in the distance.
He broke into a run.
“Dios mio,” a familiar voice exclaimed, but Teddy didn’t stop, couldn’t stop. He was trembling again, shoulders hunched in tight misery, and he had to— He had to— He just—
“I’m sorry,” he said, “excuse me.” His voice cracked and he bit his mouth, running at full speed now. The neighborhood passed in a blur of color and half-familiar faces. He yanked out his keys when he was still over a block away, but he dropped them twice as he tried to shove them into the lock. It was all rushing back now that he no longer had the distraction of flight, hot and terrible: the impact sending them sprawling into the grass. His hands on Billy’s blood-smeared face. The roar of a Hulk. Muffled cries for help. Billy’s eyes as Teddy broke this delicate thing between them once and for all.
He didn’t take the elevator; he didn’t want to wait. Teddy skidded down the hall and unlocked his front door, stumbling inside. He slammed it behind him, sagging against the frame with a low noise that he fought to muffle, one blood-smeared hand clamping over his mouth as his head fell back.
God. Just. God.
Teddy stood there, breathing in unsteady breaths, holding tight to the pieces of himself so he couldn’t crack open and go flying away. He squeezed his eyes shut, fearing the hot, warning prick of tears, and waited for the emotion to crest and pass.
He was home. He was safe.
After several long, long minutes, when the worst of it had passed, Teddy slowly straightened. The apartment was suspiciously quiet. “Mom?” he called. He pushed away from the door, kicking off his shoes out of habit. “Mom?”
The cheerful blue living room was empty. So was the kitchen. The bathroom door was open, lights off. “Mom?” Teddy said, passing by his closed door. He hesitated by his mother’s, then lightly rapped his knuckles against the frame. He knew her schedule better than she did; she was supposed to be home. “Hello?”
He tried the doorknob, pushing open the door.
Two years ago, on a whim, they’d painted the entire room—walls, trim, ceiling, all of it—a deep Moroccan blue. Vines trailed up the corners and onto the ceiling in snaking golden-yellow, bursts of colorful geometrics echoed in the sari bedspread. There was a rainbow cascade of plastic beads hanging in the open closet doorway and an ancient thrift store rattan rug on the floor. An old, well-worn purple velvet chair took up one corner. He could remember sitting on the arm of that chair when he was little, leaning against his mother’s shoulder and playing with her bangles as she read Lamb’s Shakespeare to him.
The memory was so strong, he almost swore he saw her there, blonde hair falling about her shoulders, silver hoop earrings catching the light. But no, no the room was empty.
Teddy slowly withdrew, shutting his mother’s door behind him.
It didn’t matter. He wasn’t really hurt. He wasn’t a scared kid. It was probably better this way. Teddy pulled off the blood-soaked T-shirt as he padded quietly toward the kitchen. He hated it when she worried over him, and seeing him like this—
Well.
Teddy paused to press the flashing red button on the answering machine, listening with half a mind as he dug a hole into the trash and shoved his shirt deep inside. He slipped out of his ripped and bloody jeans, inspecting them with a strange hollowness as his mother’s recorded voice talked about a sewage break and emergency meetings in Jersey—could Teddy take care of his own dinner tonight?
“Toss them,” he said, emptying the pockets before balling up his jeans. He pushed them deep into the trash, then moved the empty ketchup bottles and bags of organic sweet potato chips to hide the evidence. Teddy left the lights off as he moved back through the living room, already shivering despite the warmth of the day. He stripped out of his boxers and toed off his socks, leaving them in a messy pile on the bathroom floor.
Like a snakeskin, Teddy thought, then, Fuck, stop. Stop it.
He blindly twisted knobs and stepped into the hard spray, turning his face toward it with a choked noise. His eyes stung. The water pooling around his toes was red-black with soot and blood, and he had to fight the visceral urge to shift, to be someone else—anyone else.
My dad was right. Being friends with you, having…having some kind of crush on you…it’s me saying I’m okay with who you are, what you do. And I’m not. It’s not okay.
“Fuck,” Teddy breathed. He was shaking again, all over, swaying beneath the steady beat of water. “Fuck, fuck.” He reached out to brace his hands against slick white tile, head dropping forward as his eyes burned and his chest ached and he couldn’t get Billy’s words out of his head.
“I fucked up,” he said. He needed to speak; he needed to break the silence. It was all around him, closing in hard and fast and terrifying. “I fucked up, and I didn’t mean it, and I’m so, so sorry.”
Then:
**
3:59
They were facing each other in one of The Blue Ruin’s old booths, legs sprawled so their calves touched whenever they moved. Teddy fought to keep his eyes from drifting toward the clock, knowing it would just piss Greg off…but he couldn’t seem to help himself. Every few minutes, as he absently laughed at one of Greg’s jokes, his eyes subtly ticked to the left, marking time as it crawled by.
4:02
4:06
4:08
Greg tipped his head back, swallowing the last of his beer. His leg brushed Teddy’s in a way that would have sent a thrill up his spine just a few short months ago. “Hey,” he said. “Where are you going?”
Teddy straightened, gaze snapping back to Greg. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re a million miles away and getting farther every second. Where are you going?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Teddy lied. “I’m not,” he added at Greg’s expression. “I swear, I’m not. I’m right here; my attention’s all yours.”
“Oh yeah? Prove it.”
Teddy curled his fingers around his forgotten beer, absently sliding it over the scarred wooden table. It left a silver smear of condensation in its wake, beads of sweat rolling down the glass and over his fingers. “What do you want?” he mused, pushing the glass from hand to hand. “A blood oath? Three boons? My beer? Here, have it.” He shoved the nearly full glass over. “I swear it’s been microbrewed within an inch of its life. It’s so hip and local I keep expecting it to grow muttonchops and lecture me about the freegan lifestyle.”
Greg snorted, catching Teddy’s beer and belting it back in that way he had—that cocksure I’ll see your quip and raise you twenty way that never failed to make Teddy feel a little flatfooted. Greg’s adam’s apple bobbed and the colored light from the stained glass windows hit his face, highlighting his high cheekbones and perfectly squared jaw in subtle blues.
Teddy’s eyes ticked to the left. 4:10
He startled when Greg slammed the (empty) glass down, trying not to look guilty. Greg wiped his bottom lip with the backs of his fingers as he studied Teddy’s face. “No,” he said after a long, thoughtful silence. “That’s not going to cut it.”
“It’s a criminally overpriced beer.”
“You’ve been far away all day. I think you owe me…” He trailed off, leaning back as if he didn’t know exactly what he wanted. Teddy forced himself not to look away, shoulders slowly beginning to tense at his friend’s steady appraisal. Greg’s moods were as unpredictable as wildfire, but they’d been friends long enough—five years, almost—that Teddy could read the signs.
He knew what was coming.
“Thor,” Greg finally said. “I think you owe me Thor.”
Yeah. Yeah, he’d figured it would be something like that. “I don’t know,” Teddy hedged.
Greg cut him off smoothly, reaching across the table to grab one of Teddy’s hands, squeezing hard. His eyes were fever-bright. “Are you going to show me you want to be here or not?” Greg asked. “Or are you halfway out the door already?”
4:13
“Okay,” Teddy reluctantly capitulated. One hour; how much trouble could they get into in one hour? “If that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.” Greg slung an arm across the back of the booth and twisted to look over his shoulder. The bar was dim. This early in the day, there were just a small handful of patrons, none of them interested in a couple of stupid maybe-legals. The bartender wearily stacked glasses as she prepared for the evening rush, humming snatches of some pop tune under her breath. “You’re clear,” he murmured, turning back. “Do it now.”
Teddy glanced around helplessly, feeling exposed and— And wrong. He always felt so wrong doing this. But there was that low buzz of excitement, too, building deep in his belly as he closed his eyes and bowed his head to inevitability.
This won’t be like before, Teddy reassured himself. It’s not going to get out of hand this time.
“Come on,” Greg murmured. “Do it.”
Teddy balled up his napkin and threw it at Greg’s head. “I’m concentrating, okay?”
“Concentrate faster!”
Their shared laughter broke his better nature, and this time he didn’t need to close his eyes as he shifted. He could see Thor in his mind’s eye. He was big. Impossibly big. Teddy’s T-shirt stretched over his growing bulk and his jeans tightened around his thighs. He drew in a steadying breath, feeling the air fill his lungs as he imagined his features blurring like a ripple across still water.
The bar seemed to shrink around him. Even Greg looked small and harmless sitting there, watching him with an excited gleam in his eyes.
And just like that, Teddy thought, spreading broad hands across the old wooden tabletop, I get to be a god.
“Fuck, man.” Greg’s smile was slow and electrifying. The way he looked at Teddy (at Thor) made his stomach lurch in guilty pleasure. It didn’t matter that he didn’t think about Greg that way anymore—it was a Pavlovian reaction. It was a moment of belonging. It was Sally Field at the Oscars, practically basking in that first taste of acceptance.
You’re so pathetic, Teddy thought, even as he slowly began to grin back. He could feel the unfamiliar muscles in his unfamiliar face stretching in a way that made him something new and interesting and amazing.
“Look at you,” Greg said. “Every time I think it can’t get better, you go and prove me wrong.” He leaned in, smile going wicked, dark brows arched toward his spiky hair. “We’re going to drive everyone nuts with you like this.”
Teddy mimicked Greg’s posture, his own brows arching. “Tell me, human friend,” he said. His voice was a low rumble, like distant thunder. “Hast thou heard the one about mine brother’s fine filly?”
Greg pointed at him. “That,” he said. “That sounds just about right. Christ. Okay, come on.” He slid out of the booth, still grinning hugely as he surveyed the bar.
Teddy squirmed out of the too-small booth and straightened. He took a step, then paused to pull on his coat, tugging the ends closed to try to mask the un-Thor-like T-shirt (Teddy was pretty sure that he would have noticed if Thor was a big prog rock fan). Greg watched him fighting the buttons with a lopsided smirk and Teddy flipped him off, ducking away when the other boy grabbed for his finger. His heart felt light in his chest; it had been an age since they’d been like this, relaxed and joking around and friends again.
I’ve been so shitty to him lately, Teddy told himself, following Greg toward the bar. Surely this isn’t too much to ask of me.
He snagged a barstool with the toe of his boot and dragged it back. The bartender glanced over with bored disinterest, then nearly dropped a sloshing pint in her visible jolt of surprise.
“Oh fuck. Holy fuck.” Stools creaked and Teddy could practically feel eyes falling on him as, one by one, everyone craned their necks to see what was happening.
The air was very still. Then, “Thor,” one of the patrons hissed, and the name spread from person to person in a haze of shocked whispers, building power with each repetition. Thor, Thor, Thor. For a moment, sinking onto the barstool and offering his best lopsided grin, Teddy felt like the center of the universe.
The center of the fucking multiverse.
“Good eve, fair maid,” he said, leaning one elbow against the bar and flirting for all he was worth. If he was going to be Thor, he might as well be Thor. “Might my companion and I gaze upon this fine establishment’s bill of fare? Or dost thou have a ‘daily special’ to recommend thee?”
“I. I. Oh my fuck. Are you—?”
“Aye. And thou, fair maid, art Mecca. Thou art well met, indeed.”
Her eyes went wide behind dark-rimmed glasses. “You know my name?” she gasped. Teddy was only just aware of someone hunching over an iPhone, whispering, “Hey, hey! Thor’s in The Blue Ruin! Honest-to-God Thor, I shit you not!”
“It’s hard to miss someone as pretty as you,” Greg teased, leaning close with a wolfish grin.
“Aye,” Teddy said again. This routine was so practiced it was nearly second nature. If Greg played his cards right—and Teddy was only too aware that he was Greg’s trump card—then he’d go home with a new number scrawled across the meat of his palm. Teddy was too accustomed to the act to be jealous anymore. “Thy badge has proven most felicitous.” He gestured to the small white rectangle on her left breast. “Unless it is meant to bespeak the location and not the bearer’s name?”
Greg laughed, cocking his head so he was looking up through a fan of long, thick lashes. “My friend basically just said people should bow and pray to your rack,” he said, earning a breathless laugh from the girl. “How many times do you hear that from a god? I think that deserves free drinks on the house—don’t you?”
Set up. Punchline. Greg the Hero.
Of course, things couldn’t remain uncomplicated. It unraveled so fast: Greg leaning against the bar next to him, laughing, their faces catching the light of a dozen cameraphone flashes, then two dozen. The once-empty room growing packed as people flooded inside. The owner calling his bouncers in to work early and someone outside yelling, “Hey, dude, get in here—it’s Thor!” until suddenly, almost inevitably, they were trapped. The two of them were forced up onto the stage to avoid the crowd, retreating behind the velvet curtain as the situation grew quickly out of hand.
Teddy stood, still wearing his borrowed skin, and watched another catastrophe unfold through a part in the heavy fabric. The bar was completely packed, now, crowd pressed shoulder-to-shoulder and jostling for room. They pushed and pulled and swayed against one another, moving like a living ocean, a sea of expectant faces. Shouts rose and fell. Now and then, a knot broke free, moving toward the small stage only to be shoved back by the harried-looking bouncers. Teddy watched helplessly, a sick feeling spinning in his gut.
He startled when Greg clapped him on the shoulder. “I told you Thor would be a big hit,” Greg said, peering through the fold of curtain. “Jesus, look at them. They’re losing their minds out there.”
Teddy made a low, noncommittal noise. The bartender, Mecca, was in the front row, where the mosh pit would be on Metal Mondays. Her reddish-brown hair was in disarray, and her palms pressed flat against the scuffed wooden stage as she was driven hard against its jutting lip. Teddy watched the way her head snapped to the side, flush seeping across her skin as she yelled back at the mindless crowd.
“We should—” Teddy began, but Greg caught his arm before he could do more than turn in her direction.
“Are you insane?” Greg hissed. He grabbed Teddy’s other arm, pulling him further upstage. Amps and loaner instruments made strange, squat shapes in the dim. “We can’t go out there now—we’d get torn apart.”
“We should…” Teddy tried again, but really, what could he say? Greg was right; if he went out there now, like this, he could very well incite a riot. It was Times Square all over again. It was Lotus. It was a half-dozen other shameful memories.
Why did he keep doing this?
Standing in the shadows of The Blue Ruin’s shrouded stage, wearing Thor’s skin and listening to the maddened crowd shout and stamp their feet and call for his return, Teddy could only wonder why he continued to be so stupid.
“We’ll slip out the back,” Greg said, already striding away. He looked so much smaller when Teddy was in this form; it was almost impossible to imagine that the strength of his personality could be so shattering. “Try to blend in with the tourists and make our way to the subway. I don’t think—”
Greg half turned as if just realizing Teddy wasn’t beside him.
Teddy closed his eyes, feeling the roar of the crowd more than hearing it, letting it wash over him, through him. He breathed it in and imagined the liquid glide of watercolor on paper, forming indistinct shapes, color—reforming him. When he opened his eyes, he was Teddy again, feeling a hundred times smaller and weaker and less…everything.
“You go on,” Teddy said quietly. “I’ve got to… Well.”
Greg’s brows drew together. “You’re going to get yourself killed,” he said.
“It’s not that bad. Besides, I started it. I should at least try to fix it.”
“No,” Greg said, “you didn’t do a goddamned thing. Thor started it. You think they’re really going to listen to some kid from Brooklyn?”
He wanted… He didn’t know what he wanted. “Fine,” Greg added after a long silence, turning away again. “Do whatever you want, man; I’m out of here.”
Teddy watched him go, knowing he’d have to make up for this later. Greg kept a careful tally of slights, and it was no good to assume time would even the score. He’d have to prove himself all over again and—fuck—wasn’t that what had gotten him into this mess in the first place? He sighed, feeling stupidly small and incapable in this body, wishing he could be Thor again. Iron Man. Captain America. Anyone.
“Damn it,” Teddy murmured. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”
All he had to do was— If he could just— He only had to—
What? He only had to what?
Teddy stood frozen, surrounded by the barely muffled shouts, feeling powerless and small and very alone. He had to fix this somehow; he had no idea how he could.
He looked up at the sound of the curtain parting, a vertical stab of light falling across him before the heavy cloth fell together again. It was one of the bouncers, hair mussed, blunt features drawn into a scowl. “Hey, you, kid,” he said, stopping at the edge of the stage. Teddy subtly shifted, darkening his hair, making his eyes go nearly black. It wasn’t much, but the bouncer didn’t need more than that to see Greg. “Where’s the god?”
Teddy wet his lips. “He had to go,” he said. “There was— A call came. From the Mansion.”
“Well, shit. That just figures he’d prance in and poof off and not give two flying fucks about the mess he left behind. Fucking Avengers.” He gestured roughly toward the back door. “You go on and get out of here. I’m going to open up the stage so they can see he’s really gone. Maybe then they’ll clear out.”
“Can I help?”
The older man gave him a once-over and snorted. “Doing what? No, go on, get out of here. You’ll just make it worse.”
Teddy didn’t flinch, but it was a near thing. “Sure,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. He began to tug out his scarf as he turned away, moving dully toward the back exit. Teddy shifted again, blue eyes squinting up at the slowly darkening sky as he pushed out into the alleyway. He wound the houndstooth scarf around his neck, drawing in an unsteady breath scented with garbage and urine and the threat of snow.
He let it out slowly; the door clanged shut behind him.
There was no sign of Greg; but, of course, he hadn’t expected there to be. He didn’t want there to be. Teddy scuffed a boot against the filthy alley floor then sighed and headed toward the street, away from the main entrance where the spillover from the bar was straining to push their way inside. The streets were full of people and color despite the dreary day. Mounds of brownish-gray snow were piled in mountain ranges along the edges of the sidewalk, dotted with cigarette butts and wrappers. Teddy moved instinctively into the flow of traffic, carefully stepping over a puddle of slush as he veered into the crosswalk.
Times Square, no matter the time of day or night, always felt a bit like a carnival. There were hawkers on the corners, stopping random tourists (“Comedy! Excuse me, ma’am, do you like comedy?”) and passing out flyers. Horns blared. Lights flashed. The smell of burned peanuts and stale pretzels filled the air, superseding the taint of exhaust and trash and tightly packed bodies.
It was… Okay, yeah, it was thrilling. It was always, always thrilling.
Teddy squinted up at the huge jumbotrons, watching the flashing pops of color as he allowed himself to get swept up by the crowd. He felt like a bit of driftwood, or maybe a minnow joining its school. Each surge of the tide sent the lot of them pivoting and swerving and moving as one mass—a collective, a unit. A girl with bright pink hair leaned over the rusted metal scaffolding and took a picture. Lights flashed like a score of dying stars.
He allowed himself to be swept across 42nd, pulling back from the crowd as they crossed into a pedestrian walkway. Costumed figures strolled through the cone of foot traffic—Mickey Mouse and SpongeBob and even a Captain America. Teddy stopped to watch as kids threw themselves toward the costumed Cap, a weird, tight fist closing in his chest at the sight of their eager faces.
God. God he sucked.
Teddy shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, wanting to turn away but not letting himself. Not yet. A cold wind blew down Broadway, catching the ends of his scarf and trailing them behind him. He leaned against the wind, rocking up onto the balls of his feet as Cap crouched and slung an arm around skinny shoulders. The kid was grinning, huge and snaggle-toothed and…so fucking young.
Teddy let out a slow, unsteady breath, shoulders rounding forward. One corner of his mouth ticked up into a smile. Donald Duck cocked his head, huge costume eyes meeting Teddy’s across the walkway. He lifted a hand to wave and Teddy waved back, deliberately letting the tension seep from his body. He’d think about all of it later, he decided. Back when he was home, after he met up with—
After—
Oh, crap, what time was it? It couldn’t be that much past 5:00, could it?
Teddy spun on his heel, diving back into the swarm of tourists even as he dug for his phone. “Sorry,” he murmured, jostled and jostling; he flipped open the faceplate and cursed under his breath. It was dead. Of course, of course it was dead.
He snapped his phone shut and shoved it back into his pocket, all thoughts of Greg and Thor pushed from his mind. It was impossible to run in Times Square—there were too many people milling about, too much traffic blaring—but he did his best to squeeze between groups of tourists and annoyed-looking natives. “Sorry, excuse me,” Teddy said, sidestepping a cop. He made a beeline for the subway entrance, fumbling with his Metro card even as he skidded through the glass doorway.
The station was predictably congested. Teddy skirted the escalator and bolted down the steps, taking them two at a time. The red line would get him to the Upper West Side, though the blue would be better. Teddy hesitated, torn between taking the easily accessible red or transferring from the purple to the blue before deciding fuck it and running for the red. He could hear the screech of a train entering or leaving the station as he crested the top of the steps and he practically threw himself headfirst onto the platform, stumbling a few paces before righting himself. The doors were closing; he didn’t even have time to double-check that it was the right train. Teddy responded on instinct, darting forward and slamming a shoulder between the closing doors, taking the brunt of the impact with a low grunt.
They opened again, just enough for him to squeeze in, before closing…around his scarf. Teddy grabbed the end of it, his other hand curling around a metal pole as the doors opened again—just a few inches—and closed.
His scarf fluttered free. The train began to move.
He remained standing from 42nd to 79th, fingers curled around his phone where it had been shoved into his pocket, thumb tapping anxiously against the plastic faceplate. He could see numbers flashing accusingly across the train’s LED display every time he turned his head.
5:26
5:28
5:33
He was the first off the train when it reached 79th, pushing against the crowd of passengers waiting to embark. “Shit, shit, sorry,” Teddy called, racing past a harried-looking woman pushing a double stroller. He practically flew up the stairs and out of the station, cold wind whipping through his hair and making his scarf twist in inelegant shapes. The sky was the color of an old bruise, purple-blue as the sun sank toward the trees.
He was so late.
Teddy stumbled to a stop just outside the subway entrance and took a moment to orient himself, breath fogging in white clouds. He turned, momentarily lost, watching the stream of people converge and part around him. He should have taken the purple to the blue. At least then he’d be right there.
“Excuse me,” Teddy murmured reflexively, stepping out of an elderly gentleman’s way. He bumped up against a tree, snowflakes drifting around him. He shook them out of his eyes as he turned his head to catch the cross streets.
This wasn’t one of his usual haunts, but the streets around here were uniform—nothing like the tangled Village or Brooklyn around Atlantic/Pacific. It didn’t take more than another minute to orient himself in the neat grid of the Upper West Side, and then he was off again, racing toward the park.
He wove through a steady stream of au pairs with their young charges, kids his age walking dogs, well-dressed men on their cell phones. There was a construction crew setting up hazards. A taxi had stalled just past a light, blocking the intersection. The chorus of horns nearly drowned out the sound of his boots hitting the sidewalk, his gasping breaths.
Teddy ran past a family of four, the youngest chatting eagerly as she dragged a brightly colored balloon in her wake. The Museum of Natural History was emblazoned across its front, a T-Rex roaring on a field of white.
He took a hard left. He was almost there.
Teddy spotted Billy when he was still half a block away. The other boy was sitting on the stone steps, face against his knees, arms wrapped protectively around his head. Teddy’s heart gave a weird hiccupping lurch at the sight of him, guilt and excitement churning in his gut. He raced down the sidewalk and up the steps, throwing himself down next to Billy with a strangled, breathless gasp.
Finally.
“I’m…so…sorry.” It was almost impossible to speak. His heart was hammering in his chest and he was pretty sure he was going to fall over and die any second now. Billy looked up, cheeks and nose bright red with cold, a slow smile already spreading over his face. “I ran…all the way…from… Gah, sorry.”
Teddy collapsed against the steps, hands pressed to his stomach as if he could forcibly still the anxious roiling inside. He leaned his head back, letting his eyes unfocus while he tried to steady his scrambled thoughts. You would not believe what I did today, he wanted to say. Or, I can’t believe you waited; I am so fucking glad.
“It’s okay,” Billy said, shifting next to him. “I wasn’t waiting too long.”
Teddy turned his head, brows arching. Billy flushed. “Okay,” Billy admitted, “I’ve been waiting a while. But in the grand scheme of things, not too bad. I mean, not Godot-level.”
Was there anyone like this boy, Teddy wondered dizzily. He nudged Billy’s knee and rolled his eyes, trying to telegraph amusement and disbelief as he caught his breath. The tension slowly seeped from his frame. Billy had a strange way of doing that to him. It was as if he’d scrubbed the day clean and Teddy was starting over again without the mistakes and self-recriminations of the last few hours.
He watched as Billy reached for him, leaning instinctively into the touch. Billy brushed the snow from Teddy’s shoulders and hair, not meeting his eyes. He never did when they were this close.
Billy dropped his hand, fingers curling and uncurling in his lap.
“Am I presentable enough to be seen with?” Teddy teased. He watched with open interest as color crept up Billy’s cheeks.
Teddy stood, shaking away the last of the snow, and offered a hand to Billy. “Right, museum,” he said. He closed his fingers around Billy’s and tugged him up, close. Too close, maybe, but he wasn’t in the mood to argue with his id tonight. “Can I get the tickets?”
He’d been saving for today for the last week and a half. It was stupid—he was more than ready to admit that it was stupid—but he’d wanted to make a point of buying for them.
Billy squinted up at the museum, absently rubbing his palms against his thighs. “Beat you to it,” he said. “You can grab the next set in our daring tour.”
“Sure.” Teddy dragged his fingers through his hair, doing his best to hide his disappointment. “Two tickets to the Museum of Sex coming right—” what the fuck, brain? “Uh, unfortunate word choice, abort, abort.”
Billy ducked his head and Teddy fought back a wild impulse to turn on his heel and make a break for it. Jesus, could he be any lamer? They fell into step in awkward silence and headed into the museum. Teddy took the ticket Billy offered as he unwound his scarf, shucking out of the heavy wool coat, grasping desperately for something to say.
“Should I grab a map?” he finally settled on, turning toward Billy. His fingers twitched reflexively when Billy reached out to snag the cuff of his sweater, steering him away from the information desk and toward the big marble doorway.
“No way,” Billy said, glancing over at him with a disarming grin. “My school is practically right on the other side of the park. You would not believe how many times I’ve been here as a field trip.” He tugged again before letting go. “Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.”
Teddy slid his hands into his pockets to hide their faint tremble, eyes on Billy’s face. “Hey, VIP treatment,” he said. “I can get behind that.”
“Kaplan Tours at your service. So.” Billy swung around so that he was walking backwards, completely ignoring the milling crowd of museum-goers behind him. “What’s your pleasure?”
“My pleasure is you not taking a nosedive into a Stegosaurus,” Teddy said. He reached out to grab Billy’s thin shoulders and guided him around an exhibit.
“Right! The Hall of Dinosaurs it is.”
**
Now:
**
It was a long time before the water finally ran clear. Teddy hunched forward, head bowed as the warm spray beat at his shoulders and upper back. He felt weirdly old and young at the same time. Delicate, like new skin stretched over a worn frame.
He had no idea how long he’d been in here, remembering; an age could have come and gone. He just knew he had to leave and find…something, anything, to hold on to before his control finally snapped and the dam broke.
Someone. He needed someone.
“What the hell, Teddy?” he said. He curled his hand into a fist and lightly drummed his forehead two times, three, eyes squeezed shut before he reached for the faucet and turned off the shower. His muscles ached as he straightened and there was a fierce pounding pain at his temples, but he brushed all that aside as he fumbled for a towel and stumbled out of the bathroom.
He didn’t give himself room to think as he snagged his cell phone, toweling himself dry. Greg’s was the first number on his speed dial. Billy’s was the second. He’d have to— He should take care of that.
Later, Teddy told himself. Think about that later.
He pressed 1 as he pulled on boxers and a clean pair of jeans, towel discarded on his bedroom floor. Greg picked up on the sixth ring.
“Hey,” Teddy said.
“Hey yourself. Did you hear about all that at the Avengers’ Mansion?” Teddy could hear the unholy chaos of Greg’s apartment through the line. One of his sisters was screaming. A baby’s wail could be heard over the familiar drone of an argument. “Apparently there were fucking Ultron robots—can you believe it?”
“Yeah.”
Greg was quiet for a minute, then said, “Hold up, I can barely hear you.” The sound was abruptly muffled as if he had pressed the receiver to his chest, and Teddy closed his eyes as he pictured Greg picking his way across the filthy toy-strewn floor, passing the room he shared with his two brothers, passing the overstuffed closet with its cheap maroon-colored curtain in place of a door. When Greg came back on the line, his voice echoed oddly as if off tile. Teddy could hear the hiss of a radiator and the gurgle of the toilet. “You sound like hell,” Greg said frankly. “What’s up?”
Teddy let out a breath. “Greg,” he tried, “I’m just—I just—”
“Yeah?”
Teddy moved to sit on his bed and picked at a loose string unraveling from his coverlet. “Something happened, and I can’t…talk about it, but I need—Hell. I.”
Greg stopped him. “Use your words, Teddy,” he said, not unkindly.
Teddy took the plunge. “Can you come over? I need to not be alone right now.”
“To your place?” The sharpness in his voice was unmistakable. “You’re actually going to let me inside?”
And what could he say in the face of that? “Please, Greg,” Teddy murmured, closing his eyes and dropping his forehead against his drawn-up knees.
There was a long silence. And then, to his credit, Greg relented. “Yeah, man,” he said. “Yeah, okay. I’ll be right there. Address? Seeing as, you know, you’ve never fucking told me before.”
“I’ll text you,” he said numbly.
Teddy couldn’t figure out what to do with himself as he waited. He felt pulled in a hundred different directions all at once, yet he couldn’t seem to make himself move. Instead, he sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, hands dangling between his thighs. His phone was silent and accusatory next to him.
Hey, he would have said, if he only had the nerve, I know you hate me now, but I just need to know that you’re all right. This won’t stop until I know.
The sharp buzz of the door was a relief, jolting him out of his thoughts and forcing him up onto his feet. He went to let Greg in.
“You know,” Greg said as he moved past Teddy and shrugged out of his light jacket, “this is the first time you’ve let me come over here. I’m going to be on the lookout for murdered hookers in the closets.”
Teddy quietly shut the door. “No hookers, murdered or otherwise. Just some old Frank Miller.”
Greg glanced over his shoulder. “Translate.”
“It’s…not actually that funny of a joke.” Billy would have gotten it.
No. No, fuck, no. He needed to stop thinking like that. Billy wasn’t here; Billy didn’t want to be here. Billy didn’t want anything to do with him.
Greg. Greg was the one who’d come. He just…had to remember that.
It had been a while now since he’d turned to Greg for anything, Teddy realized, trailing a few steps behind as Greg made his way through the apartment. He’d begun to think maybe he wouldn’t anymore—that he didn’t need that kind of outside affirmation. That he was (nice, okay, be a drama queen, Altman) almost free from all that, from all the baggage that came with it.
He wasn’t free now. He was practically belly-crawling back. He’d beg, if Greg made him. Why not? It wouldn’t be the first time Teddy had bent over backwards to be liked.
“It’s pretty nice. Is your mom an artist?” Greg jerked his chin at Teddy’s watercolors and it felt…wrong somehow, like he wasn’t supposed to be here, like Teddy had made some kind of terrible mistake. This wasn’t a part of himself he wanted to share with Greg.
Teddy pushed his fingers through his hair, letting out an unsteady breath. “Yeah,” he lied. “My mom’s an artist. Greg, I’m sorry I called you over here like I did.”
“You mean after being my friend for years and never letting me step foot in your place?”
Teddy flinched, tried to hide it. Failed. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I’m sorry. I should have… I don’t know why I never asked you over.”
Greg crossed his arms. “I bet you had that Kaplan kid over here, huh?”
“Yeah. He came over a few times.”
“Is he your boyfriend?”
Teddy looked up, surprised to see a flash of hurt beneath the belligerence. Greg was standing there with his feet a shoulders-width apart, arms still crossed. Scowling. But Teddy had known him for so long—so many years of wanting—that somewhere along the way he’d picked up the ability to see past the bullshit. Or was he just seeing what he wanted?
He wasn’t stupid. Teddy knew Greg wasn’t someone he shouldlike. He could be a jackass sometimes, a bully. But there was something there, too. Something deeper. Something that looked like hurt and jealousy and… Want.
It tugged Teddy closer, pulling at him like an undertow. God how he needed to be wanted right now.
“Well?” Greg demanded when Teddy didn’t say anything. “Is he your little faggy boyfriend?”
“I don’t like it when you say that,” Teddy said. He could feel the shifts taking place inside him, feel himself responding to Greg’s presence. This was the right decision, he told himself. He never could stand to be alone. “You know that.”
Greg made a low, disgusted noise. “So you keep saying.”
“It sounds like something your dad would say.” His bare feet were silent against the hardwood floor. Teddy reached out, hesitant—careful—and rested a hand on Greg’s tense bicep. “It’s always your dad talking when you get like that.”
Greg turned his face away, flushing darkly. “I don’t want to talk about my father.”
Teddy touched the collar of Greg’s shirt with his other hand, drifting close. He felt like broken bits of flotsam in a current; Greg was an inescapable force of nature. “I don’t want to talk at all,” Teddy said.
He bridged the last bit of distance between them, one arm sliding carefully around Greg’s neck, pulling him in. Teddy ducked his head to rest his forehead against Greg’s powerful shoulder, eyes sliding shut at the relief of contact. Months ago, a year ago, he would have felt heat coiling low in his gut at the physical proximity. All that was gone, now, but it still—
It felt good. He needed good.
He closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of Greg’s cologne, fingers curling in his shirt. Teddy couldn’t think—but that was the whole point, now, right? Not to think? He focused instead on the rise and fall of Greg’s chest. The heat of his body through layers of clothing. The steady, soothing beat of his heart.
The way his hands hung steady at his sides, unresponsive.
Teddy lifted his head and met dark eyes. He made a questioning noise in the back of his throat.
Greg’s cheeks were flushed, and he looked angry, even though he wasn’t. Teddy could tell he wasn’t. “What are you doing?” he said. His voice was low and surprisingly cold.
Teddy began to pull back, startled, but Greg grabbed his elbows in a hard grip, keeping him close. “That’s not what I meant,” he snapped. “I meant…what are you doing?”
Teddy looked away, then back again, confused, mind tripping helplessly over the last few minutes to try to figure out what he had done wrong. “I’m not,” he said, voice stupidly weak, “I thought—” He glanced down, uncertain. And then it hit him.
“Oh,” Teddy said on a low breath. “Oh, I’m really sorry.”
Greg was silent for so long that Teddy had to open his eyes again, blinking up at him silently. The tight line of Greg’s body was gentling, tension draining out of him. His face had lost any traces of anger, and his eyes were…soft. Soft as he looked down at Teddy.
He reached out and very gently brushed back a long strand of hair, tucking it behind Teddy’s ear. “Something really fucked you up today, didn’t it?” Greg murmured. He wrapped an arm around Teddy’s waist, big fingers sliding to cup his skull. When he pulled Teddy against him, it was as if he were shutting a door between Teddy and the rest of the world. The explosion, the fear, Billy—don’t think his name—all of it was blessedly muffled.
But then Greg was tipping up Teddy’s face and brushing their mouths together.
Teddy considered allowing it. It felt…nice. At least, he thought it might eventually feel nice, if he let himself play along. He could remember times when he’d wanted this too, when he’d enjoyed this, more than anything, but all that seemed hazy with time and distance now.
Greg’s tongue brushed the bottom curve of Teddy’s lip. His hands tightened on him.
Teddy gently turned his face away. “No,” he murmured. “Greg…no. That’s not what I—Could you just—I just need something to hold onto for a little while, okay?”
Greg was silent for a long minute before muttering, “You don’t mean no. You mean not now.”
“Not now,” Teddy agreed. It was an easy enough concession—a way to kick the can down the road a few days, a week, especially now that Billy—
Don’t.
Teddy sucked in an uneven breath. His entire frame had gone tight as a coiled wire again. He couldn’t keep doing this to himself. Just don’t think about him, Teddy admonished himself. Just don’t think at all. He forced himself to sink against Greg’s broad, strong frame. He willed himself to relax. This, Teddy thought, was going to be enough. It had to be.
**
Then:
**
“So cool,” Billy said. He was gripping the railing, face pressed so close to the glass that his reflection nearly obscured the bobbing creatures in the dark tank. Teddy let himself focus on that. It wasn’t that the tiny school of jellyfish made him nervous—
No, scratch that. The tiny school of jellyfish definitely made him nervous.
“If you say so,” he mumbled, turning away. The whole exhibit made his skin crawl. The center of the long hall was taken up by a dark, humid tangle of rain forest trees and flowers. They burst lushly through the undergrowth, vivid greens and deep blues blending with the deepest blacks. Here and there a flower bloomed with unlikely light, delicate petals glowing in shades of yellow-white and violet. On its own, it would have been beautiful—but the curator had added small shapes in the tangle of vegetation. Glass eyes stared at him from the shadows, unblinking, unmoving.
All that, mixed with tanks of glowing shapes and the unsettling liquid chug of an aquarium, had his teeth on edge. He glanced over again. Tiny, graceful figures twisted in the aquarium like wisps of smoke. Their long tentacles lifted about their bodies as… Teddy carefully turned his face away.
He startled when Billy lightly brushed their elbows together before swallowing and looking down into a pair of thoroughly bemused brown eyes.
“You really don’t like fish, do you?”
“Yeah, well, don’t tell Namor,” Teddy said, craning to spot one of the museum’s discreet clocks. “I’m pretty sure he’d eat my face. Oh, hey, ten minutes until the show. Want to head in?”
Billy blinked. “Already? Okay, wow, yeah. You know,” he added, very obviously putting himself between Teddy and the tanks of jellyfish as they hurried out of the Hall of Bioluminescence, “I’m going to start dragging you along on every museum trip from now on. Time is just swimming by.”
Teddy backhanded his shoulder and Billy grinned. “What?” he said, laughing at the face Teddy made. “Too soon?”
“Someday, I’m going to find your weakness,” Teddy warned. “And you’re going to look back on this day and think, wow, I should have been way more sensitive to Teddy’s perfectly understandable phobia.”
Billy shoved his hands into his pockets and cocked his head toward Teddy. “I have a horrible fear of chocolate,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. “Especially the good stuff. You should definitely get your revenge by sending me just gobs of it.”
“There’s a chocolate café on Lexington. We should go when I’ve decided you don’t suck anymore.” Teddy reached over to snag Billy’s ticket as they headed into the planetarium’s main entrance. It was housed in a giant, round theater balanced on three slim pylons beneath a pitched glass ceiling. Huge ramps extended from its exits, spiraling down to a special exhibit on the ground level. Directly beneath them, visible through the glass floor, a pendulum swung through the void like the arm of a giant clock. “Have you seen this show before?” Teddy asked as he handed over their tickets. There wasn’t much of a line. A family of three sat together near the door, and one or two other small groups were scattered throughout the room.
Teddy reached out and lightly nudged Billy, guiding him toward an empty row. Billy glanced over his shoulder at him, ears going pink at the contact. The warmth of his skin, even through layers of cloth, was incredible.
“Huh? Oh. Oh, uh, no, not this one. I think they just switched over.” Billy nearly stumbled, catching himself with a muffled curse and a quick, “Sorry! Sorry.” When he sank into his seat, Teddy could see that faint blush seeping down his neck.
It was…endearing how easy it was to read Billy’s face. He wore his feelings on his quirky, angular features like a silent film star, emoting every flinch of embarrassment, every hope, every mental tic. Teddy was so used to trying to sort through his own messy tangle of emotions that Billy’s hapless honesty was a welcome respite.
It must be so freeing to be like that, Teddy thought, leaning back in his chair and staring up at the domed ceiling. The lights were dimming, stars just visible along the outer rim of the planetarium. To just…be.
The room fell into full darkness and the quiet shifting and creaking of seats was replaced by the voice of the narrator. A distant flash of color spun closer, growing bigger and brighter until it consumed the giant screen, throwing blue and green light over them. The Earth hung there, massive in scope. It seemed to hover directly over their heads, filling his vision until it was all Teddy could see.
Billy leaned in and whispered, “I think I can see my house from here,” and Teddy elbowed him in the ribs.
And then the Earth began to rotate, dipping low as it spun toward the left of the screen with a too-loud whoosh, shrinking back as the perspective shifted and the camera pulled out to view the entire solar system.
“Still pretty sure I can see the Avengers’ house,” Billy whispered.
Teddy snorted, quickly turning his face to hide his grin against his fist. He glanced at Billy out of the corner of his eyes, heart giving a queer little lurch at the goofy, lopsided smile. God, Billy was just so…
“That’s not even funny,” Teddy said, voice pitched low. He was laughing, though, shoulders shaking as he fought to keep it in. Billy’s grin simply widened. He opened his mouth—likely to add something about, oh, the Justice League’s Watchtower or whatever—but Teddy leaned over and clapped a palm over his mouth, hushing him. He pressed in close. He could just make out the subtle tang of Billy’s shampoo. “You know what they say about special hells and people who talk in theaters?” he murmured. His breath rustled the hair at Billy’s temples.
Billy blinked at him. His eyes were wide over Teddy’s hand. His breath was warm against his skin, coming just a little too fast.
He nodded.
Teddy dropped his hand and settled back into his seat, shifting to hide the blush that wanted to creep across his cheeks. “Good, okay,” he said. He could see Billy moving out of the corner of his eye, straightening until they were both staring up at the planetarium dome with a singular focus. Teddy let out an uneven breath, fingers curling and uncurling slowly. He could still feel the press of Billy’s mouth at the center of his palm. He could still feel the hot gust of his breath.
He closed his eyes, briefly overwhelmed. Lights blurred in a dizzying spiral beneath his lids as the universe expanded around him.
When he opened his eyes again, they’d moved out of the solar system and into the Shi’ar empire. Teddy watched the huge screen in silence, trying to focus on the narrator’s droning voice, but his skin felt too tight. His heart was still pounding just a little too hard.
He was intimately aware of Billy sitting so close to him. Knees almost brushing, elbows just a hair’s breadth away. He was always aware of Billy. He had been from the start, from that first moment he’d glanced over and seen him scowling down at used CDs, a bundle of frenetic energy. There’d been something there, then, something about him from the very beginning.
It was just getting worse, over time—this awareness. This strange tug deep in his gut. He let himself glance over as the system spun out to focus on the Skrull homeworld. Billy was leaning back in his chair, hands gripping the armrests tight.
What is it about you? Teddy thought. He looked away, then quickly back again. Billy wasn’t like anything or anyone he’d ever known. He wasn’t like anything or anyone he’d ever thought he wanted. He was…wholly new, unexpected. Baffling and oddly frightening. Teddy wet his lips, studying Billy’s sharp features. It wasn’t often he had the chance to do this—to just observe Billy without drawing the full weight of his attention.
His nose was a little too long. His ears were too big. He was the kind of skinny that other kids made fun of, all gangly limbs and extended trunk. His brown hair stuck up in untamed spikes, too chaotic to be deliberate. He was so pale his angular face almost glowed in the darkness.
His skin was a living canvas beneath undulating waves of light.
Teddy watched, breath catching painfully in his chest. Billy’s cheeks were cast in shades of molten red as some alien planet moved over them. His skin was painted in insubstantial watercolors, orange and yellow fading into blue and deep violet. Bursts of brighter light caught on the pale arch of his neck and the high curve of his cheekbone. They mapped Billy’s body in a chaotic swirl of shaded pigments, color and light and energy ever-changing as the universe spun above them.
And then, as the Kree homeworld filled the screen, Billy’s face tipped up and he was aglow with alien light—mottled shades of green and gold and violet making him something different. Something indescribably beautiful.
Jesus, when did he ever know what he wanted?
There was a soft rustle of cloth as Billy leaned closer. Teddy gripped his hands into fists, nails digging sharp furrows into his palms. What was wrong with him? He felt light-headed and achy. He thought, if he allowed his muscles to unlock, he might be trembling.
“Hey,” Billy murmured, voice very close. “You okay?”
No, he wanted to say. I don’t know how to be.
“Yeah,” Teddy said, staring blankly up at the ceiling as the Kree homeworld fell away into darkness. “Yeah, sure.”
**
Now:
**
Teddy lay curled in his bed, watching shafts of sunlight stretch across the hardwood floor. The afternoon was passing into early evening, marked only by lengthening shadows and the faint tick of the hallway clock.
He felt…weightless. Gratefully numb. He could have been outside of his body; he could have been walking in space, spinning through the black while the rest of him remained anchored by the heavy weight of Greg’s arm locked around his middle. One hand pressed under his cheek. Knees curled up. Breathing, because that’s what bodies did when their owners didn’t want them anymore.
He closed his eyes. He opened them again. He breathed slowly in and out.
Teddy didn’t tense up when Greg shifted behind him. Greg was a steady warmth that was supposed to be comforting. It had been comforting for a little while. But it seemed so hollow right now. He felt hollow. He felt—
Billy’s face tilted up, lips parted, the universe painted in broad strokes across his pale cheeks.
—dangerously close to the edge despite everything. There were fracture patterns outlined across his lids; if he let himself go even a little, it would all unravel. Memories of the attack. Billy’s face, spattered with blood. A door shutting, leaving him alone.
Alone.
Greg was here, hands on him, and Teddy had never felt more alone. Not since he was that little boy moving through each day from sunup to sundown silent as a ghost.
He squeezed his eyes shut and fought to ignore the rising tide of panic building in his chest with steady, insistent pressure. He swallowed, eyes burning; he struggled to push it back down again, to—
Greg pressed his lips to the back of Teddy’s neck.
Teddy went very still. Greg’s mouth was hot and damp against his skin. His breath stirred strands of Teddy’s hair, gusting against the curve of his shoulder as Greg kissed a little lower, then again, lower, following the stretched-out neck of Teddy’s T-shirt.
I told him no, Teddy thought, but it was all he could do to hold on now. His hands were trembling again. Hot tears gathered at his lashes and his stomach twisted in knots. A heavy beat throbbed in his temples and each breath was a struggle to swallow back a rising sob as Greg mouthed across Teddy’s borrowed skin.
Greg slid a hand up, caressing a curvy hip (not mine) before gently pushing beneath the hem of Teddy’s thin cotton T-shirt. His nails raked soft skin (not mine). His fingers cupped the swell of a breast (not mine).
Teddy drew in a shuddery breath, tensing as he was tugged against Greg’s body. The hazy, numb pain was rapidly burning away as Teddy subtly tried to slide free—and was pulled firmly back into the too-warm cradle of Greg’s thighs.
When had he let this become his life?
They’d been so young the first time he’d spotted Greg across the crowded schoolyard, but Greg had seemed years older, eons more experienced. He’d been surrounded by friends, laughing and joking and confident in his own skin. It had been like a scene out of a movie. Teddy had taken one look at that and wanted it with everything he had. He’d changed everything he had just to get it, to keep it.
Greg had been his first everything. He’d wanted him so much. And now? Now he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt anything for him. It was such a long time ago. Before Billy. Or had it been after?
Don’t think his name. Teddy closed his eyes again and fought the hot tremor of emotion threatening to well up and up and out of him in endless messy waves. It wouldn’t go away. The memories wouldn’t go away.
“Hey,” Greg murmured. The heat of his breath against Teddy’s ear made him tense up. “What are you thinking about?”
Teddy twitched his shoulders uncomfortably. “It’s nothing,” he said. He turned in the circle of Greg’s arms, fighting the urge to shove him away. He’d asked for this. He’d thought he needed this. “I was just thinking about the planetarium.”
Greg arched a dark brow, expression dubious. “The planetarium, huh? Fuck, you’re such a nerd sometimes.” He jerked his chin toward Teddy’s ceiling, where glow-in-the-dark stars were just visible. He began to unbutton Teddy’s jeans with one practiced hand. “You’ve got a major hard-on for space, huh?”
Teddy looked up. The solar system was spread above them, a pale imitation of the bold colors splashed across an uplifted face. He laughed, the sound raw and cracked open and not at all what he’d intended. His skin crawled as calloused fingertips pushed into his boxers. “‘The thing's hollow,’” he quoted, trying to make it a joke. “‘It goes on forever, and— My God, it's full of stars!’”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Greg said.
Billy would have gotten that.
Billy.
And just like that, hours after the first explosion had thrown him to the ground, Teddy’s desperate control finally snapped.
It happened in staccato bursts, like a strobe. Teddy struggled away from Greg, shifting to male with a harsh, unchecked sob. He’d lain under the stars with Billy, wanting him, loving him—he couldn’t do the same with Greg. He couldn’t. He just, no, he couldn’t, he couldn’t.
“No. No,” he snapped when Greg reached for him. Teddy shoved him away, struggling up to his feet. The mattress dipped beneath his weight, unsteady—he was unsteady, legs shaking so hard they almost gave out beneath him. He looked up, seeing the innocuous white stars scattered across the ceiling and recognized the stark reality of countless nights to come lying beneath them, remembering that planetarium. Remembering what he had lost.
Teddy scrubbed at his face, hot tears dripping unchecked from his chin, messy. So fucking messy—he’d made a mess of everything, and Greg was staring up at him with a baffled expression, reaching up to touch Teddy’s thigh.
“No, let go of me. No; I have to get them down.” He reached up with shaking hands and peeled away a star; it felt like picking at a scab. It felt painful and good, his breath hitching on a sob. It was all he could focus on now. “I don’t want to look at them anymore.”
“What the fuck is the matter with you?” Greg rolled away to stand by the bed, but Teddy ignored him. His fingernails scraped across the plaster ceiling as he tore away the stars with barely controlled mania. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
“Yes,” Teddy said, voice cracking over the word. “It doesn’t matter; I have to get them down. I have to get them, I have to, it isn’t, I have to stop remembering.” It was all tangled up inside and spilling out of him. He felt like he was drowning in tears and snot and the remembered tang of blood and he had to get them down.
There was a sharp pain as one of the points dug beneath his nail. He ignored it. He ignored Greg trying to pull him away, struggling out of his grip, snarling, “Go the fuck away; don’t touch me.” Greg stared at him, stunned, then turned on his heel and slammed out of the room. The echoing slam of the main apartment door was like an aftershock, hard enough to send Teddy crumpling to his knees as if the whole world truly were shaking to pieces around him.
There were stars scattered across his bed, in his hair. There were tears running down his face. He ducked down, curling around himself to press his face to his knees, pants still open, arms over his head. Sobbing.
Shadows inched across the floor as twilight passed into evening and he finally let himself lose control.
Teddy was dressed in his pajamas and sitting on the couch when his mother finally came home. He looked up when he heard a key turn in the lock, half-turning to watch as she pushed her way into the little vestibule with a tired sigh.
“Hello?” she called, nudging the door shut with her hip. Her arms were full of binders and stray papers. She had her sari-fabric purse nestled in the crook of her elbow and her spring jacket trailing from her fingers. One of its arms brushed the floor as she awkwardly tossed her keys into a colorful blown glass dish. They landed with a clink amongst spare change and popped buttons. “Teddy?”
He rose and silently padded over, taking the binders from her arms. Her shoulders relaxed immediately.
“Oh thank God,” his mother said, moving to hang her jacket on its hook. “I left I don’t know how many messages when I heard about the Avengers. I tried to come home, but the bridges were closed and…”
She trailed off.
Teddy carefully slid her binders into their slots on the bookshelf, not letting himself look at his mother. He’d cried himself out sometime a few hours ago. At least, he was pretty sure it had been a few hours ago. It all felt like some unmoored dream sequence from an Italian expressionist film. I’m going to owe Greg one hell of an apology later, he thought numbly, slipping the loose papers on their side between two binders. His mother’s looping, elegant script was mixed with strings of numbers, names, and bored doodles.
Her soft hand clasped his shoulder, gently tugging him around.
“Baby,” she said, ducking her head to get a good look at his face. The bone-deep comfort of her perfume washed over him; her bright bangles clacked together. “Oh, baby, what’s wrong?”
Teddy shook his head and bit the inside of his lip. He glanced up through his lashes, but his eyes were beginning to burn again, so he dropped his gaze. This was supposed to be over with; he’d had his catharsis. He was supposed to…
Fuck. He hated putting that worried line between his mother’s brows.
He didn’t resist when she pulled him into her arms, however, his own arms going around her waist. His mother gave the best hugs—fierce and tight, like she knew she couldn’t hurt him. Teddy felt held together in one of her hugs, as if all his disparate pieces had been bound up with a bit of twine. That, more than anything, kept him from flying apart again.
She pressed her lips to his hair. “What happened?” she murmured, fiercely rubbing her hands up and down his back. “Was it the Avengers? You know they’ll be okay; they face this all the time.” She shifted back just enough to look at his face. He couldn’t be sure what she read there, but her eyes narrowed at whatever she saw, expression going fierce. “No, not the Avengers. Was it Greg? Is he harassing you again? Do I have to kick his behind? Because I will go change into my yoga pants right now if you just say the word.”
“What, Mom, no,” Teddy said with a surprised—shaky—laugh. Her expression smoothed a little, lips curving at the edges, because that had been her goal all along, of course. “No, God. Why are you so weird?”
His mother cupped his face. “Because I have a very weird son.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.” The weight that had been pressing down on his chest ever since the explosion (ever since the rooftop) seemed to lift slightly. The knot in his gut began to release. He should have known it wouldn’t be Greg that would make it all go away. “Maybe I’m so weird because of you. It’s like the chicken and the egg.”
She grinned sunnily. “I call dibs on being the chick.” Then she leaned in to press a kiss between his brows, deliberately—he was absolutely certain—hitting his Ajna chakra. He would never admit how comforting he found that. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Teddy immediately shook his head. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to think if he could help it.
“All right,” she said, because she was the best mother in the world. “Then how about this—I’ll go change out of my very serious real estate lady clothes while you pick out something for us to watch. Anything you want. Star Trek? Batman? Game of Thrones? Doctor Who? Anything. Hit me with it.”
“Buffy?”
She brushed back his hair. “Only a monster would say no to Buffy. Did you eat?” He shook his head again. “Okay. Then I’ll fix us irresponsibly huge bowls of cereal and ice cream. Maybe some chocolate milk to top it all off, because hey, why not be a little wild? You only live once. I’ll even break out the crazy straws so we know we’re having a good time.”
Teddy laughed quietly, pushing back the heavy fall of his bangs. “And this is your idea of going wild?”
“If you find a better way,” she said with mock gravity, “you let me know.”
Teddy drew in a slow breath, smiling as she pulled away. She gave him a long, searching look, hands lightly gripping his shoulders. He couldn’t help but wonder what she saw there—whatever it was, it made that line between her brow darken. She leaned in to kiss his Ajna chakra again, murmuring something he couldn’t quite catch. Then she squeezed his shoulders and swatted gently at him before heading toward her room. When she reached the living room door, Teddy called, “Hey, Mom?”
His mother turned, brows arched, eyes worried. “Yeah, baby?”
“Thanks.”
Her expression changed, warm smile spreading across her face, tired eyes crinkling at the corners. She must have had a pretty shitty day, too, Teddy realized. And yet here she was, being…just the perfect mother. “Park your butt,” she said, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. “Tonight it’s eat-ice-cream-until-you-puke night at the Altmans’.”
“Not to be confused with scarfing-ramen-over-the-sink night.”
She laughed. “Save some of your sass for Buffy.” And then she was gone, heading down the hall to change out of her serious adult clothes, leaving Teddy standing in the living room feeling like maybe he could make it through the night after all.
**
Then:
**
It was snowing again. Teddy tipped his face toward the sky, feeling the cold flakes brush against his overheated cheeks. The last exhibit on Earth’s earliest heroes had been the hardest for him—made harder still by the fact that there was nothing he could say to Billy to explain why it touched him the way it did. How would he even begin to explain the hopeless tangle he’d made of his life?
Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to betray your heroes?
Or maybe,
Sometimes I pretend to be them because the only way I know how to be worth anything is to become someone else.
Pathetic. Standing there, staring up at that old picture of the Avengers, Teddy had felt so pathetic. He remembered the chanting of the crowd and the frenetic press of bodies surging toward the stage. He could feel the weight of Greg’s hand on his shoulder and hear his own heart beating too loud in his borrowed chest.
I don’t want it to be this way, Teddy thought, gravely staring at the wide open face of the moon. I don’t want to keep doing this.
There was a soft whisper of cloth as Billy moved to stand next to him, arm brushing lightly against his. Teddy could feel dark eyes on him; he fought against the pleasant curl of heat unfurling low in his belly. He tilted his chin to meet Billy’s gaze, locking his knees against the rush of warmth he felt when Billy slowly began to smile.
“Can I walk you home?” Teddy murmured. If this were really a date, that’s what he would do. He’d walk Billy home—maybe take his hand as they crossed the park together, lacing their fingers tight—all the way up to his stoop. He’d tug him around to look at him. He’d brush the snow from Billy’s dark hair.
He’d press their lips together and taste Billy’s sharply indrawn breath. He’d cup his hands along the delicate curve of Billy’s jaw and let himself sink into something altogether new and uncomplicated and wonderful.
If this were really a date. If he had that kind of courage.
“It’s okay,” Billy said. “I don’t live very far from here.”
Please. “Can I do it anyway?”
Billy ducked his head a little, spots of color brightening his pale cheeks. “Yeah. Yeah, okay,” he said. Teddy had to fight the urge to reach out and take his hand then and there. He shoved his hands into his pockets instead and they fell into step together, moving toward the park.
It was dark and surprisingly hushed, despite the occasional jogger winding her way through the familiar paths. Their breaths rose before them in white clouds and snow was falling steadily now. It muffled the tread of their footsteps and hung heavy over the world, making the city seem very far away. Teddy found himself sinking deeper and deeper into their silence. Billy was normally a jumble of energy and sarcasm and movement—it was nice to strip some of that away and just be here, in the moment, letting it pass without comment.
Unless…
Teddy glanced at Billy with a sudden flare of anxiety. Maybe Billy didn’t feel the same way. Maybe he was bored and wishing he were somewhere, anywhere else—but no, Billy’s eyes were closed as they walked, expression beatific. There were flakes on his dark lashes. His lips were parted on a breath.
Teddy wet his lips, breath catching as he watched Billy’s face. There were days when he felt like there was nothing to him but layers of artifice. That his whole world was a construct he had to carefully maintain to keep it all from collapsing on itself. Billy wasn’t like that. Billy was the most genuine person Teddy had ever met.
Do you even understand how rare you are? Teddy thought. It felt like a hand was squeezing his heart, making it constrict with each shallow breath. If I could be you— If I could have you—
He reached out to catch Billy’s arm when he would have walked straight into a garbage can, gently maneuvering him around the obstacle. Billy’s eyes popped open and he grinned out of one corner of his mouth, unabashed and open and more real than anything Teddy had ever seen.
Charmed down to his core, Teddy smiled back.
**
Now:
**
“I’m such a responsible mother.”
There were boxes of cereal piled up on the coffee table. Empty ice cream bowls had been stacked like Russian nesting dolls. On the television, the credits rolled to the DVD selection screen, and outside, the world seemed very dark and still. Teddy curled his fingers around the wide ceramic face of his mug and took a sip of cocoa, lashes flickering as he watched his mother over the brim.
She sighed and slouched back into her corner of the couch with a wry smile. She was wearing pajama capris and a T-shirt with dancing daleks printed across the chest. With her hair pulled up in a high ponytail and her face scrubbed clean of makeup, she looked…
Young, Teddy thought, grip tightening around the mug. Young and tired and trying her best.
He swallowed a mouthful of tepid chocolate and set the mug aside. “There were chunks of fruit in the strawberry ice cream,” he said. “And, you know, dairy. Dairy’s good.”
She rolled her head to look at him, dimples flashing at the corners of her mouth. “I’m pretty sure I unearthed some kind of nut in the chocolate. Or was it in the coffee ice cream?”
“Coffee comes from a bean, so that has to count as a vegetable.”
“The Cocoa Puffs take care of the bottom of the pyramid all on their own.”
Teddy nodded sagely. “Very true. No one has ever questioned the nutritional merits of Cocoa Puffs.”
She waved a hand at him, ever-present bangles clacking merrily. “Hush, I’m rationalizing. We’ve got the grains, vegetables…sort of, fruits, dairy, and sugars pretty well covered. Find me a meat somewhere in there and I’ll be able to go to bed feeling like a shining example of motherhood.”
“I’m pretty sure the nut covers it.”
His mother squinted at him. “Really?” She closed her eyes as if trying to picture the food pyramid. Teddy watched her with a grateful sort of warmth. He turned to rest his elbow against the back of the couch, knees tucking up beneath him. He was full—if buzzing with too much sugar—and warm and tired and…and if not okay, at least a small step closer. Almost close enough to be convincing.
“I think,” his mother said, brows knitting. Then she began to smile out of the corner of her mouth. “You know, I think you’re right.” Her eyes popped open and she grinned at him, ponytail swinging. “No, you’re definitely right. All hail and huzzah, I do not fail at basic mothering.”
He snagged one of the colorful, spangled pillows and lobbed it gently at her head. “You’re a shining example and a credit to your kind.”
She caught the pillow and tucked it primly beneath her. “Such sass. Did you want another episode?”
Teddy glanced over. Giles watched them gravely from the selection screen. “Nah,” he said. “I think maybe I’ll get ready for bed. I have a busy day of getting underfoot tomorrow. You have the day off, remember?” he added at his mother’s questioning noise.
“Oh. Well, actually,” she began. Teddy straightened, muscles immediately beginning to tighten. “I had been thinking of going in.”
“Oh.” He remembered talking to…talking to Billy about this, once upon a time. About how his mother worked so hard, too hard, to keep their little family afloat. About how he could never shake the feeling that it was all his fault. That she was killing herself at work for him. The memory was all too powerful now. If he closed his eyes, he could still feel the salt wind off the Coney Island boardwalk against his face, smell the rusted metal and trash, hear the ever-changing lull of the sea.
He could feel Billy’s mouth against his and remember the dizzy thought that came like a flash-bang grenade moments before he reluctantly pulled away: I’m going to ruin this. God, please, don’t let me ruin this.
“You worked hard today,” Teddy said, feeling the caul of misery slip over his face again. He had to keep his eyes ticked subtly to the left so his mother wouldn’t meet his gaze and read everything there. “This whole week has been…crazy. You deserve a day off.”
She reached out to push back his hair, thumb brushing lightly between his brows. “True,” his mother said slowly. He could feel the warm concern radiating off her. “And it’d be hard for you to get underfoot if I’m all the way over in the Heights. All right, you’ve twisted my arm. I’m devoting tomorrow to sloth. Maybe we could go down to Coney Island and—”
“No.”
Too hard, too sharp. Teddy rolled his shoulders as he moved to his feet, trying to shake the sudden surge of panic. “Sorry,” he added before his mother could say anything. “It’s just, I’d like to stay in tomorrow. If we can. Or maybe go see the cherry blossoms or something. I’m just…not feeling the shore.”
“We’ll think of something,” she murmured. He could feel her eyes on him, studying the subtle hunch of his shoulders, the slow fisting of his hands. Teddy tried to force his body to relax, knowing his mother could read him in a way no one else could, but he felt coiled up tight and miserable inside all over again.
“I’m going to,” Teddy began, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “You know. Ablute.”
“Baby—”
Teddy cut his mother off. “It’s okay,” he promised. “Really. I’m okay. Everything’s okay.” He retreated slowly toward the hallway, pulling away from the anxious spotlight of her worry. “I’m just going to get ready for bed.”
She’d twisted around on the couch to watch him go. “All right,” she said. Teddy turned and hurried through the doorway, not relaxing until he was out of sight. In the hallway, a multitude of pictures looked down at him from the sunny yellow walls—photos of him and his mother over the years, mixed with art from all the places they dreamed of going together, someday, when money wasn’t so tight. He focused on the tin sacred hearts. Colorful Peruvian arpilleras. Teak lotus blossoms.
Teddy trailed his fingers across the small strip of an old handira his mother had found who knew where, watching out of the corner of his eye as the round silver sequins caught his reflection in hazy miniature. He drew in a slow breath as he moved down the hall, letting the familiar texture ground him. The knowing eyes of Frida looked down at him from her place of honor to the right of the hall closet.
He could hear his mother moving about in the living room, collecting dishes. As he closed the bathroom door behind him, the soft click of the latch was lost under the sound of the television switching over to live news coverage.
Teddy turned and leaned against the door, letting his head fall back. He reached blindly for the lightswitch, fumbling…then dropped his hand weakly to his side. Just enough moonlight pushed through the frosted window to turn the tiny bathroom into a ghostly shell of grays and blues and white. Water dripped from the faucet in a steady metronome. He could hear footsteps from the tenants on the floor above them. Outside, a car alarm wailed.
And muffled through the heavy door, Anderson Cooper was reporting live at the scene of New York’s latest crisis.
He closed his eyes and slowly let himself sink to the cold tile floor. Teddy drew up his knees, hands dangling between his legs as he rested his forehead against his thighs. The rush of panic and fear seemed so distant now. It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t touch him here.
He drew in an unsteady breath. Had he really witnessed the Avengers’ mansion exploding into shards of brick and licking flames? Had he watched, horrified, as the Avengers’
jet came barreling out of the sky toward him? Had he heard the mad bellow of a Hulk and thought, heart leaping high in his throat, We’re going to die. Oh God, oh fuck, we’re going to die?
Teddy shivered and hunched his shoulders. He could remember blood streaking his forehead and running unchecked from his broken nose. His palms had ripped open when he’d been thrown to the ground. He remembered the sick slide of them against the grass as he fought to push himself up. He remembered thinking…Billy. Billy, fuck, is Billy okay?
He lifted his hands and turned them over to study the palms. There was no sign of trauma now. The skin was smooth, unblemished, as whole and unbroken as ever. He stared at the lines mapping his skin—was it his mother who’d told him the arc from little finger to pointer was his heart line?—and tried to remember that they had been torn and bloody just a few short hours before.
Just a few short hours.
His hands began to tremble.
Billy was somewhere—safe, please be safe—hating him. Greg was somewhere else, hating him too. The three of them formed a perfect trifecta, a triad, like points in a constellation.
And suddenly from the living came the sound of shattering glass.
Teddy jerked, startled, instinctively turning toward the muffled noise. He grabbed the doorknob and pulled himself up, briefly unsteady. He could still hear the news, words muffled by the heavy door, and…running?
“Mom?” He yanked open the door and stumbled down the hall in alarm. A strange, high-pitched keening was coming from the television, like the drone of a generator. A second reporter was shouting to be heard over the shrill keen.
“I repeat, we are live at the Avengers’ Mansion where a Kree armada has opened fire above—”
He turned the corner and froze in the doorway, shocked into immobility. There were shards of glass scattered across the hardwood floor. One of the boxes of cereal had been knocked over in his mother’s haste, tiny grains of puffed rice pouring in an avalanche over the lip of the coffee table. The linen closet was open, towels and sheets crumpled where they’d been tossed, an empty plastic container on the floor. It was neatly labeled in his mother’s careful script: Important Documents.
“What the hell?” Teddy wondered, baffled.
His mother hurried out of the kitchen. She had her keys clasped in one hand and a canvas bag looped in the crook of her arm. Her eyes were very wide, almost wild, and she looked like she was going to be sick—she was practically green around the edges.
“Mom,” Teddy began, but she cut him off.
“We have to go.”
“We ha— What?”
“Just,” she said, pushing past him. “We don’t have time, Teddy. Put on your shoes and grab your jacket—we’re leaving in five minutes. No later.”
He turned to stare after her, baffled. “Wait,” Teddy protested, but his mother was already hurrying out of the room. He could hear her throwing open the closet door, then moving quickly into her bedroom.
What the fuck? He glanced toward the window, but there was no answer on the Brooklyn skyline. Bewildered, he turned his attention back to the TV.
The television showed the Avengers in pitched battle. Live from Central Park was emblazoned along the bottom of the screen. It was difficult to make out what was happening from the reporter’s shaky camera, but he thought he spotted Hawkeye lifting a strung bow toward the sky, where Kree ships were bearing down on the husked-out mansion. There were so many of them. Too many.
“Fuck,” Teddy breathed. A laser shot from the closest ship, green-blue flare of it as bright as the sun. Stone exploded. He could feel the remembered impact down to his bones.
“Teddy? Teddy!”
He didn’t turn away, frozen by the shaky footage. The park was swarming with superheroes. It was a chaotic mass of color and flashing lights. Kree ships darted through the purple-black sky and bolts of power flew and a bleeding Cap leapt onto the back of a hulking soldier and— It was nothing like one of his comic books. It was beautiful, in a way. It was horrible. It was all too real to him now.
His mother stepped behind him and grabbed his arm. “Teddy,” she said, but he pulled away, shaken. Horrified. “We have to go.”
“Why are they still filming this?”
“Teddy.”
He didn’t look back at her. “They shouldn’t just be filming this. Someone should be doing something.”
She caught his hand and squeezed his fingers, standing close enough that he could smell her soft perfume. “Teddy,” his mother said again. Fear still made her voice tight, but the charge of panic seemed to have been consumed by worry over him. “Baby, I’m so sorry, but we have to go. It’s… It’s not going to be safe in the city.”
He squeezed her fingers back numbly. She’d never been comfortable with the idea of alien life. He supposed, as irrational fears went, hers made a great deal of sense. The threat of alien invasion was no longer a B-grade Science Fiction matinee. It was real, it was near-constant, and it was happening right now.
“It’s okay,” he said automatically, because what else was there to say?
“The Kree,” she began, but she cut herself off with a frustrated noise, pulling at his arm. “We should—”
Suddenly, Hawkeye raced past the eye of the camera and it swerved to follow him. His costume was torn and one of his mask’s lenses was broken. Flames rose behind him in a brilliant corona; it was impossible to hear what he shouted as he grabbed for a Kree soldier, but his arms were going around the alien and he was gripping something in his right hand.
Cap staggered past, blocking the precise moment Hawkeye and the unknown soldier blasted into the air, but the cameraman dutifully adjusted, lifting his lens as the two flew up in a mad billow of smoke.
“HAWKEYE!” Cap bellowed. Beside him, Teddy’s mother gasped and covered her mouth with one hand.
Teddy stood, transfixed, as the tiny figures—no more than a mote on the screen, highlighted against the huge belly of the Kree ship—barreled toward the massive engines. For the third time that day, an explosion rocked the city’s core.
He felt the remembered heat against his skin, heard the steady rain of rocks and shards of metal. He tasted blood in his mouth and smelled the acrid stench of burning fuel.
Burning flesh.
Hawkeye.
“Oh,” his mother breathed. “Oh, that poor man.” On the screen, Kree fighters were burning. “That poor, poor man.”
“I was there,” Teddy murmured, staring. He felt too wrung out to feel. He was frozen in shock, his mind uselessly tripping over random thoughts, images, impressions as it tried to piece together what he was seeing. Smoke and fire. Blood in his mouth. The rain of shrapnel. A Kree soldier disappearing. Cap in his tattered uniform staring up at the empty sky. Billy’s eyes dropping from his. A door sliding shut. Greg’s scowl. An endless shower of stars.
“I was there,” he said again. He let his mother wrap her arms around him, feeling her tremble with empathy and relief as the Kree were defeated, the alien threat subsided, the need to flee faded away…into smoke. And ash. And memory.
He had been there.
And Hawkeye was dead.
**
Then:
**
So it turned out Billy wasn’t just well-off, he was perfect brownstone on the Upper East Side sort of well-off. He’d had a pretty good idea Billy’s home would be somewhere like this, but there was a league of difference between imagination and reality. Teddy cast quick, wry glances around him as they moved shoulder-to-shoulder down the tree-lined street. The snow was a heavy, muffling blanket spread across the street with its fancy cars parked along the left curb. Wrought iron gates marked off the postage stamp yards and Christmas trees stood in bay windows, twinkling lights casting shadows through drawn curtains.
He and his mother had made a Christmas tree out of a coat rack and tissue paper and ridiculous armfuls of tinsel. There wasn’t room for anything else.
“This is me,” Billy said. Teddy turned automatically to face him, glancing once at his home out of the corner of his eye. He spotted a stately-looking stoop. A red bow had been hung from the brass knocker. Steps led up to the main door, another set of stairs curving about the flagstone-lined patio down toward the basement entrance. If the Kaplans ever rented out their basement as a studio apartment, it would be easily double or more what he and his mother paid for their cramped two-bedroom in an unpopular neighborhood in Brooklyn.
There was such a wide gulf between them. He was a long way from the kids Billy would have grown up with. There were, what, eight million people living in the city? What were the chances they’d each detach from their comfortable circles at the same time at just the right moment to fall into each other’s sphere?
It was almost a miracle, he thought with a slow unspooling of warmth, that they had come to this point at all.
Billy tipped up his face, expression earnest. “I had fun.”
“Yeah,” Teddy agreed, grateful to whatever trick of fate or chance that had brought him here, “me too. MoMA next?”
“Only if you promise to narrate in your Elmer Fudd voice again.”
“That was once, Billy, Jeez.”
Billy laughed and reached out to tug the ends of Teddy’s scarf. “I’ll call you,” he promised. He hesitated a moment before stepping away, moving up two of the steps. Teddy caught movement at the wide bay windows out of the corner of his eye. He swore he spotted two gleeful young faces pop out of view. “IM me when you get home, okay?”
Warn Billy about his brothers lying in wait or no? Teddy grinned crookedly as he began to walk backwards toward the avenue. New snow crunched beneath the heavy tread of his boots. “Fine, sure,” he said. “You know, you’re going to be a great mother someday.”
“Jackass!”
Teddy laughed and spun around with a little wave, heart beating a happy, uneven staccato in his chest. He dug into his coat pocket and fished out his iPod, slipping in the earbuds. His entire body was throwing sparks, and maybe…maybe he hadn’t kissed Billy on that stoop the way he’d wanted, but.
But.
There’s always MoMA, Teddy thought, ducking his head against the silly, happy grin spreading across his face. He hopped over a puddle of slush and crossed the street at a diagonal. When he turned the corner at the main avenue, he dared a quick glance over his shoulder.
Billy was still standing there where he’d left him, a small, dark figure in the distance. His arms were around his middle and his face was ducked down into the collar of his coat.
A shiver of awareness licked through Teddy’s frame; his toes curled in response.
“Goodnight, Billy,” Teddy murmured to that distant figure. He felt like a wineskin overflowing—his seams were straining to hold on to the happiness he felt. The hope he couldn’t seem to suppress.
He turned the corner. Smiling quietly to himself, Teddy tilted his face up toward the starry sky, snowflakes catching in his lashes and whispering to the street below.
Now:
**
They sat watching the news late into the evening. In the end, no one seemed to understand what had happened. The list of the wounded and dead crawled across the bottom of the screen in an ever-lengthening loop, beginning and ending with the Avenger who’d died to save the city. It wasn’t until well past midnight that Teddy realized he was fixating on each name that inched past, looking for Kaplan.
Jesus, he thought, more exhausted than anything. It was like he’d cycled through an entire PTS event in a single day, letting it burn through and out again. He felt like new skin after a bad burn—tight and painful but whole. If he just knew for certain that Billy was okay, he could—
Teddy stood, weaving a little on his feet. His mother looked up automatically. There were shadows under her eyes. Her skin was pale and her lips were set in a broken, anxious line.
“Hey,” he murmured. “I’m exhausted. I’m going to bed.”
He held still when she reached out to take his hand, letting her pull him close so she could kiss the top of his head. “Everything okay?” she asked, and he could read endless depths into her question. She didn’t just mean Hawkeye (how many could say they’d witnessed the death of one of their heroes? Hundreds of thousands, now, he supposed. Millions by the time the clip made it on YouTube) but the nebulous other that he hadn’t yet told her about. That he had no plans of telling her about.
The attack. Billy. Greg. Everything falling apart in slow motion.
Teddy’s lips curved into a tired smile. “Everything’s okay,” he promised. “It’s all over.”
“Okay.”
Still, she watched him go as he padded out of the living room toward his bedroom. Teddy pushed the door shut behind him and sighed, rubbing at his face. The room was dark, save for fitful moonlight slanting through the curtains and the glowing stars half lost amongst rumpled bedclothes. He stared down at them dully, then reached out and yanked his covers off the bed. He let them drop in a crumpled heap and crawled across the mattress. God, he felt ancient.
Teddy snagged his phone off the bedside table and flipped open the faceplate. He didn’t let himself think as he opened up his Contacts list and auto-dialed. The plastic was cool against his ear, the steady drone of each ring echoing through him. He counted the rings, closing his eyes.
Jamie picked up on the twelfth ring. “Hello?” His voice was a groggy whisper.
“Hey,” Teddy said, staring up at his ceiling. “I wasn’t sure you’d answer. I’m sorry it’s so late.”
There was a rustle of bedclothes and, small through the earpiece, a chorus of snores. Right—Jamie’s boarding school roommates. “Sorry,” Teddy said again, wincing. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s okay. I don’t think many of us are really thinking so hot today.”
He swallowed. “Yeah. Look. I don’t know what Billy’s told you…” Teddy trailed of and closed his eyes. This was…unexpectedly hard. Not painful—he was too tired, too numb for that. But it was hard all the same.
“…Billy hasn’t been telling me much lately,” Jamie said. There was a growing note of worry in his voice. “I mean, I talked to him a few hours ago, but he basically just said they were all okay.”
And with that, the last knot of worry began to unravel in his chest. Billy was okay. Billy and his family were okay. They were okay. He was okay.
He was okay.
Jamie was still talking. “…going on?”
Teddy swallowed and tipped his head back, letting his eyes slide shut. He was okay; surely he’d feel okay before long. “I’ll let Billy explain, if he wants,” he said. “But, ah. We’re not—There was a fight, and we’re not…friends. Anymore.”
“Oh.”
There was a long silence. It stretched between them, growing increasingly awkward as Teddy fought for something, anything to say. His mouth didn’t seem to want to move.
“Well,” Jamie finally said. “Shit. I’m really sorry, Teddy, but if you guys aren’t… I mean. You know how it is. Billy gets me in the divorce.” Jamie paused as if waiting for a reply. There was another long, awkward silence. “It’s not that I don’t want— You’re a really cool guy and all, but— I mean, it’s not like you suck. Um.” Silence. “…crap. I should probably go before I swallow my whole leg. Um. Goodbye, Teddy.”
He was hearing that a lot tonight.
“Goodbye,” Teddy finally managed, but the dial tone was already humming in his ear; Jamie had hung up.
Teddy quietly snapped the phone closed and let it drop off the side of the bed. Outside, the car alarm was still going. He could hear his mother moving through the apartment as she checked the locks and turned off the lights. The muffled drone of the television clicked into silence.
“One,” Teddy murmured, staring up at the blank ceiling. “Two. Three. Four. Five.” He counted each breath, eventually falling silent and continuing the count in his mind as his eyes flickered shut. He tried to trick his heart into following the same slow, even cadence, shoulders shifting as he worked out the tension.
Thirty-five. Thirty-six. Thirty-seven.
Somewhere along the way, between breath three-hundred-and-seventy-seven and three-hundred-and-seventy-eight, he finally drifted into fitful sleep. He dreamed of snow in the park and a dark-eyed boy. He dreamed of sliding his fingers into messy hair and lifting Billy’s face for a slow, meltingly sweet kiss.
Snow fell around them; the world was new and hushed and good.
