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“That’s not enough pink.”
Billy propped himself up on his elbow, the carpet not thick enough at all to cushion his arm properly, and stared into his three year old daughter’s wide blue eyes. “You’re using the pink crayon,” he pointed out. “So I’m using the purple one.” The colouring pages pulled from the book had drifted around them like a scribbled-over blizzard, blanketing the corner of the living room with a rainbow of paper.
“But purple isn’t pink.” Katie refused to give in to logic, her lower lip jutting out alarmingly. Teddy’s voice rose and fell in the kitchen, the dinner dishes stacked in the draining board and the ringing phone having called him away at exactly the right moment to avoid the incoming battle.
Terrible twos, my ass. It’s the threes you have to watch out for.
(On the plus side, she seemed to have mostly picked up Teddy’s power set rather than his, so the possibility of explosions went way, way down. The question of whether she’d eventually develop super-strength had yet to be determined. Trying to get information on her potential Kree/Skrull/Mutant Human genetic combinations had ended up with Reed shaking sheaves of paper at him, muttering about reality warpers ruining science as a discipline, and blaming Billy for his extra white hair. It had been easier in the end to simply wait and see.)
“I know that, sweetheart, but how can I use the pink crayon at the same time as you are?”
“But I don’t want it to be purple.” Her jaw set firmly, and thank God Teddy hung up and wandered back in to the room.
“That was your mom on the phone.”
Billy shoved himself up to his feet, tapping his paper on the way. A wash of blue sparkled over the paper for the span of an eyeblink, and the purple crayon changed tone to pink. Katie clapped in appreciation.
“Giving in again?” Teddy teased him, grabbing his hand to finish hauling him upright. “And you keep accusing me of being wrapped around her little finger.”
“Can I call it picking my battles?” Teddy snorted at him and Billy hung his head in mock chagrin. “Her teenage years are going to be a nightmare.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Billy tugged Teddy’s hand to pull him closer, lifting his chin to steal a kiss as Teddy’s arm found its usual home around Billy’s waist.
Half his life had been spent kissing Teddy— literally half, his thirty-second birthday only a few months ago—and that easy movement had gone from stolen thrill, to habit, to instinct buried so deep inside his bones that even breathing required more thought. And the press of his lips still made Billy’s heart pick up the pace. “What did Mom want?”
“Oh, she wanted to make sure we were still meeting them at Temple tomorrow for the Purim party. I told her we were...” he paused, and frowned. “Unless you’ve got something else planned?”
Already? Isn’t it still February? No, somehow time had kept marching on right past Tu b’shvat and Aaron’s birthday. And Aunt Viv had already been calling around about seder plans, which she started doing five weeks to the day before Passover, usually, which- yeah. “Is that tomorrow?” Billy groaned. “Ahh, shi-“ he glanced across the room and slid the curse into something slightly more acceptable, given current company. “Sheep.”
“Why did daddy say sheep?”
Teddy snickered. “Because daddy has a potty mouth.”
“Because daddy completely forgot and now we’ve only got tonight to figure out some kind of costumes that don’t scream ‘last minute and a stapler.’” Billy scruffed his hand through his hair (not greying, not yet, as long as he resolutely ignored one or two suspiciously glinting strands near his temples).
Teddy didn’t seem all that worried, even as he bent and started to gather up some of the scattered papers. “What about the caterpillar thing from Hallowe’en?”
“That works for her, but there’s still the two of us,” Billy felt the need to point out. “And it’s not like we can just use our uniforms.” Showing up at synagogue in full kit as Avengers would make for one hell of a dramatic entrance, sure, but it definitely wouldn’t endear him any further to the ritual committee. They were still pissed at him for being half an hour late picking Katie up from preschool the time that AIM had accidentally animated the Wall Street Bull.
“Why not? Other than the whole ‘blowing our cover stories’ thing, though I’m pretty sure there are a few people there who already have us pegged.” The grin on Teddy’s face was a good indication that he was trying to wind Billy up, most likely so that Billy would quit bitching.
Billy relented, returning Teddy’s exasperated smile. “Easy for you to say; you went back to cargo pants. I’m not wearing tights to Temple. The old lady brigade is a lot scarier than anything we face on the job.”
“Pockets are useful.” Teddy finished the quick clean-up and squatted down to be at Katie’s eye level. “While you work on ideas, I know someone who needs a bath.”
Up she went over his shoulder, giggling madly as they headed down the hallway toward the bathroom. “I want bubbles! Pleeeeeease?”
It was so perfect, so easy a moment, that Billy automatically turned to the window overlooking the Park and scanned the skies for something heading their way. But the view remained clear. No comets, no alien spacecraft, no real-world versions of the batsignal blazing through the sky to interrupt their evening routine.
One of these days, I’m going to get less paranoid.
And that’s when something will go badly wrong.
It wasn’t the easiest refrain to live with, the distant hum always somewhere in the back of his head, but it was one of those things that probably just came with the territory. Being an Avenger generally meant strapping a great big target on your back, and so far Billy and Teddy hadn’t been exceptions to that rule. Zoloft didn’t do much for anxiety when the threats you worried about were real.
For the moment, at least, the city stretched out peacefully in front of him, and Billy could let the tension in his shoulders go.
Now to figure out what the hell to do about Purim costumes.
Bath time rolled into teeth-brushing and sleepy cuddles, the little dark-haired girl snuggled down between Billy and Teddy trusting implicitly that her fathers would keep her safe. Teddy slipped out of the room while she was still struggling to keep her eyes open, turning off the light as he left. Billy lay there a little while longer, until Katie’s breathing slowed and her hand loosened from around his fingers.
“Sleep tight, baby girl,” he murmured, pressing a gentle kiss against her hair, still a little damp from the bath.
Billy blinked away the sting in his eyes as he emerged from the dark bedroom into the bright light of the hall.
Teddy wasn’t in the living room, or the kitchen- he was in their bedroom, standing on a chair, wrestling a box down from the back of the top shelf in the walk-in closet. “She’s out?” he asked, balancing the box on his shoulder and trying to step down off the chair at the same time.
Billy moved across the room and took the box before it could fall. It was an old moving carton, a couple of feet long in each direction, both full and lighter than he’d expected. While there was something funny about helping Teddy with a lightweight cardboard box when only a few days ago Teddy had been hauling derailed train cars around, Teddy didn’t complain.
“Completely, and I almost fell asleep beside her,” Billy answered, stifling the yawn. “And before you ask, no, I didn’t dream up any brilliant ideas for tomorrow.” He frowned down at the box in his hands. “What’s this?”
“It’s a box we never unpacked, from your parents’ place.” Teddy took it from him and dropped to the floor, popping open the tape that sealed the top. “It’s been back there since we moved in-
“-that’s what, ten years?”
“Twelve?”
“Can’t be that important, then.” Billy shrugged and sat on the edge of the bed, watching the process. “If we’d needed anything that was in there we’d have noticed long ago.”
“There might be something that’ll spark ideas,” Teddy suggested. “Old comics, cosplay stuff? Any clothes in there won’t be old enough to be officially retro, but you never know.”
It turned out to be a fairly standard ‘where the hell do we put this, oh! This one is still open’ junk-dump box, at least on the surface.
High school notebooks; a bunch of CDs that were probably scratched all to hell and wouldn’t play, if he could even find a CD player anywhere these days; canvas tote bags with convention logos and programs for panels from a decade and a half gone-
- a teddy bear that Billy dove for and Teddy stole, laughing, until he claimed a bribe. One long, passionate and lingering kiss later, and Behr was set aside for laundry and then – ultimate destination – Katie’s wall of stuffies.
Near the bottom of the box, though, Teddy’s arms and shoulders all but vanished down inside after he’d handed Billy a couple of broken game controllers and a bundle of cat-5 cable—Teddy stopped. And he stared down with a dawning light in his eyes and a wide, nostalgic smile on his face.
“Oh, man,” he sighed, and when he looked up to meet Billy’s questioning gaze, his eyes were alight. “You’re never going to believe this, Bee.”
“What?” Billy had slid into a crossed-leg seat on the floor, and he leaned forward to try and catch a glimpse.
Teddy lifted his mystery treasure out of the box like he was holding the crown of England. The headband was still mostly in a circle but the attachments were bending outward, dinged and dented from wear and from being shoved in a box under a pile of junk for more than a decade. Still, the memories flooded back full-force, and Billy... well, he cringed. Because that was the only possible reaction to being faced with first-costume design choices made by a sixteen year old. “Head wings,” Teddy announced, with barely contained glee.
“Oh no,” Billy breathed out in horror. “Is that where those went?”
“The rest of it’s here too.” Teddy dove back into the box and emerged with a handful of black fabric, scraps of red, battered gauntlets that had begun life as motorcycle gloves, and a brown leather satchel. He paused, frowned, turned it over and looked at it closely. “Is this a purse?”
“I liberated it from my mom,” Billy confessed, more caught up in the wash of memory than feeling any kind of guilt for the raid on her closet. He took the bag from Teddy’s hands, ran his fingertips over the brown leather, the scuffs and scars that fighting had put into the once-smooth surface. “She never used it, and I needed somewhere to hold my stuff.”
“Pockets,” Teddy advised sagely, and didn’t move out of the way when Billy nudged his thigh with his toe. Not a kick, but the point was made. Teddy shook out the bundle of black stretch and held the bodysuit up to the light. “It’s too bad my first costume got trashed. I liked the vest.”
The costume looked impossibly small, kid-sized and empty. Billy took it from him and folded it, the faint smell of smoke and sweat still clinging to the fibres. The last time he’d worn this one had been the day Nate vanished back into the time stream, before any of them had even begun to understand the magnitude of the responsibilities they were taking on. “Do you remember what it was like to put these on for the first time?”
Teddy was studying him when Billy looked up, a crease between his brows suggesting that he’d noticed Billy’s drift into melancholy. And he smiled, that teasing grin which meant ‘I’m going to snap you out of that mood whether you want me to or not.’ It was a good, familiar smile. He waggled his eyebrows. “I remember what it was like trying to get you out of it that first time-”
The moment passed, replaced with better memories. “Unitards and jock straps are not the best combination. Especially when you’re in a hurry.” Fumbling and laughing, every inch of his skin yearning for more touch, the hell of Teddy’s hand right up against Billy’s dick, everything hard and desperate-
“The look is good, though.” Teddy lunged at him suddenly, managed to get the winged headband half-on and half-dangling off Billy’s head. “Gotcha! You can’t escape your destiny.”
“Come on-”
“You know you want to try it on again.”
His back up against the side of the bed and nowhere else to run, Billy gave up trying to fend Teddy off and let him re-centre the band – and the stupid wings – on his head. It wasn’t as heavy as he remembered. “The whole outfit?” Billy laughed, because it was impossible not to with wings on his head. God, teenage him had been a massive dork. “Revisiting old makeouts or not, there’s no way that’s going to fit.”
Teddy made a disappointed noise.
“I'm at least three inches taller than I was back then. Heavier, too. And this started as a dance unitard from a ballet school catalog,” he pointed out, and poked his finger through a hole in one of the seams, the serged threads halfway unravelled. “It's not going to grow with me like unstable molecules would.”
“I suppose.” Teddy shuffled in close, balanced on his knees, and slung Billy’s old cape around his shoulders like a rope, used the ends to haul Billy up and in close. “There’s always this. If I’d known that it was a hint at your massive cape fetish, mind you-”
“You’d what? Not have kissed me at all?”
“Mmm, no.” They were nose to nose now, Teddy’s latest attempt at a beard golden in the soft glow of the table lamp at their bedside. “I definitely would have done that. But I might have bought stock in a couple of fabric companies, given the rate at which you go through yardage.”
There was really no answer for that except to kiss him, and this was instinct now too, the swell of familiar good right that took them from the floor to the bed, shedding their clothes like skins that were too tight. This was easy, knowing the places and the touches that would make Teddy gasp, make him arch into Billy’s hands and his mouth, a song they’d practiced together a hundred, a hundred-thousand times before.
(Not that things were boring; it was just that up-against-the-wall tended to be reserved for days when Katie was with her grandparents. The luxury of having time to be lazy with his kisses, to trace their history with his tongue on Teddy’s skin, that was special too.)
His body tightened and he cried out Teddy’s name, magic sparking blue in his fingers and Teddy’s strength the only thing holding him to the earth. And Teddy was there, as he always was and would be, taking Billy deeper, shuddering around him with his own orgasm, the rhythms of his body as familiar as Billy’s own.
Teddy laughed with delight, the soft warm sound that always meant he was satisfied. Billy pulled out and curled in beside him, sweat and all. Teddy’s arms wrapped around him to hold him close, his heartbeat slowing under Billy’s ear.
There; now the world was right. Nostalgia and memory had its place, but this was Billy’s life now – his husband, his daughter, and a job that sent him out to save the world once or twice a week. Things could be a hell of a lot worse.
“We still haven’t figured out costumes,” Teddy said, his fingertips tracing lazy circles across Billy’s shoulders and down his back.
Get out of bed and deal with it, or lie there in the warmth and the afterglow until they absolutely, positively had to clean up? Not even worth considering. “Fuck it. I’ll worry about it tomorrow.”
“Bandaid on the nose, or is that overkill?” Teddy closed the medicine cabinet and ran his fingers through his hair again, poking the gel to make it messier.
“You could put bruise makeup all up and down your arms and it still wouldn’t be overkill,” Billy replied, as Katie pulled off her hat again and flung it down the hall. “Clint’s a walking disaster area. I’m amazed you still have that jacket.”
“I only wore it once. Then Clint started using the purple chevron and I let him have it. It fit the whole colour palette thing he had going on, anyway. The costume never had time to get destroyed.”
Billy tried to get the ladybug antenna back on Katie and she took them off, handed them to him, and marched back down the hall. “Where are you going?” he asked her, giving chase. “The door’s that way.”
She made a beeline for the box of art supplies on her shelf, coming back with a green crayon. “If you’re papa, then you need to be green.”
Billy looked down at himself, at the cargo pants he’d borrowed from Teddy, too loose in the butt and thighs, and the quilted vest that wasn’t the right orange on the shoulders at all. “To be fair,” he offered, “papa’s not green right now. And I don’t think a crayon is going to work.”
“I can be green without a crayon,” Katie announced, and Billy blinked at her. A moment later, her face squinched up into a look of fierce concentration and she washed over Skrull-green, then looked up at him and beamed. “Now I’m papa too!”
Finding out that Katie had inherited Teddy’s healing factor had been fantastic news, something to take the edge off of the absolute terror that came with being solely responsible for a helpless screaming almost-person. This... was cool, certainly, but bound to make life a whole lot more interesting. In that ‘may you live in interesting times’ sort of way. At least until they could teach her not to do it at preschool.
“Hunh,” Billy said aloud, scrambling to figure out what, exactly, one did when your kid turned out to be a shapeshifter. If Teddy’s mom were still alive, this would be exactly the moment he’d be diving for the phone to call her. “When did you figure out how to do that, baby girl?”
Footsteps in the hall would be Teddy, coming to find them. “Are we going? Your mom’s going to be watching the clock until we get there.” A hinge squeaked behind him, and Teddy paused in the doorway. “What-”
And there was the expert he needed, right on cue. Billy rose to his feet, and clapped Teddy on the shoulder. “This one’s yours,” he proclaimed, abdicating immediately. “I’ll do all the other conversations if I have to, periods and bras included, but this one’s your problem.” And he retreated from the room.
“Bee, wait!”
Billy didn’t – he headed down the hall, gathering the discarded bits and pieces of Katie’s costume as he went, stashing the socks and gloves in his pockets. These are good. Next costume change, I’m getting pockets too.
“You owe me for this one,” Teddy sounded like he was grumbling, but he had a proud smile on his face that hadn’t budged since they’d left the apartment. They lingered at the door to the sanctuary, watching Katie chase around with the other kids in the lobby before the service started. Her skin was still a vivid green, but given that she was dressed as a caterpillar, no-one had actually noticed that it wasn’t face paint. So far.
Arms folded as he leaned against the wall, his terrible Hulkling cosplay actually really comfortable, Billy looked affronted. “I already said I’d take the puberty conversations-”
“And dating.”
“Oh, come on.”
“It’s only fair.”
“I married my high school sweetheart,” Billy reminded him archly. “What the hell do I know about dating?” He earned rolled eyes and a wide grin from Teddy on that one, and the conversation naturally shelved itself. For the moment. Because Billy’s parents showed up then, and Billy got The Eye from his mother when she realized Katie had gone green, but there wasn’t any time right then to explain.
Seats weren’t as easy to find as they were on Saturday mornings; Purim was a big draw holiday, especially for the kids. The normally staid crowd at Temple had gone mad like every year, the Rabbi in a clown suit and the heavily-pregnant Cantor dressed as a fried egg. Baskets of noisemakers were passed down the aisles, the Gabbai set up the ‘BOO’ and ‘NO BOO’ flip signs on the bimah, and they were off and running.
As was Katie, up and down the aisle, bouncing from her uncles to her grandparents, her parents and back again. Until eventually, despite the cheering and the noise, the whirling of the groggers and the hissing for Haman, she curled up in Billy’s lap, all three-feet of her, and fell asleep. Her skin faded slowly back to pink, her face smushed against his chest and her lashes dark against her cheek.
Teddy laid his arm along the back of Billy’s chair, and Billy slouched sideways, just enough to rest his head against Teddy’s shoulder. There would be schnapps and rugelach later, baskets of fruit and a magician for the kids (stage sleight of hand, which was really a lot harder than anything Billy could do), and at the end of the evening, a warm bed and the promise of tomorrow.
The world was full of people who would like nothing more than to see the good guys taken down; villains and hatred weren’t only found in stories. But no matter how dark it got, how much darkness crowded in, the light could never be extinguished completely. He could see it on the faces of his family around him, on friends in the congregation, in the laughter and noise and the familiar Hebrew words that lingered in the air. Strength, and hope, and a promise that tomorrow would always come.