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“But even at our swiftest speed
We couldn't break from the concrete
In the city where we still reside.”
—Brothers on a Hotel Bed, Death Cab for Cutie
David was leaning against the kitchen counter, sleeves rolled up and lights catching off the silver in his hair. He wasn’t talking, head tipped and lips tilted at the corner as he listened to another of America’s crazy stories with polite interest.
Something about…space marshmallows or whatever. No, seriously, whatever: Tommy had checked out sometime after the third bottle had been cracked open. Now he was just coasting, watching his old friends with his own little half-smile and letting the familiar rise and fall of their arguments carry him.
Like waves. A spaceship. A—
Wait.
He straightened and scanned Mrs. Kaplan’s immaculate kitchen. There was David, propped against the counter and looking handsome as ever. Kate, sitting with her hip just a few inches from his elbow, scarred fingers toying with the choppy ends of her latest haircut. America was by the fridge, shooting the shit as she rifled through the ancient produce drawer, and even Noh-Varr had set aside his latest obsession to listen with growing interest.
The golden light cast a halo around the not-so-young Avengers, and it would have been like a snapshot from a bygone era except…
“Hey,” Tommy said, interrupting. America shot him a sour glare over her shoulder, but he shrugged that off easily enough. He’d been pissing her off one way or the other for going on twenty years now—so long as she kept her fists to herself, everything was fine. “Where’d Billy and Teddy go?”
David pushed up his glasses. “Teddy’s checking on the kids,” he said.
“And Billy wandered off nearly half an hour ago,” Kate added. “You really lost your head up your ass tonight, didn’t you? What’s the matter, Tommy? Metabolism finally catching up?”
He snorted and pushed aside the empty wine bottle. “That’s not possible.”
But Kate was already grinning like she knew a secret. “I don’t know,” she said on sing-song. “I’ve been talking to Jarvis a lot lately, and he said that every speedster hits a point a couple of decades in where--”
“Oh nooo,” Tommy interrupted in a sickly-sweet croon, both hands turning to flick her off. Kate just laughed, blowing back the chunky sweep of her bangs. “I can’t hear you over the sad trombone of not giving a fuck.”
“I guess middle age is just going to be one unpleasant surprise after another, then,” she said with a vicious smile that only made him love her more. When she tilted her head to playfully stare him down, the roping scar tissue that covered her from chin to toes pulled tight, glinting silver in the kitchen lights. Josh Foley offered to help heal the old battle wounds time and time again, but Kate kept putting him off.
(“I’m thinking of getting them tattooed,” she’d told Tommy once, over random drinks some other ghost of reunions past. “Highlight them. What’s the point of surviving certain death if you don’t make the most of every fuck you no longer give, right?”)
Tommy had a few aches and pains from his own brushes with death, but he sure as shit planned to track Foley down next time he had a chance. No point aging with anything less than full-on spit and vinegar. But hey, whatever, to each their own.
David leaned forward to rest his weight on his forearms. “If I were to take an educated guess,” he said, voice pitched low as America drew back her audience with a loud, pointed clearing of her throat, “I’d say Billy went up to the roof.”
The roof. No, of course, that made sense—it was all but tradition now, after all these years. Whenever Billy started feeling crowded or twitchy or melancholy (or some dangerous combination of all three) he padded his way up to the top floor and shimmied out onto the ledge running the length of his parents’ old brownstone. There was crumbling brick along the façade that clever hands and feet could use as a makeshift stairway up up up toward the slanting gable, and the roof was pitched low enough that once you settled into its arms, you could lay back and watch the city lights for hours.
Tommy glanced toward the dark window, catching sight of the occasional snowflake drifting past. It would be cold out there, but beautiful: exactly the kind of night Billy most loved.
“Go on,” David added in an undertone. He smiled when Tommy looked at him, those brown eyes of his gone warmly knowing. “We’re good down here.”
I’ll cover for you, he didn’t have to say, and Tommy smiled back in a moment of unselfconscious gratitude before jerking his chin in agreement. It turned out if you spent long enough with the smartest man around, you reached a point where words were just decoration—unnecessary iterations on a shared understanding built brick by brick until it rivaled the Avengers HQ itself. Long ago, he used to secretly envy his not-twin for a similar kind of connection he shared with Teddy. Now that he had it for himself?
All that long-ago jealousy was pretty much gone. What he had now was nothing like what Billy had with Teddy, but it was his, and it was real, and it settled in a pit of warmth in his gut as he pushed up from the kitchen chair and padded his way out at half-speed, letting David tell the others whatever he wanted. He didn’t even need to stick around to hear the excuse anymore—he trusted him that much.
Funny, he thought, passing familiar old pictures, zipping through never-changing halls. That might’ve bothered me once upon a time too.
He reached the (open) hallway window in the space of three heartbeats and stuck his head out. Lazily drifting flakes fell around him, sticking to his hair and catching on his lashes as he peered up. Tommy twisted, grabbing the sill and crawling outside as ever-present New York traffic blared far beneath him. The street was half-blocked by a row of old trees Klara Prast had placed in thanks for all the Kaplans had done over the years, but even their gently shifting leaves couldn’t block the whole world out.
There were small dustings of snow on the jut of bricks leading up toward the roof. Tommy blew hot air against his fingers before taking a steady grip, hauling himself up and out. He felt a familiar moment of vertigo as his balance shifted, but it was there and gone again in an flash, letting him put foot over foot as he made his way up.
A cold wind buffeted his coat, sending it snapping like a cape behind him. Billy didn’t look over as Tommy dragged himself up onto the sloping gable. He was sitting perched like a gargoyle at the very crest of the roof, face tilted up toward the moon, snowflakes transmutating into scattered stars in his hair. There were shadows like pale bruises beneath his eyes, but his lips were parted in an unself-conscious smile: just the most powerful man in the known universe conversing with the cosmos.
Or some shit like that.
Tommy shivered and scrambled up old slate, careful of the gathering drifts of snow. Billy didn’t bother looking over at him no matter how much noise he made, dark lashes flickering as if he really were reading the stars. Tommy was tempted to give him a hard shove and see what happened, but at least one of the scars snaking across his ribs came from startling Billy at a bad moment, and he’d rather not spend this yearly reunion being gently chided by David at the ER.
You know…again.
So instead he did what he did best: dragged up his legs, propped his elbow on his knee and his chin on his fist, and went about being as annoying as humanly possible.
“Hey,” Tommy said in a mocking sing-song. Billy didn’t even blink. “Hey. Hey. Hey hey hey. Hey, loser. Hey.”
The last was coupled with a sharp poke to the ribs, and Billy finally startled, looking over at him with a confused blink, as if he were tumbling back into the moment from a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away. Slowly his thin mouth quirked into a smile and he scooted over, as if making room. “Hey yourself,” the Sorcerer Supreme—demiurge, terror of terrors, whatever—said. “Finally get tired of all the hey-do-you-remembers?”
Tommy barked a laugh. “Oh, we waded through all that bullshit an hour ago,” he said, settling in more comfortably. Billy was positioned to block the worst of the wind (score!), and if he angled himself just right, he could see the Empire State building rising like a blade in the distance. Red and gold light shone from its apex in celebration of the Captain’s latest victory. “America’s holding stage now, but any minute now someone’s going to start breaking out the baby pictures.”
“I’m sorry,” Billy said, pretending to feel around for his wallet. “Did you say you wanted to see baby pictures?”
“I said I wanted to shove my fist in your face,” Tommy retorted with zero heat. It was still weird, to think of any of them being old enough for, well, that. Kids and secret identities and homes of their own. Lives that didn’t revolve completely around the latest villain of the week.
God, some of them actually had for-real jobs, and if that wasn’t a kick in the nut, he didn’t know what was.
In fact, now that he was thinking about it (now that he was willing to admit he hadn’t been thinking of anything else in a long time), he couldn’t remember the last time he’d truly lost himself in battle. There was a time, back when this all started, when he was driven by this…this churning need to fling himself head-first into everything that came his way. It felt an awful lot like anger and lingered like pain and wore away at him for years from the inside-out. Each battle was his blood and bones and meat and air, and everything else was just passing time until he was back in the fray.
Somewhere along the line, all that had begun to change. He just wished he knew where, and how, and what to think of it all. What to think about these adult-shaped strangers his teenaged self would have gladly died for.
“…hey Billy?” Tommy said, voice dropped quiet enough it was almost lost beneath the wind.
Billy’s face was tipped back up toward the stars again, snow gathering on his lashes. He looked so wise in his red cloak, neatly trimmed beard showing the first streaks of salt and pepper. “Hmmm?” he said, not really listening.
Can you wish us back there, he wanted to ask, and yet…he didn’t, all at the same time. He both missed those early days and never wanted to think of them again, because he may have felt free back before he had obligations (a family, a niece, a secret fucking identity of his very own), but he’d also felt, just. Lost. Buried under that quicksilver anger and pain and—
All right. None of this maudlin shit.
“Hey,” Tommy said, reversing course and snagging at the first thing that came to mind. “Remember when we all used to live here?”
By we all, of course, he meant the Kaplans plus him and Teddy. Neither of them had had anywhere else to go, and Rebecca Kaplan was nothing if not willing to open her home and heart to whatever weird little losers her cosmic son dragged in from the cold.
Billy began to grin, attention turning away from the endless cosmos and back to him. It felt, weirdly, like a victory. “Well I’d almost managed to forget the hell of you two ganging up on me every day, but it looks like I’m about to be dragged back down memory lane,” he said. “So thanks for that.”
“Ha,” Tommy scoffed. “If we’d actually managed to gang up on you, we would have totally used our powers for good. Strapped you down and fixed your stupid hair, or shoved you into better clothes, or something.”
That slow grin just spread. “Oh yeah?” Billy said. “I hate it break it to you, Tommy, but back then I was cool.”
“Uh, I hate to break it to you, Billy,” Tommy parroted, “but you used to strut down the street in your cape and shades. You were a long fucking way from cool.”
“I bet Teddy would disagree with you,” Billy said, tilting his head toward Tommy. His dark eyes cut away, then back to him, bright with mischief.
Tommy scoffed. “Yeah, not so much. He may be Captain Boy Scout now, but back then, your boyfriend actually was pretty cool.” He paused, squinting. “…sometimes. Mostly. For the sake of argument.”
Billy leaned back on a hand, laughing. It was an old argument, its edges worn and comfortable with use. They may have grown up and grown apart and become heroes and husbands and fathers and contributing members of fucking society or whatever, but there’d always be a part of them that was sixteen years old, throwing shade just for the hell of it. “Oh,” Billy drawled, sounding remarkably like his old self again, “I dunno about that—how about we ask him?”
“Can we leave Teddy out of this?” a new voice added—plaintive, as if terribly aggrieved—and Tommy twisted around until he spotted the other man rising over the lip of the roof. He was coming from the other direction, wings gently disturbing the gathering snow as they stroked through the air…and hell, speaking of visions from days long past. It was funny: Tommy was so used to seeing Teddy in his Captain Marvel get-up that it was still a shock whenever he dressed down in civilian gear. Blond hair just as bright as when they’d been teens, jaw strong enough to cut glass, a slow smile spreading across a too-handsome face and jeans faded just the right side of respectable.
Caught somewhere between Hulkling and Steve Rogers reborn, those bat-like wings blocking out the moon as he briefly hovered over them before finding a place to land.
“Everything good?” Billy asked, scooting over to make room for his husband. Teddy dropped down next to him, wings folding before disappearing in a blur of color, like fingers smudged through pastels. He’d always loved to watch Teddy shift, yet somehow remain exactly the same—that immutable core serving as the sun he and Billy and all the rest of them revolved around over the years, taking his warmth for granted.
Hell. They still did. Was there an Avenger alive who didn’t find themselves caught within the Captain’s subtle gravitational pull?
“She was so busy telling me how not-tired she was,” Teddy was saying, tipping their shoulders together, completely unaware of his own magnetic pull as always, “that she didn’t even notice she was falling asleep. Hey, Tommy,” he added. “What are we all doing up here?”
“Thinking,” Billy said, at the same time Tommy said, “Being idiots.”
Billy flashed a quick grin. “Not mutually exclusive,” he pointed out. “But really, I just needed to get away from all the nostalgia for a little while. You know, clear my head. And of course cue Tommy crashing in trying to drown me in it.”
Tommy just shrugged a shoulder. “That’s me,” he said, unrepentant. “Mr. Hey Do You Remember When.”
“Like… Hey do you remember when Billy used to wander around in sunglasses and a cape and thought he looked cool?” Teddy said with a quick, teasing glance toward his husband.
Tommy pointed at him. “Right? Exactly. Hey do you remember when he used to crash into ceilings every time he got distracted while flying?”
“Hey do you remember when—” Teddy began, only to end on a muffled laugh when Billy clapped a hand over his mouth.
“Oh, hey, do you remember when I can totally turn you both into one-armed octopi, so maybe watch it with the sass there, sir,” he said, brightly laughing—the lines about his eyes telling a story of battles won, heartaches weathered, hopes rekindled.
Childhood ending and something else beginning, the years casting shadows over them all.
Let’s stay like this forever, Tommy thought, chest so full it almost hurt. He missed this. He missed hanging out, and laughing, and being idiots together without a care in the world (other than the rise of Kang or Doom or whatever supervillain of the week decided to test his mettle against the Young Avengers.) He missed just…being with his brother and best friend.
Of course, if Billy did reverse time and send them all hurtling back to those rosy-hued days, there were a lot of things in his life now that he’d miss, too. Going to bed with David still reading his latest nerd-fest, the warm glow of the bedside lamp washing over them both. Waking up with an arm slung around his middle and cold toes pressed against his calves. Captain Marvel leading the Avengers the way not even Captain America had ever managed, with Kate by his side and every voice heard, no matter how small. His niece staring up at him with Billy’s big eyes and a galaxy full of promise, and the whole world finally slowing down just enough for him to catch his breath.
If they tumbled head over ass back into their shared past, they’d no longer have this—the open highway of their future. No longer quite as close as they used to be, lives separating and converging into a series of moments, like points of a constellation: the Twins, burned bright into the night sky.
…or something like that. Fuck. Whatever.
“All right losers,” Tommy said, restlessly pushing to his feet. The wind blew cold around him, rustling his silver hair and making the ends of his coat flap like his own set of wings. In the distance, the city glowed in tribute to the man smiling up at him, and somewhere many, many light years away, someone was probably whispering stories about the demiurge, just as America was down in Mrs. Kaplan’s immaculate kitchen now, bullshitting with their team.
With their family.
Crazy. Crazy to think about the twists his life had taken. Crazy to think how much good could come of all that early rage.
“You heading back in already?” Billy asked, squinting against the softly falling snow. It was drifting a bit heavier now, flakes sticking to his beard and lashes.
“Yeah. This ass is way too fine to freeze to some old roof,” Tommy said, flashing a lopsided grin when Teddy snorted and Billy just waved him off. He turned back to say something to his husband, huddled against that broad side, and Tommy took his cue to slip away—slowly enough that he could catch one last look at them silhouetted against the star-strung sky.
The Sorcerer Supreme and the leader of the Avengers, heads tipped together, fingers threaded tight: echoes from a time long-gone. Brother. Friend.
He started to smile.
Shaking his head at himself, Tommy slipped back inside, shutting the window behind him. He could hear voices rising from the kitchen below (husband) and restless sounds coming from the monitor in the hall (child). The shush of snow against the windows, the rattle of wind, the creak of familiar old floorboards were all memory and message tied up in one. In the kitchen, predictably, nothing had changed—none of the important things ever did.
David looked up, light catching off his glasses. “Everything okay?” he asked in a low undertone when Tommy came to stand beside him.
He slipped his hand into David’s in answer, feeling the familiar brush of callouses, the warmth, as clever fingers curled around his. David arched a dark brow at the unusual PDA, but Tommy just shrugged a shoulder and let himself tip against the other man’s side.
…he supposed some things did change with time, after all. And considering where he started, well. Thank fuck for that.