Chapter Text
“What’s the equation of cellular respiration?” Freddy asked.
Billy leaned against the desk in their shared room, pressing a hand to his gut as the stomach ache that had been bothering him for most of the day suddenly escalated with a bout of nausea. “Um. . .” he trailed, brow furrowing with discomfort.
“Come on, man, you know this. Cellular respiration,” Freddy pressed from where he was sitting in the middle of his bed, biology class notes spread out around him.
“Yeah, yeah, I do, It’s uh. . .” Billy swallowed, trying to push down the wave of dizziness and focus on the question. “It’s. . .glucose and oxygen make ATP, carbon dioxide, and water.”
“Gold star,” Freddy gave him a thumbs up as he looked down at his notes. Billy smiled weakly as his hand rubbed at his stomach, which continued to tie itself into painful knots. “Do you think we’re gonna need to know the specific formulas and shit, like that glucose is C6H12O6 and that it’s six oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water, and thirty-six ATP?”
“I don’t know. I hope not,” Billy sighed, as everything Freddy had said after ‘glucose is. . .’ had gone in one ear and right out the other.
“Hm, and even if it is it’s something that’ll probably be, like, a multiple choice or matching question, right? I could totally pick the right equation from a choice bank, I just don’t know if I could write it from scratch,” Freddy mused.
“Yeah,” Billy said absently, rubbing his hands up and down his arms and trying not to visibly shudder from the sudden chill which grasped him. “Hey, can you pass me my jacket?”
“Too lazy to get up and get it yourself?” Freddy teased, even as he grabbed Billy’s red hoodie and tossed it to him.
“Thanks.” Billy pulled the hoodie over his head.
“Equation for photosynthesis?” Freddy asked.
“Opposite of respiration,” Billy grunted as he finished pulling on his hoodie. His stomach was roiling again, upset by all the jostling.
“Well yeah, pretty much, but can you be a little more specific?” Freddy pressed.
Billy closed his eyes and swallowed. “Um. . .sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water make glucose and oxygen.”
“Right, and where does it take place in a cell?” Freddy asked.
“Chloroplasts,” he answered without missing a beat though his eyes remained closed.
“And cellular respiration? Where does it occur?” Freddy asked.
“The mitochondria,” Billy answered.
“The powerhouse of the cell,” Freddy stated absently. “You alright, man?”
“What?” Billy finally opened his eyes to look over at Freddy.
“Are you okay? You seem kind of out of it,” Freddy asked, brow furrowed with concern.
“I’m fine,” Billy stated even as pain pierced his gut. The lie was second nature and barely even felt like a lie. People didn’t ask ‘are you okay?’ wanting the truth. They asked to be polite and the polite way to respond was ‘I’m fine.’ To answer with the truth was to be a crybaby or a downer and just generally a bother.
“You sure?” Freddy asked, lips pulling down into a slight frown.
“Yeah,” Billy’s voice pitched up with the word, making it come out more like a question than a statement.
Maybe Freddy didn’t ask just to be polite. Maybe it didn’t matter. Freddy was his best friend. Freddy was family. Which meant not being a crybaby or a downer and just generally a bother was all the more important. He’d already been too much trouble for his biological mother, so much of a burden that the one person who was supposed to love him unconditionally had abandoned him without a backwards glance.
This belonging he’d found in the Vasquez home was still so new and fragile. He’d made so many mistakes since arriving, he’d almost ruined it all in pursuit of a mother who didn’t want him, who never had, he was lucky they still even wanted him. He couldn’t keep making mistakes. He had to be better, had to prove himself worthy—a worthy brother, son, and hero.
Besides, it was just a stupid stomach ache. Nothing to make a fuss over.
Billy swallowed, pushing down his swirling thoughts and the sickness turning his stomach. “Yeah, just. . .don’t see the point of us learning all this shit. It’s not like I plan on becoming a doctor,” he said. The only point in learning it was to do good on the biology test they had the next day. He needed to do good on it. Billy had never really cared about school before. He only cared now because Victor and Rosa did. They had been so mad when they learned about all the ditching he’d been doing and so, so disappointed that he had dragged Freddy into it.
He had to show them that he was better than that, that he wasn’t some delinquent—even if he kind of was. After that stunt he’d pulled with the police cruiser, he was lucky to have been sent to the Vasquez family as opposed to juvie, and that was hardly the first illegal thing he’d done in his search for his mother. Billy lied and cheated and stole. He got into fights and ran away from twenty-three homes. He never gave a damn what anyone else thought about him, because he had a mother who loved him and was searching for him just as relentlessly as he was searching for her, and it would all be worth it in the end.
He was a fucking idiot who blew every chance he got.
“What do you want to be?” Freddy asked, jolting him from his thoughts.
“What?” Billy shook his head and immediately regretted it as a wave of vertigo swept over him.
“Like when you’re older,” Freddy explained.
“Oh,” Billy considered the question for a moment, shifting uncomfortably in the desk chair. “I don’t know.” The most pondering over the future he had done was searching for his mother. He didn’t want to think about his mother anymore. “What about you?”
Freddy grinned. “Comic book artist.”
Billy smiled. Of course.
“I want to draw comics about us. Superman, Wonder Woman, and everyone else has comics so why can’t the Shazamily? Obviously, I’d have to change things—maybe we can be aliens? From another dimensions? Escaped from an evil lab?—to like protect secret identities and all, but I think it would be cool. Kind of Peter Parker sells pictures of Spiderman to the Daily Bugle,” Freddy rambled, gesturing grandly in his excitement.
“’Shazamily?’” Billy repeated.
“Oh, yeah, that’s what I decided to call us. It’s like a mix of Shaza-ah-ah-“ Freddy mangled the word as he didn’t want to transform in their bedroom “and family. I mean, if you don’t like it we can definitely try something else. I had lots of other ideas. Like—”
“No,” Billy interrupted. “No, I like it.” Family.
“Awesome!” Freddy beamed. “We still need superhero names for all of us. I know you’re name is kind of Shaza—mhm, which is fine for like others to call you, but is kind of inconvenient for introductions and for us since none of us can say it without transforming. I know Captain Sparkle-fingers isn’t ideal, but I do like the Captain part. I was thinking maybe something like. . .” Freddy’s enthusiastic ramblings washed over Billy, a pleasant distraction from his discomfort, and Freddy was so swept up in his ideas that he didn’t seem to notice when Billy missed part of what he said because a twist of pain in his gut or a wave of nausea hit so strong as to turn his hearing to static.
Sometime later, Victor rapped his knuckles on the doorframe, interrupting Freddy’s chatter. “Time to be getting to bed, boys,” he said.
“Alright,” Freddy nodded as he started to put away all his biology notes.
“Goodnight, Victor,” Billy said.
“Goodnight, Billy, Freddy,” Victor replied as he turned to go back down the hall.
“’Night, Victor,” Freddy called after him.
Going to sleep did sound wonderful to Billy, and maybe after a night’s rest he would feel better in the morning. With that thought in mind, he pushed himself to his feet. He had to brace himself against the desk as the ensuing headrush struck him. He squeezed his eyes shut, grunting softly as his stomach rolled. Alarmingly, bile rose in his throat. He swallowed, tightened his grip on the desk to stave off the urge to clap a hand over his mouth.
“Billy?” Freddy asked, a note of concern in his voice.
Billy swallowed again, heart picking up as he realized he was actually about to vomit. “gonna brush my teeth,” he muttered, already rushing out of the room.
He ran down the hall, slipping into the bathroom just as Pedro was leaving. He shut the door and locked it before stumbling over to the toilet just in time for his dinner to have its encore—its terrible, disgusting encore. Billy sunk to his knees, hands braced against the toilet seat as he continued to wretch. He hoped no one would hear him. His gut convulsed. He gagged. His throat burned and his eyes watered. He hoped it would stop soon. It did. His stomach settled into an uneasy calm, a storm’s eye. He sat there on the bathroom floor with the side of his face resting on the toilet seat, too tired from his bout of sickness to care about how gross that was. Besides, the cool of the porcelain felt good on his now sweaty brow.
A knock on the door had him jolting up. His stomach rolled in protest at the sudden movement, but luckily nothing came up. “Are you almost done?” Mary called.
“Y-yeah, just give me a minute,” Billy called back. He grabbed some toilet paper and wiped his face with shaking hands. He flushed the toilet and stumbled over to the sink, turning on the tap. He rinsed his mouth, washed his face, and brushed his teeth as thoroughly but quickly as he could.
He glanced at himself in the mirror. He looked bad. Gaunt. There was nothing he could do to change that. He unlocked the bathroom door and stepped out into the hallway. Mary looked up from her phone. Billy ducked his head and stepped past her quickly. “All yours,” he said.
“Thanks, goodnight, Billy,” Mary said, the bathroom door closing and locking with a soft click behind her.
Freddy looked up at him as he entered their shared room. “Dude, you look like shit,” he said, standing up and walking towards him. “What’s wr—”
“Mary got into the bathroom before you,” Billy interrupted him.
“Oh, God!” Freddy exclaimed. “Why’d you let her get in there before me? It’s gonna be like an hour now before I can brush my teeth!” While Freddy was preoccupied with complaining about Mary hogging the bathroom, Billy slipped past him and carefully climbed up onto the top bunk. He flopped down onto his side, curling up and wrapping his arms around his sensitive stomach.
“Dude, you sure you’re alright?” Freddy called up to him.
“Yeah,” Billy grunted. He was relieved that the top bunk was high enough that Freddy couldn’t clearly see him. “Just tired, and, um, nervous about this biology test.”
“After all this studying we’ve been doing? We’re gonna knock it out of the park, man! At least we better, or I’m gonna be pretty annoyed about all this time I’ve wasted trying to learn about cells when I could’ve been seeing how high and fast I can fly,” Freddy stated.
“You’ll do great,” Billy said, voice soft with sincerity. Freddy was doing pretty well in all of their classes despite all the skipping they had done. He had mostly B’s except for C’s in algebra and biology. To Billy that sounded great, but apparently Freddy was usually an A/B student, so for him it really wasn’t that great.
“So will you,” Freddy said, voice just as soft and genuine. Billy turned his face into his comforter. Of that he was less sure.
Even before the whole Shazam business, Billy had skipped school a lot. He ran away from twenty-three homes. When he wasn’t in a home he was on the streets, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to school then. With how much he had been absent it was a small miracle that he hadn’t been held back a year. His grades reflected this. He was currently failing biology and French and was barely skating by with C’s in his other classes. Mary had told him that once he started putting effort into his schoolwork, actually doing and turning in assignments, that he would soon see his grades improve. Billy was afraid that maybe he was just dumb.
Billy shivered, curling in tighter around himself. He was so cold he didn’t want to move, but he forced himself to, spurred on by the thought of getting warmer. He shuffled so he could burrow under his sheets and comforter, pulling them up over his head. He was still cold. Thankfully, despite his discomfort, it wasn’t long before he fell asleep. Unfortunately, he didn’t sleep peacefully through the night.
~*~*~*~
When Billy woke he was too hot. He kicked off his sheets and comforter, the movement causing a wave of vertigo to seize him. He laid very still, eyes squeezed shut and waiting for his bed to stop feeling like it was rocking. Pain twisted his gut. He groaned, curling in tight with his arms wrapped around his stomach. Bile rose in his throat. He forced it down and clapped a hand over his mouth, breathing heavily through his nose.
He did not want to throw up again. His body didn’t give a damn what he wanted. Vomit filled his mouth. He could not throw up in his bed. He pressed his hand harder over his mouth and forced himself to swallow. Tears pricked in his eyes. His throat burned. His stomach turned in protest. He scrambled to the edge of the bunk, ignoring how the world spun around him. He needed to get to the bathroom like five minutes ago.
He fumbled down the ladder, missing a rung and falling the last foot. He hit the ground with a solid and awfully loud thump, his knees folding and depositing him to the floor in a crumpled heap. The sound of rustling sheets came from Freddy’s bed, but Billy couldn’t worry about waking Freddy in that moment. All he could focus on was crawling to their desk and grabbing the Justice League trash can before he threw up all over the floor. He succeeded, just barely, in not vomiting until he had safely sequestered the trash can. His reward was that some of it came out his nose.
Billy groaned, snot and tears ran down his face. He wanted to wipe them away but had nothing to do so with except for his sleeves. There was a buzzing in his ears, a cold sweat had broken out on his skin, and his stomach felt no more settled. Could this night get any worse?
“Billy?” Freddy’s groggy voice called from behind him, and a glow of yellow light appeared in his peripheral vision as Freddy switched on his bedside lamp.
That was a rhetorical question!
“’m fine!” Billy punctuated this point by vomiting again.
“Obviously.” Billy heard shuffling as Freddy got up out of bed. “Just hang in there. I’ll go get Rosa or Victor,” he said, the thudding of his crutch as he walked to the door drove into Billy’s chest like a hammer driving nails into a coffin.
“No, don’t!” he shot a hand out in Freddy’s general direction, still not trusting to turn his face away from the trash can.
“Dude, whatever you think their reaction is gonna be I promise you’re wrong,” Freddy stated, sure and earnest.
“No,” Billy shook his head. The world spun, his stomach lurched, he wretched.
“Billy, they’ll help you,” Freddy said. Billy was too sick to really process his words. He just knew that he did not want anyone seeing him like this: weak, pathetic, disgusting—vulnerable. It wasn’t safe.
“No!” he heaved. A whine vibrated from his throat. “. . .please.”
“Shit, Billy,” Freddy sighed. There was the sound of his steps again, but this time he was approaching Billy. He came to a stop next to where Billy was slumped on the group. “Christ, man, that’s gross,” he commented, not sounding truly repulsed but instead vaguely fascinated.
Billy wasn’t in a mind frame for picking up subtilities. He ducked his head, even though that meant pressing his face closer to the trash can and the stench of his own sick. It was gross. “Sorry,” he muttered miserably.
“It’s not your fault.” There was a light tap on his shoulder. Billy glanced over to see Freddy holding a box of Kleenex out to him.
“Thanks.” He gratefully took the box and used the tissues to wipe his face and blow his nose.
“So if getting Rosa or Victor is a definite no-go, what can I do?” Freddy asked.
Leave me alone, forget you saw any of this. Billy rubbed his fingers over the material of his sleep pants. He knew Freddy wouldn’t just leave him. Freddy had always helped him in the past, and Freddy would help him now. The surety of this knowledge caused something warm to unfold in his chest. “Um. . .” he swallowed. The taste in his mouth was awful and his throat burned. “Maybe some water?”
“You got it, man. I’ll be right back,” Freddy patted his shoulder before leaving the room.
Freddy returned a few minutes latter with a cup of water, a wet washcloth, and a medicine bottle. Freddy eased himself to the ground next to Billy, and Billy shifted to lean against the desk so he could sit up straighter. “When I was younger and I got a stomach bug, my dad would put a cold washcloth on the back of my neck. He said it helped with nausea. I don’t know if there’s, like, any actual medical backing to that, but it always seemed to help me,” Freddy babbled as he placed the cold washcloth on the back of Billy’s neck. It did feel nice.
“You’ve never mentioned your dad before,” Billy commented.
“He’s dead,” Freddy stated, blunt and forceful—like ripping off a band-aid.
“I’m sorry,” Billy said softly.
“Me too,” Freddy replied, voice heavy. He shook his head.
“Here’s your water,” he stated, too brightly, as he offered Billy a plastic cup. Billy went to take it with badly shaking hands. Instead of relinquishing it, Freddy helped him drink without comment. Billy felt tears welling in his eyes. He blinked them away rapidly. “I also brought some Tylenol. I thought it might help if you think you can keep it down.”
Billy considered that for a moment. His stomach still felt sensitive, but he didn’t feel like he was in danger of throwing up again. He nodded his head minutely, not trusting his voice. “Okay.” Freddy set the cup down so he could shake two pills out from the bottle. He handed the pills to Billy and helped him drink the water he needed to wash them down.
“Thanks, I’m sorry about all this,” Billy said as Freddy set down the cup.
“You don’t need to apologize or thank me for helping you, man,” Freddy looked at him and grinned. “I’m just doing what any good brother would.”
Much to Billy’s mortification, these words caused him to burst into tears.
“Billy!” Freddy exclaimed, horror seeping into his tone. Billy buried his face in his hands. Ashamed and wanting to hide since he was too sick and weak to run. “Billy, what’s wrong? Are you going to throw up again? Are you hurt?” Freddy grasped his shoulders. Billy shook his head. “Then what is it? Please talk to me, man.”
“Brothers?” he whispered.
“Yeah,” Freddy said, like it was obvious, like Billy had just asked him if the sky was blue.
Billy slowly lowered her hands. “Always?” he asked, voice like glass.
“Always.” Freddy stated. “You’re stuck with me, man.”
Billy leaned against Freddy. “I’m okay with that.”
“Good,” Freddy chuckled. “Because I’m not an easy person to shake.”
Billy huffed a laugh and reached a hand up to wipe at his eyes.
“Feel like you can make it back to bed?” Freddy asked. "I can’t exactly carry you, at least not without going shablam, but an indoor lightning strike is pretty much guaranteed to wake someone else up.”
“I can make it,” Billy nodded.
He grabbed onto the desk and pulled himself up. The room spun around him. Billy closed his eyes and waited for the vertigo to pass. “Billy?” Freddy lightly touched his elbow.
“’m alright,” he said. Billy shuffled the couple of feet to the bunk bed on shaky legs. He grabbed onto the ladder leading up to the top bunk. He breathed deep. He did not want to make that climb.
“Sleep on my bed,” Freddy said. Billy nodded and toppled over onto the bottom bunk. Freddy helped him get situated under the sheets and placed the washcloth back on his neck. “You good, man? Feel like you’re about to throw up again?” he asked.
“No, I feel alright,” Billy answered. The chills were back and his stomach was still hurting, but he didn’t feel too nauseous. Mostly he felt exhausted.
“Good, I’ll be right back,” Freddy said.
“Where are you going?” Billy asked, pushing himself up slightly.
“Gonna change the trash bag,” Freddy explained as he shuffled over to the trashcan Billy had thrown up in.
“Oh,” Billy’s stomach twisted, but it wasn’t with illness. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I’m not just gonna leave it, dude. That’s nasty,” Freddy laughed.
Billy grimaced. “Sorry.”
The mirth drained from Freddy’s expression. “I didn’t mean it like that. You’re sick, Billy. It’s not your fault.”
“Doesn’t mean you should have to clean up my mess,” Billy replied.
“If I was the one that was sick would you leave me to deal with it alone?” Freddy asked.
“Of course not,” Billy stated, affronted, even as a voice whispered in the back of his mind that once upon a time that’s exactly what he would of done. He wasn’t like that anymore.
“And would you be annoyed by my needing help?” he asked.
“No. Freddy, what are you getting at?” Billy sighed.
“Brothers. It’s a two way street, Billy. You don’t need to feel guilty or like you owe me for any of this, because this is just what family does—we help each other,” Freddy stated. “You just focus on getting better, okay?”
“Okay,” Billy said softly as he sunk back down onto the mattress, too stunned to formulate more of a response.
“Okay,” Freddy nodded sharply before turning. He tied off the small trash bag and left the room.
Billy laid in Freddy’s narrow bed and stared out into the darkened corridor Freddy had disappeared down. His thoughts swirled to the last time he had gotten seriously sick. It had been a few winters ago. He had run away from foster home number twelve because the parents had been self-righteous tyrants who thought they were doing something good taking in ‘problem’ children and trying to beat the bad out of them. They called it tough love, but there had been nothing loving about it.
He had been eleven years old and living alone on the streets when he caught the flu. The most help he got was when a couple of gangbangers mugged him, left him with nothing but the clothes on his back and the useless compass keychain in his pocket. At the height of his illness, he’d had fever dreams of his mother taking care of him—of her tucking him into a soft warm bed, singing lullabies to him, feeding him warm soup, and dabbing his brow with a damp cloth.
When the fever broke, he was alone, hidden away in a nest of moth eaten and rotting cloth in a forgotten nook of a condemned building. It was then that he understood: the only way to make it in life was to look out for himself first and foremost—because no one else cared what happened to him.
Well, he thought one person would care, if he could just find her. God, how could he have been so blind? Billy hadn’t been missing. He was in the foster system. It was the twenty-first century. If his mother had wanted to find him she would have years ago. For almost a decade to pass with no word from her could only mean one thing—she was never looking.
The truth had been staring him in the face all along. Had been told to him by his caseworker, past foster parents, and other kids in the system. He had just refused to acknowledge it. He had willfully blinded himself in pursuit of a beautiful lie. His mother as he had envisioned her had only ever existed in his dreams.
Freddy re-entered the room. He placed a fresh trash bag in the trashcan and carried it over to set it by the head of the bed. “Just in case. I don’t really want you barfing in my bed,” he explained.
“I won’t,” Billy promised. Freddy sat down on the edge of the bed and set his crutch down before awkwardly beginning to crawl over Billy to get to the other side of the bed. “Freddy?” Billy questioned.
“I’m not climbing up to your bed,” Freddy explained as he carefully maneuvered his bad leg. “I would of asked you to move over, but that would of kind of undone the purpose of the trashcan by the bed.”
“You good?” Freddy asked around a yawn once he had gotten himself comfortably situated under the sheets between Billy and the wall. Their bunks were small. Billy had never really noticed before, but now that the both of them were squished onto one he did. Freddy’s side was pressed against his back. It was a closeness Billy wasn’t used to and from just about anybody else would not have welcomed, wouldn’t have been safe, but this wasn’t just anyone at his back this was Freddy – his brother – so instead of tensing for a fight, he relaxed into the softness of the bed and the knowledge that he was safe.
“’m good,” he mumbled, feeling the pull of sleep and following it gratefully into slumber.