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i.
Summer is the constant hum of his neighbor’s lawnmower. Summer is sipping iced tea and watching the world go by. Summer is always being pleasantly sticky. Best of all, summer is the switch from football to track and field. Billy likes summer.
No more pads, no more gumshields, no more getting pummeled and abused in the name of sportsmanship. Just Billy, his sneakers, and the rush of wind in his face as he laps his classmates. He's actually pretty fast, his embarrassingly knobbly knees rather more sturdy than they look. Billy allows himself a tiny, shy grin as he dashes past their astonished faces, feeling kind of proud and maybe just a little bit on top of the world.
Somewhere, the brother he hasn't met yet is laughing at him.
At the finish line, he collapses onto the ground with a delighted sigh, lying spread-eagled.
"Kaplan, up," Coach barks, and Billy heaves himself to a sitting position. He picks at the grass between his crossed legs and the scuffed toe of his sneaker. He leaves the daisies intact. It bothers him when people uproot them for no reason.
His almost-friend Jay crosses the finish line next, shooting Billy a grin and skidding to a theatrical halt. It's a casually nonchalant action that Billy could never pull off, and he stares down glumly at his skinny legs. Jay is kind of cool, and sometimes he slumps down into the seat next to Billy during Chemistry and they chat. It's nice. Jay expects Billy to do the practical himself, but Billy doesn't mind, because he likes the conversation, he likes playing with bunsen burners, and also, he's basically a massive pushover.
"Sweet time, Kaplan," He says enthusiastically, "What was it?"
"Huh?" Billy says, because he forgot to check. "I dunno."
Jay shakes his head in disbelief. "You're a weird kid." There's no malice in that, so Billy smiles with one corner of his mouth.
"I try," He says, wanting to swallow the words back the moment he says them. Funny, Kaplan.
"Get up, loser," Jay instructs him, holding out an amiable hand, "Maybe I can kick your ass this time."
Billy looks at Jay's hand warily. He doesn't like touching people, and he's not sure why. He grabs it anyway, and Jay gives it a yank, much harder than Billy's rather lacking mass needs, and they practically collide. He lets go immediately, palms sweaty.
"As if," Billy croaks, because Jay's hand was warm and rough and he has this horrible, horrible, sinking feeling -
Jay gives him one of those overly showy, masculine claps on the shoulder, and Billy wishes he would just stop touching him already.
"Let's do this thing," Jay says, and Billy forces his jelly legs to move.
He wins, of course. Running is always easier when you're running from something. He just never thought that something would be Jay. Jay's nice. Jay's cool. Jay's never slammed him against the lockers or pushed his face into the drinking fountain.
Which is exactly the problem, Billy thinks miserably as he lies awake that night. Well, that, and the fact that he's gayer than a maypole. He rolls over and sighs, wondering why it took him so long to figure it out.
He doesn't mind, not really. It certainly explains a lot.
But if there's one thing worse than being a teenage loser, it's being a gay teenage loser.
ii.
He avoids Jay with a terrified intensity that does wonders for his Chemistry marks, and proves deeply detrimental to Jay's. Jay is clearly annoyed. Billy hopes it's his sudden coldness, and not his lack of academic assistance. He has to cling onto one small shred of his self-esteem.
Instead, he partners with Mary-Ann, who chews her plaits when she thinks. She thinks a lot. She's nervous, and nerdy, and quietly sad in an unsettling way. Billy can't bear it, so he plasters a friendly smile on his face and keeps babbling until, eventually, she smiles tentatively up through her glasses.
She confides shyly over the brilliant flare of burning magnesium that she just transferred here last fall. She doodles superheroes without faces in the margins of her textbook. She pretends not to notice when girls walk past and shove her too hard into the wall. She sits alone at lunch, chewing her plaits and folding the napkins into paper cranes.
Billy starts to sit with her, if only so he doesn't have to see her across the cafeteria looking so utterly lost. She draws the Scarlet Witch on his napkins and always gives him her extra fries, even though he never asked. Billy has a strange feeling about this new arrangement. She's deep in a book, absently eating chips as she turns the pages, and he finally finds his resolve.
"I'm gay," he says, but she doesn't look up.
Billy never knows whether she didn't hear or if he just never actually forced the words out.
He curses his poor resolve weeks later, as he shuffles home with an almost comedic black eye. The school nurse taped it up, somewhat at a loss, and he vaguely wonders if he can just rock an eye patch á la Nick Fury for the next week. He is not looking forward to explaining this to his parents.
It all went wrong from the moment Mary-Ann tried to kiss him. He'd backed away desperately, tripping clumsily over an open locker door. She'd clapped her hands to her mouth in horror.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I thought - I just-" Her eyes fill with tears. "That was stupid, how could I think you'd like-"
"Don't be sorry!" Billy says, "It's not - you're really cool, honestly, Mary-Ann, don't beat yourself up, ok?"
She shakes her head. "I thought we were, you know-"
"I'm gay," he croaks, and of course, it's just at that moment they acquire an audience.
Jay walks past slowly, his eyes taking in Mary-Ann standing in mystified silence, Billy pushing himself to his feet gingerly, unable to meet Jay's eyes.
You're a weird kid, Kaplan.
Billy closes his eyes and groans. PleasedonttellKeslerpleasedonttellKesler. They were friends once, right? That had to count for something.
It doesn't. Billy tries not to focus on the unfairness of this as he receives yet another blow crouched in the corner of the changing room. He slides down the wall as they finally leave, swallowing a mouthful of blood so he doesn't make a mess on the floor. God only knows why he bothers. He racks his brains for other places he can change before gym, legitimate ways he can be excused. Short of gouging his eyes out, he's not sure how to convince them he's not the least bit interested in watching them getting changed.
"Trust me," he practices, his voice cracking, "you're not my type."
Maybe next time.
iii.
Billy sits at home shaking, staring at his hands.
Right, he thinks nervously, Focus, Billy.
He can't deny that it was satisfying seeing Kesler twitching in the corridor. He can't deny that for one brief moment, he felt the thrill of vengeance. He came back down to earth with a horrified jerk. No. This isn't right.
He spends the next few days darting from class to class, but everything has changed. He doesn't know what they think. He walks past some kids whispering about how he tasered Kesler. He walks past another group saying he carries a gun. He spends ten minutes arranging the books in his locker because he doesn't know where else to hide. He almost wishes he was back to cowering in the corner, bleeding dutifully. Even Mary-Ann is avoiding him.
After a week of this feeble attempt at existing, after a week of hiding in the library during the day and wiping away angry tears at night, he finally thinks, This is stupid. He marches home with a bag full of energy drinks, the last of his determination and an armful of comics. Well, he has powers now, right? This is legitimate research.
He balances the empty can on his bedside table, flexing his fingers.
"Zap the can," he mutters, "Zap the - ZAP IT, KAPLAN." The can remains distinctly un-zapped, but his pillow has burst into some kind of fiery, blue flame, which he beats at frantically with a towel. Too late. The smoke alarm shrieks along with Billy's inner monologue. "No, no-no," he moans, as his mom bursts into his room with a terrified scream.
He wonders how many teenage boys have actually been grounded for setting their pillow on fire. He's got to be the first.
Lying in bed that night, his head flat on the mattress after the tragic demise of his pillow, he starts to laugh. Suddenly, he can't stop, and he stuffs his fist in his mouth and shakes silently, desperately trying not to wake his family. He can't even believe his life, his luck. He has a sudden, stupid, geeky idea, so naturally, he can't resist.
"Lumos," he says, and his lamp catches fire.
If he seems unusually cheerful when his father bursts in, it's mostly because at least he got the right item this time.
"I was just trying to turn it on," he tells his mystified dad, "Maybe I needed a wand."
He's hopelessly floundering along in this manner when his salvation appears unceremoniously at the end of his bed in the middle of another night. His salvation turns out to be a boy clad from head to toe in shiny, metal armor, and a grim expression.
"I'm Iron Lad, and I'm from the future," the boy says, with an earnestness that makes Billy want to believe him, "I need your help to defeat Kang the Conqueror."
A month ago, he wouldn't have believed it. A lot can change in a month. Since then, Billy has sent lightning flying from his fingertips, and even the most hardened skeptic can't argue with that. Billy was never a skeptic, anyway.
Billy is a gay, teenage loser with goddamn superpowers, and he's going to be a hero. He smiles so wide his face might crack.
"Ok," he says.
iv.
Nate doesn't know a thing about Billy's powers, but he believes in him with a quiet determination that makes all the difference. Eli shouts a lot, but Billy doesn't mind. He means well. Teddy watches him with a curious intensity, occasionally making a disarmingly helpful suggestion, and Billy is coming along in leaps and bounds.
Teddy is just disarming, period. Maybe it comes with the shapeshifting territory, but Billy finds him such an enigma. He still doesn't know what Teddy's true form is, and he doesn't want to ask. Maybe Teddy doesn't even know. Whichever color, he's always the same, and Billy thinks he might be the best friend he's ever had.
They're training all the time now, in preparation for Kang. Billy and Teddy partner themselves together more often than not, assuring Eli they are working hard then sneaking off to share buckets of chicken wings and wear their thumbs out on Billy's X-box. Sometimes their fingers touch when they grab a wing at the same time, and even though it's greasy and disgusting and would normally drive Billy crazy, he finds himself not minding. Teddy ineffectually wipes the controller down with his sleeve after a particularly greasy chicken wing, and this tiny gesture of understanding flusters Billy so much that he short-circuits his controller.
"Again?" Teddy sounds amused. "Maybe you should wear rubber gloves."
Billy blushes violently and groans. "Again…"
"I think this is a sign," Teddy says, and Billy's head jerks up like a shot.
"Wha-"
"We should maybe do some actual training, don't you think?"
"Oh, that," Billy says, relieved, "Maybe."
Teddy is already turning green, so Billy wraps a tentative hand around his friend’s bulky upper arm, and thinks really hard about the mansion…
He's delighted when it works, even though they both tumble over in a flash of blue because he misestimated the floor. Teddy gives him an approving grin, and Billy hovers a few inches off the ground, beaming.
They spar, just the way Billy likes it. Contained in his own bubble, deflecting hits without ever touching. Finally, he collapses onto the floor, exhausted. A somewhat less weary Teddy sits down next to him, smirking slightly.
"You didn't win," Billy says, affronted, "So don't look so smug."
"My opponent collapsed on the floor. I definitely won."
"Absolutely not-" Billy begins, but Teddy - big and green and enormous - has pinned him. Billy puts up a token struggle, but he's just a skinny dweeb and Hulkling is pinning him. It is stupidly unfair. He sends up a few feeble sparks, but Teddy brushes them away, grinning.
"Have I won yet?"
"Yes!" Billy squeaks, and Teddy releases him, chuckling and flexing. Showoff, Billy thinks sulkily, strangely mesmerized by the way the tendons in his neck tighten as Teddy slowly shrinks back to his human form.
"Well," Teddy says conversationally, "Since you're onto your third controller this week, how about we grab a pizza instead?"
"Firstly, it was my second," Billy huffs, "and secondly, I'm busy recovering from the trauma of being crushed by an eight-hundred-pound, green monstrosity."
Teddy smiles at that, but Billy misses the significance. Not everyone could call Teddy Altman a monstrosity and get away with it.
"Up you get, Kaplan," he says, offering a hand. "I'm hungry, and it's your turn to buy."
Billy lets himself be pulled up, strangely nostalgic and weirdly comfortable. He's been staring at Teddy for a good few seconds before he remembers to let go of his hand with an embarrassed start.
"Right," he says, shifting awkwardly. "Pizza it is."
He can't believe this is happening to him. Again. To a teammate, of all people. To Teddy. His luck is just unbelievable. Teddy is still grinning and he has no idea why, and can't shake the idea he knows something Billy doesn't.
He tries to teleport them, but he's far too flustered. Teddy gives his shoulder a squeeze, as if to say, It happens. Instead, they sit on the bus with their knees and the back of their hands occasionally brushing, and Billy holds his breath.
Later, Teddy innocently asks him if he has a boyfriend and Billy nearly chokes on his coke, because how does he know.
"`Wha- no!"
"Well," Teddy says, very matter-of-factly, "Would you like one?"
"I - sorry, what?" Billy's pizza slice is dripping cheese everywhere, neglected halfway to his mouth.
"Would you like a boyfriend?" Teddy repeats slowly, aiming for the collected tone he used earlier, but falling short slightly, the corners of his mouth twitching.
"It's kind of not that simple, right?" Billy says cautiously, "I mean, you don't just decide to have a boyfriend, you have to-"
"Billy," Teddy elbows him playfully. "I meant me, doofus."
"Right," Billy says weakly, and he blinks furiously, 99.87% certain his brain is malfunctioning. Teddy thinks it's hilarious, and maybe just a little bit adorable.
Billy opens and closes his mouth for a while, and it becomes obvious to Teddy that he's maybe broken Billy a little bit, and that he should probably take over from here. He scoots along the bed and calmly takes the uneaten pizza slice from Billy's hand, placing it in the box.
"You know," he says conversationally, "I was ideally looking for an answer, but if that's too much to ask, I could always just kiss you. Tends to get the message across." He nudges Billy gently, who has regained the power of speech, albeit somewhat shakily.
"Um, yeah," Billy says, a shy smile starting at the corners of his mouth, "You could definitely do that. Um, I mean. If you wanted. I wouldn't be, um, averse to those developments, were they to occur-"
“Billy.”
“Also, did you just beat me up and then come onto me? As far as seduction techniques go, that’s got to be-“
"Kaplan, shut up."
"Shutting up. Right away. Just-"
(Neither of them know that Teddy forcibly shutting Billy up is going to become a major theme in their relationship, but even if they did, they wouldn’t mind.)
Billy Kaplan has a lot of strange and wonderful things happen to him, but nothing quite as bizarre and bewildering and totally definitely kind of absolutely amazing as Teddy Altman sitting in his bedroom kissing him.
My life, he thinks fervently, is awesome.
And he doesn’t set a single thing on fire.