FIC: hope isn't a word, PG, gen mostly
Series: Young Avengers
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,759
Notes: Gen in spirit but canon couples are there and my Billy/Teddy bias is present because of course it is. This wisp of a fic was written because SOMEONE NEEDED TO EXPLAIN IT and then somewhere along the line I obviously started trying to get bingo. Hm. A BIG HUGE THANK YOU TO MY GIRL for making sure this thing didn't get scrapped.
Summary: It's not like there's any way to avoid it being depressing, so mostly Teddy just avoids it all together.
It's not like there's any way to avoid it being depressing, so mostly Teddy just avoids it all together. One of mom's work friends bullies the landlord into not charging him rent to the end of the month, and Kate explains that her summer camp also involved extensive courses in personal finance before grabbing every mysterious piece of paper she can find about mom's bank accounts and beating them all into submission. Before he knows it, he ends up with money in a mutual fund and a stock portfolio that Kate swears will pay off in the long term.
Tommy does most of the packing, blazing through one room at a time, sorting things into Keep and Toss piles in response to Teddy's grudging directions and only once getting tangled up in packaging tape. Cassie handles the big items - TVs and beds and dressers - and Eli talks his grandmother into letting him borrow the van to move everything.
Billy's job is most important because Billy's the one who teleports into the bathroom on the day itself when Teddy locks himself in there to hyperventilate into the bathroom mirror, the one he drew a crayon sun on when he was five that they could never quite wipe off entirely. What's so ridiculous about a sixteen year-old living on his own, he asks himself. Given enough time, he can probably figure out things like paying rent and paying hydro, changing circuit breakers and buying toilet paper. He's going to be living on his own wherever he is.
"I'm just going to end up missing her all over again," Teddy says, watching Billy's slightly pained expression of concern in the mirror.
Billy leans forward and presses his chin into Teddy's shoulder blade. "I know," he mumbles.
---
The first night is the hardest by far, even though it's his own bed and his own sheets and the layout of the furniture in the room is even approximately the same. The warehouse makes funny noises that Teddy's never noticed during the day. There's a low, electrical hum that gets louder when Teddy presses his ear to the wall just behind his headboard to make sure he's not just imagining things. It's probably part of the massive computer system that Kate and Vision had installed when they were working on making him feel at home.
Just after midnight, the central air conditioner comes on and sounds even louder in the quiet. Teddy wrinkles his nose and studies the ceiling (it's made of familiar pock-marked tiles like the ceilings at school) to keep from missing home and how it smelled and how it reminded him of mom.
He's about to give up trying to sleep for the night when the room lights up blue like someone's just shined a flood light in the one, high window. Teddy barely has time to turn on his side before the bed springs sink down on the right and when he does manage to turn all the way over, he ends up with a face full of the back of Billy's old Ghostbusters t-shirt.
"‘m still half asleep," Billy informs him, but he reaches out behind him blindly and gives Teddy's wrist a squeeze.
---
Two days later, Billy and Teddy are eating dry Cheerios on the couch in the semi-official living room when Kate breezes in followed by two men carrying clipboards. Teddy and Billy exchange a look that says Thank god we put on pants this morning, but Kate doesn't seem to notice, too busy as she is issuing instructions like "All the plumbing has to be redone" and "We're getting a real fridge in there because like hell we're subsisting on ramen noodles and lukewarm Pepsi." The men follow her around and take notes on their clipboard and eventually, Billy and Teddy return to eating Cheerios, but it's with twin wary expressions, like they're waiting for the Cheerios to be ordered out of Kate's presence too.
Eventually she collapses down on the couch on Teddy's other side as the men move off to take measurements and tap walls with tools Teddy doesn't recognize. Kate sighs and resets her sunglasses on the top of her hair to keep the bits around the edge of her face from tickling her nose.
"Kate," Teddy begins, and Billy finishes with a "Seriously. What?"
"I'm making this place habitable," she says. "Obviously. I've been meaning to for a while but there's always been -" she wiggles her fingers and puts her feet up on the coffee table - "stuff getting in the way."
Teddy presses his lips together, feeling a weird twist in his stomach that could be gratitude or guilt or some strange hybrid. "You've already been really generous, Ka- " he starts to say but again gets interrupted before he gets to the end when Kate's hand comes up and snaps open, indicating he should stop. He does, and she leans over, bracing a hand on his knee to hold up her body weight, and opens her eyes wide in a way that would probably make Eli or Tommy get a bit stupid and makes Teddy melt a little in a completely platonic way.
"Do you know what brings me greater joy than anything else in the world?" she asks. Teddy shakes his head and, in his peripheral vision, can see Billy doing the same. "Kicking bad guy ass," Kate continues. "But the thing that brings me the second most joy in the world is spending large amounts of my dad's money on good causes. Because there's nothing that drives my dad as crazy as money spent on good causes. So just let me enjoy this moment, okay?"
Silently, Teddy glances over to Billy who just shrugs back in a Don't ask me kind of way. He looks back at Kate who is managing to maintain her facial expression even though one corner of her mouth keeps threatening to curve up into a smile.
Teddy sighs. "Okay," he says.
"You bet okay," Kate agrees, bops Teddy's knee, and then makes a grabbing motion at the box of Cheerios. "Now pass."
---
On the eighth night, Billy gets grounded for sneaking out the other seven.
this really sucks. you have to promise to call if you cant sleep. su insomnia es mi insomnia, his text message reads, which gets at least a small smile out of Teddy.
dude, he types back on his own phone, were you NEVER forced to take Spanish classes?
shut up and accept my heartwarmingly noble sacrifice, dork, Billy responds.
Teddy snorts and sends back, sleep bill. SLEEP. ill see you tomorrow.
Of course, after instructing Billy to sleep, he can't himself, and he ends up thinking about the plastic bag full of his mom's clothes stashed in the closet and what level of creepy/sad it would be to pull it out just to remind himself of the exact shade of red of her favourite sweater.
He gets up instead and wanders barefoot around the warehouse, peeking into rooms he hasn't explored yet and appreciating the carpeting that Kate had put down over the weekend. It's a step above concrete, no question. Eventually he finds himself following the humming in the walls until he finds a door that hums louder than the rest and steps into a room that's a good ten degrees colder than everywhere else and filled with glass boxes behind which electronic equipment blinks at him quietly.
"Theodore," Vision's voice says, coming from somewhere in the boxes. "Hello."
Teddy ducks his head and circles around a few towers until he finds Vision seated in a chair, wires running out of one arm and into something very fancy and expensive-looking.
"Hey, Vision," Teddy says, waving his hand a little. "Sorry. I didn't mean to bother you."
Vision's expression never really changes much, but somehow he's learned to convey the idea of eyebrow-raising without actually having eyebrows to raise. "It's no bother," he says. "I generally choose not to sync my rest cycles to the standard 24-hour clock. I was performing routine maintenance, not sleeping."
"Oh," says Teddy because really, what else is there to say?
Carefully, Vision disconnects the wires from his arm and closes up the panel. He braces both his hands on the arms of the chair and pushes himself to the edge, sitting with perfect posture and studying Teddy's face. "You, on the other hand, should be sleeping, correct?"
Teddy grimaces and scratches the back of his neck uncomfortably. "Haven't been doing too well with that recently."
And this time it's Vision's turn to say, "Oh." If he were another robot, like from Star Wars or something, Teddy reflects, this would be the part where he'd blurt out some awkwardly true observation like "You are still mourning the death of you mother." But Vision is more person than robot, really, and a good guy at that, with a bit of Nate that Teddy can catch sprinkled around the edges now and then.
So after a moment of silence, Vision says, "Cassie has told me that chocolate chip cookies are good in situations such as these. I have located four highly ranked recipes on Google. Shall we?"
---
Around the two week mark, Tommy finds his way back into New York City and ends up crashing on the couch because that's what Tommy does when he's in town, apparently. Teddy, a little bashfully, has to admit to himself that he had never really considered it before, but it makes sense in retrospect. The world doesn't know what to do with people like him or Vision or Tommy; it fits that they'd all find themselves gravitating to the same place.
Tommy is, among other things, a way louder roommate than Vision, which is generally okay with Teddy these days because he's becoming increasingly convinced that too much quiet will make him go insane. But it's kind of awkward with Tommy because he finds himself trying to look past the superficial familiarity a lot to decide whether he even likes this guy to begin with. Before reminding himself that this is Billy's twin brother so he'll put up with him for Billy's sake whether he personally likes it or not.
It's late one night when Billy is throwing a physics-related studying fit in Teddy's room that Teddy realizes that this must be exactly what it feels like to have in-laws.
His realization, sudden and profound and frigging terrifying, is helped along when Tommy looks up from where he's sprawled on the couch watching CSI reruns and says loudly, "So I figure if we're going to be in-laws, we should get one thing straight."
Teddy looks around the door to the kitchen with an expression that falls somewhere between politely curious and queasy and fails to find anything clever to say at all.
Tommy doesn't seem to mind as he elbows himself up to half-sitting. "First," he says holding up a finger. "You're allowed to remember my birthday and give me presents on holidays and that crap, but I hope you aren't expecting anything in return because that is not how I roll. Second, your big gay love affair is only my business in that I don't want to have to see it, smell it, hear it or be confided in about it."
Halfway through all of this, Teddy realizes that his expression has become firmly stuck on incredulous.
"Third," Tommy says with an air of finality, holding up one last finger and then gesturing with all three at a plastic bag on the coffee table. "I got you a house-warming present so don't say I never gave you anything."
Cautiously, Teddy walks over and picks the bag up. Inside, he finds a glowstick, two Snickers bars, a calendar, and a large box with TROJAN printed all over it.
"They were on sale," Tommy informs him in what passes for cheerful with Tommy.
Teddy feels simultaneously like he wants to drown himself in a toilet and also, weirdly, touched.
---
Cassie alone out of all of them seems to get how noisy it is in the warehouse can be, even when it's mostly empty. Teddy suspects - but doesn't mention out loud - that it's because she spends more time visiting Vision in his computer forest than any of the rest of them do. Cassie obviously suspects that he suspects and just looks faintly sheepish and faintly proud about it.
"You put them in your ears," she says, the afternoon she comes over after school with this box of weird squishy things. "My mom uses them all the time. Blake - " the word comes out acidly - "snores. Loudly."
Teddy shifts, mildly uncomfortable and not at all certain how to respond, but Cassie isn't about to embark on some in-depth discussion of her family politics (this time). She's busy fiddling with the box, knocking out two ear plugs that are purple and almost bullet-shaped into the palm of her hand. She picks one up and twists the end until it's narrow then she brings it up to her ear and mimes sticking it in.
"See?" she says.
"I see," Teddy answers warily.
The box gets shoved across the kitchen table toward him, and he scoops it up as gracefully as he can. One of the ear plugs falls out the open flap and starts rolling towards the edge of the table and freedom. Casually, Teddy slaps his palm down on it, and it squishes spongily, but not exactly unpleasantly, underneath. Cassie smiles a bright, encouraging smile.
"Not to sound ungrateful, Cass," Teddy says - because he is grateful, no matter how strange the gesture. His stomach twists sometimes when he thinks about just how grateful he is for all of them. "You remember I'm a shapeshifter, right?"
Cassie's face does the complicated work of managing to look both amused and a little disturbed at the same time. Her nose wrinkles and her eyebrows draw down, but Teddy, who has catalogued all his friends' little ticks and habits, catches the way the corners of her eyes crinkle too.
"Are you saying you're going to shapeshift yourself no ears," she asks, dropping her chin down into her hand and looking at him. "Because that would be weird, Ted. Weird."
---
By the end of the first month, Eli has started to drop by after work most days. He says it's because the warehouse just happens to be on his way home, and Teddy chooses not to point out that going west from the library is pretty much the complete opposite of every logical definition of "on the way home" for Eli.
And then there's the way library books start getting left around on coffee tables and on the counter in the kitchen "just by accident." As if Eli, in the process of throwing himself down on the couch and picking up his Xbox controller, just happened to trip and leave The Tale of Two Cities or Snow Crash or The Green Mile somewhere where Teddy can easily find it.
Teddy, obviously never calls Eli out on this because that would involve break the silent, mutual, manly agreement not to talk about their feelings unnecessarily that he and Eli share, but he sometimes makes sure to leave the latest book out on the couch when Eli stops by next and lets the Kleenex-as-makeshift-bookmark stuck halfway through serve as a thank you in itself.
When Kate finds a copy of Treasure Island under a cushion one afternoon and notes the library stamp on the inside cover, though, she does comment, shooting first Teddy and Eli an amused look before leaning over to poke Eli in the side.
"It's like dating Amazon.com sometimes," she observes, and Teddy takes advantage of Eli's momentary distraction to attack him with a chainsaw.
---
And then eventually, slowly, he stops counting days. Never forgets, but the ticking clock in the back of his mind that started the day mom died fades away until it's gone entirely. He wakes up in the morning to find that Billy's managed to make himself the big spoon somewhere in the night, and he doesn't think It's been four, five, six months since I moved. It's been four, five, six months since she died. Instead he takes a deep breath of air that finally feels and smells like he belongs here, rolls over onto his other side, and pinches Billy's nose until he snorts himself awake.
"Nrragh, eff you," Billy mutters with his eyes barely open.
"Good morning," Teddy answers with a smile.