Teddy and Shen | Brotherhood Party
Oct. 14th, 2017 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ax_mainTeddy and Shen keep an eye on the Minimoffs and Maximoffs, and share some concerns.
Teddy'd been fairly dubious about the party as a whole before the day had actually come, and the actual thing wasn't getting much better. He'd already manged to embarrass himself in front of Billy back in the dorm, and now he was standing at the ridiculous huge Jenga tower, nursing a drink he wouldn't feel anyway, and feeling sorry for himself.
Bad enough he'd had to watch Billy (and his ridiculous eyelashes and ripped jeans and that stupid wonderful eyeliner) dancing with Kurt earlier. Now all he wanted to do was escape. But Billy was walking across the room and possibly into a trap, so Teddy was stuck, too.
Tommy sprawled in a chair against the wall, the dark-haired girl version of Billy sitting next to him. They'd been talking for a couple of minutes, apparently calmly enough, and now her brother - white haired, looking so much like Tommy - was leading Billy over to join them. Teddy'd heard the backstory, but seeing the four of them together for the first time was a little surreal.
Shen walked over to him, looking somehow smaller than usual, standing beside him without her wings. She was nursing a beer, and looking in the same direction he was. "So you're worried as well." She saw Wanda stand as her brother and Billy joined her and Tommy, and she stepped in front of Teddy, angling a small smile up at him. "You'll seem less like you're staring at them now. Just - tell me what's happening?"
Teddy grimaced, shaking off his weird mood as much as he could. He shifted slightly to the side so that, yeah, he didn't look quite so much like a voyeur, or some weird stalker. "That obvious, hunh?" That question really didn't need an answer. "Yeah. I'm worried. They've just been talking so far, and I'm not a hundred percent sure what I'm worried about specifically," he admitted, "other than the million and one ways this place could go pear-shaped." Tommy smirked, not-Tommy said something back, but no fists were flying yet.
"Right there with you," Shen confirmed. "And even if things go mostly all right, whatever's actually going on has gotta be emotionally taxing." If Billy and Tommy needed emotional support - whether they'd admit it or not - she wanted to make sure she was there for them. Not that she'd be the only one, clearly, and it didn't matter if they didn't want it from her. Being there for them mattered. "I talked to Wanda earlier. She seemed all right, at least."
That was a bit of a relief, and Teddy gave her a small smile. "That's good to hear. I haven't met either of them, I just know whatever Billy found out before, and he's been a nervous wreck." And there hadn't been a whole lot of anything Teddy had been able to do about it except listen and make sympathetic noises. "What's Wanda like? Is she as much like Billy as she looks?"
"Well, she's nice," Shen answered. So they had that much in common. "Her mutation's huge. Probability manipulation." What couldn't you do with a mutation like that? How did it even work? She kinda wished Kitty was around - except not really, for her sake.
Probability manipulation; it was basically magic, when you came right down to it. Wish for something and make it likely to happen. "That figures. Tommy and - what's his name? the other one - both have speed, so it makes some weird kind of sense that Wanda and Billy's powers would match up. He said they might. And," Teddy admitted, "it could answer the whole 'why' part of this weirdness. Maybe the resemblances aren't meaningful, just really, really, really... unlikely."
"Can you actually have an identical twin who's not your twin?" Shen asked with a purse of her lips. "Like, is it possible at all, or just extreeeeemely unlikely?" Ugh, all this stuff made no sense, and it didn't even directly concern her. She didn't know how the two of them could cope.
"Billy filled our dorm room with spontaneously manifesting balloons, entirely by accident," Teddy pointed out, fondness and exasperation warring for a moment in his voice. "I'm not willing to bet against anything when it comes to those kinds of powers. Except possibly a janitorial strike at school if he does that in a public space."
Shen chuckled. "Now I want it to happen in class." She sobered up, and resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. "What's going on? Are they still talking?"
"Mm-hm. Tommy's talking; from the way his arms are waving I think he's trying to explain Billy's magic theory. That or he's trying to explode something."
The urge to look over her shoulder became stronger, but Shen resisted it still. Instead, she took a sip from her beer, or seemed to, actually barely wetting her lips. "Let's hope for the former."
Nothing visibly exploded, so Teddy relaxed for a moment and looked away from whatever was unfolding on the other side of the room. One day, he was going to have to learn to read lips. "My roommate dramas aside, how's it going for you tonight?"
"You know." She shrugged, still slightly off balance that her wings weren't there. "The two of them I've talked to are pretty cool. And good dancers. One of them assured me they weren't terrorists, so here's to hoping it's true." She didn't want to have to go up against them.
"Just like that?" Teddy asked, surprised. He was pretty sure it hadn't, but how did that even come up in casual party small-talk? "Hi, I'm Steve and I'm not a terrorist'? That doesn't exactly inspire confidence."
Shen chuckled at the notion. "No, I asked." She shrugged. "No reason not to." She liked that Eileen had seemed irritated with the thought of being a terrorist, but without going overboard. Her reaction felt genuine. Shen wanted to believe her; how could the kids they were having this party with be terrorists? They were just kids, like them.
"You asked, just like that?" Teddy was officially impressed. "That takes" do not say 'balls,' do not say 'balls' "guts. I hope you're right." He looked up and over her shoulder again; this time it was Billy talking, and looking sheepish while he spoke. "Because I have the feeling we're going to be running into each other a lot either way."
Shen once again fought the temptation to look back at the two sets of twins. No. Teddy would let her know if there was anything specific going on. "I hope she wasn't lying, or she isn't being manipulated," she confirmed with a brief grimace.
"Come to that, we're not all that sure we aren't on our end either," Teddy half-sighed.
"I know, right," Shen agreed with a small grimace. "Fingers crossed all around." Eyes wide open all around, anyway. "Things still going okay?"
Teddy wrestled his gaze back to her. "I think so? It's hard to tell. They're still just talking. The other speedy guy looks like he's not buying any of it, but if anyone was going to start punching anything I think it would have happened by now."
"Well, fingers crossed, anyway," Shen stated with pursed lips. She wasn't sure about the timing of punches, but she was hoping Teddy was right. To be a fly on the nearest wall to them, seriously. If flies could even hear? She stopped worrying her bottom lip with her teeth when she realized she was doing it, and looked up at Teddy. "What about you? How are things going tonight?"
I think I'm falling in love with my roommate, he likes someone else and my own lies have destroyed any chance I might have had, so the train to self-destruction is running right about on schedule. "Fine, I guess?" Teddy went for the smile anyway. "I mostly came along to be backup for the guys, but since it doesn't look like they needed it... I need to find something fun to do with the rest of my evening. I might try my hand at the paint wall. Or dance. What's the appropriate protocol for not-so-secret infiltration of enemy territory?" he joked. "Though I guess this is officially neutral ground."
"I've mostly been following the hanging-out-and-dancing-with-them protocol," Shen replied with a small smile. "But, well." She nodded her head to the side, meaning to indicate what was going on behind her. "Just because they don't seem to need physical backup doesn't mean they might not need emotional backup."
That- okay, yeah. Fair point. He wasn't feeling particularly like being Billy's shoulder to cry on at the moment, but he was almost certainly going to end up doing it anyway. "Good luck getting Tommy to admit anything like that," Teddy deflected instead. "And if this party's like the last one, Billy's going to end up three sheets to the wind and hugging everybody. We're probably off the hook for tonight."
"I probably wouldn't be either of their first choices, anyway," Shen replied, and took a sip from her tepid beer. Yikes. "I'll still be there just in case." She might not even be part of their choices.
The way she framed it caught him off-guard (again - she seemed to be good at that) and he gave her a surprised and faintly bemused smile. "You're a good friend, you know that?"
"Okay?" Shen accepted the compliment, bemused in her own right. "I try to be, anyway."
The contrast between what she was -- thinking of others, planning ahead, offering her shoulder up to people that (as far as Teddy knew, anyway) were more 'classmates' than 'tight inner circle' -- and his entire experience of friendship before was ... affirming, somehow. Maybe it shouldn't have been. He'd done that for Greg and been drained dry by it, used up and thrown aside at the exact moment he'd finally set some boundaries. This was different.
For one, he had absolutely no doubt in his mind that Shen was perfectly capable of drawing her boundaries exactly as often and as firmly as she needed, and woe betide anyone who tried to cross them. That was a trick he needed to learn.
"It's rarer than you'd think," he said simply. Over her shoulder, Wanda was laughing and Billy was looking affronted, but his glare was aimed at Tommy rather than the other set of twins. Teddy drank, his pop warmer than he liked, but it was something to do with his hands.
"Yeah, I - know, yeah," Shen confirmed, unable not to think of Tamara. Was that unfair? Ugh. It shouldn't be a surprise. If forgiveness wasn't such hard work, more people would be doing it, she figured. And maybe it wouldn't be worth as much.
But she didn't want to get into that, and wasn't about to poke about what made Teddy think so. If he wanted to tell her about it, he would.
"But it'd be crap wanting to change the world for the better if I didn't also work to be better, myself."
Be a better person - that meant letting go of his resentment and his pain, didn't it? Billy had a life to live that wasn't going to include Teddy (at least not in a romantic way), and that was by his own design. He had to figure out how to let go. And step one had to be not staring at him from across the room like a gigantic creeper. "It looks like they're wrapping up," he said, not entirely sure of himself. "Did you want to dance?"
Shen hesitated. It was difficult to combine 'dancing' and 'being there for people'. But she could always keep an eye on them from the dancefloor, and she figured that was Teddy's plan, too. "Sure," she nodded. "I'll never turn down a dance."
Teddy'd been fairly dubious about the party as a whole before the day had actually come, and the actual thing wasn't getting much better. He'd already manged to embarrass himself in front of Billy back in the dorm, and now he was standing at the ridiculous huge Jenga tower, nursing a drink he wouldn't feel anyway, and feeling sorry for himself.
Bad enough he'd had to watch Billy (and his ridiculous eyelashes and ripped jeans and that stupid wonderful eyeliner) dancing with Kurt earlier. Now all he wanted to do was escape. But Billy was walking across the room and possibly into a trap, so Teddy was stuck, too.
Tommy sprawled in a chair against the wall, the dark-haired girl version of Billy sitting next to him. They'd been talking for a couple of minutes, apparently calmly enough, and now her brother - white haired, looking so much like Tommy - was leading Billy over to join them. Teddy'd heard the backstory, but seeing the four of them together for the first time was a little surreal.
Shen walked over to him, looking somehow smaller than usual, standing beside him without her wings. She was nursing a beer, and looking in the same direction he was. "So you're worried as well." She saw Wanda stand as her brother and Billy joined her and Tommy, and she stepped in front of Teddy, angling a small smile up at him. "You'll seem less like you're staring at them now. Just - tell me what's happening?"
Teddy grimaced, shaking off his weird mood as much as he could. He shifted slightly to the side so that, yeah, he didn't look quite so much like a voyeur, or some weird stalker. "That obvious, hunh?" That question really didn't need an answer. "Yeah. I'm worried. They've just been talking so far, and I'm not a hundred percent sure what I'm worried about specifically," he admitted, "other than the million and one ways this place could go pear-shaped." Tommy smirked, not-Tommy said something back, but no fists were flying yet.
"Right there with you," Shen confirmed. "And even if things go mostly all right, whatever's actually going on has gotta be emotionally taxing." If Billy and Tommy needed emotional support - whether they'd admit it or not - she wanted to make sure she was there for them. Not that she'd be the only one, clearly, and it didn't matter if they didn't want it from her. Being there for them mattered. "I talked to Wanda earlier. She seemed all right, at least."
That was a bit of a relief, and Teddy gave her a small smile. "That's good to hear. I haven't met either of them, I just know whatever Billy found out before, and he's been a nervous wreck." And there hadn't been a whole lot of anything Teddy had been able to do about it except listen and make sympathetic noises. "What's Wanda like? Is she as much like Billy as she looks?"
"Well, she's nice," Shen answered. So they had that much in common. "Her mutation's huge. Probability manipulation." What couldn't you do with a mutation like that? How did it even work? She kinda wished Kitty was around - except not really, for her sake.
Probability manipulation; it was basically magic, when you came right down to it. Wish for something and make it likely to happen. "That figures. Tommy and - what's his name? the other one - both have speed, so it makes some weird kind of sense that Wanda and Billy's powers would match up. He said they might. And," Teddy admitted, "it could answer the whole 'why' part of this weirdness. Maybe the resemblances aren't meaningful, just really, really, really... unlikely."
"Can you actually have an identical twin who's not your twin?" Shen asked with a purse of her lips. "Like, is it possible at all, or just extreeeeemely unlikely?" Ugh, all this stuff made no sense, and it didn't even directly concern her. She didn't know how the two of them could cope.
"Billy filled our dorm room with spontaneously manifesting balloons, entirely by accident," Teddy pointed out, fondness and exasperation warring for a moment in his voice. "I'm not willing to bet against anything when it comes to those kinds of powers. Except possibly a janitorial strike at school if he does that in a public space."
Shen chuckled. "Now I want it to happen in class." She sobered up, and resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. "What's going on? Are they still talking?"
"Mm-hm. Tommy's talking; from the way his arms are waving I think he's trying to explain Billy's magic theory. That or he's trying to explode something."
The urge to look over her shoulder became stronger, but Shen resisted it still. Instead, she took a sip from her beer, or seemed to, actually barely wetting her lips. "Let's hope for the former."
Nothing visibly exploded, so Teddy relaxed for a moment and looked away from whatever was unfolding on the other side of the room. One day, he was going to have to learn to read lips. "My roommate dramas aside, how's it going for you tonight?"
"You know." She shrugged, still slightly off balance that her wings weren't there. "The two of them I've talked to are pretty cool. And good dancers. One of them assured me they weren't terrorists, so here's to hoping it's true." She didn't want to have to go up against them.
"Just like that?" Teddy asked, surprised. He was pretty sure it hadn't, but how did that even come up in casual party small-talk? "Hi, I'm Steve and I'm not a terrorist'? That doesn't exactly inspire confidence."
Shen chuckled at the notion. "No, I asked." She shrugged. "No reason not to." She liked that Eileen had seemed irritated with the thought of being a terrorist, but without going overboard. Her reaction felt genuine. Shen wanted to believe her; how could the kids they were having this party with be terrorists? They were just kids, like them.
"You asked, just like that?" Teddy was officially impressed. "That takes" do not say 'balls,' do not say 'balls' "guts. I hope you're right." He looked up and over her shoulder again; this time it was Billy talking, and looking sheepish while he spoke. "Because I have the feeling we're going to be running into each other a lot either way."
Shen once again fought the temptation to look back at the two sets of twins. No. Teddy would let her know if there was anything specific going on. "I hope she wasn't lying, or she isn't being manipulated," she confirmed with a brief grimace.
"Come to that, we're not all that sure we aren't on our end either," Teddy half-sighed.
"I know, right," Shen agreed with a small grimace. "Fingers crossed all around." Eyes wide open all around, anyway. "Things still going okay?"
Teddy wrestled his gaze back to her. "I think so? It's hard to tell. They're still just talking. The other speedy guy looks like he's not buying any of it, but if anyone was going to start punching anything I think it would have happened by now."
"Well, fingers crossed, anyway," Shen stated with pursed lips. She wasn't sure about the timing of punches, but she was hoping Teddy was right. To be a fly on the nearest wall to them, seriously. If flies could even hear? She stopped worrying her bottom lip with her teeth when she realized she was doing it, and looked up at Teddy. "What about you? How are things going tonight?"
I think I'm falling in love with my roommate, he likes someone else and my own lies have destroyed any chance I might have had, so the train to self-destruction is running right about on schedule. "Fine, I guess?" Teddy went for the smile anyway. "I mostly came along to be backup for the guys, but since it doesn't look like they needed it... I need to find something fun to do with the rest of my evening. I might try my hand at the paint wall. Or dance. What's the appropriate protocol for not-so-secret infiltration of enemy territory?" he joked. "Though I guess this is officially neutral ground."
"I've mostly been following the hanging-out-and-dancing-with-them protocol," Shen replied with a small smile. "But, well." She nodded her head to the side, meaning to indicate what was going on behind her. "Just because they don't seem to need physical backup doesn't mean they might not need emotional backup."
That- okay, yeah. Fair point. He wasn't feeling particularly like being Billy's shoulder to cry on at the moment, but he was almost certainly going to end up doing it anyway. "Good luck getting Tommy to admit anything like that," Teddy deflected instead. "And if this party's like the last one, Billy's going to end up three sheets to the wind and hugging everybody. We're probably off the hook for tonight."
"I probably wouldn't be either of their first choices, anyway," Shen replied, and took a sip from her tepid beer. Yikes. "I'll still be there just in case." She might not even be part of their choices.
The way she framed it caught him off-guard (again - she seemed to be good at that) and he gave her a surprised and faintly bemused smile. "You're a good friend, you know that?"
"Okay?" Shen accepted the compliment, bemused in her own right. "I try to be, anyway."
The contrast between what she was -- thinking of others, planning ahead, offering her shoulder up to people that (as far as Teddy knew, anyway) were more 'classmates' than 'tight inner circle' -- and his entire experience of friendship before was ... affirming, somehow. Maybe it shouldn't have been. He'd done that for Greg and been drained dry by it, used up and thrown aside at the exact moment he'd finally set some boundaries. This was different.
For one, he had absolutely no doubt in his mind that Shen was perfectly capable of drawing her boundaries exactly as often and as firmly as she needed, and woe betide anyone who tried to cross them. That was a trick he needed to learn.
"It's rarer than you'd think," he said simply. Over her shoulder, Wanda was laughing and Billy was looking affronted, but his glare was aimed at Tommy rather than the other set of twins. Teddy drank, his pop warmer than he liked, but it was something to do with his hands.
"Yeah, I - know, yeah," Shen confirmed, unable not to think of Tamara. Was that unfair? Ugh. It shouldn't be a surprise. If forgiveness wasn't such hard work, more people would be doing it, she figured. And maybe it wouldn't be worth as much.
But she didn't want to get into that, and wasn't about to poke about what made Teddy think so. If he wanted to tell her about it, he would.
"But it'd be crap wanting to change the world for the better if I didn't also work to be better, myself."
Be a better person - that meant letting go of his resentment and his pain, didn't it? Billy had a life to live that wasn't going to include Teddy (at least not in a romantic way), and that was by his own design. He had to figure out how to let go. And step one had to be not staring at him from across the room like a gigantic creeper. "It looks like they're wrapping up," he said, not entirely sure of himself. "Did you want to dance?"
Shen hesitated. It was difficult to combine 'dancing' and 'being there for people'. But she could always keep an eye on them from the dancefloor, and she figured that was Teddy's plan, too. "Sure," she nodded. "I'll never turn down a dance."
