Characters: America, Billy, Cassie, Eli, David, Nate, Kate, Jonas, Loki, Teddy, Tommy
Pairings: Teddy Altman/Billy Kaplan, Kate Bishop/Eli Bradley, Kate Bishop/Tommy Shepherd, Cassie Lang/Nate Richards, Billy Kaplan/Nate Richards, Jonas /Cassie Lang, Kate Bishop/America Chavez, Teddy Altman/Loki, David Alleyne/Tommy Shepherd
Warnings: underage kissing, body horror, slight mentions of dysphoria (it's Teddy's this time)
Notes: You may have noticed from the title that I have ceased to give any fucks.
Enjoy. The scenes are loosely in chronological order, except America's because it fit better where I put it. Chronologically, America's scene takes place after they defeat Mother, as she and Kate are arriving at the Party at the End of the World.
Some dialogue taken directly from canon.
A kiss means a lot (but it doesn't mean that)
It began with Billy and Teddy.
"Look, you can do this. Just take deep breaths and remember your mantras, and-"
"Teddy," Billy interrupted.
"Right, sorry." Teddy took a step back, allowing his teammate space.
"I want to fly." Billy closed his eyes and tried to ignore the others in the room.
Eli stifled a laugh after Nate elbowed him in the stomach.
"Hey!"
"Let him work," Nate hissed.
"I want to fly," Billy repeated, feeling ridiculous. No one responded. There was no sound but the traffic outside. With his eyes closed, Billy could imagine he was really alone. "I want to fly," he said again, this time able to imbue the phrase with meaning instead of embarrassment. "I want to fly. I want to fly."
"Billy," Teddy breathed. Billy's eyes fluttered open, and he looked down at the teammate who'd interrupted his practice.
He looked. Down.
Billy stared in awe at the three feet of air between his feet and the floor. Could he move up here? He wobbled uncertainly. He carefully lifted one knee up and shot upwards, hitting the ceiling almost immediately. As he experimented with motion, he tuned out his teammates' conversation.
"Holy shit, it worked."
"I knew he could do it."
"Billy."
Billy flinched away from the ceiling and ended up falling to the floor. The excitement of finally flying was not lessened by the bumps and bruises sustained in the fall.
The form sprawled under him turned out to be Teddy.
"I was flying!" Billy told Teddy as they tried to untangle themselves.
"I know," Teddy agreed, and Billy heard his own enthusiasm matched in Teddy's voice.
Kissing him just seemed like the logical next step.
Somehow, it didn't stop with Billy and Teddy. Instead, their innocent, exuberant kiss opened the flood gates of teenage hormones and adrenaline, giving their teammates permission to be swept away by the rush of emotion as well.
"I could kiss you," Eli swore as the vault door opened to reveal Kate Bishop, clad in Mockingbird's mask, Hawkeye's quiver, and her own triumphant grin.
"Don't," she warned, but the warmth in her tone suggested that it was a 'later', not a 'never'.
"This was a terrible idea," Kate hissed, ducking out the window just in time to avoid being caught robbing the Avengers' secret base.
Tommy Shepherd, reading more from her tone than from her words, smiled back and tilted his head, inviting her to continue their daring escape.
Kate clutched Hawkeye's bow tightly in her hands until her knuckles turned white. She had stolen from the Avengers. She had committed a crime. She went against her agreement with the older Hawkeye by refusing to accept that he won their contest. This entire adventure was immature, illogical, and ill-advised.
She ran a thumb along the familiar texture of the bow's grip.
Maybe she needed a little less maturity in her life, anyway.
With half an ear listening to the conversation inside the room, Kate reached out and pulled Tommy's teasing lips into a kiss.
Cassie Lang was 14 years old when her father died.
She was newly 16 when she finally saw him again.
Nate was back, all intensity and desperation. He'd done the impossible, ripped apart time and space to save his friends, and somehow she'd gotten her deepest, most fervent wish in the process.
Nate's face and Jonas blurred together in her mind's eye and her heart saw them as one, unable to distinguish between the two boys who meant so much to her.
If she got overcome with emotion, if her relief got the best of her, if she kissed the boy who would become Kang the Conqueror with all the weight of those two intervening years between death and rebirth, well.
Who could blame her?
"You didn't have to lie to him."
Kang didn't respond until his younger self was completely submerged in the timestream, and thus out of the range of hearing. "Probably not. But it had the desired effect. Besides, I knew he'd do anything for you-"
The Sorcerer Supreme of Earth stood in the middle of a desolate landscape, but somehow managed to keep his red cape pristine. He took off his winged helm and waited with a raised brow for Kang to continue.
"- Billy."
"Why, Nathanial," Billy Kaplan drawled as he stepped closer to his teammate. "Are you flirting with me with my husband standing right next to you?" He leaned into Kang's personal space, close enough for Kang to see his reflection in the witch's eyes and the glint of the dying sun on the Eye of Agamotto.
"I don't think he minds," Kang answered, subconsciously leaning closer to Billy.
"I know I don't," Stinger called, and punctuated her statement with a wolf whistle.
Kang cleared his throat, trying to recapture the severity of the moment. "Now, Iron Lad will go back in time and set off the chain of events that turns him into Kang the Conqueror- and destroys the Avengers forever."
Billy chuckled at Kang's melodramatic boast. "All these years and Cassie still hasn't taught you how to flirt."
"He's going to save you," Kang reiterated, the mechanized tone of his voice giving way to real emotion.
"And he'll succeed," Billy agreed. "Like you did." He closed the distance between them until his breath fogged the metal face mask. "Now take off the stupid mask so I can kiss you."
She knew that Jonas had just given a touching and heartfelt speech about self-discovery and compromise, but somehow every word he said fled her mind as his lips met her own.
It was pleasant, as kisses go. Cassie found herself wondering who he'd found to practice with, or if kissing was one of those skills that the Vision had programmed into his memory banks.
'Had the old Vision kissed the Scarlet Witch like this?'
Ugh. That was the thought that finally prompted her to break their embrace.
"I don't know- I don't know!" Cassie said, shaking her head as if the motion might dislodge an answer. "Damn it. Why did you have to do that? This isn't-" Cassie paused, gathering her thoughts. "This isn't just a friend-kiss, is it?"
"A friend kiss." Cassie wasn't facing him, but she knew Jonas had shifted his form back into the metal Vision by the tone of his voice. It was artificially toneless, allowing him to pretend to be unaffected by her question. The jerk.
"You know," Cassie said, although maybe he didn't. "Like the team does after life-or-death situations. Celebratory kisses. When we're just so glad we didn't die and we have more adrenaline than sense."
The Vision is silent for a moment. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have expected you to reciprocate my feelings-"
And damn him for not taking advantage of the out she'd handed him.
Teddy didn't understand people who could chart pain on a scale of 1 to 10. He himself was okay with the fuzzy categories of less and more painful, but putting numbers on his worst moments wasn't something Teddy was capable of.
So maybe this wasn't the worst day he'd ever had, but it was the worst in recent memory. The surreal surprise of his mother's resurrection barely had time to sink in before he had to process that she had Come Back Wrong, that this thing wearing his mother's face was the enemy, and not the woman who raised him.
The utter helplessness of being betrayed by the brainwashed Avengers was somehow more terrifying than the adults' inability to stop Kang or Osborn or Loki has been in years past. This time, there was no one else waiting in the wings to save them. No one else would think up a plan or a way out. It was just Billy and Teddy, and once Mother got ahold of them and cast each of them, alone, into an endless expanse of white, they didn't even have eachother.
Teddy wore himself out trying to punch through the walls, but for once, his jabs hurt himself more than his target.
The featureless white of the cell made his eyes play tricks on him, specks of color and waves of light undulating across the whiteness like the back of his eyelids. Sometimes he began to make out a shape in the chaos, but any pattern disappeared as soon as he tried to focus on it, as if the attention chased it away.
His depth perception was shot, and he was becoming less and less sure of what he was seeing. When Billy's face appeared above him, Teddy thought he must be hallucinating. Then Billy reached a hand down to pull Teddy out, and as soon as skin met skin, Teddy knew his partner was real.
He should have been concentrating on escape. He should have used his shapeshifting to help Billy pull him up and out of the prison Mother trapped him in. He shouldn't dawdle in this place, where Mother reigned.
Instead, he used his weight to pull Billy closer and crushed their lips together, letting Billy's tongue chase away his mother's voice and the shapes he almost saw in the whiteness.
"I didn't even think you liked me," Kate told America, after.
"Well, you were wrong," she answered. She liked Kate a lot, maybe too much. She and Kate come from completely different lives and somehow managed to meet in the middle. America wasn't used to being with people so long, and she doesn't know how to talk to them like Kate does. She's amazed at what Kate managed to put into words, while America was still puzzling out the question.
"I feel for you. We've all been there," America managed to say, hoping it's enough to get her point across. "But it's the end of a year. Start of a new one."
Kate stepped forward into the portal, and when the light faded, they both stood at the edge of a crowded dance floor.
"And we're alive," America continued, desperate to extend the moment, to finally force out the words that had lingered on her tongue for weeks. "That's always worth celebrating." She looked out at the crowd, at her peers. Maybe the flashing lights would disguise the blush threatening to spread across her face.
"Yeah," Kate agreed, unexpectedly. She stepped closer, and America kept her eyes firmly locked on the crowd. Surely at this distance Kate could see the blush? Or was the warmth in her face invisible to all but herself?
Kate leaned in and brushed her lips to America's cheek. She startled and turned, allowing Kate's lips to hit her own when she went in for another try. Kate's eyes were so very bright, and so very carefree.
"Happy New Year, Princess," Kate said, and walked away into the crowd, purple dress swaying around her.
Teddy had certain… issues with his body. When he was a kid, he was scrawny and short. He learned to hate the slimness of his shoulders, the roundness of his face, the dark promise of his hips. When the other boys shot up in height and broadened out, gaining muscle and weight and scraggly, patchy facial hair, Teddy pressed his hands against his chest and hoped to god he wouldn't wake up one morning looking like his mother.
Sarah Altman was remarkably accepting of Teddy's desire to transition, once he confessed to her through tears after a particularly bad day in gym class. He supposes it might be a Skrull thing. He wonders how well "mother" and "woman" fit on her, or if she just went along with human gender roles for his sake.
Discovering he could shapeshift was like every wish come true. After the first few hours of joyful experimentation, Teddy made sure to keep his control tightly held, changing his form just slightly over the course of several months, until he could look in the mirror and see himself in his reflection.
He never got the chance to discuss it with his mom, but she gave him knowing smiles over breakfast. He didn't know how to tell her 'I'm not using street hormones, mom, I'm a mutant', so he never brought it up, and neither did she.
Every secret smile, ever kind gesture, every comment and encouragement and compliment was cast in a different light after Teddy found out she was a Skrull all along, that they both were.
Teddy came to terms with his shapeshifting, mostly. Some days he looks at his body (the white one) and wonders about it: he wonders which parts of his face would have developed the same way without his shapeshifting. He looks at old school photos and wonders if the nose is still the same, or if he'd inadvertently changed even that. He remembers that even that form, the one he wore as a child, was a shape forced on him as a child. He wasn't born pink and blonde, after all. He must have been as green as Hulkling as a baby. Why did his mom choose that form? Why blonde? Why white? Why New York? Did she want him to resemble his father, Mar-Vell? Did she want them to meet one day?
Some days these questions cut deep and demanded answers, but mostly they lurked quietly in the back of his mind, curiosities and nostalgia, but nothing more. In the end, Teddy is a self-made man, and he is exactly who he wants to be.
This is nothing like voluntary shapeshifting.
His limbs are hijacked by Mother's magic, unwillingly twisted into grotesque forms, looped and flailing like the tentacles of a dying octopus. His legs are gone, powerful muscles and firm bones dissolving into the useless lump of flesh he now calls his body.
With the wave of her hand, Mother bats away a tendril of Teddy's flesh, subtly forcing his weight to shift under her until he is a shape that suits her: a throne.
His face was permitted to stay, and he screams until he runs out of breath, then he screams some more. He wonders what his lungs look like now, and how long he will be permitted to keep them.
When his team arrives to rescue him, relief wars with fear in his gut. If Mother can do this to him with so little effort, what could she do to his friends? Would Kate's firm backbone be bent to her service? Would Billy's warm smile melt off his face when she fed off of his magic? Would Noh-Varr's sunny optimism be crushed under her heel? And worst, with America's power, could she spread her power across the multiverse, destroying every version of them, everywhere?
Mother rose from her seat to meet his fiancé in magical combat, and her gathered allies dispersed to attack the rest of his team. Teddy sat alone, powerless to move, unable to help his team or to save even himself. He watched and screamed as his team was overpowered. He waited in silence as Leah and the Evil Ex's dispersed into smoke.
His team finally turned toward him, but the thing in Eli's costume stood in the way. It bowed to them, stepping aside to allow Teddy to see his team clearly
And his team to see him.
Loki- was that Loki? Ze was as tall as Noh-Varr and wearing horns again. How long was Teddy a chair? How long did his team fight to save him?
Loki reached out a hand and a wave of cold washed over Teddy's body, running through his veins, sinking into his bones, washing away Mother's magic. He let his body shift into his own form: not Hulkling, but the shape he made for himself, the shape he sees in his dreams and in his mirror every day.
He struggled to stand, unused to controlling his own legs. Noh-Varr and Kate caught him before he could fall, each helping to support his weight. 'Kate looks good for however old she is now,' Teddy noted to himself. 'She was 21 when I was caught, how long has it been?'
He took a deep breath, because he was able to. He stretched his fingers, because he could.
"That… That was horrible. Horrible. Oh, god, thank you," Teddy babbled. He pulled Loki into a hug, wordlessly thankful that his teammates came through.
Kate tried to pull him back, and Teddy released Loki easily.
"No, Teddy, don't thank-" but her words made no sense to Teddy. Don't thank Loki? Don't be grateful for being released from that torture?
Loki smiled, a wry and self-mocking thing that was so unlike zir that Teddy was sure he must have been trapped with Mother for years "It was only-" Loki began.
Teddy couldn't find the words to disagree. He only knew that saving him wasn't only anything, that he was grateful and relieved and not afraid anymore, and the emotions welled up inside him until he thought he might burst. So he did what came naturally.
He grasped Loki's face with his big, familiar hands and pulled zir into a kiss. It was short, and desperate, and afterwards Teddy fell into Loki's bewildered arms, and let himself get used to the changes in his teammate.
He wasn't allowed respite for long.
"Teddy," Kate called urgently.
He looked up, then up some more. Billy, his boyfriend, his fiancé, the love of his life, was hovering above them all, locked in battle with Mother for the fate of the world.
"You should go to him," David said.
There were so many ways it wouldn't work. So many new things that complicated his relationship with Billy. But none of them would make him stay away when Billy needed him.
So he went.
David pressed his lips to the Patri-not's cloth-covered face, tired of guessing and running and chasing with no answers to show for it. Maybe his suppositions were right. Maybe one day it would be his own face hiding under that mask, taunting and leading his team to their fate, but today his face was uncovered and for now his fate was his own.
David squeezes his eyes shut as he initiated the kiss, unwilling to see the empty mask staring at him from inches away, but his eyes fluttered open as the cloth disappeared from under his lips.
The eyes staring back at him were barely visible through the goggles, but clearly familiar.
Tommy broke the kiss faster than David could process.
"Get off me! Dude, we're noodles-and-a-coffee friends, but you're moving too-" and wasn't that ironic, for a speedster to say to him?
"Where's the warehouse gone? Weren't we-?" Tommy asked, looking around in confusion.
David's heart seized in relief. None of them were sure what the Patri-not had done with Tommy, and some part of David thought Tommy would be traumatized or worse by his time spent imprisoned by a cosmic horror.
To find out that Tommy didn't even realize time has passed?
"You're ok," David said in wonder, trying to memorize every detail of Tommy's face. In the months since losing Tommy, David found himself writing over Tommy's face with Billy's in his memory. Tommy's smile is different though, David noted. Had he remembered the silver sheen to his hair, so different than Noh-Varr's?
"I'm fine," Tommy agreed with a somewhat confused smile.
-and when David leaned in for another kiss, Tommy met him halfway.
End notes: The scene with Kang is a coda to the Children's Crusade oneshot where Nate/Iron Lad meets a future version of the Young Avengers who escaped into the time stream and are now apparently evil or something. I reread that issue for this fic and HOLY DAMN there is so much Nate/Billy subtext I had to make the Evil [Young] Avengers poly. It was necessary.
Are the current Young Avengers in a tangled poly relationship or are they just hormonal teenagers who kiss each other sometimes? Is this kissing platonic or sexual? I don't know. Whichever you prefer. My initial idea for this fic was to have a bunch of platonic kisses, but it kind of got away from me, so.
Also Teddy is very confused. His time as a chair is written in present tense because it felt so long and unending to Teddy- even when he recalls it later, it feels like it's still happening. All other scenes are in past tense. ALSO I realized that Teddy wasn't there when Loki was aged-up, and thus has no idea why Loki is now a young adult instead of a kid.