FIC: look where we land, billy/teddy, pg-13 (1/2)
Series: Young Avengers
Rating: PG-13, for swearing and Billy/Teddy UST and being a band!au.
Word Count: 12,073
Notes: A very late Christmas present for tussah. OMG I HOPE YOU LIKE IT, TUSSAH. And yes, it is a band!au. And no, I don't know what my problem is. This is actually PART ONE of THREE, but they all stand alone because I don't like posting WiPs and can make no promises about when the next one is coming. E-ENJOY. (also, for the record, like half the ideas in here were stolen from co-created by tussah. i am never this smart on my own.)
Summary: Teddy has always privately thought they had something special. Something worth listening to.
Xavin quitting meant a lot of changes for the band - first and foremost for Teddy. It meant an end to constantly negotiating the volatile minefield of Xavin's emotions, which, in the final days, had seemed to swing from thinking Teddy was God's gift to mankind to wanting to stab him in the face every moment of the day. It had been the most awkward thing in the world, a serious bar to a decent practice, and yet Teddy still feels sharply and unhappily responsible for her leaving. And even more sharply and unhappily guilty over feeling so relieved that she's gone.
For the band at large, however, it meant they were suddenly a guitar short with potentially the most important gig of their lives coming up in two months. Meaning, in turn, that they were either screwed or really, really, really screwed.
"So let Teddy play for now. We don't need two guitars anyway," Eli had said, but Kate had made her managerial face and plucked a particularly out of tune E-flat and said something about how they weren't handicapping their lead singer by splitting his attention between the audience and a guitar. A frontman's job was the audience. A guitarist job was the guitar. They needed another one.
Two days passed before Tommy finally coughed up a temporary solution. "My brother's a total dork," he admitted as practice was winding down, all grudgingly helpful, his nose wrinkled in vague disgust, "and he mostly plays really dumb, acoustic, faggy shit" - this with a broad grin at Teddy who smiled brightly in return and flipped him off - "about how beautiful leaves are in the fall or whatever. But he knows how to play a chord, and he can sing all right."
Then Kate had smiled that beatific, strangely girlish smile that she whipped out when really pleased by something, the one that made Tommy's eyes light up and made him do actually nice, decent human being things like this to begin with.
And that's how they've ended up at Umi Cafe on a Friday night when most of the customers with laptops and paperback volumes of philosophy have cleared out, the lights have turned down, and the espresso machine has been put away for the night. They make an odd group: the only ones there who are clearly not on a date, gathered around a tiny, round table that is only really big enough for their cups. Eli sits, hunched, glowering in silent self-consciousness over his cappuccino while Tommy does his best to look like he is obviously too cool to be here, arm draped, lazy and careless, across the back of his chair. Kate has staked out the side of the table directly across from the small stage, immediately pulls out her cellphone, and starts busily punching out texts to god only knows who.
So Teddy feels sort of beholden to put on a polite face for the rest of his band-mates and has made sure to turn his chair all the way around so he can face the stage and smile in kind tolerance at the various wide-eyed, greasy-haired poets and singer-songwriters who trot out on stage and do their bit.
Objectively, he knows he has little cause to be weary or jaded about their music; after all, The Lamentable Decadence of the Balkans has only a handful of gigs and middling reviews in a local music zine under their belt. He hardly has enough ground to stand on, let alone look down on others from. But Teddy has always privately thought they had something special. Something worth listening to. They all do, even Tommy; that's why they've stuck with this so long and fought for every small opportunity they can find, waiting for that moment when someone else will come along and see it too. Someone who will say "That's it. You're perfect. You're exactly what I've been looking for."
So here, in the low light, where the kids on stage probably can't even see him for the glare of the stage lights, Teddy feel like he can afford to give them some silent encouragement, the listening ear they are all - him included - still waiting for.
After the fifth mostly lacklustre performance, though, he starts checking in with Tommy every five minutes.
"Is that him?" he asks and then, sometimes before the set is even over, he'll glance over his shoulder and ask again - "Is that him now?" - until Tommy finally rolls his eyes in annoyance and replies, "Dude. You'll know him when you see him. Shut the hell up."
Tommy is right, of course. And while Teddy has a policy against letting Tommy know he is right - even when it is really, really obvious - from the moment Billy Kaplan gets up on stage, Teddy loses all control over his facial expression. His eyes widen, and his jaw hangs loose, and he can feel Tommy's smug grin boring into the back of his head. And he doesn't care at all.
Billy Kaplan is short enough that he has to adjust the mic, and his beat-up 12-string bangs against the stand a few times as he wrestles with it. Billy Kaplan also looks exactly like Tommy, except that where Tommy is purposely dishevelled, arrogantly in-your-face about his non-conformity, Billy looks like he he's never even realized that there is anything to conform to. He wears a grey, too-big sweatshirt with a cracking college logo on it and slouching jeans. His hair is a mess, and he has a weathered blue and yellow friendship bracelet around one wrist and two elastic bands around the other.
Where Tommy is a study in conscious, cavalier rebellion, Teddy thinks, Billy just is.
"I didn't know you had a twin," Kate observes from the opposite side of the table as Billy goes through a quick sound check. Teddy tosses a glance over his shoulder and sees that her cellphone has disappeared again into whatever magical alternate dimension she keeps it in. That is a good sign. It means she's interested enough to be paying attention.
Tommy snorts and leans back until his chair is balancing mostly on its back two legs. "It's complicated," he says.
Up on stage, Billy strums a moody B-minor chord and clears his throat. Teddy feels his attention tugged back around, and he settles in with his arms falling over his knees to give this kid a proper, if unofficial, audition. Behind him, he can hear the others rearranging themselves a little to do the same.
"Okay, so," says Billy finally, raising his eyebrows nervously at the mostly oblivious crowd and then, without any further introduction, he starts to play. As promised, he knows how to handle a guitar. His fingers slide up and down and over the frets without any halts or stumbles. Practised competence. But he keeps his head bowed the whole, like he is hoping he'll become invisible and leave just the guitar and the music hanging in the air on their own.
The introductory bars go by slowly, sticking to the minor key Billy had struck to begin with and refusing to resolve until an uneasy feeling is gathering at the back of Teddy's neck like stress tension. And when it feels like it's going to overwhelm him and become too unpleasant to listen to, Billy begins to sing.
And, oh. Teddy falls in love a little right there.
---
To be honest, Billy feels more than a little insulted when Tommy finally drags himself out of bed around one, plods into the living room - with the heavy footfalls and large bowl of dry Lucky Charms that usually indicates that Tommy is either severely hung over or caffeine-deprived - and tells him that his band was out to see the open mic the night before.
Billy's first instinct is to get indignant; after all, he isn't looking for anyone to approve of his music. It's his and, okay, maybe not exactly the kind of music he would be playing if he was totally free to choose, but it's still his.
His second instinct, though, is to get nervous. From the little Billy has heard about Tommy's band-mates, they seem like okay people. But they are also people who hang out with Tommy more or less by choice, and that's generally not a good sign. In Billy's mind, a mental picture coalesces of a bunch of guys gathered in the back corner of Umi, laughing and pulling faces while he performed, and he has to give his head a fierce shake to get rid of it.
He glowers at Tommy who just looks back with serene disinterest and a red balloon sticking to his lower lip. "What did they think?" he asks, finally, giving into the niggling thought in his head which insists that no matter how much he might not care what other people think, these people are in an actual band. With actual gigs. That people, despite the unfortunate band name, occasionally pay real money to go and see. Their opinion might, at the very least, be sort of interesting.
Tommy shrugs loosely. To Billy's trained eye, it is too loosely; his brother is good at faking lots of things but when it comes to nonchalance, he always overacts. "They thought you were pretty okay," Tommy says. "Kate said you should come jam with us tonight."
Somewhere between "pretty okay" and "come jam," Billy's brain lags out, so for a while he just stares at Tommy dumbly until he finally has to put a hand to his mouth and ask, "Wait, what?"
Tommy snorts, flipping his spoon around between his index and middle finger so he can use the end to poke Billy's forehead. "You. Tonight. Play music." He mimes strumming a guitar and then raises his eyebrows annoyingly. "Yeah?" Billy just glowers some more, mostly to cover up for the total disbelief and confusion he's feeling. Eventually, Tommy just gets annoyed and throws up his hands - nearly spilling cereal all over the floor - and says, "You fucking spazz. Be there at eight."
"There" turns out to be a warehouse that the infamous, near-mythical Kate had inherited from her father at some point, and Billy is so blown away by the fact that these guys have a whole warehouse to practice in that he spends something like a full ten minutes standing outside the door, with his guitar case gripped tightly to his left side, before he can actually bring himself to step inside. Maybe it's nerves, in reality, but Billy is going to go with the "blown away" story if anyone questions him about it.
The whole band is already there when he finally walks in, spread out in one of the corners among amps and stools and microphones like the quintessential snapshot of people who are too cool to ever want to hang out with him if they weren't in a really tight spot. It's a thought that, for some reason, hadn't occurred to him before. Billy thinks that he was probably too flattered by the suggestion that these people actually liked his music to think about whether they wanted anything else but in those first few, awkward seconds, it comes to him that that's probably exactly what is going on here.
This guess is more or less confirmed when the dark-haired girl - Kate, by process of elimination - walks up to him, smiling with easy confidence, and says, "Hi. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate you filling in like this."
"Yeah, sure," says Billy, glaring briefly over her shoulder at Tommy who just shrugs and smirks his stupid, self-satisfied smirk.
If Kate notices the slight bitterness in his voice, she doesn't say anything. Instead, she proves herself a perfect hostess by introducing him to the other two like he is a valued addition to the team and not the one-night pinch-hitter that he apparently is. In return, Billy can't help but try to look pleased to be there, making mental notes of everyone's names and instruments and carefully trying to avoid direct eye contact with the blond guy - introduced as "Teddy, lead vocals" - who is perched on one of the amps and keeps smiling a warm, welcoming smile at him around the mouth of his water bottle. Billy can feel the tops of his ears starting to pink each time his eyes drift in that direction so eventually just stops letting himself do it.
"And I play bass," Kate finishes, patting her guitar on the headstock more like it is a thoroughbred who has just won a very important race than like it's a guitar. She moves around to settle herself on the nearest stool and gives a nod. "You can plug in over there once Teddy gets off his lazy ass, and we'll get started."
Billy nods silently, bows his head, and starts to walk over to the amp as Teddy hops off it and starts toward the mic in the middle. They pass at the halfway point, nearly brushing shoulders, and Billy glances up sideways at Teddy who is grinning over his head at the others like he doesn't even see Billy there.
"Hey," Teddy says in a voice that is as easy and warm as his smile, making the skin all down Billy's spine prickle uncomfortably. "Leave my ass alone. It does its job."
"Yeah, Kate," Tommy adds, grinning and fiddling with the strap of his guitar, "leave his ass alone. You're not its type."
"Badum-chink," Eli dead-pans from behind them.
Teddy goes a little pale, which makes his eyes stand out wide and bright when he glances over in Billy's direction, a short over-the-shoulder check accompanied by a tiny, embarrassed, and almost apologetic smile. Billy tries to smile back, but it probably comes out looking like he thinks they are all insane. Which he does, but he's trying not to let it show.
Teddy looks away again almost as soon as he's looked over and goes about setting up his microphone, mumbling something about feeling objectified and sexual harassment as he does so. Billy doesn't really hear because he's already turned his attention quite firmly to setting up his own guitar and digging out the sheet music Tommy gave him to look over.
The band has a weird collection of songs going, a tumble of prog-folk and The Decemberists and screamo which gave Billy a bit of a headache when he first looked it over but, scrapped down to their basics, there are flashes of something in there that Billy thinks might be brilliance. Or, at the very least, potential. Something that's snagged on Billy's own unpolished surface, something he can relate to.
They launch into the first song, which Tommy's writing at the top of the page calls "The Correspondence Principle," with barely any warning, just a quick count off from Eli and a slight change in the curve of Teddy's spine as he leans into the mic, craddling it in his hands. Billy does his best to keep up, hands speeding up and down, the edge of the guitar digging into his thigh, but it's hard - much faster than he'd expected - and pretty soon Kate's bass line cuts out, replaced with her shouting loudly at Eli, suddenly not ladylike in the slightest, about whether he's actually ever seen an eighth note before. And then Eli's shouting back, and Billy must have looked pretty alarmed because Teddy leans over in his direction and smiles reassuringly.
"Don't worry. This happens, like, a lot," he says. "But if it looks like they're going to start throwing things, try to hide behind Tommy."
"Riiiiiiight," says Billy. "And in case of nuclear warfare?"
In reply, Teddy just grins.
It takes five minutes before Kate and Eli settle down enough to give it another run, at a tempo that doesn't make Billy feel prematurely arthritic, thankfully. After the first ten seconds, he's actually eased into the chord progression enough that his brain can detach from what his fingers are doing and admire covertly, up through his eyelashes, the way Teddy's lips frame the lyrics.
---
---
The only way they are able to get Eli to agree to the whole thing is by promising that it's on a trial basis: no offers, no promises, no nothing until Billy proves that he can work, that he can fit in to the band the way that none of them has ever really fit in to the world outside the band.
Objectively, Teddy can understand where Eli's caution is coming from. Even he'd been skeptical when Tommy had first uttered the words "my brother" because every band needs a guy like Tommy, full of flash and boundless confidence, but no band needs two of them. Yet to Teddy, at least, it's been obvious from the moment Billy first stepped up on stage at the cafe that he is basically the Anti-Tommy and by the end of their first practice together, Teddy is sold hard on the idea of Billy becoming a permanent part of the band.
But Eli isn't. For the first week, Eli remains aloof and non-committal about the whole thing in a way that makes Teddy want to punch holes in walls out of frustration.
"Oh come on," Teddy had protested that first night as they packed up the drum kit. "He's cool. He can play. What else are we looking for?"
And Eli'd just shrugged, sticking his drum sticks into his back pocket and said, "I don't know. I'll tell you when I see it."
Once upon a time, Xavin had said that Kate was like the band's dad - always urging them to get out there and make something out of themselves - while Eli was like their mom - more than ready to keep them sheltered and unsuccessful if it meant being true to themselves. Teddy had always thought that was pretty insightful and kind of sweet but now, he mostly wants to shake Eli, to jostle him out of whatever it is that's left him so slow to trust others and make him see what they have somehow stumbled upon.
Because Billy is sort of a miracle. By the second practice, he's memorized all his parts. By the third, he's memorized the lyrics. Once, Teddy catches him singing them quietly on break, and it's amazing how words Teddy knows so well - has, in some cases, written himself - can sound so different when they're coming out of Billy's mouth. When Billy catches him smiling, though, he makes a face filled with such extreme embarrassment and mistrust that Teddy doesn't dare voice any of the compliments that spring to mind.
Instead, he begins to plan.
On Friday, he bribes Tommy into faking a cold and then begs and pouts and makes large eyes at Kate until she gives in, sighing and snapping her fingers, ordering, "Kaplan, you're on back-up." Billy looks alarmed, his eyebrows riding high on his forehead, but he acquiesces with a nod of his head and shuffles closer to the microphone.
And it is the best they've ever sounded. Easily. Because singing with Tommy has always felt like arm wrestling, a constant battle to establish harmony. Tommy tends to race, barrelling through choruses as if there's a prize waiting for him if he can beat Teddy to the end. But singing with Billy is like climbing into bed at the end of a long day or like jumping into a pool on a hot one. A relief. Something as easy as breathing.
When they wind up for the night, even Tommy looks impressed, and Eli ticks his chin back thoughtfully when he says, "Okay. That went well."
But Teddy isn't done yet. Not even remotely. On Saturday night, he comes in hacking and wheezing with a feigned croak in his voice.
Kate puts her hands on her hips and narrows her eyes. "That sounds contagious," she observes in her most neutral voice, which is always a dead give-away that she's suspicious about something.
"Yup!" Teddy croaks back cheerfully. "I think Billy better cover for me tonight."
Billy looks up from the spot he's staked out on the floor to tune his guitar, opens his mouth, shuts it, opens it again, and then furrows his eyebrows. "Oh, hells to the no, dude."
With a barely contained skip in his step, Teddy dodges around Kate and walks over to Billy, bending over at the waist to grin at him. "Oh, hell yes," he says in his normal voice and then, remembering that he is supposed to be sick, adds in a froggier one, "You are the chosen one, Young Kaplan. Get up there and accept your destiny."
For a long time, Billy just stares at him blankly, and Teddy has a moment where he is absolutely certain that his plan is going to fail due to Billy's latent misanthropy or shyness or whatever it is that keeps him quiet and monosyllabic most of the time. But he makes sure his smile is steady and calm and innocent, and eventually Billy sighs and gets awkwardly to his feet, lifting his guitar strap over his head and handing it gently over to Teddy.
"I will make you pay for this," he mutters under his breath, refusing to meet Teddy's eyes, and Teddy just grins like a loon because this is the first whole, grammatically correct sentence Billy has ever actually said to him.
They tune up while Billy wrestles with the microphone, looking so disproportionately irritated with it that Teddy eventually has to wonder if there actually is something behind his threat to make Teddy pay. Billy's guitar feels a little weird in his hands, but he's probably hyper-sensitive right now, worried about breaking something that Billy obviously cares so much about. The back-side is scratched up, and there's a small, sparkly unicorn sticker on the body, and the fingerboard, under Teddy's palm, is still warm. He practises a few fingerings and then lets the guitar rest against his hip while the others finish up.
"All right?" Eli asks before too long, steadying his cymbals, and when no one objects, he counts them off. Teddy fingers his first chord and hits it hard, almost over-enthusiastically. It's been a while since he last really played, not since the days when The Lamentable Decadence was a "maybe someday" that he and Kate would toss around in the evenings, but it comes back like he never stopped and for the first few measures, he totally can't remember why he ever did.
It's a lucky break, though, since 1) Teddy would rather not look like an idiot in front of the others if he can possibly avoid it and 2) he'd rather be watching Billy anyway.
Billy picks up the first verse like he doesn't know what to do with it. He leans forward to the mic but keeps his body away from it as if it'll burn him if he touches it, and his eyes stay fixed on the floor. The words come out of his mouth like a string of semi-connected sounds, no real meaning or emphasis behind any of them. His voice still sounds great - steady and clear, with a quiet, gravelly almost-purr whenever he gets to the edges of his range - and it makes Teddy's mouth go dry even though Billy is obviously phoning it in.
A glance over his shoulder confirms that Eli and Kate are not impressed. They're satisfied, sure; Teddy can read it on their faces. They're thinking, He's good. He's competent. But Teddy didn't go to the effort of making a plan and following it through - Teddy doesn't owe Tommy a whole twenty bucks - because Billy is competent. He wants to see that thing he saw in the coffeehouse, the momentary premonition he had that this - the band and maybe, maybe, his whole life as well - could suddenly make sense if he can just find a way to make sure Billy is part of it. The potential he saw.
So, halfway through the first chorus, Teddy starts to amble up behind him. He does it slowly, so he doesn't break anyone's concentration, but when he's less than an arm's length away he slides in quickly, his hip jostling against Billy's, and as discreetly as possible, he steps on Billy's foot.
To his credit, Billy doesn't yelp. He doesn't even pause, though his voice wavers a bit on the word "solitude." All he does is turn his body, so his foot is out of range, grab the mic stand for balance, and glare.
Sing properly, Teddy tries to convey with a raise of his eyebrows.
What the hell, you just stepped on my foot, Billy responds with a lowering of his.
Teddy permits himself a silent, weary sigh before taking a step forward. Automatically, Billy takes a step back. Perplexed, Teddy takes another step forward and, after tugging the mic out of its stand, Billy steps back again. It's like a really stupid dance, and three repetitions of this later, Billy bangs up against the amp and has nowhere left to go. He's still singing, and that alone will probably win him points with Eli, but he's also distracted enough that emotion is starting to seep into some of the words. Those emotions are confusion and mild irritation, which don't go great with Tommy's latest break-up number, but it's something. At least it doesn't sound like mechanical karaoke any more.
In between one sentence and the next, in the beat of silence as Billy fills his lungs again, Teddy slides in until their knees bump and tilts his face down, so his mouth is close to Billy's ear, and whispers low enough that the microphone won't pick it up: "You're blowing your frigging audition, man."
Billy makes a strange, quiet hiccuping noise and when Teddy pulls away, he finds that he's on the receiving end of yet another wide, disbelieving stare. But, as much as he'd like to dissect that look, cut away to its core meaning, his bottom lip tastes like sweat right now, as though he maybe, accidentally, caught it against some of Billy's skin, so instead he turns away fast to hide his blush.
Behind him, Billy's voice slurs on the first few words of the new line but as he keeps going, it gets stronger and louder until, at last at last, he's really singing. Teddy turns back then and watches as Billy leans back into the amp, shuts his eyes tightly, and all but throws his soul on the ground for their approval. If he does this every time, Teddy thinks in the back of his mind, it's going to be hell on their performance because he feels like his own feet are literally stuck to the ground, and it's all he can do to keep playing when his brain just wants to stop and stare. He bites down on his bottom lip instead and keeps going.
When they finish, the last few notes of bass fading away, they're all quiet for a moment. Billy doesn't even open his eyes, just lets his arms fall back to his sides. Teddy realizes not long after that he's holding his breath.
"Okay," says Eli finally, after the silence has started to get weird. He rubs a hand over the top of his head and nods. "Okay. What the hell."
---
Things like this don't happen in real life. At least, things like this don't happen to real people. Real people - plain, ordinary, average, unremarkable people like Billy knows, deep down, he really is - do not suddenly find themselves in bands overnight. They do not find themselves suddenly fronting a band overnight. It just doesn't happen. So it takes Billy a few days before he stops thinking Holy crap, I'm in a band every few minutes and starts thinking about what this all actually means.
For a while, he's inclined to be angry at Teddy for, apparently, master-minding the whole thing without ever asking if he was even interested, but it's hard to get or stay angry at Teddy. Teddy is polite and nice and friendly. He's the kind of guy, Billy learns, who will carry your drum set almost five blocks when it has to go in for repairs. He's the kind of guy whose approach to arguing with Tommy consists of grabbing him in a bear hug, actually bodily lifting him off the ground, and not letting go until Tommy is squirming and turning red and shouting, "Fine! Fine! Fuck, let me go!" (This is also probably the most effective approach Billy has ever seen, and he's sort of jealous that it's not something that would work for him.)
So Teddy is spared a week of the silent treatment through a combination of being a good person and the warm beginnings of a crush that Billy can feel rising in his chest, no matter how much he tries to talk himself out of it. Instead, Billy heaves his mental shoulders, bypasses the outraged part of the program entirely, and decides to jump right into trying to prove that their faith in him is justified by being the best possible frontman ever.
As things turn out, this is a lot harder than expected. For the first week, everything Billy does is wrong. Eli objects to his pronunciation and the emphasis he puts on words - "It's about falling in love," he explains at one point, "not the wonders of prepositions" - and Kate complains about just about everything else: Billy's posture, his lack of eye contact when he sings, the way he sticks too close to the microphone stand when he sings, his hair.
"I kind of like his hair," Teddy counters on the night Kate makes this comment. Immediately, Billy feels his face flush a little, so he tightens his grip on the microphone and shoots a covert, sideways look at Teddy to see if he should be reading anything into this. But Teddy is unreadable, not looking at any of them and carefully tuning his Squier, his bangs falling into his eyes even more than usual.
From the other side of Billy, Tommy snorts and says, "Of course, you do."
Which gets Teddy to look up, at last, and grin past Billy's shoulder. "Don't worry," he replies, giving his eyelashes one exaggerated bat. "I like your hair too."
Tommy just makes a face and chucks his mostly empty water bottle at Teddy's head.
But the point still stands: Billy, despite his best efforts, is not very good at this. He perseveres as best as he can, which mostly involves refusing to brush his hair and practising making appropriate, rock star-style eye contact in the bathroom mirror - which is uncomfortable and sort of hugely embarrassing because Billy cannot think about himself and "sexy" in the same sentence without wanting to cringe forever. Eventually Tommy catches him doing this and has to sit on the floor in the hallway, crumpled up in helpless giggles for a whole ten minutes while Billy glares at him.
"Never," he finally instructs, wiping an actual tear of laughter from his eye, "do that again."
And Billy sort of takes this advice, even though he usually doesn't see a point in listening to Tommy ever. He tones down the eye contact and tries to remember to move away from the microphone stand occasionally and by the end of the week, his performance has been upgraded from really atrocious to mildly awful. Which is obviously still not good and when Eli makes this pronouncement at the end of practice, Billy can't help but double over slightly, like he's been punch, because he's got no idea what else he can do.
He thinks, Things like this don't happen to people in real life, and then thinks that there must be a good reason for that. All the potential in the world doesn't insure you'll be good at something, and Billy is a little heartbroken to think that maybe he'll be caught on this edge forever, with this immense possibility of greatness hanging before him, never to actually be achieved.
He's so absorbed in being sorry for himself that he doesn't hear Kate clicking her nails thoughtfully against her bass at first, but he does tune in when she goes "Hm" in her throat. Everyone tunes in then, turning to look at her because Kate only hms like that when she's thinking up a plan.
"Do you think he's trainable?" Kate asks eventually, and her eyes are fixed on Teddy.
Teddy blinks, obviously a little confused by this question, and his eyes drift over to Billy. Billy doesn't quite manage to look away in time, so they end up sort of staring at each other. Teddy's eyebrows are raised and his eyes neutrally assessing while Billy tries to keep from blushing or fidgeting or getting too lost in how blue Teddy's eyes are.
Finally, he says, "Yeah. I think he might be. Want me to take a crack at it?"
And Kate nods, once, decisively. "Do that."
So Billy ends up taking the subway out to Teddy's early on Saturday afternoon. For a New York neighbourhood, it's pretty small and quiet. There're actual parking spaces around, which makes Billy stop and stare because he'd always considered New York parking to be sort of a mythical being, frequently whispered about but never seen. Teddy's building is a long, old brick building in fairly good repair, squished in between more nearly identical long, brick buildings. There are three doorbell buttons when Billy gets up to the top step, and he presses the third floor button hard and then waits. There's no intercom or anything, so he doesn't even know if Teddy's heard him until Teddy himself flings open the front door, looking strangely breathless and red-cheeked, smiles, and pulls him inside.
"Hey," Teddy says over his shoulder, already making his way back to the stairs, "I'm glad you found the place all right. C'mon up."
Billy looks nervously at his shoes, at the long staircase, and then at the ceiling before saying, "Yeah, thanks," and following Teddy up.
Like the building, Teddy's apartment is a long, straight line, running parallel to the main hall. Teddy lets them in at one end where there is a mat for shoes and a cluster of small rooms, but the main succession of rooms appear one after another through a pair of french doors: dining room, then something that looks like a music room, then living room, and finally a shut door which probably leads to Teddy's bedroom. The furniture that Billy can see is sparse and mismatched, but the whole place seems well lived-in and comfortable in a way that Billy hadn't expected. He can feel a knot of tension in his shoulders ease almost immediately.
"Nice place," he says, shrugging out of his jacket and handing it to Teddy.
Teddy hangs it up on one of the hooks nailed into the wall and then turns back and smiles at him, another of those big, delighted, uncompromisingly open smiles. "Yeah. I mean, you get what you pay for, but I kind of like it."
Billy smiles back a little and lets himself get dragged straight into to the music room, trying not to stare around. Kate had taken him aside at the end of practice the night before and given him a terse warning - "Teddy's dad died when he was a kid," she'd said, cool and efficient but with sad eyes, "and his mom died a couple of years ago, so he's on his own now. Try not to make a big deal about it." - so Billy isn't surprised by a lot of what he sees in the brief space between the hallway and the music room: a small stack of white take-out boxes, a bag of laundry by the door, no pictures anywhere. He notes it, feels a little sympathy pang behind his breastbone, and says nothing, just lets Teddy pull him along.
"It's not much," Teddy is saying as he drops Billy's wrist and moves to the centre of the room, looking around with a faint sense of pride that makes him look taller, "but it's nice to have somewhere just to practice."
Billy, who mostly practices on the end of his bed or jammed onto the window ledge, nods and looks around enviously. It's the most barren room out of them all from the looks of it, but there's a desk and a microphone, a sagging, orange couch, one amp, and Teddy's Squier in its guitar stand, and that's more than Billy could ever wish for for himself. It's sort of, he thinks, like heaven.
He sets down his backpack in one corner of the room and then stands around, twining and untwining his fingers and letting himself look totally uncertain for once. Finally, he clears his throat and asks, "So, how exactly does this work?"
Teddy smiles and grips onto the microphone stand, giving it a shake that makes the mic rattle ominously. "You come stand over here," he says, "and then we'll go from there."
Which is not much in the way of explanation, so Billy raises an eyebrow and looks askance. Teddy just smiles back again and wiggles the stand some more until, with a sigh, Billy comes over and stands behind it.
"Now what?"
When they are standing side-by-side like this, Teddy is only about half a head taller than Billy, but it's enough of a discrepancy that Billy has to tilt his chin upwards when he looks at him. And Teddy's face has gone almost blank, inscrutable, which is a strange look on someone who is so open most of the time. Billy raises his eyebrow again in silent concern, and Teddy seems to snap back into it, shaking his head and smiling apologetically.
"Stand like you're about to sing something," he instructs, so Billy grabs the microphone in both hands, rearranges himself so that he's facing it, and then looks at Teddy again for further instruction. Teddy's lips purse thoughtfully, and he gives Billy a long look up and down. It's innocent and considering, but Billy's skin starts to prickle traitorously anyway, and it gets worse a second later when Teddy's hands come up and forward a few inches and grab onto his hips.
Teddy's got big hands, surprisingly big, enough that he can get his hand almost all the way around Billy's hips without really stretching out his fingers. Billy bites the inside of his lip to muffle a whimper he can feel forming in his throat and thanks god that his jeans are thick enough to block the heat of Teddy's palms.
"Take a step back," Teddy says in a voice that seems very low all of a sudden, and Billy obeys without really thinking about it. Teddy's hands push and pull on his hips - Billy thinks, faintly, that he can make out each finger as a separate line of pressure - until they're canted at an angle from the stand; one of his feet wedges in between Billy's and pushes his left leg out a little farther. By the time Teddy speaks again, "Try not to line yourself up so much," his front is nearly pressing up against Billy's back, and Billy can't do more than nod and offer a weak "Unh-hunh?" in reply, shutting his eyes and trying to hold down his blush.
And then Teddy's hands are gone, and his body heat recedes, leaving Billy with a chill down his spine. Billy pries his eyes open again, in time to see Teddy doing a walk-around, one hand curved over his mouth and the considering look back in his eyes. Billy's can't tell if there's more colour to his cheeks now or if that's just him projecting.
He stands silently in this new configuration until Teddy finally comes to a stop and nods. "Okay," he says, opening his hand toward Billy; there's no trace of the strange lowness to his voice now. "Sing something."
So Billy clears his throat, which feels sticky and thick like it hasn't been used in a while, and starts into the first verse of "The Battle of Mir (Ends in Tears)."
---
---
Getting Billy to loosen up is not nearly as easy as Teddy had hoped it would be. And maybe that's because Teddy's watched one too many music documentaries where the band members go on about how they had a special feeling from the start, like an audible click when things finally fit together. Teddy knows what that feels like because he felt it the first time he and Kate ever played together and the first time Kate introduced him to Eli and even the night Tommy nearly ran him down after a concert. He feels it now with Billy too, this slow burn in his stomach, like change and tangible possibility.
But he's pretty sure Billy doesn't feel it, and Teddy's not sure what to do about that because Teddy isn't usually a plan-guy. He moves on instinct most of the time or does what Kate and Eli tell him; he doesn't think about things ahead of time, except that with Billy he's kind of had to from the beginning and now he's running low on what few plans he had.
Billy's got a lousy stage presence. That's the hard truth of it, and they all know it, even Billy. Teddy can see the disappointment in his eyes at the end of every practice, the growing sense of not good enough that's lurking there, and it's frustrating the hell out of Teddy. Because, honestly, Billy takes instruction well. After their first Saturday meeting, he can at least stand like he's ready to command attention; it's just once he's standing there, he never gets around to actually commanding attention and even after another handful of Saturdays, he still somehow manages to disappear behind the mic stand, no matter how loud he sings or how much he tilts his chin or juts out his hip.
Which, okay, fine. Teddy could maybe accept that. Some people, even if they have the most amazing singing voice and jawline and eyes that Teddy has ever seen (like certain band members whose names begin with B and end with illy Kaplan), are not cut out to front a band. If Billy was quiet and reserved and shy, Teddy would understand and move on. This, however, is totally not what Billy is like at all.
Billy has a sense of humour that runs the gamut from really dark at times to really stupid at others. For example: at the end of a very long song-writing session one night, he pens out a three minute guitar carnage solo that he titles "If Dick Van Dyke Played Halo, He Would Pwn You" and then proceeds to play it, entirely straight-faced, on his acoustic every time Kate and Eli start squabbling. Teddy is usually laughing so hard he's tearing up within the first 50 seconds.
And he argues, all the time. Like he actually just enjoys being difficult. He and Tommy have this constant, low level bickering thing going on that almost rivals Kate and Eli (almost), and he'll even argue with Teddy if Teddy takes the time to properly bait him into it. Which Teddy starts doing after a while, if only to get Billy's eyes to light up the way they do in mid-shout.
On their fourth Saturday together, Teddy's frustration finally boils over, and he cuts into Billy's rant about the ideological purity of 6/8 time, interspersed with mumbles about how Teddy should try some of the lo mein.
"Seriously, dude," he says, stabbing into the air with his chopsticks in the general direction of Billy's face, "why can't you just do this when you sing?"
Billy's chewing slows, and his face shutters up instantly, returning to its default expression of wary nervousness. "Do what?" he asks.
Teddy sighs. "Well, obviously not what you're doing right now. But that thing, a second ago, when you were yelling at me. Why can't you do that?"
"Why can't I yell at you while I sing?" Billy says, with his eyebrows rising higher up on his forehead, becoming an amused gloss on his expression. "Well, mostly I'm just not sure it's physically possible, Teddy."
Which they both know is just Billy being difficult, so Teddy rolls his eyes and throws a chopstick at Billy's head and levers himself off the floor. "C'mon," he says, manoeuvring around his stumpy, wicker coffee table and grabbing at the collar of Billy's shirt as he passes by to tug him along. Behind him, Billy's sigh is audible but so are the sounds that his jeans make when he gets to his feet and that his socks make against the wood floor, so Teddy doesn't look behind him until he gets to the music room and spins around.
"Sing like you're arguing with me," Teddy instructs, pointing to the mic.
Billy's eyebrows furrow. "I'm not sure I can do that," he says.
"Look." Teddy grabs the stand and carries it over to where Billy is. When he bangs it down, it rattles noisily, and Teddy has to clap his hand over the mic to keep it from falling. He stares over it at Billy, trying to look serious. "I can try to make you mad if you want, but that's not really the point 'Cause, I mean," he pauses and reaches out to poke Billy in the chest once, "I've seen you sing like you mean it. So I know you can do it. You've just got to find a way to focus and feel it and really want it, right? Then you could do it all the time?"
Billy rubs his chest, and his eyebrows stay furrowed, but he very slowly begins to nod. "Yeah," he says. "I guess."
Teddy nods back, once, firmly. "Right. So sing like you're arguing." And without another word, he stomps over to the couch and throws himself down on it.
For a few seconds, Billy stays where he is, still rubbing at his chest and looking at a random point on the wall, but then he starts to rearrange himself behind the mic, carefully following Teddy's instructions about how to stand. When he's finished, he takes a big breath, bows his head, and shuts his eyes. Teddy leans forward on the couch and clasps his hands together between his knees, fighting the temptation to close his eyes and let Billy's inevitable singing wash over him - like he usually does - by staring at the spread of Billy's dark eyelashes against his cheekbones.
And when Billy does start to sing, it's a song Teddy doesn't recognize, something strange and sarcastic and opaque, like Billy himself. It makes Teddy's gut twist, though not quite as much as his gut twists when Billy finally looks up, a small smile trapped between bitterness and amusement playing across his mouth. The real miracle, though, is that Billy catches Teddy's eyes and holds them as he sings, and maybe it's the late afternoon sunlight, but his eyes seem a warmer kind of brown than usual.
The chorus feels like getting slammed in the chest by the world's softest, gruffest, and most heart-breaking battering ram. It's something about love, Teddy thinks, but a self-effacing love that seems to swing back and forth between hopeless and hopeful in a way that makes Teddy feel self-conscious, like his skin is suddenly too small for his body. Although, that could also be the way Billy is looking at him or the fact that Billy's thumb has hooked into the belt-loop of his jeans, weighing them down just enough that the waist of his boxers is visible.
By the time Billy's voice softens to a whisper and eases out of the the song, they're both slightly flushed. Billy swallows and looks up at the ceiling immediately, his chest rising and falling in heavy, silent breaths. Teddy rubs the back of his neck, trying to get rid of the tight feeling, and says, "Well, that was pretty good."
Billy snorts. "That was exhausting," he corrects drily but when he looks down from the ceiling again, he's smiling.
Teddy smiles back and says, "That just means you're doing it right."
They practice for a few more hours after that and once Billy seems to finally be getting the hang of it, Teddy grabs his guitar and plays along. By the time the sun's gone down and they call it quits, Billy's voice is crackling, and he's rubbing his throat every few minutes, when his attention wanders and he forgets to pretend like he's fine. Teddy refuses to listen to any arguments and shoves Billy down onto the living room couch and makes him chicken soup from a can, grinning back serenely when Billy protests, "I'm not five, and this isn't the flu."
They end up watching some cheesy drive-in horror flick on TV and laughing whenever the Swamp Monster's watch is visible between the sleeve and gloves of his costume. Teddy polishes off the leftover take-out, and Billy sips at his soup, sitting scrunched up in a compact N-shape, peering at the TV over his kneecaps.
"I'm not sure I want to know what it says about me," he mutters after a while, "that I have to pretend like I'm arguing with someone in order to properly sing a love song."
Teddy thinks that he doesn't want to know what it says about him that he's increasingly head-over-heels about someone who has to pretend he's arguing to sing a love song. So he just laughs a tiny laugh in back of his throat and shrugs. "Whatever works, I guess?"
Billy's return sideways glance doesn't look convinced, but he tilts his head in slow acknowledgment and shrugs. "Yeah," he says, "I guess."
Thirty minutes later, Billy's head sags over onto Teddy's shoulder, and Teddy spends the rest of the movie trying not to move around too much or breath too loud for fear of waking him up and toys cautiously, now and then, with the elastic bands around Billy's wrist.
Part 2