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If Billy hadn’t just bought the damn coffee, and if he didn’t desperately need it, he’d seriously consider throwing it at Tommy. Plastic lid and cheap paper coffee sleeve and all. Luckily for Tommy and his as yet unscalded skin, Billy needs the coffee, if for no other reason than to be able to cope with Tommy without throwing coffee all over him.
It’s a circular line of reasoning that Billy is not quite capable of getting his head around because, again, he still has not yet had his coffee.
He puts Tommy out of his mind long enough to take a sip and winds up with a scalded mouth and a splashed shirt for his trouble because Tommy, being Tommy, is apparently determined to not be put out of mind. Billy splutters and chokes when Tommy zips around in front of him. Suddenly. Again.
“Tommy, would you knock it the fuck off, jesus?” he says, groping a handful of napkins off the counter to blot the coffee from his previously stained shirt.
Billy’s scowl deepens as Tommy continues to buzz around him, fiddling with the jugs of creamer and rustling the artfully arranged cups of straws. Clearly a coffee shop was not the best place to meet up with someone so hyperactive. But, Billy sighs, addiction is a powerful mistress.
“Seriously stop,” he tries again. “And-- powers? Public? What part of ‘civilian identity’ to you fail to grasp?” Billy can quote Kate’s speech verbatim, having been on the receiving end of it more times than he’s comfortable mentioning.
“Grouchy,” Tommy says, turning over the wire basket full of sugar packets. “Chillax, bro. Drink your coffee. Then put on your not-so-pissy pants.”
“Did you really just say ‘Chillax’? Are you stunted? Are we suddenly in 2005?” Billy says, tossing the crumple of napkins in a trashcan as they leave the shop. Why did he agree to meet Tommy so early? What kind of demented human being chooses to be awake when being buried under a pile of blankets is the more obvious and inviting option?
“You never know, bro, could be,” Tommy says with an infuriatingly smug grin on his face, proving Billy’s dour point. “Could be that that Starbucks existed in a pocket of hidden time and as soon as we walked in we got locked in to some past year, vocabulary and all. You can’t say I’m wrong.”
And the sad thing is: this is basically true. While yeah, Billy knows that this is genuinely just Tommy being a jackass as per usual, he has also been around long enough at this point to know that a random timestream-skipping Starbucks from 2005 is actually kind of disturbingly plausible. The fact that he has to entertain that thought for even a millisecond-- yeah, this is his life now.
“Sometimes I really really hate you,” he mutters, and does his level best to drink all the coffee in one gulp.
Tommy laughs when he coughs on it. “Nah, admit it, your life before you met was a drab and uninteresting landscape. Face it, little bro, I’m the best thing that could’ve ha--”
Tommy stops abruptly, and Billy actually gets three whole steps in front of him before he realises it.
He turns, and Tommy has gone stock still on the sidewalk. That in and of itself is unusual enough to mark, but it’s the closed down look on Tommy’s face that really halts Billy in his tracks. He hasn’t seen Tommy without his cocky smirk in a long time.
“If it isn’t the little Spazz,” says a harsh, reedy voice, and every single hair on Billy’s body stands on end. For a split second Billy is convinced - convinced - that the owner of the voice must be talking to him - because really, who else? - and he moves to duck in on himself before a second voice chimes in with a rattly stoner’s laugh and “What the fuck, Twitchy McGee, it’s totally you!”
Billy is not always the most observant person in the world, but not even a blind baby bat would be able to miss the way Tommy’s fists clench against his pants or the way the muscles in his jaw jump.
“Man,” says the owner of the first voice, who is, without a trace of irony, actually wearing a popped collar over another popped collar, “it has not been the same without you around.” The words are nothing Tommy hasn’t said before, but this guy is saying them with a sneer, and now Billy’s hackles are up for a completely different reason.
“Heard everyone else finally caught on to how completely shithouse crazy you are,” the first guy is saying. “Took ‘em long enough, but damn did I miss my fun when you disappeared.”
“Yeah,” says the second guy, with another burst of that horrible laugh, “how was the loony bin, Spazz?”
Tommy’s eyes are hard and dark and these jackasses are laughing like this is the funniest thing that has ever happened to them. Abruptly, their laughing cuts short, turning to a strangled yelp, and they fall to the ground clutching the back of their pants.
Tommy jumps back a step, startled, and he turns with a jerk as if he’s only just remembered that Billy is there. He opens his mouth to speak, then stops, squinting at Billy’s face. “I see blue,” he says, pointing.
“You sense make no,” Billy says, cocking an eyebrow.
Tommy looks back at the boys still writhing on the ground, and then squints again at Billy as Billy turns to walk away.
“Did you just,” Tommy starts, following, “Did you just seriously give them a magic wedgie?”
“Always wanted to try that,” Billy says without looking back.
Tommy squeezes the bridge of his nose and laughs long and hard. He slings an arm around Billy shoulders. Billy’s hand tightens on his coffee cup and he fights the urge to shrug him off. “Okay, you know what, I take it back,” Tommy says. “Feel free to wear your pissy pants all the time. I’ll put up with your griping any day if the result is that.”
Billy rolls his eyes and finally does shrug Tommy off. “Just shut up and let me drink my coffee.”
“And quit it with the speedy shit,” he says as Tommy zips ahead. “Public!”
::fin::