(no subject)
Author:
jazzypom
Fandom: Young Avengers, Marvel 616
Beta: None.
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Kate Bishop/Eli Bradley, Kate Bishop,Tommy Shepherd/Eli Bradley Cassie Lang, Billy Kaplan, Thomas Shepherd, Teddy Altman
Rating: Assorted. There are two bits rated 'R' in the linkage.
Word count: over 6000 words, but various stories, so.
Disclaimer: Characters and situations are the property of Stan Lee and Marvel Comics. No profit is being made off this fan-written work.
Summary: A sandwich is just a sandwich, Tommy is on a spaceship (and the others wish they were off), Eli needs to charge his phone, Kate decides that she doesn't want to choose between Tommy and Eli, Kate is injured, Cassie is a comfort. Kate and Eli share cereal at gods ayem in the morning. Links to longer prompts at the end.
A/N: Just posting fic to keep stuff together.
Sandwich!
"You know," Eli groused as he smoothed his hands along his costume, trying to adjust his crotch so he could walk comfortably. He looked like a giant Weiner - man, if his siblings saw him in this, he was going to be toast. "When you guys said, 'do you want to be in the middle of a girl-sandwich?' I didn't think you meant that literally."
"C'mon, Eli, be a sport," Rikki chimed in, as she ran her hands through her bangs, only for them to fall back into place. "This was the only costume all of us could agree on."
"I feel as if I'm walking in a diaper."
"Ugh, Eli, I don't need to hear about what you two get up to when I'm not here."
"Hey, we get up to nothing when you aren't here. It's not like that."
At Rikki's look of interest and Kate's glare, he slapped his hands over his face. "I shouldn't have said girl-sandwich, shouldn't I?"
"Not when the YA squared can promote healthy eating," Kate did a turn in her costume. Even in a square of brown bread, with her face peeking out, she looked pretty, and yeah, Eli checked himself. He had it bad.
"At least they can't call us 'whitebread', right?"
"Rikki," Eli sighed, wondering if he could graft his hand to his face permanently. "Oh, no, no."
"I did that again, I did that again, didn't I? I - that's what I do. I'm a superhero, not a... wise cracking sidekick."
"Just, let's just get this healthy eating on the road, okay? We're supposed to meet the others there. Billy is the big cheese. Just look out for a stray oversized cheddar."
"We'll be fine, Eli," Kate patted him on the space where his shoulder was in the costume. "Just fine."
"I'll never eat another sandwich again," Eli muttered.
"Until you eat another one," Kate said, and Eli knew better than to argue.
Spaceman
"I'm on a horse!"
"I knew we shouldn't have shown him that commercial." Billy muttered ready to raise his hands and do some mischief IwantTommytosh-.
"You know that Tommy is high strung," Teddy gave Billy a pat on his shoulder, interrupting Billy's spell on purpose. They are in space, and he doesn't know what Billy's magic can do, especially in a spaceship.
"When Mr Stark finds out that we stole his Quinjet, version 4.0, he's going to be mad."
"Don't worry Cassie," Kate craned her neck, and turned to face her friend, over the headrest of their seats. "We'll just blame Tommy."
"Guys, focus, please?" Eli adjusted the controls, him being Vision's co pilot was tricky, although Vision knew everything there was to know. But still, with the blips and swirls and dips at the dials right in front of him, it was different from Driver's Ed and a Sat Nav.
"And Eli," Kate whispered behind her hand. "He's the leader, and the buck stops with him."
"I heard that."
Kate rolled her eyes, muttered something about that damned Supersoldier serum with such ill humour, Cassie had to smile. Then, because she was fifteen (in July), and it was space, the heavens outside entranced her. The deep velvet black of the universe, so big, so formless. She had read about stuff, like the Milky Way, Andromedea. That stars never twinkled in the skies, it was just earth's atmosphere.
"Hey, Cassie, look, a shooting star," Teddy said, pointing it out to her, but there were many of them, zig zagging and shooting everywhere like fiery exclamation marks, as they streaked past. Or some seemingly leaving themselves in phases, each millisecond a different colour as they hurled towards destinations unknown.
"Make a wish, Cassie."
"I can make dozens."
"Atta girl," Billy smiled at her, and Cassie smiled back. The quinjet, or more a quinpod with Tommy, grinning like a loon, Eli and Jonas all serious business as they got to grips with the controls. Kate ever so cool, because she knew that she'd be flying back. Teddy and Billy, because it was right that their names were together like that. Cassie'd never tell them, but she wasn't going to make a wish, because she already had six.
"I'm on a boat," Tommy sang, and did something to his voice so it sounded all distorted, as he ran it through a protool machine.
"Can we drop him off at Alpha Centuri, please?"
"No, Billy," Kate shook her head, as she pored over the map of this sector of the universe on her lap, her foot resting on the base of the controls. "We will not help you commit fratricide."
"I'm on a SPACESHIP."
At everyone's groans, Cassie placed her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.
Mr Stark might understand, maybe.
Charge It - not just for credit cards
"Sorry I'm late, I came as soon as I heard on the radio," Eli slid in, behind the car, right where Kate and Cassie were taking cover.
"The radio?" Kate hissed. "What are you, eighty? Eli, in 1876, this guy called Alexander Graham Bell, invented this handy thing called a phone. Over time, it's morphed into something small, mobile. You know, a cell phone."
Eli mumbled something, only to be the recipient of Kate's glare.
"You didn't charge your phone?"
"Guys -" Cassie cleared her throat.
"I might have been playing pac man on the subway," Eli admitted.
"Eli."
"It's pacman."
"Guys - " Cassie pointed. "We might want to be looking at that?"
"Aww man, is that --- a giant sea monkey?" Eli exclaimed, as the tall gilled creature shattered the glass windows of the mall and started to ooze across the car park.
"Mutated sponge," Kate notched an arrow into the string of her bow and took aim. "Science experiment gone heinously wrong."
IwantodrythespongeIwantodrythesponge
"I'll go inside, and make sure no one's hurt." Eli sprinted off, knowing that the conversation wasn't over.
Later, when Eli was shovelling cereal into his mouth, Kate came into the room, a little shopping bag in her hand.
"That's disgusting," she said, and Eli looked at the coco puffs in his milk.
"You just hate chocopuffs."
"Right."
"Listen, today, my bad. I demand a complete do over."
"No," Kate placed the bag on the counter, and Eli knew what it was before she upended it, and five boxes scattered across the counter.
"Five chargers, Kate? Isn't that a bit anal, even for you?"
"Charge your damned cell phone, Eli. Today won't happen again."
Eli placed his chin in his hands, saw her frown, and sighed. "Yes, ma'am."
Three
On mornings like this, when he wakes up to Kate still asleep: her hair spilled across the white sheets like black ink, her fingers linked in his, Eli's arm around her waist as he's tucked in behind her, Tommy wonders how they got here.
He's not my boyfriend, Kate said when they first met, after getting up from a tumble. Her face flushed, her eyes lit, a hot babe with cool reserve. Eli had other ideas though, and Tommy knew, he'd be trouble.
The thing that holds them together is Kate. It's not selfishness that causes her to keep them both, as people might think, it's the fact that each of them holds her down, keeps her centred. Tommy sees this when she's with Eli; he kisses her on top of the roof most afternoons, the sun spilling over them both. Eli holds her as if she's as fragile as spun glass, and they cling together and kiss with such raw desperation as if the world around them is imploding and that they need one last scorcher of a memory before they go.
With him, well. Kate throws back her head and laughs, big hearty guffaws before he kisses her. He drags her into dark corners of anywhere and swallows her protests with his tongue, Oh God, Tommy, we shouldn't do this... should we? Oh.
That tilt a whirl see sawing for Kate's affections came to a head one day, when they were in the linen closet. "We just washed these sheets, Tom- oh, Eli," Kate greeted as calm as she pleased, Tommy and Eli both shocked and slightly embarrassed. Eli probably even more so, as he held the knob of the door in his hand, his features going carefully blank.
"Ah, Eli, we can explain-" Tommy remembers how he stuttered, how much like a heel he felt at that moment, until Kate cut in.
"Don't speak for me, you can't."
The memory stretches into the evening, when Kate sits down, and says the unthinkable. "I'm sorry, Tommy, I can't give up Eli, and in the same breath, I- can't give up Tommy either, Eli. I won't chose."
"So, hold up, you want two of us?"
"Yes," Kate says, with the ease that she does. Then citing a former engagement and she must dash, she left them both just looking at each other.
Eli, although he can be a tool at times, gets to the heart of the matter with his characteristic honesty.
"I love her," he says, and it's a declaration that a man makes, and Tommy wonders when the hell they grew up.
"I love her too," Tommy laughs at the strangeness of it. He couldn't have been more hexed if the Scarlet Witch had tried. "I can't walk away."
"I can't either," Eli sighs. "I don't want to."
On mornings like these, when he wakes up to Kate still asleep: her hair spilled across the white sheets like black ink, her fingers linked in his, Eli's arm around her waist as he's tucked in behind her, Tommy wonders how they got here.
White sheets and hospital stays
"Kate, you're awake."
Kate blinked her eyes once, twice. After her injury Billy insisted> that she got checked out at the hospital. To make matters worse, the staff supported Billy's opinion. Hospitals never changed, with their faintly anti sceptic smell, and white everywhere.
"Cassie," her mouth curved with affection as Cassie reached over, her fingers brushing against her forehead.
"The doctors said you'd be okay."
"And my dad?"
"We told him that you got injured playing lacrosse."
Kate gingerly touched her forehead. She was okay: no headache, her vision clear, and - Kate turned her head, the fabric of the pillow creasing under her head and cheeks- but no neck pain.
"Lacrosse?"
"I saw it on Gossip Girl."
"God, we're not all like that." A pause. "Did he buy it?"
"Uh huh," Cassie nodded.
Although it shouldn't have, her dad's easy acceptance of the excuse hurt. Kate didn't even opt for lacrosse in her year; she did fencing, archery and gymnastics.
"Did I do something wrong?"
"No," Kate braced her hands against the bed, getting ready to sit up, and Cassie was there, smelling of apples and outside. For a brief moment, Kate closed her eyes, her head against Cassie's chest and shoulder. "You did everything right. You all did."
Cassie's breath was a warm gust by her ear. "Because you're here."
Disciplined and Professional: Eating Cereal @2am
(A/N Background to this story is Young Avengers : Dark Reign)
Eli couldn't say that he was surprised to see Kate still up, hunched over the kitchen table, staring sightlessly at the bowl she cupped with her hands. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, and she was clad in a deep purple robe, similar to the colour of her costume. Out of deference to the rest of the household, the door had been closed, the lights on at only fifty percent. This made the rest of the kitchen shrouded in shadow, and Kate under the spotlight.
"You look like a candidate for a game show."
"You mean like, 'surprise, how to blackmail and get a spot on the Young Avengers!'?"
Eli didn't answer immediately, only sat in the chair beside her, and gently curled his fingers around her wrist.
"I've done a lot worse," Eli kept his voice low, despite the fact that everyone else was safely asleep. Kate lifted her head from her cup, and turned her face to his.
"Yeah, but we can't be - who are we to be judging others? They might have as much right to being Young Avengers - just as we do. And it's not like we got handed the title, we just took it."
"Unlike them, we're doing the right thing," he answered, worried because he'd never seen Kate this troubled. Headstrong and bossy, but never less than sure. "It's because - we don't have to walk around with the disclaimer that our best friends are Jews, because of, you know, Billy."
"And Tommy."
"And Tommy, although he mightn't want us."
Kate's mouth and eyes grew soft, and Eli tried not to be jealous, because he was here with her, and not Tommy.
"What are you eating?" he decided to change the subject.
"Oh," Kate pushed the bowl towards Eli. "Shreddies with milk and maple syrup. It's a dish my - it's a dish," she finished.
Eli took the spoon, and scooped up a mouthful of shredded wheat, milk and maple syrup, and chewed.
"Not bad," he said, handing the spoon to over to her, and Kate took it from him, her nails lightly nicking his knuckles before spooning milk and cereal in her mouth. She chewed and swallowed, before saying, "We're doing the right thing, by guarding the name, for being what we are."
"Professional?"
Kate dropped the spoon in the bowl, covered her face with the palms of her hands, and laughed. It sounded rusty and unsure, but anything was better than the look on her face earlier.
"When Cassie said-" she couldn't stop laughing. Not necessarily out of amusement, as much as relief that things could still be funny. "And Billy."
"And Billy," Eli pinched the area between his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "Oy."
"We're okay," Kate dropped her hands on her lap, and sat up straighter, her spirits brighter. "Cassie's right. We're getting good at this."
"Yeah," Eli stirred the cereal in Kate's bowl, before talking another spoonful. At gods ayem in the morning, Eli could admit with some honesty, "We are."
Linkage
We Come To Be Genderswapped Eli/Kate (Eliza/Kyle). Please read the author's notes. Written for
ryuutchi
jazzypom
Fandom: Young Avengers, Marvel 616
Beta: None.
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Kate Bishop/Eli Bradley, Kate Bishop,Tommy Shepherd/Eli Bradley Cassie Lang, Billy Kaplan, Thomas Shepherd, Teddy Altman
Rating: Assorted. There are two bits rated 'R' in the linkage.
Word count: over 6000 words, but various stories, so.
Disclaimer: Characters and situations are the property of Stan Lee and Marvel Comics. No profit is being made off this fan-written work.
Summary: A sandwich is just a sandwich, Tommy is on a spaceship (and the others wish they were off), Eli needs to charge his phone, Kate decides that she doesn't want to choose between Tommy and Eli, Kate is injured, Cassie is a comfort. Kate and Eli share cereal at gods ayem in the morning. Links to longer prompts at the end.
A/N: Just posting fic to keep stuff together.
Sandwich!
"You know," Eli groused as he smoothed his hands along his costume, trying to adjust his crotch so he could walk comfortably. He looked like a giant Weiner - man, if his siblings saw him in this, he was going to be toast. "When you guys said, 'do you want to be in the middle of a girl-sandwich?' I didn't think you meant that literally."
"C'mon, Eli, be a sport," Rikki chimed in, as she ran her hands through her bangs, only for them to fall back into place. "This was the only costume all of us could agree on."
"I feel as if I'm walking in a diaper."
"Ugh, Eli, I don't need to hear about what you two get up to when I'm not here."
"Hey, we get up to nothing when you aren't here. It's not like that."
At Rikki's look of interest and Kate's glare, he slapped his hands over his face. "I shouldn't have said girl-sandwich, shouldn't I?"
"Not when the YA squared can promote healthy eating," Kate did a turn in her costume. Even in a square of brown bread, with her face peeking out, she looked pretty, and yeah, Eli checked himself. He had it bad.
"At least they can't call us 'whitebread', right?"
"Rikki," Eli sighed, wondering if he could graft his hand to his face permanently. "Oh, no, no."
"I did that again, I did that again, didn't I? I - that's what I do. I'm a superhero, not a... wise cracking sidekick."
"Just, let's just get this healthy eating on the road, okay? We're supposed to meet the others there. Billy is the big cheese. Just look out for a stray oversized cheddar."
"We'll be fine, Eli," Kate patted him on the space where his shoulder was in the costume. "Just fine."
"I'll never eat another sandwich again," Eli muttered.
"Until you eat another one," Kate said, and Eli knew better than to argue.
Spaceman
"I'm on a horse!"
"I knew we shouldn't have shown him that commercial." Billy muttered ready to raise his hands and do some mischief IwantTommytosh-.
"You know that Tommy is high strung," Teddy gave Billy a pat on his shoulder, interrupting Billy's spell on purpose. They are in space, and he doesn't know what Billy's magic can do, especially in a spaceship.
"When Mr Stark finds out that we stole his Quinjet, version 4.0, he's going to be mad."
"Don't worry Cassie," Kate craned her neck, and turned to face her friend, over the headrest of their seats. "We'll just blame Tommy."
"Guys, focus, please?" Eli adjusted the controls, him being Vision's co pilot was tricky, although Vision knew everything there was to know. But still, with the blips and swirls and dips at the dials right in front of him, it was different from Driver's Ed and a Sat Nav.
"And Eli," Kate whispered behind her hand. "He's the leader, and the buck stops with him."
"I heard that."
Kate rolled her eyes, muttered something about that damned Supersoldier serum with such ill humour, Cassie had to smile. Then, because she was fifteen (in July), and it was space, the heavens outside entranced her. The deep velvet black of the universe, so big, so formless. She had read about stuff, like the Milky Way, Andromedea. That stars never twinkled in the skies, it was just earth's atmosphere.
"Hey, Cassie, look, a shooting star," Teddy said, pointing it out to her, but there were many of them, zig zagging and shooting everywhere like fiery exclamation marks, as they streaked past. Or some seemingly leaving themselves in phases, each millisecond a different colour as they hurled towards destinations unknown.
"Make a wish, Cassie."
"I can make dozens."
"Atta girl," Billy smiled at her, and Cassie smiled back. The quinjet, or more a quinpod with Tommy, grinning like a loon, Eli and Jonas all serious business as they got to grips with the controls. Kate ever so cool, because she knew that she'd be flying back. Teddy and Billy, because it was right that their names were together like that. Cassie'd never tell them, but she wasn't going to make a wish, because she already had six.
"I'm on a boat," Tommy sang, and did something to his voice so it sounded all distorted, as he ran it through a protool machine.
"Can we drop him off at Alpha Centuri, please?"
"No, Billy," Kate shook her head, as she pored over the map of this sector of the universe on her lap, her foot resting on the base of the controls. "We will not help you commit fratricide."
"I'm on a SPACESHIP."
At everyone's groans, Cassie placed her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.
Mr Stark might understand, maybe.
Charge It - not just for credit cards
"Sorry I'm late, I came as soon as I heard on the radio," Eli slid in, behind the car, right where Kate and Cassie were taking cover.
"The radio?" Kate hissed. "What are you, eighty? Eli, in 1876, this guy called Alexander Graham Bell, invented this handy thing called a phone. Over time, it's morphed into something small, mobile. You know, a cell phone."
Eli mumbled something, only to be the recipient of Kate's glare.
"You didn't charge your phone?"
"Guys -" Cassie cleared her throat.
"I might have been playing pac man on the subway," Eli admitted.
"Eli."
"It's pacman."
"Guys - " Cassie pointed. "We might want to be looking at that?"
"Aww man, is that --- a giant sea monkey?" Eli exclaimed, as the tall gilled creature shattered the glass windows of the mall and started to ooze across the car park.
"Mutated sponge," Kate notched an arrow into the string of her bow and took aim. "Science experiment gone heinously wrong."
IwantodrythespongeIwantodrythesponge
"I'll go inside, and make sure no one's hurt." Eli sprinted off, knowing that the conversation wasn't over.
Later, when Eli was shovelling cereal into his mouth, Kate came into the room, a little shopping bag in her hand.
"That's disgusting," she said, and Eli looked at the coco puffs in his milk.
"You just hate chocopuffs."
"Right."
"Listen, today, my bad. I demand a complete do over."
"No," Kate placed the bag on the counter, and Eli knew what it was before she upended it, and five boxes scattered across the counter.
"Five chargers, Kate? Isn't that a bit anal, even for you?"
"Charge your damned cell phone, Eli. Today won't happen again."
Eli placed his chin in his hands, saw her frown, and sighed. "Yes, ma'am."
Three
On mornings like this, when he wakes up to Kate still asleep: her hair spilled across the white sheets like black ink, her fingers linked in his, Eli's arm around her waist as he's tucked in behind her, Tommy wonders how they got here.
He's not my boyfriend, Kate said when they first met, after getting up from a tumble. Her face flushed, her eyes lit, a hot babe with cool reserve. Eli had other ideas though, and Tommy knew, he'd be trouble.
The thing that holds them together is Kate. It's not selfishness that causes her to keep them both, as people might think, it's the fact that each of them holds her down, keeps her centred. Tommy sees this when she's with Eli; he kisses her on top of the roof most afternoons, the sun spilling over them both. Eli holds her as if she's as fragile as spun glass, and they cling together and kiss with such raw desperation as if the world around them is imploding and that they need one last scorcher of a memory before they go.
With him, well. Kate throws back her head and laughs, big hearty guffaws before he kisses her. He drags her into dark corners of anywhere and swallows her protests with his tongue, Oh God, Tommy, we shouldn't do this... should we? Oh.
That tilt a whirl see sawing for Kate's affections came to a head one day, when they were in the linen closet. "We just washed these sheets, Tom- oh, Eli," Kate greeted as calm as she pleased, Tommy and Eli both shocked and slightly embarrassed. Eli probably even more so, as he held the knob of the door in his hand, his features going carefully blank.
"Ah, Eli, we can explain-" Tommy remembers how he stuttered, how much like a heel he felt at that moment, until Kate cut in.
"Don't speak for me, you can't."
The memory stretches into the evening, when Kate sits down, and says the unthinkable. "I'm sorry, Tommy, I can't give up Eli, and in the same breath, I- can't give up Tommy either, Eli. I won't chose."
"So, hold up, you want two of us?"
"Yes," Kate says, with the ease that she does. Then citing a former engagement and she must dash, she left them both just looking at each other.
Eli, although he can be a tool at times, gets to the heart of the matter with his characteristic honesty.
"I love her," he says, and it's a declaration that a man makes, and Tommy wonders when the hell they grew up.
"I love her too," Tommy laughs at the strangeness of it. He couldn't have been more hexed if the Scarlet Witch had tried. "I can't walk away."
"I can't either," Eli sighs. "I don't want to."
On mornings like these, when he wakes up to Kate still asleep: her hair spilled across the white sheets like black ink, her fingers linked in his, Eli's arm around her waist as he's tucked in behind her, Tommy wonders how they got here.
White sheets and hospital stays
"Kate, you're awake."
Kate blinked her eyes once, twice. After her injury Billy insisted> that she got checked out at the hospital. To make matters worse, the staff supported Billy's opinion. Hospitals never changed, with their faintly anti sceptic smell, and white everywhere.
"Cassie," her mouth curved with affection as Cassie reached over, her fingers brushing against her forehead.
"The doctors said you'd be okay."
"And my dad?"
"We told him that you got injured playing lacrosse."
Kate gingerly touched her forehead. She was okay: no headache, her vision clear, and - Kate turned her head, the fabric of the pillow creasing under her head and cheeks- but no neck pain.
"Lacrosse?"
"I saw it on Gossip Girl."
"God, we're not all like that." A pause. "Did he buy it?"
"Uh huh," Cassie nodded.
Although it shouldn't have, her dad's easy acceptance of the excuse hurt. Kate didn't even opt for lacrosse in her year; she did fencing, archery and gymnastics.
"Did I do something wrong?"
"No," Kate braced her hands against the bed, getting ready to sit up, and Cassie was there, smelling of apples and outside. For a brief moment, Kate closed her eyes, her head against Cassie's chest and shoulder. "You did everything right. You all did."
Cassie's breath was a warm gust by her ear. "Because you're here."
Disciplined and Professional: Eating Cereal @2am
(A/N Background to this story is Young Avengers : Dark Reign)
Eli couldn't say that he was surprised to see Kate still up, hunched over the kitchen table, staring sightlessly at the bowl she cupped with her hands. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, and she was clad in a deep purple robe, similar to the colour of her costume. Out of deference to the rest of the household, the door had been closed, the lights on at only fifty percent. This made the rest of the kitchen shrouded in shadow, and Kate under the spotlight.
"You look like a candidate for a game show."
"You mean like, 'surprise, how to blackmail and get a spot on the Young Avengers!'?"
Eli didn't answer immediately, only sat in the chair beside her, and gently curled his fingers around her wrist.
"I've done a lot worse," Eli kept his voice low, despite the fact that everyone else was safely asleep. Kate lifted her head from her cup, and turned her face to his.
"Yeah, but we can't be - who are we to be judging others? They might have as much right to being Young Avengers - just as we do. And it's not like we got handed the title, we just took it."
"Unlike them, we're doing the right thing," he answered, worried because he'd never seen Kate this troubled. Headstrong and bossy, but never less than sure. "It's because - we don't have to walk around with the disclaimer that our best friends are Jews, because of, you know, Billy."
"And Tommy."
"And Tommy, although he mightn't want us."
Kate's mouth and eyes grew soft, and Eli tried not to be jealous, because he was here with her, and not Tommy.
"What are you eating?" he decided to change the subject.
"Oh," Kate pushed the bowl towards Eli. "Shreddies with milk and maple syrup. It's a dish my - it's a dish," she finished.
Eli took the spoon, and scooped up a mouthful of shredded wheat, milk and maple syrup, and chewed.
"Not bad," he said, handing the spoon to over to her, and Kate took it from him, her nails lightly nicking his knuckles before spooning milk and cereal in her mouth. She chewed and swallowed, before saying, "We're doing the right thing, by guarding the name, for being what we are."
"Professional?"
Kate dropped the spoon in the bowl, covered her face with the palms of her hands, and laughed. It sounded rusty and unsure, but anything was better than the look on her face earlier.
"When Cassie said-" she couldn't stop laughing. Not necessarily out of amusement, as much as relief that things could still be funny. "And Billy."
"And Billy," Eli pinched the area between his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "Oy."
"We're okay," Kate dropped her hands on her lap, and sat up straighter, her spirits brighter. "Cassie's right. We're getting good at this."
"Yeah," Eli stirred the cereal in Kate's bowl, before talking another spoonful. At gods ayem in the morning, Eli could admit with some honesty, "We are."
Linkage
We Come To Be Genderswapped Eli/Kate (Eliza/Kyle). Please read the author's notes. Written for
ryuutchi