Work Text:
“You give me that look that’s like laughing
With liquid in your mouth;
Like you’re choosing between choking
And spitting it all out.
Like you’re trying to fight gravity on a planet that insists
That love is like falling, and falling is like this.”
—Falling is Like This, Ani DiFranco
**
“All right,” Iron Lad said, dropping lightly to his feet. His voice was bright with false cheer. “Good work, you guys. Things are really shaping up out there. Next time, we’re sure to get it right.”
Hulkling wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist, pushing aside messy black hair. He caught Billy’s eyes and tipped his head toward him with a wry grin. “Have you ever noticed,” he murmured, voice pitched low, “that the more we suck, the more he compliments us?”
“Positive conditioning,” Billy said. He was sprawled inelegantly by the bleachers, one hand braced against the packed dirt, the other checking to make sure his head hadn’t come flying off during their latest attempt at teamwork. “He’s trying to help us achieve our goal through active visualization. Ugh, I need like ten showers.”
God, he felt gross. Sweat dripped from his chin and trickled down his spine to catch in the waist of his jeans. The air smelled like cooking trash and exhaust, and he was pretty sure if he stuck his nose into his pits, he wouldn’t smell much better. Summer in the city was hard; summer in the city when you were training to save the world was brutal.
He startled as a huge—massive, really—green hand thrust toward him. Billy stared at the other boy’s outstretched palm before tilting his chin and peering up into his face. The hot sun was setting behind Hulkling now, forming a halo. Which was, he mused, exactly what his overactive imagination needed. “I slipped him a few of your mother’s books,” Billy added, sliding his hand into Hulkling’s and letting himself be tugged up. “In case you were wondering.”
“Is that why he’s started on about trust exercises?”
“Oops?”
Hulkling snorted, letting Billy go as he began to blur around the edges. Billy scuffed his foot and pretended to look away, squinting his eyes toward the sun as if he were, oh…judging the time or predicting the weather or something else predictably lame. Really, he was watching the change. The shift.
Black hair bled pale, going longer above his brow. Green skin flushed into a golden tan. Dark eyes dilated, and when he blinked, they were a clear blue, like some artist’s interpretation of the sky. Hulkling—Teddy—rolled his shoulders as they shrank, leaving the stretched neck of his t-shirt gaping around his collarbone. He reached down to grab the hem, pulling it off in one gorgeous, unfairly graceful move.
His muscles actually rippled with the gesture.
Billy bit the inside of his mouth and squinted hard against the sun, color spreading across his cheeks as he pretended not to ogle that broad expanse of bare skin. Freckles dotted Teddy’s shoulders, dipping low down his spine, all the way to the waist of his jeans. Billy could never understand why a shapeshifter let himself have freckles.
He wondered, if he could be perfect, would he make the same bizarrely imperfect choices as Teddy had?
Teddy leaned down to grab his duffle; his baggy jeans tightened around his (yes, perfect) ass. “You know,” he said, voice a little too even, “you don’t have to pretend like you’re not looking.”
Billy immediately jerked his shoulders forward and ducked his head, mortified at being caught. The gesture was reflexive, ingrained from years of being the punching bag for kids as impossibly gorgeous as Teddy; Teddy frowned when he saw it. “Um,” Billy said, face going hot.
“I’m, you know, your boyfriend now.” Teddy pulled out a clean shirt—this one a crew with orange and aqua stripes—and tugged it on. His cheeks had gone a little pink, too. “So, well. Look all you want, I guess?”
“Habit,” Billy mumbled.
Teddy glanced over. Sunlight glinted off his row of piercings. “The ‘looking’ or the pretending not to?”
Billy rubbed the back of his neck even as he shuffled closer, moving into Teddy’s orbit. He could feel the heat radiating from his body. He could smell sweat and earth and that strange aquatic undertone that always reminded Billy of curling up in his parents’ closet and reading about Narnia when he was a kid.
Where sky and water meet
Where the waves grow sweet—
He flushed when Teddy’s knuckles lightly, deliberately, brushed his own. Teddy was smiling out of one corner of his mouth, dimple flashing. “Did you know,” he said, reaching up to brush his thumb between Billy’s brows, “that you get a little crease right here when your mind goes spinning off into some elaborate fantasy?”
Billy heart gave a near-painful lurch. He shuffled even closer, until there were just a scant few inches between them. “How do you know I’m not plotting your gruesome death or something?” Billy murmured.
Teddy cocked his brows. “I’m not convinced you’re that evil, Asgardian.”
“How do you know I’m not just hiding pure evil under a winsome smile?” He tipped his face up, practically basking in Teddy’s attention. It had always been like this, from the first awkward introduction at Nate’s Hi-I’m-Totally-Evil Want-To-Team-Up-To-Kick-My-Future-Self’s-Ass powwow. Back then, however, he’d been doing his level best not to be caught looking. He stole secret glances and hoarded away impressions to bring out at night, when he was curled around his pillow and trying to remember the exact shade of blue Teddy’s eyes turned when he grinned.
Now he had permission to look. He had permission to touch. He could grab Teddy by the ears and yank him down for a kiss if he wasn’t sure Eli would throw his dirty shorts at their heads.
It was…dizzyingly wonderful, really.
“Winsome smile, huh?” Teddy glanced toward their teammates. Billy followed his gaze, catching Nate looking at them with a curious expression. Nate looked away quickly, and Billy fought a sudden urge to shiver despite the crushing heat of the day.
Speaking of a friendly face hiding pure evil…
“I think you’re going to have to practice your mad cackles and winsome smiles. All I’m seeing is Upper West Side Dork.”
“Hey!”
“With a grass stain on his ass, because he hasn’t worked out flying yet.”
“Hey!”
Billy grabbed for his boyfriend’s—boyfriend!—arm, swatting at him in protest. Teddy just laughed and snagged him about the waist, hoisting him up in a show of strength that never failed to send electric awareness crackling down Billy’s spine. He shuddered as Teddy manhandled him, his own awkward, scrawny limbs so easily manipulated by Teddy’s bigger, broader, impossible grace.
He tipped his face up, not even pretending to fight, focused on Teddy’s mouth with a fierce surge of want so strong he could feel his powers responding. Teddy was laughing and saying something, still teasing him, but Billy had fallen outside of the moment, outside of himself. He wasn’t skin and bones and gawky teenage emotion anymore. He was bigger than that, more than that. He needed more than that.
And then Teddy met his eyes and stilled. His brows lifted in surprise at whatever he saw on Billy’s face. Color swept across his cheeks; even his ears went red. What kind of feeling did it take to make a shapeshifter blush? He pressed in closer, aware of their bodies brushing from chest to knees, and ached to find out.
“Hey,” Billy murmured, sliding his arms around Teddy’s neck.
Teddy ducked close. One big hand rested on Billy’s hip, thumbnail rasping over worn denim as he rubbed a slow, maddening arc along the waist of his jeans. “Hey,” he murmured back. He ducked his head until their faces were very close. Billy could taste his breath, could feel the strength of him. God, it was incredible.
“Right,” Eli said, unnecessarily loud, shattering the moment. “I’ve got a long train ride ahead of me, so I’m going to bolt.”
“I’ll go with you,” Nate added hurriedly. “Or I’ll fly you. Do you want me to fly you? I should fly you. Goodbye, you two.”
Billy felt his own ears burn. The tension that had been steadily collecting in his lower belly began to dissipate. “I think,” he whispered, “that we just scarred our friends.”
Teddy’s eyes ticked over Billy’s shoulder as he watched Eli and Nate beat a hasty retreat across the overgrown field. “I’m pretty sure you’re right. On the plus side,” he added, carefully stepping away to break their unexpected proximity, “I’m also pretty sure we just disqualified ourselves for any trust falls.”
Billy laughed, dragging his fingers through his hair. He was still throwing off sparks, heart hammering too fast in his chest, but he felt a little more in control of his own body the further Teddy got from him. That was something, at least. “I’d love to see an Avengers ropes course, wouldn’t you? Hey,” Billy added, bending to grab his duffle bag. “You said your mom would be out late tonight, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Teddy slung the strap of his black bag over his shoulder, adjusting it across his chest. “She’s showing a couple of apartments tonight. Why?”
“Do you want to come over? My brothers have soccer, so they won’t be underfoot for awhile. And I think we’re having lasagna?” He fiddled with the strap of his own bag as they fell into step together, heading across the old baseball diamond and trash-strewn outfield toward the nearest train station. Civilization felt very far away, this far out in the borough. It was the perfect place for an inept new superhero team to practice at not sucking. “I mean, you don’t have to, but, if you wanted to not be alone or, um, whatever, you could—”
Teddy reached down and took Billy’s hand, threading their fingers together. The warm, gentle grip immediately derailed his words, his brain. “Sure,” Teddy said, squeezing Billy’s hand. “That sounds cool.”
“Cool,” Billy breathed.
“Cool.”
“Cool.”
Teddy squinted at him. “Are you secretly a Buffybot stuck on some kind of programming loop?”
Billy snorted, turning his face to press his forehead against Teddy’s arm. When he breathed, his lungs were filled with the incredible scent of him. “No,” he said. “Shut up, I’m just having a spaz.”
“Oh, well, in that case.”
“You’re mocking me,” Billy sighed. He listed against Teddy, eyes shut, trusting him to keep them both from falling. The crunch of glass and gravel couldn’t drown out the steady, wonderful thrum of Teddy’s heartbeat.
Teddy unlaced their fingers and slid one palm to the small of Billy’s back, guiding him around…something. He didn’t bother to open his eyes long enough to check. “I see repeat viewings of Sherlock are finally paying off.” At Billy’s questioning noise, he leaned in, breath fanning against the shell of his ear. “Your deduction skills are astonishing.” Teddy slipped his fingers into the waist of Billy’s jeans to tug him to a stop. “Also, we’ve reached the fence.”
Billy pulled away, flushed and buzzing all over, just long enough to hold open a tear in the chain-link fence for Teddy. “I’m taking it all back,” he said. His pulse was thrumming beneath the tight cage of his skin. “I’m not that into you after all.”
“You probably should have read the fine print when you signed your official boyfriend papers,” Teddy tsked. “I’m afraid there are no takebacks.”
“Ugh, why do you suck so much?”
Teddy pursed his lips primly. “This response has been edited for mature content. Listener discretion is advised.”
And if that made Billy trip over his own sneakers, at least Teddy was gentleman enough not to comment.
They stepped out onto the cracked sidewalk. The subway station (above-ground, because they were in Queens and Queens was weird) stood some distance away still, rusting metal and old wood sides covered in graffiti and about twenty years’ worth of discarded bubblegum. There was a train in the station, but Billy barely spared it a second glance. There was no way they’d make it, even at a full sprint.
Teddy wrapped an arm around him, hauling Billy in close. There were people on the streets. A small knot of kids their age loitered in the parking lot of an old Burger King, smoking cigarettes and bullshitting about all the crazy things they wouldn’t actually get around to doing this summer. Billy felt himself tensing up as a few of them looked over, but Teddy just pressed his lips to Billy’s temple and hummed in a pleased breath. Like he didn’t even notice them. Like he didn’t even care.
This boy, Billy thought dizzily. Oh God, this boy.
Billy turned sharply on his heel, walking backwards so he could face Teddy, chest filling up high and tight like a balloon. Teddy didn’t care who saw them together. He didn’t care if people where watching them and laughing, or whispering low, disgusting things, or just…just noticing them the way they wouldn’t have noticed if Billy had been a girl.
Teddy didn’t care, probably didn’t even think that way, probably didn’t assume other people were thinking that way because Teddy was good, and kind, and a little naïve, and it made Billy want to blurt out ridiculous things, like,
“I love you,”
even though they hadn’t been dating very long at all, even though it would be really weird to say something like that this early on, emotion spilling up and up and out of him in messy, endless cascade.
Of course, Billy thought in the panicked seconds after his impulsive admission, the trouble with thoughtless declarations was there was no way to take them back.
“Um,” Billy said. Teddy was blinking at him owlishly, visibly shocked. “Um. Um. Crap. That was.” He waved a hand. “You did not hear me say that.”
“Billy,” Teddy began. His voice was low and all too serious.
Billy waved his hand again. “You seriously did not hear me say that.”
“Billy.”
“No, really. Those words, my lips—didn’t happen!”
Teddy reached out to catch his spastically flailing hand, tugging it—and by extension, Billy—closer. He lifted Billy’s hand and turned it, watching Billy through his lashes as he pressed a kiss to his palm. “Your Jedi mind tricks don’t work on me, young Padawan.”
Billy fought not to squirm. “If you say anything about embracing the dark side, I’m packing up the shreds of my dignity and leaving.”
“So noted.” Teddy kissed his palm again, his other arm sliding around Billy’s waist. Billy let himself be tugged forward, into the warm shell of Teddy’s body. Their hips fit together—everything about them fit together, Billy thought dizzily. As if he’d dreamed Teddy up and brought him to life with his magic. It was so unfair; no wonder he was losing his mind. “So,” Teddy said.
Billy dropped his head forward, lightly banging his forehead against Teddy’s strong shoulder. “Can we really not talk about it? You know how I am sometimes with the words and the thinking and the babble and the complete wreck of a human being.”
Teddy chuffed a quiet laugh. His other arm slid around Billy’s waist. “We can not talk about it,” he promised.
Billy breathed a low sigh of relief.
“Especially since,” Teddy added, “I never really pictured the first time I admitted that I love you would be in Queens by the side of the highway, smelling like half-dried sweat and failure.”
Billy’s head jerked up.
“With a Burger King in sight, no less,” Teddy continued. “I always figured I’d be making flowery confessions with one boot planted on the backside of an unconscious Kang. You know, after we saved all of time and space and Iron Man gave us keys to the newly rebuilt Avengers’ Mansion and Cap shook our hands and called us son unironically and Eli had to be dragged off, yelling, ‘I’m not your son, Captain Asshat!’ And then I guess Eli’d punch out another Avengers’ villain, because why not? He’s pretty badass and we’re on a roll.”
“Um.”
“Or maybe.” Teddy tilted his head, bangs falling into his eyes. “We’d be at some super-romantic spot. Like… God, I don’t know, a star show. One of those fancy ones where rich people gather at the astronomy lab up on a hill and drink champagne as they mingle around the giant telescope—like something out of a Bond movie. And I’d be in a tux and you’d be pretending you hadn’t just been dancing spastically like some kind of possessed sock monkey or one of those weird wavy arm wind machine guys…” He snapped his fingers a few times, brow scrunching. “What are those things called?”
“…air dancers.”
Teddy grinned sunnily. “Air dancers, right. Like one of those.”
“I do not dance like a possessed sock monkey,” Billy muttered beneath his breath, but his lips were curving at the corners.
Teddy leaned in, pressing their foreheads together. “But you’ll concede air dancer?”
He couldn’t fight back the low shiver of pleasure. He didn’t want to. This was… God, this was bizarre and wonderful and so very them that his toes were curling in pleasure. He doesn’t think I’m weird, Billy thought. Or if he does, that’s okay, because he’s just like me.
We’re in this together.
Billy slid his arms around Teddy’s neck, fingers digging into thick blond hair. “I can neither confirm nor deny these allegations. So,” Billy prompted, “we were at the swanky Bondesque astronomy party, you were in a tux…”
Teddy slid his hands down (down, down) to lightly grip Billy’s hips. The highway, the train station, the cool kids loitering outside the run-down Burger King—none of that existed anymore. It was like every cliché about love Billy had ever read. Before Teddy, he would have scoffed and said it was all a bunch of romantic bull.
“Yeah,” Teddy murmured. “I was in a tux, and I was so nervous because I was going to be taking this huge freaking step and admitting… You know, we haven’t been together for very long, but something about knowing you’ll be fighting for your life—for everyone’s lives—really soon makes you see things differently. It makes it all clearer. And you may be the biggest spaz I’ve ever met—”
“Hey.”
“—but I’ve never felt more like myself than when I’m with you. And I don’t know about love at first sight, but I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on love at fifth, sixth, and seventh sight and, um, awkwardly descending into shmoop, abort, abort.”
“Ugh,” Billy said, heart doing frantic little somersaults in his chest. “Will you shut up and just kiss me already?”
Teddy flushed, grinning, watching him from beneath his lashes. “Yeah,” he murmured, leaning in. “Sure, I can do that.”
His mouth brushed Billy’s, soft at first—so soft, so sweet, just the barest pressure of lips against lips. Billy hummed in a breath, rising up onto the balls of his feet to bridge the distance between them. He tilted his head, eyes flickering shut as he pressed into the steady rightness of the kiss.
He’d never been kissed before. Teddy had been his first. But Billy couldn’t even imagine someone else making him feel like this.
Billy tangled his fingers in Teddy’s hair, lips parting on a question. Teddy’s tongue dipped out, answering, brushing along the curve of his bottom lip before slipping inside. Their tongues slicked together, slow and shudderingly good.
Please, Billy thought, straining to get closer. He dug his nails into the base of Teddy’s skull, fighting to swallow a soft moan when Teddy gripped his hips and deepened the kiss. It pressed on, slow and languorous and scalding as a summer day, Teddy’s tongue stroking deep into Billy’s mouth as he swallowed the breathless noises Billy couldn’t stop making.
Billy rocked up. He shivered. He fought the urge to press his hips in tight, knowing Teddy would be able to feel the slow stirring of his arousal—seemingly banked and always ready to come roaring to awkward life whenever Teddy so much as touched him. His skin was flushed with heat and his tongue was in Teddy’s mouth and he thought he might come flying apart any second, heart tripping in his skinny chest, body straining helplessly toward Teddy. Toward his boyfriend.
And then Teddy pulled back with a breathless noise, breaking the kiss. A dimple flashed against his smooth cheek as he studied Billy’s upturned face. “‘Since the invention of the kiss,’” Teddy said with mock sincerity, “‘there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.’”
“Oh my God,” Billy protested happily, “you dork.”