InsaneJournal

WHO: Tommy Shepherd and Billy Kaplan
WHAT: Billy comes over to make sure Tommy isn't becoming a sad Victorian lady and plays Smash Brothers
WHEN: A day or so after Toph disappears
WARNINGS: None!
STATUS: Complete!

There was a reason most of Billy Kaplan’s Ao3 fic tags were ‘fix-it’. He was, objectively, a fixer. He wanted to make things better, and maybe that was the core of why he loved superhero comics so much. The world could be a better place, and people who could do something about it had the responsibility to do that. Billy couldn’t fix Tommy’s broken heart, logically he knew that, but it didn’t stop him from immediately leaping into action.

Which involved texting Teddy multiple items with multiple things to pick up from the store and thankfully, Teddy’s well of patience never ran dry. Billy knew Teddy would be close by the apartment, waiting for the moment he could come in and talk to Tommy, and at any moment Wanda would come by herself armed with food and magic and hugs that Tommy would actually accept, but right now? Right now it was twin time, so that Billy could best judge what Tommy needed.

He knocked on Tommy’s door and was already opening it as he did, worried that perhaps Tommy would leap out of a window to avoid a conversation. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, and while Billy could stop his speedster brother, it would violate his trust, and Billy had worked hard to build that up over the years. The room was dark, the curtains pulled tightly against the window, and the space was lit only by the light that creeped in from the edges of the window and from the tv currently showing off a video game. Tommy was in his bed, the blankets pulled up to just under his eyes,

“Okay, I’ve got al pastor, barbacoa, carne asada, and chicken. And then there’s guacamole, chips, and five–seven–I think maybe eight now that I look at it–types of salsa. Teddy wasn’t sure which ones to get, so it looks like, yep, looks like he got them all.” Billy sat down next to Tommy and started pulling out styrofoam containers. Tommy may have thought of it as pity food (joke’s on him, it wasn’t pity food, it was bribery) but Billy knew his brother. He couldn’t resist the siren call of al pastor.

Goddamn Billy and his goddamn way to make him want food. Okay, to be fair, Tommy always wanted food, but this was I'm sorry food. Pity food. Don't do the window thing like me food. Which was always a risk coming from a family struggling with mental health issues. But Tommy was...numb? Uninterested in anything other than stabbing some people with Link, or cheating with Kirby. He hadn't realized how long he was playing himself against, well, himself in Super Smash Brothers, but that was why the curtains were drawn. He didn't have to care.

Tommy did, though, snatch the food from Billy as he was taking out the containers and poking at each one like a Michelin critic, trying to decide which one he would save for last. "I see you and Altman panicked," Tommy said around a mouthful of barbacoa. He was already pouring on a green salsa before he finished the next bite.

Unlike his usual state, he did not perk up immediately after scarfing. Fuck, he was sad. The closed curtains were a metaphor. He was an absolute tool.

"Are you gonna tell me it's gonna be okay? Quote me some wise words of wisdom from Aragorn? Yeah, I fucking know his name, and no you can't tell anyone that I do. But that guy was badass." Tommy was stalling, distracting Billy while he distracted him. Two could play at this game.

Billy didn’t rise to the food bait…because it was true and he would have failed a performance check in acting affronted. “Doesn’t stop you from shoving them down your gullet like Kirby,” he pointed out, grabbing a foil wrapped carne asada taco. “Which, by the way, using Kirby in Smash Bros is totally a lame move, if you take Kirby against me I’ll hack the game so you can only use Little Mac.” He was a little more selective about salsa, choosing a creamier green one in hopes that the heat was a little tempered. If Tommy took an especially spicy one, it likely wouldn’t have mattered because by the time his taste buds registered it, he would have moved on to the next thing.

He shrugged at the question. “I mean, Aragorn’s wisdom comes mostly in the form of inspiring speeches right before battle, or ones that are meant to rally the troops, so I don’t know that it’s completely appropriate right now.”

Which was a complete and total lie, as Billy immediately thought up two quotes then and there.

“In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.”

“There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.”

Okay, he felt better.

Even the wisdom of the Chieftain of the Dúnedain, High King of the Dúnedain, King of Gondor and Arnor, King of the West, Lord of the Westlands wouldn’t be enough to help Tommy, and Billy knew that. Tommy had never been about words, anyway, he would have been the first to tell anyone that people could say whatever they wanted to, but it was their actions that really proved what they were about. It was a different mindset than Billy had, especially considering the way Billy had learned to use magic was by literally speaking things into being, but it made sense for Tommy. When people called themselves your parents but treated you like hot garbage, when the adults said you could trust them and they were only there to help but then basically tortured you instead of actually helping, well.

He sat back against the headboard and nudged Tommy with his foot. “We don’t have to talk, you know. Not if you don’t want to.”

Tommy wolfed down two more tacos, rolled his eyes, and flopped dramatically back down on the bed while Billy quoted nerd shit at him. He liked it better when they were just trying to give each other noogies and Billy threatened to turn him into a popsicle. They were trying to navigate a breakup, that wasn't a breakup. It wasn't even mutual or initiated by the people in the relationship. How the fuck was that even fair?

"What would we even talk about?" Tommy asked, both tired and petulant—normal Tommy behavior. "I just got dumped, Vallo style, because my girlfriend of almost two years got yeeted back to her home world, which doesn't exist where we are. It's like Romeo and Juliet, except for the weird creepy age difference shit, and were not like biting thumbs at people or whatever the fuck that means." They were nothing like fated lovers from Shakespeare but Tommy was feeling withering and desperate and shitty. Fuck love.

"It's whatever." It was no whatever, but it was obvious that Tommy didn't know what to say. Was he going to cry? Maybe. Was he going to suck it up until he puked? Also probably. He needed like 800 more tacos.

"I'll see a silver lining eventually, but thinking about all the time I don't get with her anymore sucks, okay?"

“I’m not going to tell you it doesn’t suck, Toms,” Billy promised, quickly. He might have made fun of Tommy for literally everything else, but Tommy being open and sincere about how he felt happened rarely enough that Billy didn’t want to do anything to break it. “I can’t imagine how you’re feeling right now.” He and Teddy had taken a break, both agreeing it had been for the best at the time, and Billy had felt so excruciatingly wrong. Billy had tried to grow used to not having Teddy in Vallo, but he wasn’t able to, it was like being perpetually off-kilter, off-balance, off-every-sense-that-made-him-Billy.

Tommy had walls upon walls, and when he finally did let down those walls to bring someone in, it made the blowback all the worse when something didn’t work out. Billy didn’t want to give him any kind of platitudes about how ‘maybe she’ll come back!!’ because even though things like that had happened before, the people who returned had also not been the same people and that seemed like a whole new type of pain.

Billy handed over the chips and guac and look, he couldn’t help it, his twin was in pain and even though they weren’t biologically related, they came from the same cosmic magic. He sometimes thought he could feel Tommy’s emotions like his own. So he grabbed Tommy in a side hug, strong and sure. “You tell me what you need. Momda and Teddy are hovering, but I can keep them away for a while. Me though, you have to deal with.”

Tommy did not shake off the hug. He let it happen, and even just vibed in the familial affection. Did he need it? Sure. Did he want it? Also, sure. This was worse than a breakup—there was fighting and mutual agreement to piss off to other corners of the continent (or universes if you came from their world.) But with Toph disappearing he didn't even get to say goodbye. He didn't even get to tell her all the good shit he felt when he was around it. He had taken his days with her for granted, and probably didn't make out with her enough.

Vallo fucking sucked like that. And Tommy was tired of always being on the receiving end of that shit. When did he have to stop sucking up his feelings just to exist without falling apart? Maybe he should have blown up more shit with Zuko that first night.

Now he was being hugged by his twin and being quoted LOTR and eating his (and Toph's) favorite tacos. He probably should have put on some sad, shoe-gaze music for the full effect.

"I don't know what I need, Billy. Maybe to be a mopey shithead, or just play video games until my hands fall off, or run around Vallo eighty thousand times until my face hurts and my eyeballs fall out or something. I thought about one of those sensory tanks but I'd get so fucking bored trying to meditate and not think about it."

Finally, he pulled away and went back to his nearly-laying-down position, and vacuumed more chips into his mouth. "Just tell me I'm not doomed to be a loveless single dickwad forever."

Billy rolled his eyes, affection and fondness coloring the gesture. “You’re definitely not doomed to be a loveless, single, dickwad forever,” he promised, again. That he was doing that though gave Billy a little bit of hope. He liked Toph a lot, they were friends, he liked Toph and Tommy as a couple. They had the same style of communication, the same fierce love for the people they thought of as theirs. Tommy had loved her, Tommy had let himself love someone and be loved in return, and that never came easily for him.

He grabbed the second controller from where Tommy had discarded it in favor of food, and started adjusting the settings on the game. It also gave Billy time to think and reflect on what he wanted to tell his brother. Billy couldn’t fix it (well…he shouldn’t try, at least, that probably broke at least a million rules of reality), as much as he wanted to, but he had to give Tommy more than just comfort food.

“This isn’t about you, you know that, right?” Billy forced himself to stare at the screen, as if modifying the character was his true focus. They had already had a version of this conversation right before Teddy had appeared, Tommy had confessed that he felt jaded about people and love on the whole, and Billy straight up hated that here they were again, having a very similar talk. He would show up every time for Tommy and tell him the same thing, but he hated that he had to because it meant that yet again, Tommy was hurt. “It’s not about something you did, or didn’t do, it’s not about who you are or aren’t, it’s just–a shitty situation overall. And that doesn’t make it better, it doesn’t make it easier, I know that. But you deserve better. You’ve always deserved better, Tommy.”

Tommy's sigh was big, dramatic, loud. It was indicative of all the feelings he built up—big, dramatic, loud. He never did anything half-assed, and loving people tended to be the same way. So when they left, or he had to leave them, his reactions were big, dramatic, and loud. He didn't know how to be anything else. So at this moment, surrounded by tacos and his brother, he just existed in a space where Billy was telling him he deserved better, loudly, but maybe a little less big and dramatic.

"I don't believe in karma, or like bullshit coming to bite me in the ass, because if you're worried about the future or what will happen if you do one thing, you like, I don't know, are paralyzed in the present. Like fuck that shit.. But sometimes..." Tommy trailed off grabbing his controller and purposely trying to mess up whatever Billy was trying to do, by pressing the back button or moving the joystick around—there were still times to be a shithead, even when sad.

"Sometimes, it feels like it. Like all the karma is building up until I find something or someone that makes me really happy and then—BAM!" Tommy smacked his hands together for emphasis, controller and all. "Totally fucked. But it's not going to stop me from what I do. Or change who I am. Maybe I get all this shit because I can handle it."

“Stop it,” Billy said through gritted teeth as he leaned over to practically lay on top of Tommy to throw him off. “You’re going to play as Dr. Mario or the Piranha Plant, and that’s too bad for you.” He, meanwhile, was going to take the Wii Fit Trainer, a controversial choice but ridiculously underrated. At least in video games Billy stood some chance of keeping up with Tommy–even though Tommy’s fingers flew over the buttons in a blur, the system could only go so fast to keep up. It just forced Billy to be extra clever about things.

And as sad as he was to hear Tommy vocalize that perhaps he was doomed to never find real happiness, there was at least a small sense of relief that Tommy’s sense of self-worth and importance, who he was, was still there. Tommy didn’t need to change for anyone, yes, people changed and grew with time and experiences, but the core of who Tommy was: stupidly loyal, the first in a fight for his friends and family, and a tender heart he would never admit to, would never change. Without looking at him, Billy punched Tommy on the shoulder. “Sure, you can handle it, but you shouldn’t have to. And, you don’t have to handle it alone either. You’re always going to have me and Teddy and Mom.”

"I know, I know, I know," Tommy said, trying to brush Billy off. But between every repeated I know was an understanding at what Billy was offering. His twin stuck by him through thick and thin, through monsters and aliens and weird supervillains that they had no right fighting. Even the personal ups and downs were punctuated by Tommy realizing that Billy was there for every single one. Being his nerdy, stupid, dorky brotherly self. Tommy was touched, but he didn't want to show it.

At least not when he was feeling sad and vulnerable. Billy would try for more hugs and suggest expressing their feelings in some really healthy constructive manner and he was not about to open that door. Annoying the hell out of Billy while he was showing how much he cared was a hobby of Tommy's, not these heartfelt conversations. Not all the time.

But still he managed out, "Thanks, dorkus," and punched Billy in the arm. "I don't know what I would do without you getting all grouchy and shit all the time, but I'm glad you're here to bring me tacos—" Tommy ate one, just to prove a point, then hit start on his controller faster than Billy could select his character. "But now you're gonna have to lose as Mario to me in Smash Brothers, because I'll be more sad if I don't win."

He gave Billy a pouty face, but it was hard not to smile at the same time. He was feeling marginally better.

Billy’s mouth twisted into a grin, even as he acted so offended. Sometimes, he thought, maybe sometimes the way he wanted to fix things just wasn’t the right approach. Sometimes what he really had to do was just show up, bring food, listen, and be present. Billy would always want to protect Tommy from the hurt that the world seemed to want to pile on him, but for the days that he couldn’t? He would still be right by his side.

“Bring it on, moron,” he retorted. And maybe, just maybe, he would let Tommy win a round before absolutely destroying him.

Maybe.