Chapter Text
So maybe lying his ass off to Eddie really wasn’t Teen’s best idea, but he just had to roll with it. The plan of leaving to talk to his boyfriend in the middle of the night kept on course, even though it proved more difficult than his sleep-addled brain had thought when he’d thrown that idea out to Edddie. God forbid the Coven all sleep at normal times like functional people, so he had to improvise to be able to leave in the dead of the night without being noticed. As it turns out, his improvisation came as an uncapped bottle of wine and a pack of tarot cards placed on the kitchen counter. Now the Witches were all more or less dead to the world in various stages of post-drunkenness naps and Teen took it as his cue to strike. He put on his ripped up coat, picked up his keys with a minimum amount of jingling and stole away in the middle of the night.
He only drove a few minutes, Westview’s rocky paths crunching under his tires every now and then, with only his headlights to help him distinguish the road, before he parked and cut the motor in front of the children’s park.
(Wanda created it with her powers.
Specifically for him and—)
His old engine groaned for a few more seconds after he took out his keys and out of the blemish beam of a street lamp, Teen spotted Eddie.
The poor boy looked worried out of his mind. He was dressed haphazardly, like he’d been throwing on random pieces of clothing in the past days as if it was the least of his worries. His eyes were borderline red, slightly puffy and irritated. He was hunched over on a bench, nails picking at some loose thread in his pants. He seemed not to have slept in days.
Teen didn’t deserve that boy.
The broader man jumped at the sound of the car’s door slamming shut. He twisted his back around to take a look at Teen, stared in his eyes.
An onslaught of thoughts assaulted Teen’s mind, knotting his brain in a low ache, so many he wasn’t able to pick much out. Eddie was relieved to see him alive and well, in one piece, and, well, he couldn’t really blame him.
Teen gave his boyfriend, who hadn’t moved a muscle even through all those thoughts, a strained smile. He crept up besides him, the smooth earth giving way below his feet, holding his head in one hand. He felt like his telepathy had doubled down since he’d come back from The Road and the multitude of Eddie’s worried thoughts was giving him a migraine.
Stupid powers.
“Hey.” “Billy.”
The aforementioned boy sat down on the cold, old bench with a sigh matching the poor thing’s creaking from the additional weight.
Teen put his hands in his pockets in one swift movement upon realizing Eddie would be able to see them in the flickering light up above. See his fingers.
He’d never touched the Darkhold. He thinks, hopes he never will. But his powers, they felt like they knew it. They attached him to other versions of himself in other universes, some created by him in more alternate worlds, others by some sort of being that he knew, as if on instinct, was called The Demiurge. Something familiar.
One of those alternate versions of him had had a less than fortunate encounter with a Scarlett Witch too corrupted by the Book of the Damned to bother hiding her thoughts. This ten year old Billy, who was watching the TV when it happened, bickering with his…– was assaulted with an uncontrollable onslaught of knowledge of Dark Magick and that which contains the Darkhold. A part of his soul had kept it, and even though he didn’t know any of it, the deepest parts of his mind did. It didn’t matter to his magic that he didn’t have the slightest idea what that version of himself saw in the mind of that monster – he knew. He knew. He knew–
“Eddie, something’s going on with me. Something– something’s not right. It’s not right because it is right, but the body’s wrong , and William Kaplan’s dead .”
What the hell is he– “What the hell are you talking about? Billy, you’re not– you’re not dead, okay!? You’re here. Everything’s okay, I don’t..” I don’t understand what he’s talking about. What the fuck is wrong with him? Maybe his head injury–
Something in Teen snapped, like a twig that was crushed under the weight of a leopard chasing down a hare. Not his head injury. William’s. William. William who's dead. William who’s not him.
William…
“It’s not my head injury! William was the one in the car crash, I wasn’t– I was after. I’m not– I’m not William Kaplan.”
It occurred to him then that a tear was streaming down his eye, and that his whole speech was an incomprehensible mess for the poor Eddie who didn’t know anything, nothing at all. His breath quickened, his hands crackled– The panic wasn’t expected, he’d thought it’d go smoothly, but now that it was there it made sense.
It was his first time talking about his body displacement out loud.
Teen choked up the urge to throw up, his body begging him to swallow his next words, and then opened his mouth, and… “I’m Billy Maximoff.”
He kind of blacked out for a second, no more and no less (It was more), but that was enough to miss Eddie’s first thoughts on the revelation. He came back to himself, feeling his eyes in the back of his head, his heart in his throat and his lungs in his stomach, and it was quiet.
Bless the quiet , he thought dimly.
“--And you’re not making any sense! William, maybe you need a hospital? I think you really need a hospital, okay love? You– you probably hit your head again, you just need help.”
Teen sighed, let Eddie finish his rambling -which he had apparently missed half of- and closed his eyes a moment.
“Think of a number between 10 000 and 26 000, specifically. Make it a decimal, too. I
don’t
want to have to do it twice.”
What.
“What? Okay, Billy, you need–”
“Just do it! And then we’ll see if a hospital can help me. Okay?” Liar, liar, liar.
Quiet. Quiet. He didn’t want to hear.
24 398,76.
When he repeated it, Eddie broke.
He didn’t believe in magic. But the existence of mutants was undeniable. Mutants had powers. And mutants were villainized and discriminated against everywhere. Their lives were constantly endangered, and most of them ended up in experimental facilities. Eddie felt for mutants.
He was pretty sure this whole ordeal was his boyfriend coming out as a mutant.
Now, Eddie feared for mutants.