Characters: Eli, Kate, Teddy, Billy, Tommy, David, Nate, Cassie, Jonas
Pairings: Billy/Teddy, past Noh-Varr/Kate, past Noh-Varr/Teddy
Note: I wrote a YA fic without Loki in it, someone give me a medal.
"The first Captain America?" Eli demands. "This is such such bullshit! Pasty Steve Rogers did not 'pioneer' the America cruisers! My grandfather was the test-pilot for the America prototypes before Rogers even had his license!"
"Oh god," Kate groans, setting her head on the counter. Her long dark hair pools onto the sticky faux-wood finish. "I'm too drunk for this."
"Who set him off this time?" Teddy Altman asks idly, swishing his Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster around in its glass.
Kate doesn't look up from the counter, but waves her hand in the general direction of the argument. "I don't know, some guy with hipster hair."
The barstool is designed for a body with three legs, and only coincidentally fit bipeds, so Teddy almost falls off in an attempt to see around Kate's body.
He's gorgeous. Common bipedal body type, two arms and two legs, only one head, a visible mouth. Symmetrical structures and a messy head of dark, fine hair. His sharp features are scrunched up in embarrassed apology as he tries to assuage Eli's anger.
He looks Kree, but there are dozens of species in this galaxy that look like that (thanks, ancient alien genetic engineers!). Teddy's libido will be the death of him, seriously. He must be the only Skrull in the universe with a Kree fetish.
Teddy swallows nervously, his eyes still cataloging the alien's features: sharp nose, curved jaw, binocular vision, nervous smile.
"Do I have a chance, do you think?" he asks Kate.
"Leave me here to die," Kate moans.
"I'm going in," Teddy says, more to himself than to his drunk companion. He feels a little bad about leaving her alone at the bar, but despite being a drunk human, Kate is more than capable of taking care of herself. Her darts work just as well at close range, and if someone's close enough to bother her, she won't even need to aim.
"Hey Eli, who's your impromptu history student?" Teddy slides up next to his shipmate and leans back on the bar in a way he hopes is suave.
Eli glances back at him and smiles. "With the state of education this side of the Virgo Subcluster, someone should give me a medal."
"I'm Billy," the alien offers, glad for a distraction from Eli's lecture on the history of Terran Intergalactic Space Travel. "I- sorry about the Captain America comment. I've never even been to Earth."
"Kree?" Teddy asks casually. Play it cool, Teddy. If you don't act like it's a big deal, it won't be a big deal.
Billy's eyes widen and immediately dart to Teddy's face, to the scaled ridges on his chin that mark him as a Skrull. "Uh, no. I'm from Genosha." At Teddy's blank look, he clarifies, "The uh, the Mutant moon colony?"
Oh. Homo superior, then. The genetic successor of Terrans. Teddy tilts his head, and looks at Billy's features again. They do seem more similar to Kate's than he first thought.
"I'm Teddy," he replies with a friendly smile. "You're pretty far away from the Sol system."
Billy the Genoshan looks stricken, and Teddy frantically replays the conversation, trying to remember if he'd made any social faux-pas. The worst part of inter-species flirting is trying to navigate vastly different social cues.
"Well it's not like I can go home, with the whole system under lockdown," the alien answers bitterly.
Eli, who had been trying to subtly excuse himself from the conversation, does a 180 and steps into Billy's personal space.
"Lockdown? Why? Who even has that sort of power in this sector?"
Billy furrows his brows and looks between Teddy and Eli in confusion.
"You really hadn't heard?"
"We've been out of touch for awhile," Teddy explains. "Haven't had any reason to go back for months."
"It's all over the Wave," Billy tells them, "Thanos set up shop on Mars – that's Sol 4- and the Nova Corps don't want anyone else catching his attention."
"Fuck."
"Hey Kate!" Eli yells over the din of the bar. "Want to do something stupid?"
"Give me like six hours of sleep and some pain killers and I'm yours," she calls back.
"You're just going to hop over to the Sol system and, what, tell Thanos you're very disappointed in him?" Billy asks, incredulous. "You're all going to die."
"Maybe," Eli agrees. "You coming?"
Billy stares at him for a moment, then looks at Teddy. He shrugs.
"Ok, let me go round up the others."
"Others?" Teddy echoes.
The 'others' turn out to be two other Genoshans, including Billy's identical twin brother.
"This is dangerous and stupid and we're all going to die. I'm in," Tommy replied upon hearing their plan.
"Tommy's right. We can't let Thanos take Genosha. Or Earth," David adds, as an afterthought.
"Well that's great. Love the enthusiasm, but we can't fit all of you in our little shuttle," Kate points out, proving that even when drunk she is still a better strategist than any of her friends.
"We could ask Noh-Varr," Eli suggests.
"We're not calling up me and Teddy's mutual ex-boyfriend for a lift into Nova-controlled space."
Teddy thinks this is a bit uncharitable, as both of their break-ups were fairly amicable, and Noh-Varr would probably agree to help them regardless.
"I know a guy," Tommy says. They all pause a moment, waiting for him to continue, but the only explanation they receive is a smug grin.
"Are you sure we can't call Noh-Varr?" Eli asks.
The Conqueror is a large, sleek Vision-class spacecraft constructed out of red and green-shaded alien alloys. It towers above the smaller shuttles and schooners at the docks, a swan amongst pigeons.
"Holy shit," David breathes. "You know Kang?"
"We're not seriously asking a mass-murderer to help stop a bigger mass-murderer, are we?" Eli demands.
"Isn't Kang dead?" Teddy points out, reasonably. He is ignored. They probably have a point, though. How many times has an intergalactic celebrity seemingly come back from the dead? A lot.
"Nate's his clone," Tommy tells the mismatched group as they wait for The Conqueror to finish docking at the Andromeda station. "When Kang died, Nate was declared his heir and inherited all his cool tech."
"Wait, didn't that happen a few years back to some guy from Jotunheim? He illegally grew a clone to transfer his consciousness into when he got too old, but he died before he managed it and the clone petitioned to be considered the same legal person?"
Tommy shrugs. "Yeah, Kang wasn't too original, I guess. Nate's cool."
The ship slides neatly into place with three large, metallic clicks. With a whoosh, the airlock releases, and finally, a silhouette is visible in the doorway.
"Speed!" The guy in the doorway looks like a fairly average Kree- human! He looks human. Teddy has got to stop using the Kree as his standard for comparison. Anyway, this guy has fairly light skin in that middle-beige color that humans have. Teddy estimates that the exact color is somewhere between Eli's and Kate's, maybe closer to Kate's than anything else. He has dark hair, like Billy, but it's sleeker and, to Teddy, somehow less attractive.
"Iron Nerd!" Tommy calls back happily. "We're going to do something incredibly dumb. Want to help?"
"We'll do what we can," a short blonde girl answers, appearing from the depths of the ship to stand by Nate's side.
"Holy fuck, is that Cassie Lang?" Kate says, taking off her sunglasses (for once) to get a better look at the stranger.
"Am I supposed to know who that is?" Teddy asks Eli quietly.
He shrugs. "Her dad's kind of a celebrity on Earth. Don't worry about it."
Tommy zips up the gangplank to chat excitedly with his friends. The others trade glances and follow.
"So what do you need my help with anyway?" Nate asks as he leads the group into his ship.
"We're going to save the Universe," Tommy says with a grin.
Nate stares back. "Really now."
"Nah, it's more like a couple planets, but still. Should be fun."
It turns out that Nate's ship has an AI who is somehow in love with Cassie.
His name is JONAS; his personality is based on Nate's own.
They loathe each other.
Random background that didn't make it into the fic: Teddy is still Dorrek III, but hasn't been told about it. He was raised by his foster-mom on another planet, knowing full well he was a Skrull (but not that he's half-Kree). Eli left Earth to join the Nova Corps a couple years back, but isn't very good at taking orders so he quit to do the odd courier job with Teddy and Kate. Eli and Kate are close but have not dated (yet?). Noh-Varr joined them for awhile, and dated Kate and Teddy in quick succession before getting distracted by bright shiny opportunities and possibly girls.
Not sure if Billy and David still have the same powers they have in canon, but it isn't terribly important to the plot, so. I hope they do, or else their desperate attempt to stop Thanos is going to be short and painful.
I imagine Cassie, Nate, and JONAS have wacky fun adventures not entirely unlike Zaphod, Trillian, and Marvin fromHitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
A commenter on AO3 suggested that Nate is Billy's ex, which is why Tommy doesn't want to reveal who he is. I am 100% down for this interpretation.