Work Text:
Teddy has never shaved before.
The good news is that after surviving a mass extinction event that took out most of their team, and being incorporated into Revelation’s tyrannical reign, their apartment still gets great wi-fi. So Teddy pulls up a YouTube tutorial from a man who, appearing human, may very well be dead now, sets his phone up by the sink, and focuses on the hair follicles in his face, willing them into growth. He starts simple, neat and blond and right in the sweet spot of Tony Stark classic and Mirrorverse.
Teddy lathers up and takes it slow, gliding the razor over his chin. He has to fight his instincts as he goes, because what comes naturally to Teddy is to reconstruct his face to avoid contact with the blade. It’s the first thing they probably teach in the shapeshifting class he never got: you don’t leave your organs where they can get damaged. But he needs a proper practice run before the real exam so he holds in place all the bone and muscle and blood vessels and takes the nicks as they come.
He goes slowly, but still catches himself on the upper lip, then twice on the chin. Not too bad, he figures. Not good enough yet, but not bad.
He seals up the cuts and dabs away the blood and the edges of foam stuck at the corner of his ear. He has to sacrifice a hand towel to the bloodstains now that Billy can’t just Prestidigitate them away, but it’s for the greater good.
Then it’s on to round two. Teddy goes bigger, less Doctor Strange, more Commander Riker, which is when Billy wanders in, to see what he’s doing.
Well, that’s the reasoning Teddy ascribes to Billy’s entrance anyway. It’s hard not to. They’ve barely left each other’s sides since they were sixteen, it’s always been natural to seek each other out when they weren’t in sight of one another. Just to check in, ‘anything in the news we need to do something about?,’ ‘did you see Kate’s reel?,’ ‘want me to heat your coffee back up for you?’
Just the little things they can’t do anymore, because even if Billy sees what Teddy is doing, in the strictly physical sense, he’s not going to understand it.
And he’s definitely not going to be able to extrapolate that this is meant for him.
Maybe it’s curiosity that can’t be sated, that Teddy has gone into a different room and not come out for a bit and is making unfamiliar noises. Maybe he just grew restless and started to wander the confines of their apartment and has just happened to arrive in their ensuite by chance. Maybe it’s just instinct, lying much deeper than what Billy has had stolen from him, is the fact that they will follow each other to the ends of the multiverse. They’re bonded to each other, and it isn’t just a metaphor that they can’t be kept apart.
They will always find each other.
They’re never alone and that’s the deal. Forever.
So, habit. Teddy turns and shows off his new whiskers. “What do you think, hon?”
Billy scowls at the sounds he can’t make sense of and mutters an unintelligible reply. He presses his hands to the sides of his head, accidentally reopening some of the scabs from where he’s been picking irritably at his own incoming beard.
The other Babeled that Teddy has encountered over the last two years have run the gamut from feral to just outright catatonic. Billy is one of the more irritable. He’s docile enough most of the time, but probably more than any of the others from whom Ramsey has stripped their language, Billy knows what he’s lost.
Words are Billy’s power. They figured that out in Teddy’s mom’s apartment, at sixteen, flipping through The Secret and three different books all with lotus flowers on the cover. It isn’t just the concept, the words are the conduit for Billy’s reality warping. They’re how everyone understands the universe around them, but they’re also how the universe understands Billy in return.
And now that’s all gone.
“Yeah, it’s not really me, is it?” says Teddy. “I look like the other side of a time skip.”
Billy shouts nothing and leans back against the wall.
At the beginning, Teddy was very cautious. He spoke to Billy even more gently than he normally would. He kept his voice low and coaxing, his sentences short and upturned. He adopted slow movements, kept his palms upturned, shrank himself by inches and then a full foot to be as non-threatening as possible.
But it didn’t matter.
It’s not just words that Revelation has stolen from Billy, it’s language. It’s all communication.
He can’t differentiate the meaning between a soft tone and a raised voice. Teddy can try to telegraph his intentions all he wants, but it’s only going to come through as incomprehensible gibberish. He could lean in for a kiss or swing Excelsior toward Billy’s neck and it would all be the same to Billy.
So he speaks to Billy as if he’s the same man he married. As if he’s the same sixteen-year-old he fell for as they stood over the long boxes in the comic book store and realized they’d each met their match in nerdiness. He asks him what he wants for dinner, if he wants to see the possible leaks for the next Zelda, if he remembers where Teddy left his phone.
And it hurts them both every time there’s no answer.
The second shave goes much better. Less blood. And even though he doesn’t bother with the aftershave, Teddy gives himself a good Home Alone cheek smack, just for good measure.
Billy mutters, wordless and irritated, then sits down on the bathmat with his head lowered.
Teddy gives himself a minute to let the tears fall. He doesn’t try to hide it anymore. It doesn’t matter.
And then when he’s sure his hands are steady enough again, he runs water over a washcloth and sits down on the bathroom floor. “All right, buddy, let’s do this.”
He fastens the same towel around Billy’s neck. Billy doesn’t fight him. The bloodstains communicate nothing to him, he has no reason to be alarmed even when directly presented with evidence of Teddy’s inexperience.
He washes Billy’s face clean first, then lathers up his beard, and presses the blade of the razor to Billy’s cheek. He uses one knuckle to lift Billy’s chin to give himself a better angle, and has to leave his hand there because Billy can’t understand that he wants him to hold the pose.
There’s no way to explain to him beforehand that the object he’s holding is sharp, no way to tell him not to move, no way to promise that Teddy is only here to help and that he’ll be happier after.
All he has to rely on is what’s between them. That bond that runs deeper than names or words, that promise to each other that they made, not just in Vegas and on the command deck of the Alliance’s flagship in front of a crowd of Avengers and soldiers, but every day, over and over again.
Never alone.
So they press on.
Teddy pulls the blade down, and a few dots of blood well to the surface of Billy’s skin in his wake. Teddy cannot apologize and Billy never once tries to pull away.