Billy K and TJ - Waaay backdated
Jun. 5th, 2018 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ax_mainAlt-sibling outing! Billy and TJ go have sushi. In Tokyo. Like you do.
Billy was glad he had decided to actually knock on TJ’s door, knocking his knuckles against the wood as he waited to see if his half-sister was home. Teleporting right into her room would probably end in disaster, even Tommy didn’t like it but it was easier to get over Tommy’s annoyance. He had a feeling he’d be a wreck if TJ was annoyed with him.
"I've been talking to your answerphone, na na," TJ was singing on the other side of the door. "Something tell me you don't want to know, na na..." She trailed off at the knock, and turned down the music on her phone. "Yeah? Come in!" she called out, sitting up on her bed.
Billy tried to smother the smile at hearing her sing through the door and pushed it open to find her on the bed. “Pretty good. Think you should go pro karaoke.”
"Is that where the big bucks lie in this universe?" TJ asked with a grin. Of course she was grinning; it was Billy. "I just might!"
Billy laughed. “Only if you’re super bad. Do you have William Hung and American Idol in your universe? Guy was a genius.”
"We have American Idol," she compromised. "William who? Did he make karaoke cool again?"
Billy shook his head with a grin. “He was so bad that everyone loved him and he actually sold records. Pretty genius. But hey, karaoke has always been cool, even if you’re bad.”
He looked around and then leaned in as if he was about to tell a big secret. “Which, I’m going to be real with you here. I suck.”
TJ laughed. "Well, now you know we're gonna have to go karaoke together. Anyway, what's up?" She didn't figure he'd come to her room to suggest alternative careers for her.
Billy gave a shrug. “Was just wondering if you wanted to hang. We haven’t gotten to much so I thought I’d be brave and ask. You hungry?”
If it took bravery to ask her if she wanted to hang, TJ was doing something wrong. She hopped off her bed with a grin. "Always!" Which, well, was true enough. Speedsters didn't have the monopoly on mutations that took a lot out of your metabolism, although they had it worse for sure. She slipped her phone in the pocket of her skort and hooked an arm with Billy's. "Cafeteria? Kitchen? Somewhere out in the world?"
Billy grinned when she accepted and he nodded to all the above, then shook his head with a laugh. “Ah, no. Sorry. I mean whatever you want, man. Cafeteria is fine, but if you want I can take us somewhere else.”
If he was going to be adventurous then... “Just name it.”
"Just name it?" TJ echoed, checking that he didn't want to immediately take that back.
“Yeah seriously name it. Give me a good challenge.” He didn’t know why but he felt kinda confident in his teleporting today...as long as the Could google maps and see a picture of it.
"You wanna go for some proper sushi?" she asked with a fanged grin. "I've never been to Tokyo."
Billy couldn’t help but answer her grin with one of his own. “Oh, my sister has some fancy tastes. Okay, Tokyo, huh?”
He pulled out his phone and started giggling sushi places in Tokyo, laughing when it started mashing English and Japanese together. “I can get us there, but I’m not sure I can translate well. You know any Japanese? All I got is Domo arigato, Mr.Roboto.”
TJ laughed. "Hmm. Arigato gozaimasu? And kampai! That's cheers. We're totally ready for this." She grinned at him.
“Oh yeah. We got this.” He joked as he took a few more looks at the pictures google was showing him before nodding. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
He reached out to take one of her hands. “Ready?”
"And excited!" TJ confirmed, putting her three-fingered hand in his.
***
TJ hummed happily at her first bite of sushi, swallowed, then smiled at her brother. "Billy. Billy. Isn't this the best sushi you've ever had?"
Billy grinned as he plucked another piece of sashimi off the plate, dunking it in soy sauce before shoving it in his mouth. He waited until he was done swallowing, God that was good, before he answered with a small laugh. “Uh, Yeah. I know they always say you don’t know till you have the original and I thought that was just people being snobs, but this is amazing.”
"I'm so glad we did this," TJ said with a grin. "Thank you." It was all him going with her crazy idea and doing the teleporting.
“I’m glad we did this too. Honestly, coming to Xavier’s has my life being like five hundred times more interesting and exciting than it probably would have been if I had just stayed powerless.”
He glanced around, still amazed they were in a country that was on the other side of the world from New York. “I mean, I never would have thought I’d be eating sushi in actual Japan with my cool half sister from another world. That is far more interesting than the time I found a beach ball on the side of the street.”
TJ laughed at his conclusion. "I guess it would be, unless that beach ball was really something else. Something more?"
“No.” Billy laughed as well. “It was a regular old beach ball, but to a twelve year old Billy that’s a pretty awesome find apparently. I thought it was the coolest treasure to find, then I find out later you can buy ‘em at the dollar store for a buck.”
He swirled his chopsticks in his soy sauce for a minute before looking up at her. “What was your childhood like? All I know if who your parents are, but...what was that like?”
"Oh, it was crazy," TJ assured him with a grin. "Like, we're all teens at the school right now? But we had kids of all ages. With earlier onset mutations, mostly. I was never without someone awesome to play with. But it was also... I grew up knowing all of the X-Men, and the Avengers, even if I didn't live with them. Proper superheroes. That's kind of all I ever wanted to be."
Billy’s face while listening her had transformed from interest into awe and he couldn’t help the excited grin on his face. “Shit, like actual superheros. That is so freaking cool. Sorry, if you didn’t know already, one of your brothers is a huge nerd, the idea of being around actual superheros is pretty mind blowing.”
TJ watched him with an amused grin. "Well, we're the actual superheroes here."
“You,” he pointed his chopsticks at her. “You are. I’ve been on one mission where I couldn’t really help some kids we rescued from killing people and then two times in Limbo.”
He smiled a little. “Though, I guess I’m learning. The idea of becoming a superhero is kinda...wow. Were they all mutants or were there some that had fallen into a vat of nuclear waste kinda stuff?”
"Oh, no we got all kinds," TJ assured him. "Super serum people, radioactive oopsie people, tech people, alien people - although we have those too, apparently," she added with a quick smile, "and shit so weird I don't have the words for it people." She still thought he was selling himself short, and she knew for a fact he was Sorcerer Supreme material - she just hoped he wouldn't be snooty about it, when and if the time came. Maybe he could change that title.
“Yeah, so mutants was as weird as I thought it got, but apparently not.” Apparently there were aliens too, which just kinda blew Billy’s mind. He wasn’t sure why when earlier that year he had fought demons and been possessed but still. “Teddy told me in your world, the skrull are kinda well known?”
That was putting it nicely and he winced a little.
"They tried to invade a couple of times, yeah," TJ confirmed with a grimace. "They're not my favorite people, and that was before they enslaved a bunch of us as gladiators in another world."
“Enslaved? Geeze.” Well, the skrulls sounded lovely and he tried to think of Mrs. A and the woman who was Teddy’s real mom as being that...awful? Billy frowned and poked at a piece of sliced ginger. “Was their leader Dorrek...uhhh...fuck what number is Teddy? Eight? Yeah. So, was their leader his grandpa? Number seven?”
"I really don't remember," TJ said with a shake of her head. "Their names kinda all sound the same."
“Kinda? They were the same...I mean Teddy’s mom has a different name, but all the guys in that line had the same name and then just a number.” Billy frowned, then shook his head. “I will never understand royal traditions. Trust me, if I do have a kid and it’s a boy, I don’t want that poor soul to be William Kaplan II.”
TJ had been talking about the Skrulls in general, but now she'd said it out loud it sounded kind of racist, so she was happy not to correct Billy's assumption. She chuckled at his conclusion, and grinned at him. "Sounds like he'd be Dorrek the ninth, anyway."
Even though he had nothing in his mouth Billy made a bit of a choking sound at her words, reaching out to take a gulp of his now lukewarm tea and tried not to blush too much. “Ah, ah ha. W-well who knows. I mean lots of stuff could happen so.”
Though the idea made him feel giddy. He needed to shift focus onto something less embarrassing and glanced over at her hands when an idea struck him. “You have the power to do Wand’s Hexs right? How long exactly did it take you to learn that? I’m still testing the waters of my powers, but I wanna try and be better.”
TJ smirked at the desperate change of topic. "Nice segue." She flashed him a teasing grin, but went with it anyway. "But no, I don't. We only named them after her hexes, but hers are probability altering wonder stuff. Mine are more to do with Dad. Bolts of energy right out of that dimension he bamfs through. Hence the smell." If they weren't in the middle of eating, she would've demonstrated.
“Oh. Really?” He looked at her hands as if looking at them doing nothing would explain that. “Sorry, I just assumed cause of the name. What do they do and were they tricky to figure out?”
He felt kind of silly not knowing all her powers. What kind of alternate world brother was he? He frowned a little at the stares they were getting from a few other tables and resisted the urge to flip them the bird. Probably didn’t even mean the same thing here.
"They're concussive," she replied, completely ignoring anybody staring at her. It happened even in her world. "It took a while to get the aim right, and the force. But I had people to help me out. It was way less of a bitch than the possession, really."
Billy smiled a little at that. At least he wasn’t the only one who had issues with his powers at the start, even if he still hadn’t figured everything out. “How exactly did you go about practicing that? I was scared to death of just floating and teleporting when I learned I could. I’m still scared to say the word wish flippantly.”
"The possession?" TJ checked. "Well, it involved a lot of not touching people at first, and a lot of volunteers. Xavier's is awesome for that. Not many places people would sign up for a twelve hour coma just to help you out with your mutation."
“Geeze...” Billy whispered softly, the idea of someone volunteering for that was unthinkable, but then again TJ seemed like the kind of girl who could make really good friends. He looked at the plate in front of him with a small frown. “I have to admit I’m a little scared to work on my powers. I’m nervous I’ll mess something or someone up so bad that it can’t be fixed.”
"Yeah, they seem really scary." TJ could sympathize, although she hadn't had it as bad. "Can't Wanda help?"
“Maybe?” Billy questioned, wondering if it would be better to ask Wanda for help or Yana. “Yana, Illyana, kinda helped me out in the start so I had figured about going back to her, but Wanda would make more sense I guess.”
He tapped his finger on the table a few times in thought. “I guess, I just feel weird asking her? I haven’t really hung out with her much aside from a few times and the fact that she’s my weird future mom makes me kind of want to...impress her? Ugh. That’s weird. Sorry.”
He covered his face with his hands as he get his cheeks heat up.
"You're talking to your half-sister who's also really not your half-sister," TJ replied with a smile. "Weird is what we do." Not just in this family, but X-Men, in general. And other assorted teams. Wanda - her mom - was Avengers, after all - for all that she hadn't had future past twins in her world. TJ really had to wonder who the dad was. "I get it. Kurt isn't Dad, but I'd still hate disappointing him, somehow. And that's even weirder. I mean, at least Wanda's your actual mom."
Billy couldn’t help the relieved smile on his face and he chuckled quietly at that. God, it felt good to talk to someone who understood because Tommy was in the same boat but impressing parents wasn’t on his to-do list and it was too weird for anyone else to get. “To be fair, I’d hate to disappoint Kurt too and I’m not related to him...I think.”
TJ wrinkled her nose with a smile at that last bit, but otherwise just focused on the heart of the matter. "He really is awesome, isn't he?"
Billy smiled at the thought of the blue boy, so happy things had worked out for him and JM and that they could be friends again. “He really is.“ Besides Teddy, I don’t think there is a sweeter guy out there than Kurt. He’s probably a fantastic dad, right? I can see Kurt being a really good parent.”
"He's the best," TJ said with a small smile. No matter how tense things had been between them at times - they'd figured it out, and they'd been in such a good place, when the Timebroker had pulled her from her timeline. "But he's more - he's harder than the Kurt you know. I don't know if that's something he'll grow into? I kinda hope he never has to."
“Harder?” Billy questioned. “As in...stricter? Or like all around personality wise?”
He couldn’t imagine Kurt being anything besides the happy teenage boy he was. Kurt was kind and loving, the idea that it might change for any reason made Billy frown.
"Just... He's been through some stuff," TJ tried to explain. It was odd, trying to explain her father, but she'd obviously spent a lot of time comparing and contrasting him with the Kurt here. "And you need some hardness to you, if you're gonna lead the X-men. He's still Kurt, but..." She shrugged. "I don't know, he's been really tough on me sometimes. We'd come to a good place, though, before... before I came here." Don't think about it too hard, TJ, you don't wanna tear up. She gave Billy a smile. "You know. Usual father daughter stuff."
Billy reached out unconsciously and laid a hand over hers, giving it a small squeeze. He hoped it would do for now until he could actually hug her, but to be separated from your family for an unknown time had to be hard. Specially, when you loved that family as much as TJ seemed to love hers. “He sounds like a really awesome guy. Which explains why you are the way you are.”
He gave her a small smile.
TJ returned his smile, although hers was all tease. "No, I think my awesomeness is all Mom." Which, of course, was bullshit, but joking was the way out of ending up tearing up over sushi, so there she went. She squeezed Billy's hand back, then pulled hers out from under his to keep on eating.
He noticed her smile, but let it go and picked up his chopsticks as well. Change the topic, Kaplan. “Can we get ice cream after this? After all this authentic Japanese food I’m kinda of hankering for the some serious Coldstone ice cream. Though you need to stop me if I try to get them to mash more than four candy bars into my single scoop.”
"Sorry, bro, I don't think I want to stop that from happening," TJ retorted, happy to roll with the change of topic. "I kinda wanna encourage it."
Billy grinned. “You and Tommy are bad for me learning self-control.”
"Me and Tommy are awesome for you not forgetting how to indulge," TJ replied with a quick smile. "I mean, look at you, taking us to Tokyo for sushi."
Billy laughed a little and nodded. He looked around again, his mind still having moments where it couldn’t believe they were in a completely different country across the globe. “Well, you wanted sushi and who better to supply it? Speaking of Tommy, should we see if we can make this a whole sibling affair for ice cream?”
"Yes, best idea," TJ agreed wholeheartedly. "We can enable you together."
Billy was glad he had decided to actually knock on TJ’s door, knocking his knuckles against the wood as he waited to see if his half-sister was home. Teleporting right into her room would probably end in disaster, even Tommy didn’t like it but it was easier to get over Tommy’s annoyance. He had a feeling he’d be a wreck if TJ was annoyed with him.
"I've been talking to your answerphone, na na," TJ was singing on the other side of the door. "Something tell me you don't want to know, na na..." She trailed off at the knock, and turned down the music on her phone. "Yeah? Come in!" she called out, sitting up on her bed.
Billy tried to smother the smile at hearing her sing through the door and pushed it open to find her on the bed. “Pretty good. Think you should go pro karaoke.”
"Is that where the big bucks lie in this universe?" TJ asked with a grin. Of course she was grinning; it was Billy. "I just might!"
Billy laughed. “Only if you’re super bad. Do you have William Hung and American Idol in your universe? Guy was a genius.”
"We have American Idol," she compromised. "William who? Did he make karaoke cool again?"
Billy shook his head with a grin. “He was so bad that everyone loved him and he actually sold records. Pretty genius. But hey, karaoke has always been cool, even if you’re bad.”
He looked around and then leaned in as if he was about to tell a big secret. “Which, I’m going to be real with you here. I suck.”
TJ laughed. "Well, now you know we're gonna have to go karaoke together. Anyway, what's up?" She didn't figure he'd come to her room to suggest alternative careers for her.
Billy gave a shrug. “Was just wondering if you wanted to hang. We haven’t gotten to much so I thought I’d be brave and ask. You hungry?”
If it took bravery to ask her if she wanted to hang, TJ was doing something wrong. She hopped off her bed with a grin. "Always!" Which, well, was true enough. Speedsters didn't have the monopoly on mutations that took a lot out of your metabolism, although they had it worse for sure. She slipped her phone in the pocket of her skort and hooked an arm with Billy's. "Cafeteria? Kitchen? Somewhere out in the world?"
Billy grinned when she accepted and he nodded to all the above, then shook his head with a laugh. “Ah, no. Sorry. I mean whatever you want, man. Cafeteria is fine, but if you want I can take us somewhere else.”
If he was going to be adventurous then... “Just name it.”
"Just name it?" TJ echoed, checking that he didn't want to immediately take that back.
“Yeah seriously name it. Give me a good challenge.” He didn’t know why but he felt kinda confident in his teleporting today...as long as the Could google maps and see a picture of it.
"You wanna go for some proper sushi?" she asked with a fanged grin. "I've never been to Tokyo."
Billy couldn’t help but answer her grin with one of his own. “Oh, my sister has some fancy tastes. Okay, Tokyo, huh?”
He pulled out his phone and started giggling sushi places in Tokyo, laughing when it started mashing English and Japanese together. “I can get us there, but I’m not sure I can translate well. You know any Japanese? All I got is Domo arigato, Mr.Roboto.”
TJ laughed. "Hmm. Arigato gozaimasu? And kampai! That's cheers. We're totally ready for this." She grinned at him.
“Oh yeah. We got this.” He joked as he took a few more looks at the pictures google was showing him before nodding. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
He reached out to take one of her hands. “Ready?”
"And excited!" TJ confirmed, putting her three-fingered hand in his.
***
TJ hummed happily at her first bite of sushi, swallowed, then smiled at her brother. "Billy. Billy. Isn't this the best sushi you've ever had?"
Billy grinned as he plucked another piece of sashimi off the plate, dunking it in soy sauce before shoving it in his mouth. He waited until he was done swallowing, God that was good, before he answered with a small laugh. “Uh, Yeah. I know they always say you don’t know till you have the original and I thought that was just people being snobs, but this is amazing.”
"I'm so glad we did this," TJ said with a grin. "Thank you." It was all him going with her crazy idea and doing the teleporting.
“I’m glad we did this too. Honestly, coming to Xavier’s has my life being like five hundred times more interesting and exciting than it probably would have been if I had just stayed powerless.”
He glanced around, still amazed they were in a country that was on the other side of the world from New York. “I mean, I never would have thought I’d be eating sushi in actual Japan with my cool half sister from another world. That is far more interesting than the time I found a beach ball on the side of the street.”
TJ laughed at his conclusion. "I guess it would be, unless that beach ball was really something else. Something more?"
“No.” Billy laughed as well. “It was a regular old beach ball, but to a twelve year old Billy that’s a pretty awesome find apparently. I thought it was the coolest treasure to find, then I find out later you can buy ‘em at the dollar store for a buck.”
He swirled his chopsticks in his soy sauce for a minute before looking up at her. “What was your childhood like? All I know if who your parents are, but...what was that like?”
"Oh, it was crazy," TJ assured him with a grin. "Like, we're all teens at the school right now? But we had kids of all ages. With earlier onset mutations, mostly. I was never without someone awesome to play with. But it was also... I grew up knowing all of the X-Men, and the Avengers, even if I didn't live with them. Proper superheroes. That's kind of all I ever wanted to be."
Billy’s face while listening her had transformed from interest into awe and he couldn’t help the excited grin on his face. “Shit, like actual superheros. That is so freaking cool. Sorry, if you didn’t know already, one of your brothers is a huge nerd, the idea of being around actual superheros is pretty mind blowing.”
TJ watched him with an amused grin. "Well, we're the actual superheroes here."
“You,” he pointed his chopsticks at her. “You are. I’ve been on one mission where I couldn’t really help some kids we rescued from killing people and then two times in Limbo.”
He smiled a little. “Though, I guess I’m learning. The idea of becoming a superhero is kinda...wow. Were they all mutants or were there some that had fallen into a vat of nuclear waste kinda stuff?”
"Oh, no we got all kinds," TJ assured him. "Super serum people, radioactive oopsie people, tech people, alien people - although we have those too, apparently," she added with a quick smile, "and shit so weird I don't have the words for it people." She still thought he was selling himself short, and she knew for a fact he was Sorcerer Supreme material - she just hoped he wouldn't be snooty about it, when and if the time came. Maybe he could change that title.
“Yeah, so mutants was as weird as I thought it got, but apparently not.” Apparently there were aliens too, which just kinda blew Billy’s mind. He wasn’t sure why when earlier that year he had fought demons and been possessed but still. “Teddy told me in your world, the skrull are kinda well known?”
That was putting it nicely and he winced a little.
"They tried to invade a couple of times, yeah," TJ confirmed with a grimace. "They're not my favorite people, and that was before they enslaved a bunch of us as gladiators in another world."
“Enslaved? Geeze.” Well, the skrulls sounded lovely and he tried to think of Mrs. A and the woman who was Teddy’s real mom as being that...awful? Billy frowned and poked at a piece of sliced ginger. “Was their leader Dorrek...uhhh...fuck what number is Teddy? Eight? Yeah. So, was their leader his grandpa? Number seven?”
"I really don't remember," TJ said with a shake of her head. "Their names kinda all sound the same."
“Kinda? They were the same...I mean Teddy’s mom has a different name, but all the guys in that line had the same name and then just a number.” Billy frowned, then shook his head. “I will never understand royal traditions. Trust me, if I do have a kid and it’s a boy, I don’t want that poor soul to be William Kaplan II.”
TJ had been talking about the Skrulls in general, but now she'd said it out loud it sounded kind of racist, so she was happy not to correct Billy's assumption. She chuckled at his conclusion, and grinned at him. "Sounds like he'd be Dorrek the ninth, anyway."
Even though he had nothing in his mouth Billy made a bit of a choking sound at her words, reaching out to take a gulp of his now lukewarm tea and tried not to blush too much. “Ah, ah ha. W-well who knows. I mean lots of stuff could happen so.”
Though the idea made him feel giddy. He needed to shift focus onto something less embarrassing and glanced over at her hands when an idea struck him. “You have the power to do Wand’s Hexs right? How long exactly did it take you to learn that? I’m still testing the waters of my powers, but I wanna try and be better.”
TJ smirked at the desperate change of topic. "Nice segue." She flashed him a teasing grin, but went with it anyway. "But no, I don't. We only named them after her hexes, but hers are probability altering wonder stuff. Mine are more to do with Dad. Bolts of energy right out of that dimension he bamfs through. Hence the smell." If they weren't in the middle of eating, she would've demonstrated.
“Oh. Really?” He looked at her hands as if looking at them doing nothing would explain that. “Sorry, I just assumed cause of the name. What do they do and were they tricky to figure out?”
He felt kind of silly not knowing all her powers. What kind of alternate world brother was he? He frowned a little at the stares they were getting from a few other tables and resisted the urge to flip them the bird. Probably didn’t even mean the same thing here.
"They're concussive," she replied, completely ignoring anybody staring at her. It happened even in her world. "It took a while to get the aim right, and the force. But I had people to help me out. It was way less of a bitch than the possession, really."
Billy smiled a little at that. At least he wasn’t the only one who had issues with his powers at the start, even if he still hadn’t figured everything out. “How exactly did you go about practicing that? I was scared to death of just floating and teleporting when I learned I could. I’m still scared to say the word wish flippantly.”
"The possession?" TJ checked. "Well, it involved a lot of not touching people at first, and a lot of volunteers. Xavier's is awesome for that. Not many places people would sign up for a twelve hour coma just to help you out with your mutation."
“Geeze...” Billy whispered softly, the idea of someone volunteering for that was unthinkable, but then again TJ seemed like the kind of girl who could make really good friends. He looked at the plate in front of him with a small frown. “I have to admit I’m a little scared to work on my powers. I’m nervous I’ll mess something or someone up so bad that it can’t be fixed.”
"Yeah, they seem really scary." TJ could sympathize, although she hadn't had it as bad. "Can't Wanda help?"
“Maybe?” Billy questioned, wondering if it would be better to ask Wanda for help or Yana. “Yana, Illyana, kinda helped me out in the start so I had figured about going back to her, but Wanda would make more sense I guess.”
He tapped his finger on the table a few times in thought. “I guess, I just feel weird asking her? I haven’t really hung out with her much aside from a few times and the fact that she’s my weird future mom makes me kind of want to...impress her? Ugh. That’s weird. Sorry.”
He covered his face with his hands as he get his cheeks heat up.
"You're talking to your half-sister who's also really not your half-sister," TJ replied with a smile. "Weird is what we do." Not just in this family, but X-Men, in general. And other assorted teams. Wanda - her mom - was Avengers, after all - for all that she hadn't had future past twins in her world. TJ really had to wonder who the dad was. "I get it. Kurt isn't Dad, but I'd still hate disappointing him, somehow. And that's even weirder. I mean, at least Wanda's your actual mom."
Billy couldn’t help the relieved smile on his face and he chuckled quietly at that. God, it felt good to talk to someone who understood because Tommy was in the same boat but impressing parents wasn’t on his to-do list and it was too weird for anyone else to get. “To be fair, I’d hate to disappoint Kurt too and I’m not related to him...I think.”
TJ wrinkled her nose with a smile at that last bit, but otherwise just focused on the heart of the matter. "He really is awesome, isn't he?"
Billy smiled at the thought of the blue boy, so happy things had worked out for him and JM and that they could be friends again. “He really is.“ Besides Teddy, I don’t think there is a sweeter guy out there than Kurt. He’s probably a fantastic dad, right? I can see Kurt being a really good parent.”
"He's the best," TJ said with a small smile. No matter how tense things had been between them at times - they'd figured it out, and they'd been in such a good place, when the Timebroker had pulled her from her timeline. "But he's more - he's harder than the Kurt you know. I don't know if that's something he'll grow into? I kinda hope he never has to."
“Harder?” Billy questioned. “As in...stricter? Or like all around personality wise?”
He couldn’t imagine Kurt being anything besides the happy teenage boy he was. Kurt was kind and loving, the idea that it might change for any reason made Billy frown.
"Just... He's been through some stuff," TJ tried to explain. It was odd, trying to explain her father, but she'd obviously spent a lot of time comparing and contrasting him with the Kurt here. "And you need some hardness to you, if you're gonna lead the X-men. He's still Kurt, but..." She shrugged. "I don't know, he's been really tough on me sometimes. We'd come to a good place, though, before... before I came here." Don't think about it too hard, TJ, you don't wanna tear up. She gave Billy a smile. "You know. Usual father daughter stuff."
Billy reached out unconsciously and laid a hand over hers, giving it a small squeeze. He hoped it would do for now until he could actually hug her, but to be separated from your family for an unknown time had to be hard. Specially, when you loved that family as much as TJ seemed to love hers. “He sounds like a really awesome guy. Which explains why you are the way you are.”
He gave her a small smile.
TJ returned his smile, although hers was all tease. "No, I think my awesomeness is all Mom." Which, of course, was bullshit, but joking was the way out of ending up tearing up over sushi, so there she went. She squeezed Billy's hand back, then pulled hers out from under his to keep on eating.
He noticed her smile, but let it go and picked up his chopsticks as well. Change the topic, Kaplan. “Can we get ice cream after this? After all this authentic Japanese food I’m kinda of hankering for the some serious Coldstone ice cream. Though you need to stop me if I try to get them to mash more than four candy bars into my single scoop.”
"Sorry, bro, I don't think I want to stop that from happening," TJ retorted, happy to roll with the change of topic. "I kinda wanna encourage it."
Billy grinned. “You and Tommy are bad for me learning self-control.”
"Me and Tommy are awesome for you not forgetting how to indulge," TJ replied with a quick smile. "I mean, look at you, taking us to Tokyo for sushi."
Billy laughed a little and nodded. He looked around again, his mind still having moments where it couldn’t believe they were in a completely different country across the globe. “Well, you wanted sushi and who better to supply it? Speaking of Tommy, should we see if we can make this a whole sibling affair for ice cream?”
"Yes, best idea," TJ agreed wholeheartedly. "We can enable you together."
