Fanfiction Idol Audition

[holli]

Title: into luminous air
Fandom: Young Avengers
Rating: R
Not mine, obviously, but the fanfictionidol folks have blanket permission to repost and quote. holy crap, y'all, I can't believe I was talked into this. Um.


"let geese/ gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release/ from dusty bondage into luminous air." --Edna St. Vincent Millay, Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare


"Seriously, though, do you really buy into this stuff?" Billy frowned at the yoga mats Teddy was setting out on Billy's bedroom floor. He'd only just cleared enough space for them, at the end of the bed; on either side, canyon walls of dirty clothes loomed. There was maybe a bare inch of space between the mats. "If nothing else, I think we need more *room* for yoga. And for that, I need to either do laundry or figure out how to clean and fold clothes with magic."

"There's plenty of room, and I am totally not saying a *word* about your dire lack of cleanliness," said Teddy. "Anyway, we're meditating, not doing yoga, and I swear it works. I got *way* better with my powers once I started doing this. It gets like a million times easier to focus."

Billy almost said "Yes, because sitting three inches from you is the best way for me to focus on my *powers,*" but he didn't, because he had enough self-control for that, if not enough to not zap people with his magic lightning.

The thing was, he really needed to not zap people with his magic lightning, because he was not going to be much of a superhero if he blew his secret identity the first time someone shoved him in the lunch line. Maybe even that was thinking ahead too much-- he didn't have a real costume yet, he didn't even have a *code name*, and being a superhero thus far had mostly consisted of listening to Iron Lad fret about the impending arrival of Kang the Conqueror, watching Eli scowl and demand to know when they were going to actually fight some actual crime, and trying desperately not to look at Teddy's ass. This last was not going well, because Teddy kept coming over with new versions of his costume and *modeling them.* Billy was pretty sure he'd be lucky to get out of today's meditation session with only the light bulbs in his room exploded.

When Teddy has been thinking about a costume design that had had, dear god, *shorts*, Billy had accidentally blown every fuse in a one-block radius. He bet the Scarlet Witch never had these problems.

And then Teddy took his shirt off, settled into an unfairly comfortable-looking lotus position, and raised an eyebrow at Billy. "So are you going to join me, or are you going to sit there and make faces?"

Billy was reasonably sure the universe hated him. Hot teammates were one thing; hot teammates who would not keep their clothes on, had no apparent concept of personal space, and were either deeply oblivious or actually *evil*, were more than any sixteen-year-old with superpowers should have to deal with.

Somehow, without either passing out, blowing anything up, or tackling Teddy and licking his neck, Billy managed to grumble a "well, I didn't know it was *shirtless* meditation, I would have done sit-ups." He shucked his t-shirt and bounced off the end of the bed to the floor, managing somehow to not look directly at Teddy at any point. He struggled into more-or-less a lotus. The lights only flickered a little.

"Okay," Teddy said. "Now, close your eyes." Billy did. It helped, because he could not see Teddy's unclad torso, but he could *imagine* it, which was almost as bad, and there were blue sparks behind his eyelids. He was, somehow, not blushing fiercely enough to catch the rug on fire, which was a minor miracle. "Just take a couple of deep breaths, and start trying to clear your mind," said Teddy, and then Billy's mother opened the door.

"Oh," she said. "I'm sorry--" Somewhat reluctantly, Billy cracked an eye open. She was carrying a tray of cheese and crackers, and looked as confused and embarrassed as Billy generally felt in Teddy's presence, which was somehow gratifying.

"Teddy's a big New Age weirdo, Mom," Billy said, recovering, he thought, impressively fast. "He thinks I need to learn to meditate." He held up one of Teddy's books, the one with the picture of the tree and the geode and the big psychedelic eye. His mom relaxed a tiny fraction of a bit, and then raised an eyebrow.

"Well," she said, "don't let him talk you into past-life regression, that stuff's a crock of hooey," and then, oh thank god, she was leaving. Billy was only able to spare a tiny fraction of the giant tidal wave of embarrassment now engulfing him for the fact that his mom had said "hooey" in front of his friends. Friend. Lust object. Whatever.

He looked up through his eyelashes at Teddy, who was very clearly trying not to laugh. And oh, no, there went the blushing, horrible and blotchy, down his neck and over his shoulders too, but at this point there was nothing he could even *do* anymore, and abject surrender seemed like the only option remaining. Dimly, he knew he should have some sort of extremely clever remark that would make all of this less disastrous, but he'd used up his last one on his mom.

He tried to flop backwards dramatically, but the eastern wall of the clothes canyon broke his fall. His desk lamp sizzled, ominously.

"I just," he said, because he honestly had nothing left, "did it have to be *shirtless* meditation?"

Teddy, damn him, had not even lost his ridiculously good posture. Which only made matters worse, because sitting like that his shoulders looked *fantastic*, and Billy was pretty sure that if he even *glanced* at Teddy's six-pack he would set something on fire with his mind. Instead, he stared up at the ceiling fan. The light fixture began to rattle in its socket.

"You know," Teddy said, "it was Iron Lad's idea for me to teach you to meditate."

"Really?" Billy frowned at the Rocky Horror poster on his ceiling. "I though he said it was 'a bunch of twentieth-century superstition and nonsense.' I mean, he didn't call it 'hooey,' but he came pretty close." And now *he* had said "hooey" in front of Teddy. Death could not come swift enough.

"He did, and he still thinks it is." Billy could hear Teddy moving. Hopefully this meant he was putting his shirt back on, preparing to leave and go tell Iron Lad that Billy was clearly unfit to protect anything, including his own dignity, and should be kicked out of the Young Avengers posthaste. This was, in Billy's mind, the absolute best-case scenario. Teddy made an amused kind of noise, like a "hmph" but with laughter. "He also thinks this should be the absolute last thing I try, because you are clearly denser than several elements that won't be discovered for at least eight hundred years."

Billy had moved on to wondering whether Teddy and Eli and Iron Lad would choose to publicly humiliate him in front of the superhero community, or merely allow him to live with his shame in anonymity. He stopped, and rewound the last thirty seconds. "Wait. What?"

Billy's view of the ceiling suddenly became a view of Teddy, who was leaning over him and smiling. For a single terrifying moment, Billy had absolutely no idea what was going on, and then Teddy leaned in and kissed him. Billy leaned back into the clothes canyon a little, in surprise, but he also opened his mouth enough for there to be *tongue*, oh god, he was making out with his teammate and neither of them were wearing *shirts*.

"Oh my god, wait, don't *stop*," he said, somewhat breathlessley and all in a rush, when Teddy finally broke the kiss. And then, "hey, why is it dark?"

Billy's room had western exposure, so there was enough fading sunlight for him to see that Teddy was blushing now too, a little greenly, and also that his lips were wet and kissed-looking and, if Billy had any say in it, the center of his universe from that point forward, because *oh dear lord*. "You blew out the light bulb," Teddy said. "And your alarm clock, I think. Also, you're kind of crackling."

Billy looked down at himself, somewhat dazedly. Tiny lightnings were arcing across his skin. He *really* needed to get a better handle on his powers. "Oh. Um. Wait." He tried to focus, failed utterly, and thought, wait. I need to think about what I want. I want to make out with Teddy some more. To do that, I need--

The lock on his door clicked into place from across the room, at the same time a wave of blue light swept up the four walls of his bedroom, drawing traceries around the window and the door before they faded. "I think I just warded everything outside my room from, you know, exploding," Billy said. He didn't actually stand up-- standing up, right now, was a *challenge*, and only the combination of not standing and jeans was keeping Teddy from knowing he had a hard-on *already*, god, okay he was a teenager but this was sort of ridiculous. So he just kind of scooted from his perch on the clothes canyon wall to the end of the bed, and kept scooting until he was sitting up against the headboard. "And, you know, I'm sorry about being kind of an incredible spaz, but in my defense I am stupid and was totally not expecting this at *all*. So please don't, you know, stop, or not let me fight crime with you anymore."

Why, why could he not stop talking? Why was his response to his absolute best fantasy coming true to unleash a torrent of utterly meaningless babble? Why couldn't the earth just, maybe, open up and swallow him *right there*?

But no, that would be a *bad plan*, because if that happened then Teddy wouldn't be able to climb up onto the bed next to him, kiss him again, slide a hot and not-unpleasantly-sweaty hand down Billy's chest. Billy wouldn't be able to kiss down the line of Teddy's jaw, or trail his mouth along his neck to his collarbone. And that, Billy thought, dimly aware that he had his actual *hand* on someone else's *nipple*, would be a tragedy.

"You know," Teddy said into his ear, sounding only slightly less light-headed than Billy felt, "I was starting to think you didn't even-- oh my *god,* do that again," and Billy wasn't actually sure what he had done, but he was totally willing to try. Totally. He felt a deep and profound gratitude for Teddy's shirtless fake meditation, which had somehow launched them clean over first base and onto wherever it was on the baseball field that he got to push his thigh between Teddy's legs, and where Teddy curled his fingers over the waistband of his pants before going for the button on the fly. "Okay," Teddy said, "I really want-- I really--"

"No, I know exactly, I," Billy managed to get out, and scrabbled frantically at the ties on Teddy's sweatpants. He just did not have the motor skills for this, right now, and after a few frustrated seconds the drawstring glowed blue and disappeared. From the way Billy's jeans were suddenly sliding easily over his hips, he was pretty sure he'd just vaporized his own zipper, and the degree to which he did not care was really indescribably vast.

And then he was just-- all that *skin,* his and Teddy's, and Billy was sort of aware that he should be cracking a joke about his utter, utter lack of a tan, and how his ass would glow in the dark even if it didn't, you know, glow in the dark. But he just didn't have the brain cells to spare for that, or the breath, not even to be a little jealous of how Teddy, of course, didn't have to worry about tan lines. And anyway, it was at that point that Teddy's hand tightened on his hip a little, just for a second, before he wrapped his hand around Billy's cock, and the tiny part of Billy's brain that was still thinking in words went "oh, oh my god, you," while Billy clutched Teddy's shoulder and moaned. Teddy looked at him, his hair in his eyes, grinned crookedly and kissed him, and Billy regained enough motor skills to grope Teddy's ass, no, wait, he wanted to-- and then *his* hand was on *Teddy's* cock. Teddy bit his tongue a little and tightened his grip, and it was perfect, it was totally worth spending forty dollars a month on lightbulbs and wire, worth it even if he never settled on a code name or even fought any crime.

Fuck Eli and Iron Lad, or, no, they could fuck each *other*, Billy could care less, he had Teddy's tongue in his mouth and his free hand in his hair and their legs tangling together while they both gasped and pressed their hips into each other. Teddy made this incredibly sexy noise in the back of his throat, broke away from the kiss to pant into the side of Billy's neck, and came. His hand only stopped for a second, flexed and shifted its grip, and that was it, Billy arched up into him and heard the crackle that meant his desk lamp, too, had bit the dust.

They lay there like that for a second, listening to the *ping* sounds that cooling metal made, and Billy hoped that didn't mean his stereo was done for, too. He wasn't actually going to be that upset if it was, though.

"That," Teddy said, sounding breathless, "was kind of like making out with an electrical transformer, but in a really good way." Billy twisted around to look at him. In the fading light, his hair was, for the first time since they'd met, standing up at odd angles, and his jawline looked maybe a little less classic than usual. As Billy watched, his shoulders broadened a bit, and his face went back to what Billy had been thinking of as normal up to now. Huh.

"I really am going to practice," Billy said. The blanket on the foot of the bed unfolded itself and settled over them. Teddy yawned and moved in a little closer, and Billy thought, seriously, being a superhero is awesome. Even though I think that smell really is my stereo, burning.