Boom

Tommy was fast, but he had to be able to see something coming in order to avoid it.

He didn't see this coming.

"There you are!" came a voice that was distinctly Teddy Altman's, as Tommy found himself grabbed around the waist and picked up.

"Oy!" Tommy shouted indignantly, kicking his legs, thought to no effect. "Put me down, you stupid green alien! Can't you see that my hair is white, not black?! I am not your boyfriend! And if you don't put me down in the next three seconds, I am going to accelerate your atomic structure until it explodes, and we'll get to see if your Skrull genes with allow you to reform from that! And if you don't, Billy will go completely Wanda and I'll have to kill him before he destroys the world or does some major reality-warping thing, and then everybody will hate me for having killed my brother, and I won't be allowed to be an Avenger and I'll have to go rogue and become a supervillain, and then—"

"Oh, shut up," Teddy said fondly, ruffling the smaller boy's white hair.

"Okay, changing tactics," Tommy mumbled. Then he started shouting: "MAYDAY, MAYDAY! HULKLING IS KIDNAPPING ME! S.O.S! SAVE OUR SPEED!"

"That's not going to do you any good," Teddy said, as he carried the struggling speedster into the hang-out area. "See?"

Glancing around the room, Tommy saw that all the Avengers who currently resided at the mansion had gathered there, lounging on couches or just standing around.

"Whatever it is you think I did, I didn't do it!" Tommy said immediately.

"Relax, son," Steve Rogers said, placing a hand on the speedster's shoulder as Tommy was placed back on the ground by Teddy. "You're not in trouble. We're just having an Avengers Movie Night."

"Is this tradition?" Tommy asked as he made a big deal about straightening his clothes. "As in: would I be kicked out of the Avengers if I played hooky?"

"No, you wouldn't be kicked out," Steve said, "but we would all appreciate it if you'd stay and do some team-bonding with us."

"Watching a movie is not team-bonding!" Tommy protested, crossing his arms and glaring up at the tall blond soldier. "You don't interact with people! You just sit and watch some fucking colored pixels move on a fucking screen!"

"Thomas!" Wanda exclaimed, giving him a scolding look from where she was seated in a chair, legs crossed and hands clasped over her red dress. She was the only one who seemed to be wearing her costume; everyone else was in civilian clothes. Even Peter Parker, though he was sitting crouched on the ceiling. "Language, please!"

"What-the-fucking-ever," Tommy said, mouth pulled nearly into a sneer. "I'm almost eighteen. I'll say what I damn well please!"

"Let the teen attitude crap go, Wanda," Logan advised, as he leaned against the table, a bottle of beer held in a large paw. "A little cussin' ain't never hurt nobody."

"Come on," Teddy grinned, picking Tommy up ("Dammit! Not again, you asshole!") and sticking him on the couch next to Billy, who immediately wrapped his arms around his twin and kept him from leaving. "We're watching the new Spiderman movie," Teddy said, as he sat down on Tommy's other side, securing him there with yet another pair of arms. "You'll love it. We're all going to make fun of Spiderman and how out-of-character he's going to be, and discuss whether Peter or the actor is cuter."

"Guys, again, can we please not watch this?" Peter practically begged them. "This movie is awful! They made everything up, and it's totally not me!"

"What, have ya already seen it?" Wolverine asked him, raising a bushy eyebrow.

"No! Of course not! But from what I've heard—"

"Everybody hush, I'm putting in the movie," Clint said, smirking as he slid it into the player. "This is gonna be great!"

"No, it really, really isn't," Peter groaned, covering his face with his hands. "This is going to be awful, I just know it."

"I couldn't agree more," Tommy said as he tried and failed to execrate himself from his position tangled in the arms of his brother and his brother's boyfriend. "Don't make me sit through this. Nobody's gonna end up happy, seriously."

"Relax," Billy murmured into his ear. "Learn to slow down a little bit."

I can't, Tommy wanted to say, but he couldn't force the words from his throat. They'd just think he was trying really hard to avoid hanging out with them or something. And well, it had been a while since he'd even tried to watch a movie. He supposed he could try today...

And to his own credit, he really, really did try. He did.

But movies weren't thrilling when they were pretty much a static screen. And not only that, but he had to sit down and sit still, and he was starting to feel trapped by the people pressed up close on either side of him and hugging him so he couldn't run away.

He needed to run away.

This entire thing sucked. It sucked it sucked it sucked it really damn fucking sucked.

His foot was tapping at superspeed, he was glancing around the room more than at the TV, trying to see if maybe he could catch one of the Avengers' eyes and silently plead for their help.

"Stop tapping your foot," Billy grumbled at him.

"You need to let me go," Tommy intoned, low but serious.

"You have to watch this! This is like one of the best parts of the movie!" Billy's eyes were rapt on the TV screen. Even though it wasn't even as interesting as watching the real Spiderman in action.

"You need to let me go,," Tommy said. "I'm asking you nicely." The walls were closing in on him. The world around him was bright, clearly defined, so crystal-sharp it made the movie look like a blurry reflection in water, even though it was a Stark TV and probably the most high definition screen in the world. The warmth from the bodies around him was hot, cloying. Billy and Teddy especially. They were too close. They were too close. And he was so, so sick and tired of sitting down. A fire was roaring in his limbs and clawing through his mind, brilliant, hot, loud, searing, desperate, furious.

"Shhh! This is the best part!"

Tommy couldn't hold still. His entire body was shaking at superspeed, the movement so fast and subtle the only sign was that his edges were slightly blurred. But you would hardly have noticed, unless you looked hard.

"Guys, my spider sense is tingling," Peter said from the ceiling. "And it's not from the lizard dude chasing around the spandex-clad stunt guy on the TV."

"Bro," Tommy said, voice soft but venomous. "Let. Me. Go."

"Guys! My spider sense is really tingl—!"

BOOOOOOOM!

Haha! Take that, suckers!

Sure, Tommy could have just vibrated himself out of the situation, but he was angry. He was really angry.

He'd asked to be left out of this, hadn't he? But had they listened to him? No, they didn't.

They forced him to sit on the stupid couch and watch the stupid TV, so he was blowing up their stupid couch and especially their stupid fucking TV.

They made him suffer. He was just returning the favor.

"What the hell just happened?!" somebody shouted, probably Clint but it was kind of hard to tell, as all the Avengers coughed, trying to gaze around the room that was obscured by a large cloud of dust and ash.

"I told you my spider sense was tingling!"

"Oh no," Billy realized, as he blinked through watery, irritated eyes. "Tommy."