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WHO: Billy & Terry (& Bradbury)
WHERE: Terry's Apartment
WHEN: 5/11 or "in the evening whenever"
WARNINGS: n/a
SUMMARY: Terry offered to give Billy Teddy's stuff from when he was here last.
FORMAT: in the style of your choice.

So, okay, Billy had tried his best to pretend everything was easy to deal with. And in a way, that wasn't a lie. It wasn't like his own world hadn't been turned on top of itself a few times, it wasn't like he didn't personally possess enough power to go and potentially do something like this. (Now there was a thought -- don't even.) Seeing and talking to Kate had been good, though, a sense of normalacy even in this totally abnormal place. But there was still this question about Teddy's stuff, and he thinks about it a lot the second day and decides to go over to Terry's place that night, hoping he's not going to seem too desperate or forward, or insert other negative adjective. Anyway "evening whenever" it is, so he knocks on the door. Hopefully he's home.

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He's not very good at this. He's painfully aware of it, and inwardly willing the situation to resolve itself as quickly as possible, because in all honesty, the longer he spends trying to interact with other sort of human beings, the more likely it is that he'll say something to mess it up. Like the circumstances aren't already awkward enough already.

But, oh. Right. The raccoons.

"April -- my boss." Might as well be blunt about it. Terry waves his hand a little, as if to say, it's really not a big deal. "Her power is like, controlling raccoons or something. They follow her around. Nest in people's hair and stuff. Whatever."

At least the description of April's power gets Billy to laugh. "Oh man, I'm not sure if that's really great or really unfortunate." He's leaning towards unfortunate, but, man, racoons can be cool when they aren't being terrifying, right? And as a weapon we can definitely see the positives there. Though for some reason he also has the image of Tom Nook, bane of every Animal Crossing player's life stuck in his head. Maybe it's "boss" and "racoons" in the same sentence. Which, speaking of, "What kind of job do you have?"

Unfortunate is the word that Terry would choose -- but then again, he's a pessimist, so unfortunate tends to come up a lot with him anyway. His relationship with April is a strange one, filled with small woodland creatures. But he won't explain it too much. Billy's bound to find out first-hand sooner or later anyway.

"I'm April's intern. At City Hall." Not that he has any interest in politics. He's immortal -- those things start feeling irrelevant when he thinks about them too hard. "Basically? I make a lot of coffee. And a lot of copies."

The flatness of his tone suggests he doesn't find it a particularly thrilling lifestyle. But truthfully, the mundane quality of it can be comforting.

He goes on dryly, "If you're into slave labor, she could probably hook you up."

"Coffee and copies, that's really living the high life." Not that he knows what he wants to do with his, but those are details, right? "If I ever decide that's what I want to do, I'll definitely give you a call. I might to the school thing in the fall - it seems kind of a waste to start in with it the month before the summer starts."

Terry rolls his eyes a little, but just a little, and mostly for show. He's not any more sorted out than Billy is (maybe he's less), but it gets him out of the house -- which, if his pallor is anything to judge by, he probably needs. It beats sitting in the dark avoiding people all day, every day.

"The school thing. Right."

Terry remembers that too. Supposedly there's a future where he grows up, gets somewhat functional, and gets a useful education, but he isn't there yet and he isn't sure he wants to be. He hasn't done school since high school. And the sarcasm he responds with betrays what kind of experience he thinks that was.

"Because school doesn't completely blow most of the time or anything."

"I think maybe all my grandmother's lectures finally got to me." It's only partly a joke - Grandmother guilt is definitely the worst as far as he's concerned. But partly, he just wants something that counts as normal. His powers aren't, and he's not always sure he wants those, so having a fallback plan seems like a really really good idea. You know, become an account or something like that.

Terry makes a bit of a face. Lectures. His favorite thing.

"Seriously?" Obviously he doesn't exactly buy that reasoning. "I think I'd rather feel guilty than have to deal with school." And people. And expectations. And all the general crap that going to school brings around.

"Maybe your grandmother isn't as good at it as mine is." Go to a goo school, get a good job, marry a nice jewish girl, etc. etc. "It would be good to know how to do something."

He's pretty sure his grandmother would be horrified to see him anyway -- the human one he knows he has, at least. Do demon lords have mothers? Maybe if he does have a dark demonic grandmother, she'd be able to coerce him into doing things. He's not exactly eager to find out.

"You mean besides alter reality or whatever the hell it is you do?" Maybe he just doesn't really remember normalcy -- or he's given up on it. "What else is there, underwater basket weaving?"

"Altering reality isn't really a viable career option, I don't think." Maybe it is - but he gave up superheroing. For good reasons, as he was learning. At least, maybe he'd go back and do it, but only for as long as it took to get this mother parasite gone and then. And then that was it.

Really.

"I dunno, maybe I'll become an accountant." That was stable right. Being a super hero was like the opposite of stable.

When did he turn into this person? If the Billy of a year ago had seen him talking like this they would have had A Discussion about it, but now he's pretty much okay with the idea of trying to be. Normal. At least for the most part.

Terry makes another face. Because accounting. He tries to imagine the other reality alterer he knows saying something like that and the mental image is purely ridiculous in his head. Jenny Quantum wanted to rule the world. Billy Kaplan wanted to be an accountant. Maybe it just takes all kinds.

"Please tell me you're kidding." Well, maybe that's insensitive. But he's not really good at being sensitive anyway. "Not that I buy into the whole spandex gig, because that gets stupid fast too, but. Seriously?"

"Seriously. I mean, it's a life skill or whatever adults are always trying to tell you about, right? You're kind of employable for forever." It sounds dumber the longer he describes it, he's well aware, "I guess I just...even if I never did anything with it, it'd be something."

Life skill. Right. Maybe he just doesn't grasp the concept entirely. Does that happen when you start coming to terms with your immortality? Or maybe it's his social ineptitude showing again. Who knows.

"That's seriously what you want?" He's skeptical. A little judgmental too. Not because he doesn't understand the desire to be normal -- he does. Definitely. But his powers are awful. Dangerous. Nothing but harmful. Billy is different, right? "What happened to the whole, I dunno, teen hero thing?"

"I'm not a 'teen hero' anymore. We stopped being the Young Avengers awhile ago, so." He shrugs. It's not something he wants to get into, though it's true that talking about it would probably be good eventually. Just, you know, with people he knows better. He'd already talked about it a bit anyway and that was totally enough right?

"Why, what do you want to do? Work with the Initiative forever?"

"What? No."

Terry makes another face. Truthfully, the Initiative was only a slight upgrade from high school. Just another place where he didn't fit in with his peers and managed to ruin mostly everything for everyone.

"But I'm pretty sure there's nothing school can do for me either."

Unless colleges can take your powers away, of course.

"Then don't go to school." Billy shrugs. He knows its not for everyone - but he and his analytical skills are going to learn some accounting. Or something.

"Not planning on it." His tone is dismissive. There will be as little accounting in Terry's future as humanly possible. "I'm immortal anyway, so there's not a whole lot of point to it."

"Really? You're a immortal?" This is somehow now 900 times cooler than any discussion about school.

"Well, yeah. I mean, I can't be killed, so I guess I am. Supposedly." Suddenly, he seems unwilling to discuss it in detail. It's frustrating really, that the demonic side of him affects just about everything. He can't even die properly. "I did get autopsied and embalmed once though. That sucked."

Edited 2013-06-14 08:03 (UTC)

Okay yeah that definitely puts a damper on the whole being immortal is cool. "That sounds horrible."

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