Stardust - SLWalker - Multifandom [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter 1: Prologue

Chapter Text

Prologue

Don't know much about history,
Don't know much biology,
Don't know much about a science book,
Don't know much about the French I took,
But I do know that I love you,
And I know that if you love me too,
What a wonderful world this would be.

- Wonderful World, Sam Cooke

August 20th, 1985

It was a good thing that time spheres apparently came with safety harnesses. Or, at least, that this one did. And it was a good thing Michael had actually hooked himself into it, too, before re-entering real space. Otherwise, arriving in the past might’ve been something more like being stuck in a blender and less like being in a slow-motion but still dizzying vehicle accident.

Which was to say-- it would have been really, really messy.

Getting spat out by a time storm was intense. Especially when the time sphere jolted and then rolled to a stop. And--

--not good, Michael thought, before he’d managed to get his eyes open, as the smell of something burning managed to trickle its way into his somewhat spinny reality. “Skeets?” he asked, after a little wheezing cough.

“Here, Michael,” Skeets answered, but from somewhere below Michael, which was--

“Wow,” Michael said, in a rushed whisper, looking out at what appeared to be actual foliage attached to actual real trees, albeit upside down. Even with his head spinning still, which was not helped by his positioning, the most green he’d ever seen in his life before now was the artificial turf in the stadium; by comparison, this looked--

Then he took a better look at the interior of the time sphere; the panels sparking, the smoke wafting around and burning his nose.

“Wow,” he said again, with considerably more wincing, when he saw what he’d managed to do to their ride.

Whatever happened next, they sure weren’t going back to 2462 using this time sphere. Michael had managed to figure out how to operate it with Skeets’s help, but repairing it was definitely a skill he didn’t have.

“Where and when are we?” he asked, starting to become aware of the bruising he got when they crashed; after a few moments, though, he hooked his ankles around the base of the pilot’s seat so he wouldn’t fall on his head and started untangling himself from the harness.

Skeets hummed in a ‘wait a moment, I’m thinking’ manner, a programmed response to make humans feel more comfortable with security ‘bots, moving out of the way when Michael got loose and made a less-than-tidy landing on the ceiling. “According to radio waves, we landed when and where we had planned to in order to prevent the president’s assassination. This is August 20th, in the year 1985. We’re in a park on the outskirts of Metropolis, not very far from where the Space Museum will be built.”

1985.1985. Suddenly, bruised or not, Michael needed to get out there, needed to see this. Yeah, okay, he had planned this, but succeeding in it hadn’t been any guarantee for a pair of rank amateurs running on nothing but daring, desperation and maybe a little luck. Or-- more accurately, one rank amateur and the poor unwitting ‘bot he happened to make off with.

He scrambled to the hatch and breathed out in relief when the controls worked, then tumbled out, rolling to an untidy stop--

He was so overwhelmed by the sudden in-rush of sensory information that it made his head start spinning all over again. He laid on his back, looking up through trees to blue sky--

And the sound--

And he was laying on-- on the ground-- on--

It felt like turf, but-- also nothing like turf. Grass, he knew. He’d actually seen some grass before, there was an indoor park that Ma used to sometimes take him and Shel to when they could scrounge up enough to cover the transit that distance, but it wasn’t really there to be touched. Let alone laid on. Just-- viewed. A relic of some past before the world was so abused that even grass couldn't survive without intervention.

Now, though, overhead the trees stirred in a hot breeze, throwing dappled light down to the ground. It took Michael a long minute to realize that what he was hearing wasn’t coming from any speakers; a strange whistling or chirping. When a shadow darted between trees, moving way too chaotically to be a drone, he understood it was an animal of some kind.

“What in the--?”

“A bird, sir. More accurately, a goldfinch,” Skeets said, hovering over until he was above Michael, blocking off the glimpses of blue sky above. “There have been numerous human-driven extinctions by this time, but there is still considerably more biodiversity than in our time.”

Considering that there were only a few handfuls of surviving species of animal left on Earth in the mid-2400s -- insects fared some better, at least -- that still wasn’t exactly saying much. But even just laying there, in one single human-sized spot, he could see birds and trees and grass and--

Michael picked his arm up and watched a little bug, something red with black spots, crawling on him.

“I’ll bet the roaches are smaller, too,” he said, absently, just shaking his head in wonder as the little thing took off in a clumsy flutter of wings.

“I have no information in my databanks about the comparative sizes of roaches, but I can confirm that the rats, at least, are smaller in this time period,” Skeets said.

There was something genuinely funny about that statement, compounded with the absolutely fantastical world they were suddenly surrounded by, and Michael started laughing and didn’t stop until his guts and sides were aching from it. Skeets gave up asking if he was all right when Michael just couldn’t answer him.

A disgraced ex-quarterback turned serious thief turned aspiring superhero, and here he was goggling at bugs and birds while laying in the grass in 1985, right next to the time sphere he just wrecked, while the ‘bot he stole explained the relative size of rats.

He hadn’t had much of a reason to laugh of late and even less of one to really feel it in-- he didn’t even know. A long time. But now, Michael was still giggling when he finally got up, brushing off bits of grass. He needed to hide the time sphere. And then--

Well, he might be from a grimmer and darker future, but standing in the past, it was all looking golden right now.

“Radio, huh? Hey, Coach, why don’t you play some music while I hide our ride?” he asked Skeets, beaming. “Oh, and-- stick with Booster while we’re here. At least until I figure out what name I wanna go by.”

“Yes, Booster,” Skeets answered, without missing a beat.

No one in this time was going to associate his nickname with disgrace, after all.

August 20th, 2008

The time sphere must have hit something when it came back into real space; aside the blaring alarms warning of imminent catastrophe, there was the hard jolt, two subsequent bounces, and then a crunching, crashing kind of noise before it finally rolled to a drunken stop.

Its pilot was not actually drunk, though; in fact, given that the age for buying alcohol was twenty-five in his century, any time he’d ever had any was because someone older bought it and gave it to him. Not that he was all that inclined to drink even then. But had he stayed in the year 2462, he would have had over five years before he would have been able to go buy any of his own booze.

Michael “Booster” Carter had not stayed there, though. Instead, feeling daring and optimistic, he’d stolen a time sphere, his security robot partner and all the makings for a superhero’s costume. When he had set the coordinates inside of the time stream -- during a time storm -- for nowabouts, aiming to stop a presidential assassination attempt and hit the ground running, he’d felt like he was leaping into a bright and hopeful world with both feet forward and both eyes open.

But now that they’d re-entered real-space-- something was wrong.

Not the alarm. Not the smell of smoke. Not even the way his stomach was trying extra hard to crawl its way out of his throat and maybe find somewhere less hostile to live. But something else, something-- something deeper.

The smoke finally got to him enough to start him coughing, and he pressed the heel of his palm to the side of his aching, spinning head.

“--chael?”

“Hi Skeets,” he answered, hoarse, before finally taking a look around. His neck was already getting stiff; that had been one hell of a landing. The time sphere was trashed; outside of the transparencies was a whole lot of foliage. Rain was falling, a soft pattering white noise that was oddly soothing.

“I was growing concerned when you didn’t answer, for a given definition of the word,” Skeets answered, buzzing around his head, though not frantically. “According to the signals I’m able to pick up, we’re in the year 2008. August 20th is the specific date.”

Something about that also wasn’t right; Booster pressed the heels of both of his palms against his brow hard as a kind of half-assed counterpressure to the headache he had burning all through the front of his skull, since one hand clearly hadn’t been enough to help.

It didn’t feel like it was related to the whiplash.

“I thought we were--” he started, then trailed off, trying to remember how he was supposed to finish that sentence. But the harder that he tried to grasp it, the quicker it slid out of his fingers; by the time he was starting to untangle himself from the safety harness, it was gone.

He shook off the vertigo, albeit gingerly, and started throwing anything salvageable into a pack he’d snagged on the way out of the future and into the past. When Skeets spoke again, Booster was mostly back together, though not without a deep sense of being-- kind of off-balanced.

Like there was something missing that changed his entire center of gravity. He rolled his right shoulder briefly against a ghostly soreness, then went back to packing.

“Recordings and images of this era fail to do it justice,” Skeets said, hovering close to a clear and undamaged spot in the transparency; even though he relied on a wide array of sensors, there was something-- maybe sweet? About the little ‘bot wanting a clear view so his opticals could take in as much as possible. It made Booster smile, anyway, something warm and fond.

He paused in his packing and stood next to Skeets, looking out into the soft gray light and the abundance of green. He’d never in his life seen that much of anything growing before now, unless one counted the ubiquitous mildew and mold anyone found in any and every given corner of his old neighborhood in Gotham, but it-- didn’t actually feel like a surprise.

It should have. He’d been ridiculously excited by everything this era had to offer-- not even twenty minutes ago, in fact.

A shiver went down his spine, then he more firmly shoved it all right back out of his thoughts. He had the assassination attempt of a president-- no, a presidential candidate to stop, a name to make for himself, fame and fortune calling and no reason to feel anything but optimistic about what was ahead for them.

But even as he buried the wrecked time sphere and set off into the city with Skeets, he couldn’t quite feel anything that he had expected to.

August 20th, 2016

Later on, Skeets would tell Michael that he was roughly thirty-one point six seconds from jumping on the cellular signals flying around so that he could call emergency services, and the only reason he didn’t do that was because Michael finally stopped screaming.

The screaming lasted a minute and eight seconds. Skeets had a computer’s ability to keep perfect time, so he actually knew the time down to milliseconds; later, though, he would revisit them landing in the past and contemplate that if he was capable of feeling things at that point, it would have felt much longer than that. Likewise that if he had nerves, he would have been deeply unnerved when his human partner went from bringing them back to real space to-- that.

That would be later, though.

“Michael?” Skeets asked, cautiously, hovering around in front of his human in a manner he would have classified as worried, had he witnessed it from outside. He had a limited but useful set of sensors to read human biosigns, a feature that helped when one worked with the public; according to those, Michael wasn’t injured (absent some bruises from the safety harness) but his vitals were those of a human in severe pain, though they seemed to slowly be coming back to a more normal range even as Skeets kept up a continuous scan. “Can you hear me?”

Michael made a noise that sounded strained, half-shaking his head despite the fists he had buried white-knuckled in his hair. But he nodded only a moment later, seemingly oblivious to the tears running unchecked down his face.

Skeets wasn’t entirely sure what to do. Sitting in a crashed time sphere wasn’t really a viable short-term plan, but the way this had happened had been wholly unexpected.

Admittedly, Skeets wasn’t an expert on time travel, he was a security ‘bot, but-- he was at least reasonably sure that most people traveling in time weren’t hurt by it like this. And, for the first time in the ‘bot’s existence, he found it unfortunate that he didn’t have limbs or hands to at least try to comfort his human.

Instead, he said, “According to various electronic signals, we’ve arrived on August 20th in the year 2016. We’re in Metropolis, in a park close to where the museum will be built.”

He would plug into the time sphere shortly, but Skeets already figured that it was likely unsalvageable. That wasn’t his biggest concern at the moment anyway; even the report he just gave was more to keep in touch than because it was important to convey the information right this second.

“There are pieces-- ” Michael gritted out, breathing hard, before he let go of his hair and clutched his head at the temples.

“What pieces?” Skeets asked, forcing himself to stop buzzing back and forth for lack of any ability to do more than that.

Michael seethed another breath, trying to bend forward, only to be stopped by the harness he was still in. “I don’t-- no. I’m losing them--”

As curious as Skeets was about what these ‘pieces’ were, it was clear there was a correlation between losing them and feeling less pain. “Sir? Pieces of--?”

“Memory-- or--? No.” Michael’s breathing was calming and he slowly let go of his head, hands shaking, and looked around blankly before swiping at his wet face. “It’s not-- but-- it’s just--”

“What were you seeing?” Skeets asked, thinking that a concrete direction might give his human a metaphorical hand out of this disorientation, since Skeets had no literal hands with which to help.

“Blue. And-- blood splatter.” Michael’s bottom lip quivered, then he added unsteadily, “And amber glass, shattered into pieces.”

If Skeets were a poet, instead of a security ‘bot and the somewhat self-appointed guardian of one disaster of a human, he would have wondered if that amber glass was in the same number of pieces that Michael shattered into after saying that, sobbing with what seemed to be his whole body and every last fiber of his heart, in an entirely different kind of pain.

Skeets was not a poet. All he could do was hover, not-worry (because he wasn’t programmed for emotions), and try to talk Michael through it.

But in a tidy number of months, he would find himself locked onto the blue-cowled, amber-goggled, smiling face of the second man to call himself the Blue Beetle and Skeets would remember those words even after his human had apparently forgotten them.

By then, Skeets would know what both worry and love felt like.

Chapter 2: Part I: January 14th, 2017

Chapter Text

Part I

Got this history that I cannot trust
Remindin’ me of who I thought I was;
Praise the highs and curse the lows,
Play what I remember most:
You were there to pick me up.

-I Don’t Wanna Worry; NEEDTOBREATHE

January 14th, 2017

“He gives off major dad-vibes.”

Ted blinked and glanced over. And then somewhat up, because the speaker had probably four inches on him. And then he followed the guy’s gaze to where Supes was busy talking with Wonder Woman. “You sure it’s dad-vibes and not-- I dunno, scout-leader vibes? Den mother vibes? Babysitting vibes?” he asked, a smirk tugging the corner of his mouth. “Because that’s probably closer to the truth than anyone here’s comfortable with.”

“Are you calling all of your teammates immature?” the guy asked back, eyebrows up behind his visor.

Ted snorted. “They’re not my teammates. I mean, I’ve been invited to these shin-digs before, I’m friendly with ‘em, I provide funding or tech sometimes, but I’ve never been inducted into the League. Blah-blah-too-nonpowered-blah-too-fragile-blah. Ignoring, of course, that Bats is just as unpowered.” He turned to the very shiny newcomer again, this time more fully engaging. “I’m the Blue Beetle,” he said, offering his hand. “Two of Three, if you want it in a Borg designation.”

The guy looked bemused for a second, then flashed him a very white grin that managed to perfectly straddle the line between roguish and approachable, shaking Ted’s hand. “Booster Gold. The one and only.” He only let go of Ted’s hand when Ted had to give a tug to get it back; seeming unfazed by that, Booster added, “I was pretty excited to get an invite to this get-together, but I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting the cheese and fruit trays.”

“What? No.” Ted crossed his arms, grinning more broadly as he looked back towards the main table with the admittedly impressive cheese and fruit trays. “You really didn’t expect the Official Justice League Cheese Platter?”

“No. But what makes it official?” Booster asked, standing on his toes -- like he needed any help in the height department! -- to try to get a better look. “Shaped in a giant S with an obligatory hair swoop? Or no, wait--! Arranged in Batman’s silhouette!” He dropped back down to his feet and mimed Batman’s pointy ears with his fingers behind his own head, putting on a raspy whisper to say, “I am the cheese that flaps in the night.”

Ted was laughing before he could stop himself, face hot at the number of costumed people who turned to eyeball him. But he didn’t really feel any great need to stifle himself or dial down his admittedly bombastic volume, and when Bats also turned to give him a hairy look, he almost collapsed from the force of his busting up. “Protecting the-- the gouda people of Gotham?” he managed to ask.

“They’re very fondue of him,” Booster agreed, beaming at Ted.

Oh god. Ted wrapped around his gut with one arm and slipped his fingers under his goggles to wipe at the tears with his other hand, face aching. “Careful, I think he’s starting to find this-- grating.”

Booster was losing his composure, which Ted was definitely gonna enable because why laugh alone? “Must be why-- why-- why he’s giving us such a curdling look,” Booster said, before gnawing on his bottom lip, so clearly trying to hold it together. One tap on that glass--

It wasn’t often that Ted had someone to talk to who not only seemed to get his sense of humor, but then play off of it. He doubled over, laughing until he could manage to stutter out, “We’re such muensters, picking on him like this.”

And that was pretty much it.

The next five minutes were lost while the two of them laughed well past the point of tears, collapsing against the wall they had been hugging, bracing shoulder-to-shoulder to stay standing, and yet still ending up sitting on the floor while everyone else uncomfortably gave them a wide berth.

Booster hadn’t been exaggerating when he had said that he was pretty excited to be invited to the Hall of Justice a few weeks back. Skeets could attest to the volume of his whoop and his touchdown dance, in fact. And for that matter, the number of times he pulled on his outfit to pose in front of whatever mirror in whatever motel room, trying to look suitably dashing and heroic and like he knew what the hell he was actually doing, too.

But upon arriving to a small sea’s worth of the brightly colored costumes of a whole lot of heroes, some of whom he patrolled the statues of for months in the museum, legends that survived for centuries despite the dark ages in between, and he’d promptly gotten so nervous that he had to go splash cold water on his face in the public restroom until he didn’t feel like losing his breakfast.

Then he’d gone back out, affecting nonchalance as well as he humanly could, and tried to mingle with all these icons.

He’d met a few of them already. You couldn’t just show up on scene with a skin-tight costume and a Legion flight ring and not attract attention; mostly they’d been friendly, too. Maybe a little wary, which-- Booster could get that. There were a lot of costumed types running around; even then, it seemed to be a tighter community than he might’ve expected, even observed from the outside. So, a newcomer wasn’t gonna break in instantly, which was fine. But they’d still given him an invitation for this get-together after a few months.

Truthfully, Booster didn’t know if he was here more because he was really hoping for an invitation to join the League or because he was so damn lonely.

He had Skeets. But-- well, Skeets was the only other sentient being he had in his life who knew him mask on or off, who knew both of his identities and who knew where he came from. And while Booster had found it shockingly easy to integrate into the twenty-first century, adapting to the cultural and language differences smoothly, he still felt the isolation from everything he’d ever known keenly and chafed against some of the uglier social norms.

And he hadn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep since coming to this era, either, which wasn’t helping matters. His life in the twenty-fifth century hadn’t been any bed of roses, unless one counted all the thorns on ‘em, but he’d never had nightmares like this before. Or-- maybe nightmares? He wasn’t sure whether it counted when you couldn’t remember them, all he knew was that it was doing a pretty serious number on his ability to focus and think ahead beyond the next day.

Or sometimes even to the end of the same day.

Anyway, he’d left Skeets in the pretty decent hotel room he’d sprung for because he didn’t want all his cards on the table at once; it felt like sound tactics, but that didn’t make this any less nerve-wracking, coming here alone without the only friend he had in this time.

Michael Carter had been in the center spotlight in a lot of parties in his own era; even during his last two years in high school, he’d been invited to plenty of them. Dressed up in a suit that had cost Ma a hell of a lot more than they could afford, and that had to be adjusted as he finished growing, and he’d gone to those parties to let them all try to woo him. Just about every Division I football program in existence wanted him, and it had been a combination between the scholarship offer and the hometown pride that had him sticking with Gotham U. He started at seventeen as a freshman -- almost unheard of, fielding a freshman quarterback from the outset -- and took them all the way to the championship and through it.

And then coming into his sophom*ore year--

Well, the last party he’d been to before this one had been thrown by the mob, the same criminals who cut his Dad and who were paying Michael off by then, and there was nothing quite like the pressure that existed in that space between being treated like gold and being treated like property. He’d tried begging out of that one because he had already been so damn anxious that he was panicking before every game and most practices, and was told in no uncertain terms that he was expected to be there and didn’t want to upset his ‘benefactors’.

This party wasn’t the same, obviously. These were good people. For that matter, he didn’t really belong here, but that wasn’t something he was in any hurry to tell them.

Just-- y’know. Smile. Hold your head up. Look like you’re every bit of the hero. The times and context might be different, but the script wasn’t, not really.

Somehow, Booster still found himself drifting to play wallflower, ending up next to a guy dressed just ridiculously enough that he either had to have a sense of humor, or at least no great sense of shame. And then an off-handed icebreaker about Superman (Superman!!! But why was that less exciting than it should have been?) had led to them riffing off of one another and then that had turned into the first good belly-laugh Booster had had in years.

It wasn’t the most incisive humor or anything, but--

“Whew, I needed that,” his blue-clad companion said, still giggling intermittently, face flushed.

The Blue Beetle had an amazing laugh. And an equally amazing smile. It was as much down to both of those as it was the words that had kept Booster going as long as he had; they’d about get it under control, then they’d make eye contact and lose it all over again.

Booster knew how to make his living with his smile, among other assets, and his face was still aching from how hard and long he’d laughed himself.

It felt good. It felt like the most natural thing in the world.

“Yeah, me too,” he agreed, massaging his cheeks and the hinges of his jaw with his fingertips, despite that he was still grinning and prolonging the ache. He had a hell of an impulse to scoot over and press his shoulder against Beetle’s again, which was a little weird and left field even for him, but instead he drew his knees up some and rested his forearms on them. “I mean, I didn’t expect to end up discussing cheese trays with a guy dressed as a giant blue insect, but--”

Beetle snorted, elbowing Booster light in the side, but he was still smiling. “Hey, pal, be careful there. I might be dressed like a bug, but you’ve got the name of-- I dunno, a jewelry thief.”

The man had a point. Booster scoffed and tried to find a retort, but ended up saying, “I kinda screwed that one up myself, yeah.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I was gonna call myself Goldstar. But then, my first day in uniform, I ended up saving the mayor of Metropolis’s goldendoodle from getting turned into road pizza, and she asked me who I was and I kinda--” Booster gave a little flap with his right hand, even though he was more amused than embarrassed in retrospect. “--fumbled right at the goal.”

“So where’s the Booster from? Since the Gold is self-evident,” Beetle asked, gesturing.

Booster scratched the back of his neck, wincing jokingly. “Believe it or not, a nickname from high school. And not because I was a thief, thanks.” At least, not back then.

Beetle gave a rolling gesture. “And...?” he asked, drawing the word out.

“And what? I was a quarterback, I broke records with my throwing arm. So-- Booster it was. And then the mayor’s dog, and then the Planet ran a story about it, and now here we are.” It wasn’t exactly ideal, but it also wasn’t the worst situation; Booster was used to answering to that name regardless of a mask or not, and so he’d just rolled with it. His name and picture in the paper was enough to start building a brand, which was enough to hopefully start building a life. Changing it to Goldstar after would have meant a missed opportunity. And in retrospect, there were definitely some benefits to having both his identities very separate from one another.

“So, you’re saying I could just go and find out who you are by looking in the Guinness Book?” Beetle asked, grinning tongue-in-cheek.

Booster wagged a finger at him. “Not a chance, man. Long story.”

“Ah, I’ll get it out of you eventually,” Beetle said, cheerfully, then upnodded towards the table where the core group of the Justice League was sitting at their table in deep discussion. “Looks like their freshman draft is now underway.”

And there went the nerves again. Booster looked through the crowd towards the table where the most heroic of heroes debated the membership of the League, the one he really deeply wanted to be invited into, and then shot Beetle an apologetic look as he got to his feet. “I’ll be right back,” he said, then walked like he wasn’t being eaten alive by anxiety chewing holes in his guts, heading right back for the public restroom to splash his face with cold water a dozen more times.

At least this time, the nerves were offset by the warm sort of feeling lingering in his chest.

These shin-digs of the League’s weren’t quite as casual as they were carefully cultivated to seem.

The official reasoning was that it was a good thing for the costumed heroes of the world to get together quarterly or so, discuss issues, debate or invite new members into the League or its reserves, and socialize with each other, but it always had that little bit of a feel like it was the grand jury of superheroes. Or a really nerve-wracking job interview.

At least, that was how it felt to Ted. It had taken a year before he’d received an invitation, mostly because he’d stayed in Chicago and stuck with combatting common street crime earlier on, but even though everyone here had been friendly, it still felt like being in the presence of giants. After a few of these events, Ted had outright asked if this was about being invited to join the League, and while they let him down gently-- well, he still wasn’t an active or reserve member, was he?

After that, Ted mostly just attended these things to spy on any new tech. And now, he also did it so that if Jaime decided to RSVP to one of them, the kiddo wouldn’t be alone with this crowd.

They were good people, Ted knew. He even knew who a fair number of them were in their wallet lives. But damned if he was gonna let his teenage protégé wander alone among them. Jaime was a sharp kid and everyone who met him liked him (with the initial exception of any Green Lantern, though it turned out that was a Scarab Thing and not a Personal Thing), but Ted still figured an extra level of protection against overzealous interest or accidental exploitation couldn’t go amiss.

It wasn’t that any Justice Leaguer or adjacent intentionally put the lives of kids at risk. It was that so many of them had started into the hero business when they were only kids themselves that it kinda seemed to have warped their views on age and heroics.

Ted was pretty sure he was in a minority of people who started into this heroing business as an adult, albeit a pretty young one. And while he was already half-retired at the age of twenty-five thanks to supraventricular tachycardia -- which was really sh*tty for an acrobat whose heart had to adapt quickly and accurately to sudden postural changes -- it had given him an opportunity to mentor a really special kid.

(He could get that fixed, but the idea of them knocking him out and threading something into his heart and freeze-drying or burning part of it was enough to scare him out of his tights as yet.)

But it was that sort-of cultivated instinct that had him drift after Booster when it was time for the whole meet-and-greet thing. Because despite the guy's height and the visor and the mask, the latter of which did a decent optical job of sharpening some of the angles of Booster's face, he still couldn't have been more than a few years older than Jaime. Adding in the wall-flowering and the way he kinda glommed onto Ted instead of some more impressive specimen, and Ted's protective instincts were pretty much instantly activated.

When Ted flopped down at the table in one of the Lantern’s chairs, immediately leaning back and crossing his boots up on the tabletop, he got the stink-eye from several of them. So, he beamed back at them because why not?

He-- also realized his instincts had been good. Because while the Justice League wasn’t comprised of sharks, it seemed that there was already blood in the water.

“--less that one report and more everything adding up the way it is,” the Flash (Borg designation Two of Several Because Ted Had Lost Count of Speedsters) was saying, pointing to an open file folder. He didn’t sound happy, either.

Ted wasn’t anywhere near enough to read whatever was over there, but his riffing partner looked kinda blanched under his tan.

“Your apparent commercialization of good deeds is-- disturbing,” Superman added, clearly uncomfortable.

Commercialization of good deeds...? Ted wondered what kind of sentence that was. How exactly could someone commercialize a good deed? He raised his hand like he was back in second grade, but didn’t wait to be called on before asking, “Wait, are we calling Booster a reverse mercenary? Instead of ‘give me money and I’ll kill someone for you,’ it’s-- ‘give me money and I’ll do something nice...?’”

“Endorsem*nts are fine for sports figures,” Booster said to the senior Leaguers, after shooting Ted a grateful look. His voice cracked briefly in the middle, he had his hands knotted together behind his back, but Ted really did have to give the guy props for having the chutzpah to try to hold his ground against the most powerful beings on the entire planet. “I don’t see the difference.”

Flash -- Barry Allen, who was either a cop or cop adjacent in his wallet life -- spread out a bunch of papers. “Attempted endorsem*nts in one identity -- the one where you’re playing hero -- and a whole series of petty crimes in another. Which, by the way, is also illegal.”

“Victimless crimes,” Green Arrow pointed out. “And nothing felonious. And I don’t know if I’d count three ATM hacks and a disorderly conduct charge a whole series.”

Tell ‘em, Ollie, Ted thought, because what was this, a meet-and-greet or an interrogation? And did they invite this guy here just to ambush him with this?

“And two social security numbers? A secret identity is one thing, but this--”

“--endorsem*nts are fine for sports, kid, but when it comes to helping others--”

“--stealing from an ATM without getting caught, plus whatever other--”

“Those are some pretty badass programming skills,” Ted said, speaking up enough to reach over the debate. He got another glare from a few of the Leaguers, but it was the brief little smile Booster gave him that he’d been chasing. “I mean, it’s not child’s play to hack an ATM or to build a whole second legal identity.”

“Thanks,” Booster said; he was still looking like he was waiting for the firing squad, but also-- maybe some kind of weary. He went to add something else, then stopped and shook his head before looking back at the senior Leaguers, a substantial minority of whom were busy tearing him down.

“--compromised in the public eye because a teammate was working as a stripper--”

It was a textbook perfect example of a record-scratch moment, everything at the table (and in the vicinity of the table!) going silent in an instant.

Ted didn’t even know which one of them had said it with all of the crosstalk going on, but he could honestly say he’d never seen Superman blush before. In fact, there was a lot of uncomfortable shifting going on at the table. Some judgmental looks. A few curious or appraising ones. Ollie seemed ready to jump in and start swatting people with newspapers, and Ted was ready to do the same once he got over the whole stripper thing, but Booster beat them both to it.

Something flashed across his expression, anger or maybe defiance, and then his entire demeanor shifted and he prowled a few steps closer to the table, moving with an easy and sensuous grace that pulled every eye in the place to him; when he got there, he leaned both hands on that table and looked every senior Leaguer dead-on, one at a time, back arched a little and a smirk painted on his mouth.

God, he was using their table as a prop. The Justice League’s fancy table. As a prop.

Ted was straight as far as he knew, and even he had no trouble whatsoever seeing where people would throw money at this guy to get him to take his clothes off.

And-- it was kind of telling, who here was willing to hold that eye contact and who was looking away.

“Well,” Booster said, voice low enough that it felt kinda intimate and frankly kinda dirty, “a man has to make a living somehow. And if you have it like I have it?” He reached over and plucked a strawberry from the fruit tray, bringing it up to tap against his bottom lip. “Seems more criminal not to use it.”

He didn’t even give them a chance to respond, he just ate that strawberry like a high-end p*rn star, then finished, “Anyway, since it’s pretty clear that you’ve already weighed the evidence and brought down the conviction, I’m out. Thanks for the invite.”

The entire Hall of Justice had fallen quiet by then; Booster walked through that crowd like sex on legs -- and they moved out of his way when he did, too! -- and left without looking back, smoothly flicking the stem from the strawberry away from him right before he was gone.

The first person to break the silence was Ollie, who said frostily, “You know, if we’re gonna start basing our recruitment criteria on someone’s perfectly legal job--”

“It’s not about that,” Barry said, looking kinda mortified. Though Ted couldn’t guess over which part. “Second chances are one thing, but all of these criminal activities are recent.”

Ted stood up; they might not have even looked in his direction, but he wasn’t ready to let them off the hook himself. So he didn’t bother keeping his voice down when he butted in with, “Inviting him here just to ambush him that way was pretty sh*tty. Just, you know, if you were wondering. Good work, heroes.”

He didn’t look back when he walked out, either.

“Hey! Hey, wait up! Sheesh, cut a guy some slack when he’s trying to keep up on his stumpy little beetle legs!”

Booster was most of the way to the doors when Beetle’s voice caught him; for a split second, he thought about keeping going, but that was mostly because he felt trapped triangulated somewhere between about to rage-detonate and about to throw up and about to bawl and didn’t exactly want any witnesses for any of those. His suit’s ability to moderate his temperature was doing nothing for the hot shame crawling on his skin.

But he stopped anyway.

Beetle skidded up, wearing what looked like a wince-smile, but his expression shifted right into concern when they were back face-to-face. “That was rough,” he said, bobbing his head back towards where the rest had been left. “You okay?”

Booster went to say he was fine, but then the realization slammed into him that aside from Skeets, that was the first time anyone in this time had even asked him that question. He wasn’t as prepared as he might’ve hoped for the shard of misery that accompanied that thought, either.

“You know,” he said, after swallowing against the sensation of being strangled, “this isn’t even the first time I’ve been publicly humiliated. I keep thinking, ‘okay, now you’ve made it, you’re not going to land on your face anymore, no one’s ever going to make you feel like that again’ and then something like this happens. But-- yeah, I’ll be okay, I just--” He gestured helplessly, then just dropped his hand, not sure where he was going with that.

Or, right now, with anything.

“God, yeah, I get that,” Beetle said, shaking his head; he reached up and unstrapped his mask (cowl?) under his chin, then peeled the whole thing back like a hood. When Booster shot an alarmed look at the floor-to-ceiling windows, Beetle caught it and smiled. “Hall’s locked on the outside right now and there are so many safeguards keeping people from peeking in that if anyone learns who I am by looking through those windows, they deserve to figure it out. You got a phone?”

“Huh? Yeah, but not on me,” Booster said, trying and failing to follow this conversation with any clarity, in part because now the Blue Beetle was steering him over to one of the benches and kind of pushing him to sit.

But the other part of his distraction was because Beetle was-- attractive? Yeah, but that wasn’t quite the right word. Handsome? Beautiful? A lot closer. His red-brown hair was a kinda-curly mess, his eyes were every bit as intensely blue as his costume now that his yellow goggles weren't in the way, his face was warm and open and expressive and--

And while Booster had been attracted to plenty of people in his life, he felt whatever this was all the way into his spine.

It was enough to temporarily knock him past the hot flood of shame, though his legs still felt shaky when he sank down onto the bench and Beetle sat down next to him. Beetle chuckled and knocked their knees together. “Yeah, I guess keeping a phone on you in that costume would make for a game of guess that lump among the civilian population.”

It startled Booster into a brief but badly needed laugh; not as hard as earlier, but being able to laugh at all cut through the anger and queasiness and hurt, and he sank against the back of the bench after, shaking his head, still smiling some.

“There, that’s better.” Beetle grinned back, then got into his holster and whipped out a marker. “I’ve got a marker if you’ve got something to write on?”

“Uh--” Booster tried to figure out what he had that could take marker ink and not potentially stain his costume, then pulled off his glove and offered his hand. “I guess this’ll work?”

Beetle’s eyes went wide, and he grabbed Booster by the wrist, inspecting the connectors that went between the glove and the rest of the suit. “Oh, I’d love to get my hands on this,” he said, seemingly to himself. “I’ve never seen such complex circuitry at this scale. At least, not from planet Earth.”

“It’s one of a kind,” Booster said, absently, watching and flexing his hand.

“No kidding.” Beetle shook his head, looking so closely that he practically had his face on Booster’s arm. Then he shook himself out of it and offered a sheepish, lopsided smile that went right to work on Booster’s already besieged heart. “Sorry, I’m an engineer. And a scientist. And a few other things. We get distracted easily by a pretty piece of tech,” he said, before uncapping the marker with his teeth.

Booster watched as Beetle wrote down a phone number on the back of his hand and then right above it--

Ted.

He knew before the ‘T’ was even finished, what Beetle was writing; it felt like a memory, but when Booster tried to chase it, no memory presented itself, not even in fragments. Just--

Just--

“Wow, I can definitely say this is-- not actually the first time I’ve given someone my name and phone number and upset them,” Ted was saying, apology written all over his face. “But usually I was flirting with them before that, so-- sorry I skipped right to the upsetting part?”

Booster shook his head back, short and sharp, shuddering a breath out and pulling a much deeper one in after it, like a diver just finding the surface.

His eyes were stinging and he had to take his hand back and cross his arms to hide the way both hands were shaking now. God, no wonder Ted thought he was upset. “It’s okay, it’s not you,” he said, trying to shove it all down or aside or anywhere else. “I-- it’s just-- it’s been a pretty hard day. I’m-- I should just go back to the hotel and shower and try to sleep before I have to go to work.”

Ted’s expression softened there, which was just making it even harder to hold it all together. “That’s a good idea. I have to fly back to El Paso myself.”

“Yeah.” Booster got up and took another careful breath. “Thanks for-- I guess everything.”

Ted stood up too, smiling. “Hey, we cheese-appreciating jesters have to stick together.” Then he nodded towards the back again. “And for what it’s worth, that was really awesome, what you did. I mean-- I wish I had that kind of confidence.”

I wish it actually was confidence, Booster thought, but the sentiment still squeezed his heart. “It’s worth a lot,” he said, sincerely, then held up his markered hand. “I’ll try to get this into my phone before it rubs off.”

Ted’s smile morphed into a grin that screamed up to no good. “Oh, that’ll be in about three, four days. I use that to mark equipment. Don’t worry, though, it won’t be permanent. Just-- persistent.”

“Guess I’ll have to wear gloves on stage tonight,” Booster quipped back. “If not much else.”

“How was it?” Skeets asked, after Booster landed on the balcony and let himself back into the fifth story room in the pretty-okay DC hotel.

He’d flown without his forcefield activated because he wanted the cold air on his face; after that, coming back into a warm room was almost too much. He pulled the curtains closed, though he left Skeets a crack to ‘look’ through, and then started peeling out of his uniform, trying to figure out how to answer that.

Skeets knew his whole sordid history -- who else did Booster have to talk to? -- and it was still curiously hard to tell the ‘bot about the rejection he just got. He opened his mouth three or four times to start, then just-- couldn’t.

It was weird. Equal parts newly humiliating and familiar. He hadn’t seen it coming until he was already under the gun, but then once he was, it was like the worst case of deja vu. And it wasn’t the first time that had happened since landing in this time. He’d be trying to do something -- chase a criminal, save people from a burning building, the usual hero fare -- and he’d get the feeling he’d done it a thousand times before. Even though he’d only been in this game for not quite five months.

The whole thing was starting to make him feel like he was going crazy.

“Sir?” Skeets prompted again, pulling him back to the moment, half undressed.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” Booster said, looking at the marker on the back of his hand. The bright spot in all of that: Laughing with Ted. Trying to weigh it now felt all kinds of wrong, because even the gut-turning shame of the League’s rejection (and the hows) seemed somehow less important, and that just didn’t make any sense.

He’d gone there looking for membership or networking, not friendship, even if he was lonely. Instead of the first two, maybe he’d gotten the last.

“I-- uh--” He shook out of it and finished getting out of uniform, leaving it in a heap on the chair, then headed for the bathroom. “They didn’t want me. They know about us hacking ATMs. And, um, what I do for a living currently. I don’t know how I feel about it.”

Aside bad, anyway. And tired. And still pretty lonely. But weirdly grateful for the phone number and name written on his skin in a marker that’d last for a few days, too. It was all a mess.

Skeets gave that little hum of his like he was thinking, but Booster didn’t wait to hear what the ‘bot might have had to say before firing up the shower and getting in; he turned it up hot as it would go and scrubbed himself clean, lingering on it long enough to feel a little more human again, then blow-dried his hair and brushed his teeth before flopping on the bed in some cheap Walmart PJ pants and a loose t-shirt.

He wasn’t there too long, staring at the ceiling, before Skeets hovered over and then slowly settled down in the crook of his arm.

It had happened a handful of times now, though usually Skeets only did that on the really rough nights where all Booster wanted to do was crawl into some dark hole and have someone kick enough dirt over him to constitute a mercy-killing. He wasn’t sure this night qualified, because while he was in the hole, he wasn’t in any great rush to be buried there, but he still tucked the ‘bot in close to his side, fin under flank, and let the proximity chase some of the heartache away.

After a bit, after the ‘bot’s cool metal skin had warmed where they were in contact, Booster reached over and pulled his phone off of the night stand. He put Ted’s name and number in his contacts -- now four whole numbers deep! -- then on a whim held the phone up and smiled and took a selfie before sending it over so that Ted would have his number in turn.

The answer back was quick: Oh, I see something shiny and pretty! Are you sleeping with one of your football trophies?

There was a split second there where, in some other lifetime, Booster would have started preening on the assumption that he was the shiny, pretty thing being complimented. Or made a joke about the lack of eroticism contained in a football trophy. In this one, though, he looked down at Skeets tucked against his side and found himself chuckling before texting back, If he knew you called him a football trophy, he’d be offended. Then he added, And if he knew you called him pretty, he’d be insufferable.

He?????? Is that a robot???? And you should send another selfie and do duck face this time.

Booster blinked. “Skeets-- what’s a duck face?”

“An exaggerated pout used in selfies, where the person taking the selfie pushes their lips outward, thereby unwittingly imitating the bill of a duck,” Skeets answered, with his usual speed and accuracy, because he could surf the internet faster than any human could think. “It’s largely fallen out of fashion, but is still considered a humorous meme.”

“Huh.” Booster mentally shrugged to himself, then took another one, this time pouting.

And the robot? You have to tell me about the robot!

Then: aNYWAY, that’s not duck face, that’s just sultry. Now this is duck face.

It took several seconds for the picture to load, but then Ted’s face popped up, unmasked, making the most-- ridiculous kind of expression at the camera, lips and chin jutted out, eyes half-lidded. Behind him was some elaborate-looking instrument panel. It was such a goofy expression that you couldn’t help but laugh at it.

Booster thought about firing something back about blackmail. Or maybe about Ted needing to practice his flirting, though that had some dangerous implications. But after he got done snickering at Ted’s goofy look, he just ended up writing, His name is Skeets. And yeah, he’s a robot. And my friend.

That is SO COOL. When do I get to meet him?

There was that issue again; what there existed of a future. What there didn’t. Despite being from several centuries into it, Booster still couldn’t see past the next day, the next meal, the next shift, the next patrol, the next motel room. Trying to stretch whatever he could earn long enough that he didn’t have to live like this anymore.

In all of that it seemed pointless, trying to plan for a when he couldn’t even imagine.

So-- he didn’t answer that. He just texted back, Night, Ted, and muted the phone and set it back on the nightstand. “Wake me up when we have to fly back to New York?” he asked, like he wasn’t going to wake himself up however many times, as he got halfway under the covers and even managed to do so without letting the ‘bot go.

“You might do better to avoid going in tonight, Michael. But I will.”

If he could have afforded to avoid it, he might have. But since he couldn’t, he just rolled to his side and cuddled Skeets against his chest and tried to sleep.

Chapter 3: Part I: February 6th, 2017

Chapter Text

February 6th, 2017

Semi-retirement hadn’t come easily to Ted.

It wasn’t so much that he got a kick out of the so-called glory or anything. There wasn’t actually much glory involved in dressing as a giant blue bug and wise-cracking his way through criminal take-downs, believe it or not. (Or getting to hear jokes about that knock-off with the web motif in the comic books, either.) Nor was there much glory in getting one’s ass kicked often enough to know what it felt like to have broken ribs more than once.

In fact, as far as Ted knew, most people never even had one rib broken once, let alone multiple ribs broken multiple times. And most people also didn’t know what it was like to piss blood for days after a dirty kidney shot. Or how to tie a tie with one arm in a sling. Or--

And yet, despite all of that, it was actually really damn hard to hang his suit up.

Which-- was probably why he was wearing it again now, and for something more important than a get-together at the Hall of Justice.

“I’m not screwing up your work shift, right?” he asked, perched up on the roof of the warehouse adjacent to the one he owned, wrapped up in a coat while he waited; it wasn’t that frigid out (and frankly, he didn’t think any place in NYC had wind as sharp and mean as Chicago’s in February), but there were still several dozen things Ted would have rather done with his time than hang around outside on a stakeout. No sense being cold while he did.

“Club I usually work is closed on Sundays,” Booster said back, leaning against a rooftop air mover with his arms crossed; unlike Ted, he wasn’t wearing a coat, but he didn’t seem bothered by the cold, either. “And since I’m used to being up all night anyway, I don’t have anything better to do,” he added, shrugging.

“I appreciate it.” Ted kept up his physical conditioning as well as he could, but even with the beta-blockers, his heart could go into tachycardia. And then his muscles would all feel overworked and he’d be unable to catch his breath, and it’d feel like someone was squeezing the hell out of his trachea--

Well, if he was going to act on the tip that someone was targeting his company’s warehouse here, he needed some muscle that wasn’t going to crap out on him at the worst time. “My protégé has school in the morning and if I tried this solo, I’d probably end up dead.”

“The Blue Beetle in El Paso?”

“Yeah. Borg designation Three of Three.” Ted grinned to himself, shaking his head. “He’s sixteen. A great kid, he woulda come with me -- after whining for a suitable amount of time because he really is sixteen -- but we’re having a hard enough time keeping his superhero life from messing up his grades and attendance. And frankly, his mother scares the hell out of me, so I’d rather not drag her teenage son several states away to hang out on a roof in the wee hours of a Monday morning.”

It didn’t occur to Ted that talking so openly with someone he only knew from one meeting and fairly regular texting might be a bad idea; whatever Barry’s indignation about the guy knocking over a few ATMs months ago, nothing about Booster set off alarm bells in Ted’s mind. And sure, Ted wasn’t always the very best judge of character, but he wasn’t the worst, either.

Anyway, any guy who had a robot for a friend was intriguing. And while Ted hadn’t gotten to meet Skeets yet, he had gotten several pics of Booster’s robot pal, which was pretty exciting. He was just about to beg in the least-pathetic manner possible to see said robot when Booster spoke again.

“So, why is there a Three of Three when Two of Three is still active?” Booster asked, gesturing to Ted, smiling a little bit. “You don’t look old enough to retire.”

“Bum ticker.” Ted tapped his chest over his heart, smiling back ruefully. “I mean-- it’s not so bad I’m gonna drop dead without help, but bad enough that I can easily end up in a situation where some bad guy will gleefully give me that help. Which is why I called you. Sorry about that.”

Booster shook his head when Ted apologized, waving it off. “I don’t mind, but why here? I mean, in New York.”

Ted hadn’t exactly gone broadcasting that he was that Ted, as in Ted Kord, as in billionaire. Or that it was his warehouse down there in danger of being knocked over. While he was sure most of the senior League knew his wallet name, he always felt kind of embarrassed by it. Like Ollie and Bruce, a huge amount of his family fortune was tied up in a thousand humanitarian projects, what wasn’t tied up in keeping his people employed, paying for his own expensive gear and saving enough for the future; unlike them, people didn’t actually tend to take him seriously even with all those zeros denoting his wealth.

Not in either persona.

And for some reason, the idea of coming clean about how rich he was to his new friend made him really uncomfortable. Unfortunately, lying was even worse.

So-- he decided to try to split the difference by being vague until something forced him to stop.

“I, uh-- got a tip. A credible tip.” Ted burrowed deeper into his coat. “See, the warehouse is a distribution hub for parts to the local branch of the company that owns it. And the company--”

“KORD, Inc?” Booster asked, dryly, pointing to the sign on the side of the building opposite.

“--yeah. Uhm-- KORD is Kord Omniversal Research and Development, actually. A multinational tech company. But anyway, the tech KORD deals in is pretty high end and a lot of it’s experimental, but most of the stuff already on the market is really modular. If you grab something, you can almost always make something else out of it pretty easily, which is great for production but makes for a tempting target. So, the tip is that someone’s looking to make off with a lot of drone components that would normally be used for medical assistance drones.” At Booster’s bemused look, Ted gestured. “You know-- like that stupid old commercial on late night television? ‘Help! I’m an extremely geriatric old lady that my great-grandchildren have ditched alone in this Florida cottage to die! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!’ Except, instead of being a wrist-band that just calls 911, it’s a little drone who can alert emergency services and family members. And in the normal everyday, it can fetch medication and prepackaged foods, stuff like that. It can find lost phones and keys. It can ring an alarm when its owner needs to be reminded to take their meds. It's not true AI, but it acts kinda like a pet, which also helps. Quality of life improvement, you know?”

“That’s very forward-thinking tech,” Booster said, though something about the expression he was wearing made Ted think there was something amusing or ridiculous about that explanation.

Still, Ted wasn’t easily offended and just beamed back. “It really is. It’s helped a lot of people stay in their homes safely for longer than they could have before. We have a contract with--”

--hnngh.

“--they have a contract with the US federal government; KORD sells the drones to the Fed at a price to cover costs and turn enough profit to put it into more R&D, the Fed provides them through Medicare for free to vulnerable seniors who need them, and the world’s a slightly better place.”

If Booster caught Ted’s slip, he didn’t comment on it, just nodded seriously before smirking and pointing again. “I guess we better do something about those nefariously shadowy people crawling on the warehouse’s roof, then.”

“sh*t!”

Turned out that they fought together just as well as they bantered together.

Booster still hadn’t managed to work out why this whole heroing thing was coming as easily as it did. Because before he’d arrived, he’d thought he was just going to waltz right on scene with a cool costume and awesome future tech, and that the outfit would make the hero. And then after he’d arrived, shaken up and disoriented enough that even Skeets seemed worried, he’d realized he didn’t actually know the first thing about being a hero and that he was gonna get himself or someone else killed.

Except just when he’d come to the conclusion that he was a hopeless amateur, it turned out that this all came easily to him. The physical part of it, anyway.

It was a lot like the first time he was throwing a pigskin in a gym class. His hands weren’t quite big enough for his fingers to land between the laces and he’d still thrown that ball better than their teacher, a pretty clean spiral, the distance of which was limited only by his size at the time. And yeah, Michael worked hard on top of having some measure of talent for it; he trained with a single-minded dedication that pretty much defined all of his teenage years but the last. (And-- even the last, really, if in a much worse way.) But that underlying inclination--

He was a relatively average student with a book regardless of how much he liked to read, but he was brilliant on the field both passing and rushing and had earned the right to own that with blood, sweat, tears, bruises, a couple concussions--

Heroing wasn’t quite like football. He didn’t know entirely how to feel about it, for one; there were times when he got the distinctly uncomfortable sensation that he was doing this because he just didn’t have anything else. Not even for getting his name in the paper or building enough of a brand to make a living without having to strip, but because he was at a loss otherwise.

Not to say he didn’t get his joys from it. From heroing. The occasional complimentary article in the Times was nice; to read something about him that didn’t start with Michael Carter’s destroyed career and reputation. And he loved flying. And even though it was probably stupid and sappy and sentimental, he also really liked helping people. Even saving that dumb goldendoodle felt nice.

It was just also-- overly familiar? In some ways. Fighting and criminal-apprehending and running into burning buildings, all of that felt-- maybe not as dangerous as it should have? Or maybe just routine.

More unnerving, though, was how little he honestly cared anymore about being famous. He knew why he was supposed to want to be, but it wasn’t gelling. There was a sharp fracture down the middle between what he was expecting to feel, need and want, and what he actually did, and he couldn’t even start to figure out why.

So-- apprehending badguys it was. And being really impressed with the Blue Beetle’s moves during the apprehending, too.

“Heads up!” Ted shouted, cheerily, swinging off of a catwalk like some kind of acrobat, only to smack Random Henchman #3 -- on a shelf below him beside an open crate -- in the middle of his back with both boots, which--

--sent him flying down right into Booster’s outstretched arm, who clotheslined him neatly, saving him from a potentially bone-crunching meeting with the floor. “And down!” The henchman dropped in a heap with a grunt and wheeze. Booster winced, looking down at the guy. “Oooh, might wanna watch the face, those ski-masks aren’t really much protection.”

Random Henchman #5 was running for the doors after #4 tripped and tumbled, because it had frankly only taken three minutes of chasing them around the warehouse to take most of them down. “Grab him?” Ted asked, sounded surprisingly winded, and Booster glanced down at the guy he’d just dropped before taking off after the one running.

It was a quick collar -- literally! -- and just so he wouldn’t have to babysit, Booster hoisted and hung that guy off of a pulley by the leather belt he was wearing before flying back to make sure #3 and #4 were still subdued along with the others.

In the meantime, the Blue Beetle wasn’t looking so good even in the dim light; he was still hanging from the catwalk and something about his pallor was alarming. “Hey, what’s wrong?” Booster asked, wasting no time flying over there.

Ted’s skin was sweaty where it was exposed, and up close, he was clearly having an incredibly hard time holding himself up. “Heart. Ride down?” he panted, and sagged with a grateful sounding sigh when Booster took his weight and he could let go of the catwalk. “I’ll be okay,” he said, shivering. “Just need to lay down.”

Booster was less convinced, but he landed them soft and didn’t let his alarm show when Ted literally stretched out on the floor of the warehouse, thumping against his chest with the side of his fist.

“--should I tie them up?” Booster asked, even as he hit his wrist-comm. “Skeets, call the police, send ‘em to our position? Then hone in on my position and get here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yeah, please,” Ted said, though he had picked up his head and was watching; he beamed despite looking like hell. “Do I get to meet your robot?!”

Booster smiled, shaking his head, and went to go figure out how to secure their random henchpeople. “Your lucky night. Hey, do you have anything I can use as handcuffs?”

Ted fished something out of that thigh holster, then held up a handful of zip ties that were sticking out of his fist like porcupine quills. “These work?”

“You came to a bust with zip ties? And while I’m at it, do you actually keep a gun in there, or is it just like your all-purpose junk drawer?”

“Actually, I do have a gun! It’s called the BB gun, because I’m clever like that.” Ted let his head rest back on the floor and took a slower, more even-sounding breath. “But yeah, I also stick random stuff in there because I don’t have pockets. It’s got pouches in its pouch,” he added, with a snicker. “Like a Liefeld comic.”

Booster didn’t get the reference, but he did happen to think the word pouch was funny, which was why he was giggling like a twelve-year-old as he zip-tied their disgruntled henchfolk. “And don’t want any civilian games of guess that lump?”

“Give the man a cookie!”

“I’ll settle for some all-night diner pancakes, but if a cookie’s all I’m getting for saving your butt--”

“It’ll be one of those really big cookies.”

“They do make some impressively sized baked goods in this era,” Skeets said, zipping through the half-open man door. “Also, the police will be here in approximately forty-five seconds.”

“Skeets!” Booster grinned, then nodded back towards where Ted was sitting up gingerly. “Your new biggest fan ever wants to meet you.”

Skeets paused for a moment mid-air, a barely noticeable hesitation, then flew over to hover in front of Ted, offering a cordial, “A pleasure to meet you, Mister Blue Beetle.”

Ted made a noise that Booster might’ve ascribed to an overly excited young dog being shown a new toy. Like-- maybe a verbal flail of excitement, if that was a thing. Then he said, “You are so cool. Booster! I’ll buy the pancakes if the ‘bot comes with us!”

Booster sat back on his heels and watched, even as the sound of vehicles roaring up outside filtered in; something about the scene -- Ted sitting there in wide-eyed wonder and Skeets hovering at eye level -- grabbed him by the heart. Good, mixed. “Blueberry pancakes?” he asked, rising to his feet so he could go lead the cops in.

“Pal, I’ll get you the whole damn blueberry bush.”

“Deal!”

It actually wasn’t too far from morning-morning by the time they got done handing over the wannabe thieves to the NYPD and giving their reports. Then it was just a matter of picking a place to eat (Booster’s choice) and changing into civilian clothes (Ted’s idea) and meeting up for whatever meal it was when you were up all night but also technically having breakfast.

Ted had clothes on the Bug for just such occasions as these and some remote places to stash her. That meant paying a small fortune in cab fare, but at these hours, even Manhattan was pretty bearable for traffic.

He hurried through all of it and made sure to knock back his medication so he could actually do the hurrying without ending up on his back again; when he arrived at the diner on the upper East Side, the glowing red neon cutting through the darkness, Booster was waiting outside leaning on the next building over and Skeets was hovering close by.

In his civvies, he looked like every overly-perfect jock that had ever given Ted a hard time in high school. But that impression only lasted until he spotted Ted walking up and lit up happily. “I was worried you got lost.”

“Nah, parking a custom-built airship is just a time-consuming venture,” Ted said, waving it off. “There are only so many places you can get away with it.”

“Custom airship?”

“She’s called the Bug.” Ted opened the door and slipped in, holding it open so Booster could follow. Then he heaved a fake sigh out. “I know, you’re swooning at my originality.”

“I dunno, that actually is pretty original,” Booster replied, waving to the waitress before sliding into one of the booths, seemingly oblivious to the fact that said waitress was instantly blushing and mooning over him. “How many beetles fly around riding on bugs in nature?”

He was carrying Skeets under his arm like a football and set the ‘bot on the table once he was settled, grabbing the pepper shaker to stick under Skeets’s front so he could balance properly. Ted barely resisted the urge to pick poor Skeets up, not wanting to impose, but his fingers were itching for him to get a closer look. “You do have a point. Maybe I should hire you for PR. You can backfill all of my ridiculousness with an explanation. No hovering, Skeets?”

“It attracts too much attention,” Skeets explained.

Booster smirked there, patting the ‘bot on his-- head? Chassis? “It’s easier to call him my custom boombox.”

“God, there’s no way you’re old enough to know what a boombox is,” Ted said, shaking his head. “And okay, maybe I’m barely old enough to remember myself, but at least I am!”

Booster had an eyebrow up, but then he made a smug little face. “My driver’s license says I’m over twenty-one. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

“Indeed,” Skeets added, drier than Death Valley.

So, definitely not twenty-one yet. But even if he was, that was an anachronism anyway; no way someone born in ‘96 should know what a boombox was. (And Ted didn’t want to examine too closely his own dorkiness that he did, thanks.) He turned over his coffee mug, though he had to wince apologetically at Shawna the Waitress and say, “Decaf for me, please?”

Shawna managed to tear herself away from making heart-eyes at Booster and smoothly filled Ted’s mug with a decaf carafe in one hand and Booster’s with the regular coffee in the other. “You boys know what you want yet?”

So many explanations, Ted thought, but he just gestured to his breakfast buddy. “You go first.”

“Uh-- full stack of blueberry pancakes and bacon?” Booster asked, resting his chin on his palm and looking up at Shawna, who was probably gonna explode at this rate.

“Sure thing, sugar,” she said, with a wink, then looked back to Ted.

Low sodium, low cholesterol, low-this, low-that-- Ted sighed out like some sad hound dog in the sun and dropped his head back before screwing his face up, forcing himself to ask, “Can I have the vegetable omelet with egg whites and a side of chicken sausage?”

Shawna had the kindness to look sympathetic as she winced back at him. “Oh honey. You sure can.”

“May I ask what you’re diagnosed with, sir?” Skeets asked, after she left, and Ted couldn’t resist reaching over and gently patting the ‘bot himself.

“You can just call me Ted,” he said, then scratched his head briefly before going back to patting the ‘bot. “There’s this abnormal cluster of cells in my heart that misfires sometimes. For me, usually when I’m changing position suddenly, which--” He gestured out the window as if that was somehow an illustration.

Booster caught it quick, though. “--wowzer, that sucks.”

“--yeah, exactly. Anyway, when that happens, my heart jumps rhythm and goes into tachycardia, and then I’m pretty useless for everything until it stops. If I lay down, it usually goes back to a normal rhythm quicker, but sometimes it can last hours.” Ted scrubbed at his eyes, then pressed his hands flat to the table. “There’s a way to fix it, but--”

He trailed off there, then doctored up his coffee before finishing, “There’s a way to fix it, but honestly, it kind of spooks me. I’m still trying to decide what I want to do. The beta blockers make it so I can function in the normal day-to-day, but anything more acrobatic is dicey.”

It didn’t fail to occur that he was maybe oversharing. But these two were so easy to talk to. “Supraventricular tachycardia?” Skeets asked, after making a cute little humming noise.

“Yeah.” Ted smiled ruefully and mirrored Booster’s pose with his chin on his hand, elbow on the table, addressing the man himself. “You know, you’re gonna have my whole life’s story at this rate and I don’t even know your name.”

“Sure you do. Or-- one of them.” Booster smirked again, but then his expression softened some. “I’m pretty boring, Ted.”

“You’re a stripper and a superhero, Booster, that’s the very opposite of boring.”

“Michael.”

Ted blinked, then grinned. “Oh?”

Booster reached across the table, offering his hand. “Michael Carter, at your service. One of However the Hell Many, in a-- what did you call it? Borg designation?”

Ted shook that hand, grinning even wider for the play off of his geekiness, but then pressed a more regretful kind of smile right after. Time to come the rest of the way clean, apparently. “Ted -- don’t call me Theodore -- Kord, and back atcha.”

“Kord as in the warehouse, as in Kord Omniversal Research and Development?”

“One and the same.”

Booster didn’t seem too surprised by that; he nodded and went back to sipping on his coffee. “You know, that can almost be the start of a joke. ‘A stripper and a billionaire in tights walk into a warehouse...’”

Ted laughed, throwing his head back, “A joke or a very interesting p*rno!”

That set Booster off handily and then he was laughing as hard as Ted. Thank everything that the diner was mostly deserted. They garnered a glare or two, a few more bemused looks. Shawna the Waitress seemed weirdly disappointed.

“Oh man, if you thought the League was scandalized before,” Booster said, scrubbing his hands down his face, still chuckling.

“--so there I was, hanging from my skywire by one hand, with my tights around my ankles in the falling snow, all the while freezing my goolies off--”

Booster’s voice went up most of an octave when he asked, “Wait, your what? ”

Ted blinked a couple times at the incredulous interruption, then snickered. “Which part? My skywire or my goolies?”

They’d had a fairly leisurely breakfast, trading tidbits of information back and forth; Ted honestly ended up doing most of the talking, though, not so much because he meant to, but because it really was super easy to talk to Booster and Skeets. And it was a nice distraction from how bland and pointless Ted’s breakfast was. (Okay, the chicken sausage wasn’t that bad, but still.)

Ted had meant to keep trying to hand the ball back, but it just hadn’t worked out that way.

The sky was starting to come light when they left the diner; they ended up standing out on the sidewalk talking instead of parting ways -- which was the plan, right? -- and then somehow they were in motion, walking until they landed in a Sundollar. Skeets had flown off to do whatever Skeets did when he wasn’t hanging around with Booster, which left Ted feeling a bit crestfallen, but the other half of that duo was charming company despite being organic.

Now they were back outside wandering the streets of Manhattan in the ever brightening morning with yet more coffee (and decaf); almost without meaning to, Ted was leading them towards where the Bug was parked. Not because he was in a hurry to leave -- yeah, he did have responsibilities, but the good part of being the boss was the flexibility -- but because he kinda wanted to show his ship off and didn’t exactly want the morning to end.

“The skywire is pretty intuitive,” Booster said, snickering. “I mean, so are goolies, but that might be the most amazing word I’ve ever heard and I was wondering where you got it.”

That had Ted giggling back, if only because it really was a pretty funny word. “Oh, hell, I don’t know. I picked it up somewhere. Now, do you want the rest of this story?”

“Sure. Don’t leave me hanging the way you currently are.” There was a beat, then Booster added, “Or the way that your--”

“--no!” Ted turned and walked backwards, pointing right at Booster’s nose, somehow managing to force a straight face. “You’re about to make a terrible joke and I refuse to be a party to any such comedic butchery, especially involving parts of my anatomy. Only I’m allowed to bust my balls, pal.”

Booster shoved Ted’s hand aside then held both of his own up, looking not a little smug. “Oh, come on, Ted. You can’t give me a setup like that and not let me follow through.”

“Sure I can.” Ted waved one-handed, turning back to walk straight again. “The last time I let someone else bust my balls, she broke up with me and kept the diamond ring.”

“I’m sure there’s a crack somewhere in there about her making off with more than the diamond ring. Or--” Booster tapped his chin thoughtfully, “--something about your masochism? Or maybe something about me being an especially cheap date, but that only works if I’m allowed to bust your balls. Or encouraged to? I mean, there are a lot of directions I can go with this.”

Ted groaned with every bit of melodrama he could dig out of his soul, rolling his eyes and his head for good measure. “Oh god, you’re definitely not allowed nor encouraged, especially not for a stack of blueberry pancakes and three pieces of diner bacon. Sheesh, Booster, show some self-respect and at least ask for something measured in carats. Now, are you gonna let me finish this story?”

Somehow, a very late (or very early) breakfast turned into walking and coffee, and then somehow that led into them still hanging out in the hours approaching noon.

Turned out it was really easy, listening to Ted. The man had the gift of gab, but he was a generous conversationalist; yeah, he did most of the talking, but it wasn’t because he didn’t ask questions or leave openings. It was just that Booster-- liked listening. He’d pounce on a fun opening if Ted left him one, volley the banter for a bit, but he was content enough providing an ear, following along on Ted’s stories of the various wacky hijinks he got up to as the Blue Beetle, then pretty much his whole life’s story, all while roaming the streets of Manhattan.

That was how Booster learned that Ted was from around Chicago -- Shi-kaaah-go, with the ‘a’ all the way in the back of the throat -- and that both of his parents were gone. That he’d hacked the Department of Defense at age thirteen and got at least two decades of his life scared off of him by the government spooks who showed up at their house because of it. That he’d graduated high school at sixteen and he probably could have at fourteen, except he got into the World of Warcraft thing, then the Minecraft thing -- Booster made a mental note to look those things up just to satisfy his curiosity -- and slacked off some to do online gaming.

There was gymnastics (“Don’t laugh, but yeah, I still have all my old awards.”), the death of his mother, the subsequent depression, the struggle with an eating disorder. Then Dan Garrett, then a psycho uncle named Jarvis, of all things, with deadly robots that Ted sort of accidentally helped invent, Dan actually being the Blue Beetle (One of Three), Dan dying because he’d been trying to protect Ted, and then Ted promising to take over the mantle.

It was another weird, fractured aberration that Booster wasn’t interested in looking too closely at, his own contentment with just listening and learning, but it certainly wasn’t the worst one. Even before his disgrace in the 25th century, he hadn’t been all that good at making friends. Some of the reasons why were his own fault; he knew he could be self-centered and kinda single-minded and vain and that a lot of people found those traits off-putting. And the more sincere he let himself be, the more awkward he got, which didn’t help matters.

And-- some of the reasons weren’t his fault; the world had certain expectations of their stars, after all. It hadn’t taken long in this time period, working on a stage, for Booster to conclude that being a star athlete and being a sex worker were a lot more alike than different.

When you made your living with your body, the people paying you -- be it with product endorsem*nts, lucrative contracts, dirty mob money or bills stuck in a g-string -- saw you as something to own.

You belonged to everyone but yourself.

By the time they ended up in the Bug (which was impressive as hell, though her aesthetic design was somewhere between charmingly silly and overly cute), Booster was having a time of it staying awake. No matter how much coffee he managed to knock down over the past eight hours, he was rapidly approaching forty-eight hours up and running and was starting to feel every additional minute.

But he still didn’t try to wind it down to a close. What was there to do other than this? Go back to his no-tell motel room. Maybe grab something for lunch along the way. Sleep however long and well he could, go to work, then do it all again the next day. The thought made his heart ache. By contrast, hanging out with Ted -- even while half asleep -- was just a lot better.

Skeets had rejoined them now that they weren’t so much in the public eye; at some point in the past ten minutes or so, Ted had transitioned from showing Booster around the Bug’s control panels to giving Skeets the full techie tour and had wandered off to grab something from the storage all the way in the back.

“You can tell him, Skeets,” Booster said, muffling a yawn into his forearm after sinking down into one of the two front co*ckpit seats.

“Sir?”

“About where we’re from. How we got here.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Sure about what?” Ted asked, coming back up front with something that looked like a drone in hand, if a small and sophisticated one.

Booster tried to come up with some suitably clever reply, maybe about blackmail or french maid outfits, and ran right back into the metaphorical wall with a second -- deeper -- yawn, so Skeets was the one who did the talking. “Michael said that I could tell you our story.”

“Oh, Michael did?” Ted asked, leaning against the control panel. “Tell me the truth, Michael: It’s because I’ve finally bored you most of the way to sleep, isn’t it?”

“You caught me. I’m ready to confess to all of my heinous crimes. Or let Skeets confess to all my heinous crimes,” Booster answered, pressing his shoulders back into the shockingly comfortable seat, trying and failing to decide how he felt hearing Ted call him by his name-name. Definitely not bad. But also not very definable, either. Complicated, maybe?

Like every other damn thing in his life, it seemed.

“You’d take the fall for me, right?” he asked, looking up and over at the ‘bot.

“Truthfully, sir, I’m amazed that I haven’t been asked to be your patsy before now.”

“Whew. Harsh. I’d take the fall for you if you were the one committing heinous crimes.”

For a robot programmed without emotions, Skeets could put on a doubtful tone with the best of them. “You would?”

“Mm. Next time you’re eying up an underaged vacuum cleaner--”

“You know, I would pay real money, like six figures, to hear you trying to take the fall for Skeets flirting with a new vacuum,” Ted said, breaking into the conversation apparently just so he could smirk at Booster.

“It would stretch your acting abilities, sir, but I do have faith in you.”

Booster rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, sighing dramatically, “I see it’s now my turn to have my balls busted.”

Ted rubbed his chin like a supervillain and shifted to cross his ankles, pretending to think about it before going, indignantly, “Wait, I don’t bust balls for free! So, when can I expect the diamond ring?”

Booster had a very reckless or maybe dumbass temptation to do something with that opening, because it was pretty much perfect for both humor and flirting and Ted was right there in reach, but he also didn’t exactly want to ruin things between them, and then there was the fact that he probably wasn’t actually thinking all that clearly, so he would almost certainly be panicking about it later even if he did do anything with it now. And yeah, Ted was a real pleasure to listen to and certainly to look at, he could swing around a warehouse catwalk with breathtaking skill and do a flip from standing -- at least before his heart acted up -- and he could somehow dress up as a giant blue bug and still be very easy on the eyes, but he’d also given no real sign Booster could recognize that he was interested in anything romantic; what kinda flirting they maybe had been doing had been the perfectly innocuous kind that almost couldn’t be expected to be taken seriously--

“You still with me?” Ted asked, eyebrows drawing together, which was when Booster realized he was just staring at the man like a total space-case.

He blew a breath out. “Yeah, sorry.”

Ted nodded. “If you want, I could give you a ride somewhere closer to where you’re staying? I’ve been enjoying the company so much that I kinda lost track of the time.”

That made the both of them; it was the-- the kindest morning Booster had experienced since landing in this era. And if he was counting his own time, then the kindest one he’d had in years. That was why it was easy for him to say, “Hey, you can hang out with Skeets if you want, just don’t mind if I nap here.”

Ted hit a button on the console and looked at the holographic time display that popped up for a moment, mouth skewing sideways as he thought. Then he looked back between Booster and Skeets and smiled. “Nap away; if you wake up as the newest exhibit in the El Paso Zoo, though, you’ll only have yourself to blame.”

Any last semblance of cleverness was fleeing rapidly, which was why Booster stopped fighting with his eyelids and just said, “Yep,” instead.

Booster woke up only once during; drifted back and watched quietly as Ted sat in the other seat, socked feet braced up on the console, writing into a tablet with a stylus and talking to Skeets.

The sun had moved. It was warm and something smelled nice. He’d ended up mostly horizontal somehow, no idea how. Ted’s coat was under his head.

And-- Ted himself looked happy.

It was an aching thought that crossed through Booster’s head, something made out of grief and longing and hope and resignation, the echo of a ghost:

I’m not going to survive you, am I?

(It was also much older than he was.)

Chapter 4: Part I: February 25th, 2017

Chapter Text

February 25th, 2017

“It really is kind of uncanny.”

Ted looked up from the high-powered magnifier where he was busy inspecting and modifying Booster’s visor to where the guy himself was sitting on one of the lab tables reading through a stack of Ted’s old, vintage Nite Owl comics that he kept in the Bug for something to do on long trips. Or, rather, modern reprints of Ted’s vintage comics because the actual originals were safely tucked in plastic and stored in an archival box in the family home in Highland Park.

“Yeah, those comics were from when my Dad was a kid. He lost all sense of wonder and humor by the time I was born, but he did give me those,” he said, sitting back a little bit and giving his eyes a rest from the fine work he was doing. “And I liked the second Nite Owl’s Archie so much that I tried to make him real when I first designed the Bug. Though Nite Owl’s aesthetic was more steampunk and mine’s more futuristic.”

Ted had spent a good six hours just hanging out with Skeets a couple weeks back, while Booster was crashed in his co-pilot’s seat, and a fair amount of that time had actually been spent going over the schematics for Booster’s costume and then for Skeets, which -- with them being from the twenty-fifth century, holy sh*t -- Ted was understandably curious about. And since Skeets had been given permission to talk about it all, the ‘bot had.

Learning that his breakfast buddies were from the actual, factual future was exciting; Ted had absolutely dallied in the theories of time travel, just like a lot of scientists, and he knew that eventually humankind would solve it.

But this was the first time he’d ever had direct access to anyone who had experienced it.

“You nailed it,” Booster said, holding the comic up and comparing it to the Bug. “I mean, the legs are different, the antennae, yours is way updated, but it’s amazing how close the shape and capabilities are otherwise.”

It was hard not to preen at that, so Ted didn’t even try. He beamed at the compliment, even as he stood up and started into a stretching routine so he wouldn’t be stiff or sore later when he was done hunching over his workbench. “Yeah, I keep refining things as I go. I originally only had one seat, when I started, but then when I started mentoring Jaime, I added the other. And then I ended up adding even more modular seating since I started having regular passengers to go with him. And I don’t have missiles like Nite Owl, but I do have countermeasures. The gyroscopes, the armor plating. And oh! Skeets! The internal gyros that stabilize Skeets are just-- they’re so simple and so brilliant that I’m kind of mortified I didn’t invent them myself, so I’m neck-deep in redesigning the Bug’s to get as close as I can, which should stabilize her considerably even during turbulence.”

Skeets had been hovering around Booster’s shoulder, apparently reading along with those old comics, at least when he wasn’t hovering around Ted’s shoulder helping him. “Your designs are truly impressive, Doctor Kord. You would have little trouble mastering and exceeding the technology of our time if you had access to the manufacturing capability it’s created from.”

Ted rolled his eyes, even as his face heated. “Seriously, Skeets. Ted. You can call me Ted.”

“So you’ve said, sir.”

“It’ll be awhile,” Booster said, not looking up from the comic, though the sly little grin tugging on his mouth certainly suggested he was finding this amusing. “But you’ll wear him down eventually, Doctor Kord.”

Ted picked up a rag and threw it at Booster’s head, who leaned to the side so that it missed. “Don’t you start.”

Even just between the costume and the ‘bot, there was a ton to be learned from the tech of the 25th century. The fiberweave circuitry that made up Booster’s suit was impossible to replicate because it required manipulation on a quantum level to even create it; according to Booster, it was actually originally alien. But somehow, he and Skeets had been able to modify it together to what it was now, integrating several different technologies, including a force field that Brainiac 5 had invented and the gauntlet blasters, comms and visor from other places. The only really independent part was the Legion flight ring.

None of those disparate technologies had been created to talk to one another, and yet they did.

It was a hell of a kitbashed solution. As an engineer, it made Ted want to climb walls and howl because that could get so damn dangerous; the guy was flying around in a suit that could malfunction and deep fry him like a particularly leggy turkey in mid-air. As a scientist, though, it made Ted want to cry for a different reason and plead to be taken into the future because it was all amazing, regardless of the kitbashing.

And as regular old Ted Kord, he was half-impressed and half-flabbergasted by the boldness of literally everything Booster had done, up to and including bolting into the past with an armload of tech, a time sphere (!!!! and ?!?!), and his security robot partner, all to try to become a hero centuries in the past.

The guy -- who Skeets had revealed was barely twenty, whatever his claims on his fraudulent driver’s license -- sitting on Ted’s table, swinging his legs idly back and forth and reading comic books, had apparently felt like he’d f*cked his life up so badly that he had to leave everything he knew in the most spectacular and permanent manner possible.

It was either incredibly brave or genuinely crazy and Ted wasn’t actually sure which was more applicable. It was also a pretty sharp illustration of how much difference five and a half years could make: Ted, at almost twenty-six, never would have the necessary lack of impulse control that Michael at nineteen (and likely also barely-twenty) for sure did. And hell, even at nineteen, Ted had been pretty methodical about it when building the suit and tech to take over for Dan; it was a whole year of that and pretty intensive training before the second Blue Beetle made his debut.

Michael, on the other hand, had sat up a few nights in a row with Skeets, made a costume of several unrelated pieces, pulled it on and had thrown himself out into the fray seemingly without hesitation.

All of that knowledge of his new friend was really starting to snag up hard against those same protective instincts that Ted had cultivated (and was still cultivating) as mentor to Jaime.

When he told Booster he wanted to do work on that costume today, Booster handed it over without a second’s hesitation, just-- obviously trusting Ted not to do anything to it that could get him hurt or killed. And then the way he’d fallen asleep in the Bug for six hours, letting Ted have access to Skeets like that, never mind the vulnerability--

It was-- touching but unnerving, being the recipient of that kind of blind faith in such short order. Especially since it was obvious that it was exclusive to Ted, for whatever reason. And now Ted was treading pretty carefully because he didn’t want to disappoint that.

He sure didn’t regret it, he was really enjoying their developing friendship even as new as it was, but the intensity of it all was starting to worry him. They went from meeting and trading goofy selfies to not a day going by where they didn’t talk for at least an hour, or spend all afternoon texting back and forth. Somehow, despite there usually being a few thousand miles between them, they fit into one another’s lives like a pair of puzzle pieces clicked together and that was-- a lot to absorb.

Still, that wasn’t really Booster’s fault or problem to deal with. It wasn’t necessarily even a bad thing. It apparently just was.

He’d gone back to reading while Ted had been wool gathering; sitting there in his frayed jeans and second-hand sneakers and blue henley, he looked like any other college-aged sports kid in this world and time. The exact kind Ted never would have normally interfaced with because they traveled in very different circles; the exact kind that typically rode in on an athletic scholarship or a parent’s legacy and got all kinds of sneaky concessions so they could pass and continue to play ball. Gifted with good looks, health and the resiliency of youth.

Yet there were moments where Booster would say something or wear a certain expression and instantly Ted would feel like he was talking to someone twenty years older and a lot more heartsore than the reality.

He looked at the visor on his workbench; while he and Skeets had been doing their thing last time, they’d brainstormed some additional features that they could add to that incredible costume, including telemetry via cell service and ways to maybe recharge the future power-rods that powered it before they ran down too far. Those were things that would take some time, and Ted was only going to be on the Eastern Seaboard for the weekend, so he probably should have kept on it.

But instead, he asked, “Hey, wanna learn how to fly her?”

Booster looked up from his reading, eyebrows going up. “Huh?”

“The Bug.” Ted upnodded to his ship. “Wanna learn how to fly her?”

The way that Booster lit up excitedly and hopped down from the table was endearing and had Ted grinning back. “Yes!”

“Awesome, we can go somewhere weird and offbeat for dinner,” Ted said, heading for the Bug, already thinking ahead of where that could be and looking forward to it.

Their ‘weird and offbeat’ dinner was at a restaurant shaped like a giant chicken in rural New York. Predictably, the menu had a hell of a lot of chicken or chicken-product in it. Just to be contrarian, Booster haggled with the waitress for a BLT instead, turning on his best smile, and got his BLT and fries. Even though that wasn’t on the menu.

He also got her number written on the back of a napkin, once he got done trying (and failing) to wrestle the check away from Ted. And after mopping up the water that had gotten knocked over in the attempt.

Booster had shoved the napkin with the number into his coat pocket, but he didn’t have any intention of calling it. She was cute and all, curves and braids and beautifully done acrylic nails that he did have a brief moment fantasizing about, specifically how they’d feel digging into his back (or scalp), but then they were outside walking along some small town’s main drag and he tossed the napkin in the trash with barely a thought.

He’d had a few hookups in this era; casual, vaguely-drunken things with attractive people who didn’t seem inclined to care what his name or story was as long as he was willing. One of those had ended up with him arrested, a three-way fling up against the brick wall of an alley, which was quite an acid-test on the civilian ID he and Skeets had managed to seed into the State of New York’s public records; that was also the one the Flash had apparently managed to dig up (which-- how??), the one that he had pleaded down to a charge of disorderly conduct.

The thing was, though, that he didn’t feel any great or pressing urge to go on the prowl looking for dates, hookups or whatever else. The sex had been nice, but that was all that could really be said for it. It wasn’t mind-blowing, it didn’t fill any great need in him, it was just nice.

Booster had been chalking his relative lack of interest up to the fact that he had his clothes off and hands on him most nights of the week and that was way more exhausting and less sexy than anyone might believe; if no one ever pinched any part of his anatomy again, it would be too soon. And that was a legitimate reason, he figured, for being kind of burnt out on being touched.

Except, he probably would have offered to saw off an arm for a good, long hug, the kind with at least one rib-creaking squeeze. The last good one of those he’d gotten was from his own twin sister, and that was before he’d been ruined.

So maybe it was less the being-touched thing and more the hows.

Any which way, it didn’t fail to occur to Booster that he would rather cuddle his ‘bot like a stuffed animal or play-wrestle with Ted across a chicken-themed table for a check than sleep with a pretty waitress with excellent nails.

Nor did it fail to occur that people might find that weird. Hell, he would have thought it was weird seven months ago.

“You go any further down that rabbit hole and I don’t think I’ll ever get you back.”

Booster blinked and picked his head up from where he was staring at the single-lane, chip-and-seal road. Or through it. Somehow, they’d left the town behind and were walking along a fenceline; to the left, some cows were placidly grazing and occasionally eying the two city-kids who had encroached on their territory. And Ted was giving him a kinda worried look.

He winced back, apologetically. “Sorry, I must seem like a super space-case.”

“Just a little,” Ted said, illustrating with his thumb and forefinger before humming thoughtfully and holding his arms out wide. “Just a tiny bit. You okay?”

“Yeah, just trying to figure out--” Booster pulled out his phone and checked the time; his heart got heavy when he saw what it was. He closed his eyes and sighed, “--something.”

If they were going to get back to the city in time for him to go on stage, they’d have to leave pretty much immediately. Then he’d have to get back to the motel, take a shower, change and hope there were no late running trains on the metro, unless he decided to risk city-flying in his civvies. Then he would spend what was left of the night trying to make enough to cover the costs, including the house fees, which meant a lot of hustle and a lot more pinching--

He bit on his lip and then looked around again.

Skeets was floating on the other side of Ted, apparently having rejoined them when they were out of town. It was a pretty day and not terribly cold; it smelled like mud and frost and cow, but even that wasn’t too off-putting. He’d gotten to fly Ted’s airship, which had been very cool. He’d talked a chicken place into giving him a BLT. They were in the middle of nowhere, their only company the cows and each other.

And space-case or not, Booster didn’t want to be anywhere else.

“Hey, Ted,” he said, turning and walking backwards, holding up his right hand with his flight ring. “Wanna learn how to fly?”

“Okay, so if I die, I’m going to come back from the afterlife and torture you for the rest of your natural or unnatural existence.”

Booster tipped his head over, closed one eye, pursed his mouth sideways, then asked, “Define unnatural?”

Ted flexed his hand back and forth, the weight of that flight ring just enough to remind him that he might kill himself attempting this. Because it was a fine idea until it was time to actually, you know, try it. “You could come back as a zombie. Or get turned into a vampire. Or, uh-- get made incorporeal and stuck as an essence in a mason jar. Or converted into a miniature haunted doll--”

“You know, I thought it would be nifty if I ever had my own action figure, but you’re really making me reconsider that.”

“I’m just sayin’, my ability to haunt you is not necessarily tied to your ability to consume oxygen.”

“Yeah, but if you have a ghost haunting a ghost, that’s just getting into weird, recursive territory.”

Ted eyed Booster over an imaginary pair of spectacles. “We’re two guys who regularly dress in very color-saturated tights to run around and punch bad guys. We’ve long since left weird territory, passed Bizarro World -- which I think is actually a thing -- then we hung a left at Funkytown and landed flat in the State of Certifiable.”

Booster squinted at him there, all exaggerated suspicion. “You sure you’re not occupying the State of Chickensh*t?”

Ted waved a hand, dismissing that. “No, but I do believe we had dinner adjacent to there!”

Booster shrugged. “Granted. Now, are you gonna try that? Because it’s been fifteen minutes since you put it on and you haven’t even attempted to fly.”

Skeets had been hanging around and occasionally weighing in; now, he piped up again with, “Thirteen minutes. But I estimate that at this rate, it will be at least another thirty-five years before Doctor Kord--”

“Skeets, it’s Ted!”

“--attempts to fly solo.”

Booster whistled. “Thirty-five years. Actually, wait-- you’re telling me you can’t get any more accurate than that, Skeets? Mister Measures to the Nanosecond?”

“I’m afraid that my skills in predictive odds are somewhat hampered by variables beyond my control. Perhaps with a little more time I can give you a more accurate estimate.”

Ted worked his jaw in fake irritation; he actually was a little embarrassed because he regularly leapt out of the Bug on his skywire and that was potentially devastating to life, limb, several joints, bystanders--

Well, he had regularly done that. Now, he mostly just flew support.

Still, he used to take to the air in his own way just fine, so there was something kinda pathetic about not wanting to try it with the flight ring. It was just-- the idea of being high in the air relying on a piece of tech he didn’t create was a little terrifying, and it wasn’t like they had safety measures in place in case it crapped out or in case he turned out to be so inept that he plummeted like a stone.

But it was also pretty hard to say no, no, I’m way too big a coward to try it, too.

They’d wandered back to where the Bug was parked behind an old, abandoned barn, with weathered, gray board-and-batten siding that was briefly restored to some former glory by the warm light of the settling sun. Ted tried to tell himself that no one could possibly see it if he made a total jackass out of himself, aside Booster, and also that he didn’t have to fly any higher than six inches if he didn’t want to.

“Okay. Just-- will the thing. Like a Lantern, but with less glowing,” he said, for maybe the fifth time. He stared at the ring intently and tried to will the thing to make him (very very slightly) airborne, and--

Nothing.

“I mean, you have to actually want to fly, too,” Booster pointed out, crossing his arms and leaning against the side of the barn.

Ted frowned, then stepped back and leaned there himself. The sun was sinking down to where a couple of hills intersected; the view reminded him briefly of the Loess Hills in Iowa. The same evening sun in the west, the air thick and golden with it, while his old man talked about the geology and history of the region. “I don’t have anything against the flying part. It’s that I don’t trust the tech. I know these things are super advanced, but I wasn’t the one who made this ring. And-- telepathic control? What if I start thinking about some hot babe in a chainmail bikini and fall to my death?”

“In fairness, I’ve definitely thought about hot babes mid-air and I didn’t die.” Booster raised an eyebrow at him. “And I mean, you’re a genius. You can think your way around anything. If I can do this with like an eighth of the brain cells you have, you sure can figure it out.”

That gave Ted a moment’s pause, eying his friend, trying to figure out if that self-deprecation was intentional for the sake of humorous illustration, or if Booster actually did think he was somehow dumber than Ted. It was pretty impossible to tell, though, so he stuck a mental bookmark in it and kept going, “Genius doesn’t necessarily translate to the kind of focus you need to use one of these,” he said, sliding the ring off and offering it back over; the relief of giving up definitely didn’t overshadow his own embarrassment in doing so. “And you’re no idiot,” he added, unable to really let that one go without at least a little challenge.

Skeets sounded about as dry as anyone, human or robot, could: “I’ve told him the same; perhaps he’ll listen to you better than he does me.”

Booster snorted back at the both of them. “Now that remains to be seen.” But he took the ring and slid it back on the middle finger of his right hand; Ted thought that would be the end of it, but then he found his own hand being taken.

There was a second there where Ted’s heart thumped hard against his breastbone; not enough to jump rhythm, but still a jolt of surprise. He had no idea what he was thinking was going to happen, but--

“Okay, so,” Booster said, apparently oblivious to Ted’s little brain-stutter, “we’re gonna try this a different way.”

“We are?” Ted asked, not his most eloquent response, but that could have been because he was still busy trying to work out why he was holding hands with Booster. Or, rather, why Booster was holding his hand.

“Yep.” Booster walked backwards, pulling Ted along, grinning all the while. “See, I figure that it’s all down to the fear of falling, right?”

Ted followed like some wayward duckling. “I-- guess? Maybe? It’s just-- I didn’t make that ring, I don’t know how it works, so my mind runs to all the things that can go wrong with it.”

He didn’t imagine that squeeze on his fingers-- unless he did? It would be pretty presumptuous to assume.

“Right.” Once they were well away from the barn and Bug both, Booster stopped, though he still had a hold of Ted’s hand. “So, instead of you worrying about falling, I’ll play buffer and failsafe.”

It didn’t take Ted too long, even after his mental stumble, to put together what Booster was suggesting; it was a weird kinda relief to turn his thoughts to the logistics and safety issues there. “I don’t know. I mean, I get what you’re thinking, but--”

“But?”

“It would be safer this way,” Skeets said, having trailed after them. “If your control of the ring fails, Michael’s experience would allow him to take over quickly.”

Quicker than terminal velocity, maybe, but that was only really applicable if they were high enough to give Booster time to do so. Ted’s heart did a sprinting lap or two of his ribcage. “I don’t know, a broken leg would be a pretty bad way to end the day.”

“It’s not like you’re thinking.” Booster finally let go of Ted’s hand, looking like he was bracing for disappointment. Which was a little ironic, since Ted was doing the same. “I mean-- it’s not like you have to think super hard every second. And you’ll know it’s working because you can feel a kind of--” he gestured at his own head, “--resistance? Like-- like a tug back against your thoughts. Not a bad kind of resistance, just this kinda feedback. And once you feel that, it gets so much easier, because then you can start working out what it takes.”

Ted’s fingers were cold. Or maybe they were only cool, but that it was more noticeable now. Still, that explanation was genuinely fascinating. He’d never had the occasion to ask one of the Lanterns what it felt like to use their rings, and while the Legion flight ring was way less versatile, it was still essentially the same principle. “Does it resist more the harder you push it? I mean, when you’re flying at higher speeds, or...?”

“I don’t know, I guess resistance wasn’t the right kind of word,” Booster splayed his fingers and looked down at the ring. “It’s not like it’s pushing back to stop me from doing something. More just--” He frowned and blew a breath out, looking frustrated. “sh*t, this is hard to explain.”

Ted got what Booster was trying to say, though; it clicked and he straightened up. “Like-- well, like you said earlier? Like a buffer. Humans think really fast, but it’s still a pretty messy process, so maybe the ring has this flex so that you have to be sure of what you want to do in order to use it...? Which-- which is why I couldn’t make it work. Because I’m not sure. And that buffer is what’s providing that feeling of resistance.”

“Very well said,” Skeets said, lowering himself so he formed the last point of the triangle they were standing (or hovering) in. “I have no schematics for the Legion ring, but it makes sense that its designer would build it such to take into account the normal stutters of organic sentient thought.”

Before Ted could chicken right back out again, he reached out and grabbed Booster’s hand this time. “Okay. I don’t have to be wearing it, though?”

Booster blinked a few times, seemingly surprised, then broke into a sweet smile that probably had netted him a lot of dates in his life, curling his fingers through Ted’s. “Nope. I mean, you have to be pretty close to it, but you don’t have to actually be wearing it to control it. Long as I don’t try to, you should be able to.”

Well, that meant Ted might be able to let go again, but he wasn’t exactly rushing to. He took one deep breath, found it wasn’t enough, took two more and then closed his eyes on the exhale of the last and tried again to will that ring into flight, brow furrowing as he focused.

It wasn’t anything like quick; his own mind really did tend to latch onto things and run with them, sometimes to the complete exclusion of sleep and food, so even as Ted was trying to focus on flying, he was also contemplating the cleverness of that buffer, how warm Booster’s hand was, and whether that ring could be turned against its wearer in close combat with someone else’s willpower. And when he did feel something -- and instantly understood why Booster had said it was like resistance, because that was actually an excellent word for it -- it took Ted several seconds to make it happen again.

It was a strange sensation; not bad, and it’d be very easy to overlook it, but since he kinda knew what he was feeling for, he was able to experiment with it. His feet were still on the ground, but there was no hurry--

“Okay, so you’ve got me in the air, kinda. Now you gotta get you up here.”

Ted opened his eyes; well, Booster wasn’t exactly soaring anywhere, but he was hovering a couple feet off of the ground, his only anchor to the world currently Ted. More on instinct than anything else, Ted tugged him back to Earth. “How far out does the antigravity field extend?” Ted asked, feeling that ‘resistance’ vanish when he quit trying to control the ring.

Booster shrugged, taking his hand back, only to take his ring off again and offer it over. “Honestly? Not sure, I never tried testing it. I have a pretty easy time when I have to carry someone, but I don’t know if that’s the ring or the suit. Or the gym. Or all three.”

“I don’t believe it will extend more than half a meter, if even that,” Skeets chimed in. “I have no sensors capable of measuring that or I would be able to offer more information.”

Feeling a lot more bold this time, Ted took that ring back and slid it back on; he still wasn’t exactly interested in going anywhere high enough to hurt himself, but his scientific curiosity was winning out in the short-term. “I could probably do an analysis in one of my labs,” he said, then braced himself and tried to ‘catch’ on the Legion ring again.

It actually was a lot easier to make it work while wearing it now that he knew something of what he was doing. In fact, it was way the hell too easy, because one moment Ted was standing with his feet firmly on the ground and the next, he was about eight feet in the air and listing like a drunk. “Oh fuuUUUUU--!”

“Oh, sh*t, Ted--!”

“Sir--!”

Ted might have answered them if he wasn’t busy cussing and squealing like a bad pair of brake pads; instead, he flailed and panicked and tried to gently lower himself back to the ground, except he ended up dropping like a stone straight into Booster’s arms, who caught him with an oof and mostly managed to absorb the shock, though not entirely.

There was a few second pause while they just stared at one another in surprise before the realities of gravity and balance asserted (and reasserted) themselves on the both of them. Then they tumbled messily into the dry tall grass.

It was another few minutes before they stopped laughing long enough to get back up out of it.

“It wouldn’t have been worth it. I mean-- there’s a sweet spot between how much you have to pay to perform and how much you stand to make from it, and there was no way I was gonna be able to hit it.”

Flying lessons had drawn to a close after Ted’s little turn as damsel-in-distress; after that, Booster took his ring back, and on a whim the two of them had gone up to sit on the roof of the barn to watch the sun setting, carefully finding a sturdy spot to settle just below the peak. Now the sun was growing heavy and orange; out past the hills in front of them, the streaks of clouds blazed, and behind them the horizon cooled and softened.

Somehow or another they had gotten onto the topic of Booster missing work, which wasn’t exactly his favorite kind of discussion, but the least he could do was reassure Ted that it wasn’t something to apologize over.

(Hopefully the next week, though, would let him hustle enough to make up for it.)

“Wait, you have to pay to work?” Ted asked, eyebrows furrowing.

The evening light really brought out the reddish color in Ted’s hair; it was such a pretty color that Booster was having a hard time not staring at the guy in a creepy fashion. “Yeah. I’m technically an independent contractor. So, in order to get stage time, I have to pay a house fee per night I work. And the later you go out the more it costs, because statistically, you stand to make more and the club wants their cut. And Friday and Saturday nights are the most expensive, obviously.”

“That-- sounds incredibly stressful.” Ted shook his head slowly, a little wide-eyed. “There aren’t any guarantees you’ll even make back the fees you put into it?”

Booster just shrugged back; that was his life, for the time being, though he had finally managed to scrape together enough funds for a professional photographer in order to build a portfolio he could send out. And it helped that email made sending photos easier, though the competition to even get called back was both global and fierce.

He had a feeling that if he’d landed a few decades earlier, he’d already be well-established and making a good living. Instead, world-wide communication being what it was now, everyone who would hire a model had their pick of people from all over the world, so Booster was still trying to fight his way to the front of the pack.

Right now, the only way to keep a roof over his head was to leverage whatever advantage or asset that he could. He was starting to get more regular inquiries about being hired for private parties, at least, which paid more reliably and typically were kinda fun. His favorite so far had been a canasta party with a dozen old women, partly because they tipped on top of paying for his presence, partly because he was good at making them smile and blush and giggle, and partly because by the time it was getting late, he’d somehow gone from being the designated boy-toy to learning how to play cards, drinking too-strong coffee and having a hell of a good time.

He palmed down his face, then elaborated, “What I mean is, all I have behind me is a year and a couple months of university, and since I was majoring in history in the future, that’s not exactly a big CV builder. And I’m pretty sure credit hours from the twenty-fifth century wouldn’t count anyway. Stripping isn’t the most stable job or anything, but it’s keeping me fed and sheltered.”

“My records of the last few decades of the twentieth century are considerably more complete than those of the first quarter of the twenty-first century,” Skeets said, where he was just hovering peaceably between them. “Had we arrived then, we might have been able to leverage that knowledge more effectively. As it stands, however, our foreknowledge has only helped in crime-fighting so far.”

“I was gonna say, if you had sports scores or stock market trends, those could have set you guys up for life.”

“The thought definitely occurred.” Though, the idea of talking to bookies was enough to make Booster queasy; beyond what his old man had done to their family, there was that year he’d been beholden to organized crime, too. And no matter how rough things got, at least he felt like he could live with himself right now. He shrugged again, picking up a piece of the handful of grass he’d brought up to the roof just so he could shred the grain at the top and watch it get taken by the breeze. “We’re doing okay, though.”

“Yes. Despite repeated mass extinction events, bedbugs are still found where humans are in our time,” Skeets said, which had Booster wincing reflexively. “My sensors are calibrated to detect them, having worked with the public as a security ‘bot; that ability has saved us many nights of unpleasantness in this time.”

Admitting to living in motels had not been anywhere on Booster’s agenda, especially not to Ted. “Not lately, though,” he hurried to say, which was mostly the truth because they’d successfully found a motel in their price range and that was close enough to the metro and he’d been paying by the week. It had been ‘home’ for the past three weeks; sure, the only way to get a hot shower was to shower between the hours of two and three in the afternoon, but it was the longest Booster and Skeets had been able to stay in one place.

Ted was looking between them with a kind of confusion or concern on his face. Before he could go asking questions, Booster added, “Actually, that oughta be your next invention. Hand-held bedbug detector. Unless they’re somehow adjacent to whatever beetle you’re named after and you’re afraid it’ll be insulting to the family tree?”

It acted as the distraction Booster had hoped; Ted laughed at that, then shook his head. “Welllll-- I originally thought it was just a blue scarab amulet that got infused with magic that Dan found in Egypt, which would make it a dung beetle -- hold the laughter until the end of the ride, please -- but it turns out it’s actually a highly advanced genetically engineered marvel, fused with technology, that was sent to prepare our world for conquering by some nasty folks who’re called the Reach.”

Booster was definitely juvenile enough to jump all over that dung beetle thing, but then the rest of it turned out to be way more important, so he sacrificed the comedic timing in order to ask, incredulously, “And-- this is the one that your protégé is using...?”

“Yeah. It’s fused to his spine.” Ted didn’t seem to think that was alarming, given his expression. Which made one of them. “Used to be a crazy, homicidal little critter, but Jaime’s managed to talk it around. They kinda remind me of you and Skeets, how they get along. Though I can only hear one side of the conversation.”

“From what we were speaking of last time, Doctor Kord--”

“Ted! My name is Ted! Unless I’m in costume, anyway, but since I’m not, it’s Ted!”

“C’mon, Ted, you’re not gonna win this one anytime soon.”

“--Indeed. To go on, however, I’m uncertain as to how the scarab and I would communicate, but should the opportunity arise, I would like to make the attempt.”

Ted gave the ‘bot the hairy eyeball in the most campy manner possible, narrowing his eyes and pursing his lips as he pointed at Skeets’s faceplate. “I’ll make you a deal, Skeetster. You call me something other than Doctor Kord, and I’ll find a way to introduce you two.”

Booster dropped his head and rubbed over his mouth, but only to hide his grin, since he knew what was coming next.

“You would do that?” Skeets asked, innocently.

Ted gave a firm nod back.

Skeets hummed, then said, “I truly would appreciate it, Mister Kord.”

Ted’s indignant squawk landed at the same time as Booster started laughing.

So, of course, he just laughed harder.

There were two pictures that came out of that day, at least of those not stored in the mind’s eye. One Skeets had taken, the subjects unaware they were being photographed: In it, Ted and Michael were sitting and talking backlit by a sun that was still more golden, limning them in light, the roofline of the barn providing a compelling contrast of cool color as a bottom frame. Creatures of momentary brilliance, suspended in that instant via lens.

Not too terribly far into the future, a large print of that one would hang in Ted’s office in El Paso. Surrounded by framed degrees and blueprints of Ted’s favorite inventions, it was the one truly human spot there, and he would spend a fair amount of time looking at it, pulled back to it for any number of reasons, some of which he could only feel because there weren’t words for them.

The other was taken after the sun was lower and rosier; seemingly on a whim, Michael had moved over closer to Ted and pulled his phone out for a selfie. When Ted asked what he wanted a selfie for, Michael asked back, “When’s the last time you sat on an abandoned barn to watch a sunset? It’s an experience, we should have a record of it.”

Ted had no good answer to that, because of course he had never sat on an abandoned barn to watch a sunset, and he made certain to say so when asked. But he obligingly shifted so that they were both in frame and grinned cheesily for the camera.

Except, right before taking the photo, Michael slung his free arm around Ted and plunked his chin on Ted’s opposite shoulder, practically draped on him, so the image was of Michael grinning mischief at the camera and Ted with his head half-turned, a bemused little smile on his mouth.

A different kind of brilliance.

It was no surprise whatsoever to Skeets that Michael made that image his lockscreen before the night was even over.

Chapter 5: Part I: March 15th, 2017

Chapter Text

March 15th, 2017

“Hey, Beetle! This your dumbass over here?”

Later, Ted would reflect that his first instinct -- deny that Booster was a dumbass -- meant that he didn’t even think to deny the possessive implied there. What he wouldn’t reflect on, because he couldn’t possibly know it, was that him not denying it was going to completely change his relationship with the man currently hollering to him, and for the better.

But at the moment, he was busy scrambling over debris towards the bright colors of gold, blue and green amidst the brown-and-gray carnage, occasionally giving a cough because the air was murky with dust and smoke and his Bug was left back parked on the biggest open and stable space in two city blocks.

Metropolis was a shiny place most of the time; then again, when a city’s main protector was Superman, how couldn’t it be? But the nature of super-powered battles meant that even its pretty art deco façade could get smudged up. It always felt weirdly insulting, even to Ted -- who had no desire whatsoever to ever live in Metropolis -- seeing this particular city banged up.

Turned out that it wasn’t anywhere near as insulting to him as seeing Booster banged up, though. Took maybe five seconds before Ted wanted to resurrect some psychic manifestations of supervillains just so he could make them cease to exist anew.

Currently, Booster was sitting on a piece of displaced concrete, glaring mutinously up at Guy Gardner, enough blood on him to turn half of his hair and a decent patch of his uniform’s chest red or red-adjacent. Ted’s heart was in his boots despite the fact that Booster was clearly okay enough to try to murder Gardner via gaze alone.

“What’s up, Old Bay?” he asked Gardner, after he managed to swallow against that jolt of adrenaline, kinda proud of himself for not letting his voice tremble from it.

“This little punk here decided to protect my back at the expense of his skull, Deep Dish,” Gardner said, and completely despite himself, the nickname still got a tight smile off of Ted.

“I’m bigger than you are,” Booster snapped back, which was probably technically true (if maybe a little immature) and which was still almost certainly the wrong thing to say to this particular Green Lantern. Ted winced and braced himself for the brow-beating he was expecting to follow.

Shockingly enough, though, that made Gardner laugh. “Kid, you’re taller. But ain’t no one bigger than Guy Gardner, Lantern or otherwise. Let alone some rookie.” Then, apparently feeling like his work was better off addressed to someone else now that Ted had arrived, Gardner turned to him. “Goldilocks here threw some kinda forcefield around me and got sacked headfirst into rubble for his trouble. --oh, hey, that rhymed. But anyway, he tossed his cookies when I pulled him outta the wreckage, it took a few minutes for him to clear up and my ring says he’s got a concussion. And his flyin’ toaster said the same thing.”

Ted absorbed that as he looked around for Skeets, but gave up pretty quickly; beyond all of the costumed heroes, there were the civilians being triaged and the medics scurrying around, so finding one five pound ‘bot in all of that wasn’t likely to happen. “Sheesh, Boost, I didn’t know you could project your forcefield.”

“Neither did I,” Booster muttered back, taking his hand away from his head long enough to eye his bloody glove. “And I’m not a rookie. And this isn’t my first concussion either, thanks.”

“Bet you’re not even old enough to buy a beer legally,” Gardner countered, but there was no genuine antagonism in his tone. Ted had worked with him enough times to recognize the real thing. “What, you play ball?”

That seemed to knock a few of the sharp edges off; Booster eyed Gardner again, but at least this time without any murderous intent. “Was a quarterback for the Nighthawks.”

Ted was there and present to witness a genuine smile off of Gardner, which was-- actually the first time he’d ever seen that, though he’d heard faint rumors that such a rare and mysterious thing existed. “Yeah? I was a linebacker for the Wolverines back in the day, least ‘til my leg got wrecked. By the time it healed, I was done for. But anyway, since you played ball, I’m bettin’ you know the drill.”

“What drill?” Ted asked, shooting Skeets a small smile when the ‘bot returned to the group.

“The last of the civilians have been escorted to the triage areas,” Skeets reported, which got a dismissive wave off of Gardner.

“Tell him the drill, QB,” Gardner said, crossing his arms and looking like every PE teacher Ted had ever hated in his teens. Just needed a wife-beater and a silver whistle.

Booster sighed and rolled his eyes, but he answered, “Go home, rest, don’t get hit again until I’m healed. Right, coach? ”

It was probably meant to be taken as pointed, but Gardner took it with a surprisingly soft-looking smirk. “Yeah. After you get a few staples sunk into your scalp, anyway. Hey, Toaster, you able to keep an eye on his vitals for a day or two?”

“Yes. But I prefer to be called Skeets.”

“Oh, kinda like how I prefer to be called Ted?” Ted asked, sotto voce, leaning over towards Skeets with his eyebrows up behind his goggles.

Skeets lowered his own voice to the same level and replied, “Touché, Blue Beetle.”

“Good,” Gardner was saying, as he turned to take off. “They’re your problem now, Beetle!”

Ted ended up chuckling as he moved and sat down next to Booster on the debris, shaking his head after the carrot-topped Lantern. “Guy is-- his own kind of experience,” he said, by way of greeting. “What are you doing down here, anyway?”

Now that Gardner was gone, Booster sagged and rested his head in both hands, albeit very gingerly. Ted was about to start worrying again when he answered, “Beginning to discover that being a hero and relying on your looks to earn a living might be just a little incompatible? More seriously, though, I had a job interview a couple hours ago.”

“Yeah?” Ted had been in Metropolis for a meeting at the KORD, Inc. branch located in the city, a chance to interface with his local R&D people and wish Angie -- who he’d hired when he first took over the company -- a happy birthday. He’d actually planned on detouring up to New York to see if Booster wanted to hang out or do anything, so it was fortuitous that both of them were here right now.

Unless, you know, one counted the blood-letting and blow to the head.

“Yeah. Modeling agency owned by one of the ladies who was at a party I was hired for last week. I woulda told you before now, but I didn’t want to-- I dunno, jinx it or something.” Booster got to his feet, wavering a little once he was there, which had Ted up to steady him. “I’m fine, I’m just a little dizzy.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Ted glanced around again; some of their heavy lifters were already starting to clear debris. “So, what’s your preference? Hospital, urgent care, see if one of the League’s medical types can have a look at you?”

Booster gave him a pitiful look. “None of the above?”

“Nope, sorry,” Ted said, apologetically, which was probably kinda overbearing, but he wasn’t interested in letting his blood-covered friend off the hook without at least a check-up. “Can’t fill in the last bubble on this one.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ve got forty-three dollars and twenty-six cents on me -- see? Memory’s working -- and that’s nowhere near enough cash for the first two,” Booster said, though he obligingly let Ted hook him by the back of the neck and pull his head down to get a better look. “And I’m pretty sure none of the League’s people like me enough for the last anyway.”

Ted scowled at the sight, though it was less at Booster and more just out of concern. The guy had a decent-sized hole in his scalp, a goose-egg that was only gonna get more impressive, and was arguing with Ted about doing something about it, while just seeing the damage up close was making something in Ted’s bones ache deeply. “C’mon, you definitely need stitches. I’ll pay, if money’s--”

“No.” Booster pulled back from him, shaking his head for a moment before he apparently realized that was a bad idea and stopped. “No. Don’t.”

“Sir--”

“I swear, I’ll fly back to New York right now.”

It was enough to boggle Ted, the vehemence of that denial. Skeets seemed surprised, too, falling silent and hovering back beside Ted. But there was no denying that Booster was serious about it; he looked two seconds and one more protest from taking to the skies and leaving them both there.

Ted thought fast, then just asked, “How about a compromise?”

Ted’s idea of a compromise wasn’t actually much of a compromise; he essentially dictated the terms, but he was so-- so nice about it that by the time Booster realized he was being railroaded, it was done, signed, sealed and delivered.

Admittedly, some of that might have been him turning inward to assess the battle that he’d just flung himself into; it was hard to avoid a railroading when you weren’t paying attention to it.

All assurances to Ted about memory aside, the last thing Booster actually remembered before getting hit was throwing his forcefield -- which had so far protected him against every threat he’d encountered -- around the Lantern, who he’d somehow ended up partnering with in the fight.

He’d had no idea he was going to do it before he did.

He’d had no idea it was even possible, but like it was muscle memory, he saw that glowy manifestation of a supervillain leaping soundlessly for Gardner’s back and immediately switched from fighting his own battle to throwing that forcefield around Gardner, pirouetting midair to do it. He’d had maybe four seconds to see it work (??? and !!!!) before his memory vanished into white and pain.

The next bit of recall with any clarity was him throwing his guts up onto an old copy of the Daily Planet and Gardner blustering at him about what a dumb thing Booster had done in trying to save his ass. Booster hadn’t actually cared about that part (“Yeah, you’re welcome.”), it was only when Gardner was threatening to take him to a hospital that Booster started pushing back at him.

(He had no issues with hospitals, but unless there was some kind of major healthcare plan that offered free healthcare to superheroes, neither Booster Gold nor Michael Carter could afford an emergency room. He was also absolutely aware of the relative lack of sanity of crime-fighting while uninsured, but didn’t like thinking about it, so he didn’t.)

There was a kind of-- anxiety or maybe even fear that was itching under his skin now, though, because while a concussion could explain any abnormalities after he got knocked into the rubble, it wasn’t retroactive.

And before that had been its own thing.

Booster hadn’t yet fought alongside anyone but Beetle, let alone as part of something larger than ruining the plans of some thieves, but he and Gardner had somehow found each other in the midst and it was like something clicking; they fell so smoothly and well into fighting together that it was outright bizarre. As if they’d gone into battle a hundred times side-by-side and knew every move the other was gonna use. All the way up until Booster threw that forcefield around Gardner, they’d fought with a scary amount of synergy. And even that had seemed to be born of some instinct he didn’t know he had.

(Not that anyone else -- anyone more important -- was paying attention. Which-- of course they weren’t. Wouldn’t want to have to take their peripheral helpers seriously, after all.)

Anyway, Booster was preoccupied enough with thinking about the battle that Ted was able to railroad him with exactly no resistance whatsoever.

Apparently, the emergency services on-scene at engagements like this were financed by a number of companies and wealthy individuals, including KORD, Inc.; mostly consisting of specialized disaster-recovery personnel, who were paid and equipped to deploy where these things happened in order to pick up the pieces, they had done a lot to improve the public opinion of superheroes.

There was a whole infrastructure for these supertypes, mostly out of the public view; while Booster had assumed something to that effect, he was both impressed and a little disheartened when he started grasping just how extensive it was and just how outside of it he was. Even Ted was more part of the in-crowd than out; he might not be a Leaguer, but people knew him well enough to address him with comfort and familiarity. And some apparently knew who he was as a civilian, too, because he got pulled aside here or there with queries about equipment or funding.

And that was how Booster got railroaded, because Ted kept up a mostly one-sided chatter about the program, its funding, its mission, its triumphs and while he was doing all the talking, touring them around the scene of trucks and tents and introducing people, Booster ended up with a tetanus shot, staples in his numbed scalp (which wow, needles and staples were barbarically primitive), a laminated sheet detailing post-release wound care and other instructions, a couple packets of painkillers, and he had no clue how all that actually happened.

By the time the railroading was over, though, the buzzing high left over from the fight had been long since gone, and with it any of the anesthetic-effect that came while dodging someone or something trying to forcibly remove your head from your shoulders.

Adrenaline was a hell of a drug, but when it wore off, all there was left was to feel everything that wanted to be felt.

“You don’t have any private parties booked tonight, right?” Ted was asking, as he fired up the Bug; Booster thought he might’ve asked that already, at least once, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Nu-uh.” The Bug’s amber viewports were pretty gentle on the eyes after being outside in the midday sun and feeling more awful by the minute, but Booster still hid behind the darkness of his own hand for the time being, letting the screaming headache he had back off to a slightly duller roar. “Where did you say we were going?”

“The Bayfront Hyatt. I have a suite booked.”

“Do I want to know how much that cost?”

“Probably way less than what you’re thinking, since I used all my rewards points for the upgrade. And I rack up a lot of rewards points.”

It wasn’t that Booster forgot that Ted was incredibly rich. It was that Ted still had signed up for some hotel chain’s rewards program and all of the spam that went with it in order to save money. It was hard to think of the man as loaded when the man himself acted like he wasn’t.

“I don’t know that I like this anyway,” Booster said, rubbing across his brow carefully but leaving his eyes closed. “I mean-- you’ve definitely got better things to do than this, right?”

“Ha! Wrong. I was actually on my way to the Big Apple to see if I could hang out with you when I saw the battle and caught a glance of you and Guy. I can’t jump into the fray myself, but I was still able to fly support. Fog the bad guys, put the Bug between them and the civilians, that kinda thing.”

It took a good several seconds for that first part to sink in properly, but then Booster did look over, baffled. “You were seriously gonna fly all the way up to New York just to see if I’d hang out?”

Ted looked over, eyebrow up, half-smiling bemusem*nt; his cowl and goggles were off again. “Well, yeah. It’s only about an hour as the Bug flies. Less if I piss off the FAA. So you can stop being weird about spending the night here, I was gonna ask for a sleep-over anyway. Only difference is a change in venue.”

“A sleep-over,” Booster repeated, slowly, mostly to cover up his surprise.

“Yeah.” Ted glanced at the control panel, but then looked back at Booster again. “You still have sleep-overs in the twenty-fifth century, right?”

“We do, but I’ve never been to one.” Whether because he couldn’t deal with Ted watching him like that or because that headache definitely wasn’t improved by adding vision to the mix, Booster closed his eyes again and rested his head back against the cushioned headrest. “What do two adult superheroes do at a sleep-over, anyway?”

“Well, I was originally gonna suggest we go out for dinner, then I’d go play in my New York lab while you’re at work. And then after, we’d go to your place, maybe Netflix some movies, pop some popcorn and just hang out. But now I’m gonna suggest a dinner in, if you can stomach it, and you can sleep while Skeets and I plot world domination.”

Like hell was Booster ever letting Ted see where he lived, at least not until he lived somewhere better, but that whole plan of Ted’s was sitting on his adam’s apple and making his eyes sting anyway.

He had no idea why.

“You’re letting me buy dinner tonight,” he said, back behind his hand, counting on his tone to get the point across.

“Fine by me,” Ted answered easily, thank god. “There’s this amazing Chinese place that’ll deliver to the Hyatt.”

Despite insisting, though, the mere thought of food right now was enough to make Booster understand, with resounding clarity, what it felt like to be green around the gills. He’d never conceived of green being an actual feeling before now. And that wasn’t helped any by the Bug lifting off; the last few times he’d been in Ted’s airship had been trouble-free (and Booster knew better than to try to read anything longer than a road sign while in motion), but the combination of feeling lousy and a vertical takeoff made him ask, pathetically, “How long ‘til we get there? And-- tell me you have a bucket somewhere in here?”

There were often a fair number of steps between a plan and a destination.

It was something Ted knew well, and he was actually scary good at taking those kinds of steps, but it still sucked this time. Prodding and nudging his friend through it made him feel like he was being mean, but the Hyatt didn’t typically allow people -- even rich people -- to park their private airships on the roof’s landing pad, so that meant parking the Bug in her Metropolis hidey-hole and getting them a ride to the hotel. But before that, they had to change into civilian clothes, which luckily they both had now that Ted had retrieved Booster’s duffel from the roof he’d left it on in order to go leap into battle.

Booster managed to get enough of the blood off of himself with Ted’s cache of wet-wipes that he no longer looked like a very recent victim of violent crime and instead looked like the victim of a violent crime that had happened nebulously sometime in the past week. Skeets grumbled, but made himself at home in the duffel so that he wouldn’t catch too much notice.

It still took a walk from the industrial district on the outskirts where the Bug had a well-secured hangar to where they could hail a cab, then it took a ride back to the ritzier part of the harbor where the Hyatt was located, and then it took a walk through the lobby and a ride in the bullet-proof glass elevator, but the view from the suite was one of Ted’s favorites and he hoped that it would prove likewise for Booster, too.

The elevator was on the city side of the hotel and overlooked that famous skyline, including the Daily Planet’s globe; from the other, though, where the suite was located, the hotel looked out over Delaware Bay, the huge floor-to-ceiling windows showing off a 180 degree vista of how the city curled around itself like the contour of a contented cat. The hotel was so waterfront that it had an infinity pool running in warmer weather that transitioned practically to the water, the beach fanning out on either side of it.

“Holy sh*t,” Booster said, freezing inside the door, looking wide-eyed around the suite.

That was kinda what Ted had been aiming for, but it was still gratifying. He’d stayed here probably two dozen times since the last time it had been remodeled, and it was homey for that familiarity. He felt comfortable and safe here and wanted to share that feeling.

“Right?” he asked, stealing the duffel off of Booster’s shoulder long enough to let Skeets out. “They’ll have breakfast downstairs or you can have it delivered up here via room service. And there’s an indoor pool, a bunch of hot tubs, an on-staff masseuse, a bar, a gym-- I mean, it’s pretty nice. Wait until you see the bathroom.”

Skeets immediately hovered up out of the bag. “Thank you.”

Ted had a feeling the little ‘bot was going to find any reason in creation to not call him by name, but that was a battle he could fight at some other point. “You’re welcome,” he said, reaching out to pat the ‘bot on the chassis even as he eyed said ‘bot’s pet human. “You look kinda like you came off the worst in a deathmatch against the Condiment King.”

Booster had been standing there in his nice white dress shirt and black slacks, which were still clean and therefore completely at odds with the fact he had dried blood behind one ear and some of it still staining his hair strawberry in parts, at least where the iodine hadn’t dyed some other parts deep yellow.

The whole thing added up to make him look very-- lost. Ephemeral. Like he had one foot in another dimension. He blinked and then asked, without taking his gaze away from the massive windows and the sky past them, “Wait, the what?”

“The Condiment King.” Ted shoved the duffel aside with a foot, smirking, even as he worried like his little old Jewish grandmother (may she rest in peace) and made to at least steer Booster out of the entryway and somewhere closer to a chair. “Yes, he’s a real thing. One of Batman’s rogues. Which-- frankly, Batman totally deserves a villain named the Condiment King.”

Ted actually thought Bruce was pretty amazing, in his gadgeteering and crime-fighting. He also thought Bruce could be an asshole sometimes. Plus, KORD and Waynetech often ended up on opposite sides of business deals or gunning for the same contracts, and while Ted hired lots of smart people to do the negotiating (and a lot of the running) of his family’s business, there was still gonna be some competition there.

Because the truth was, Ted was a hell of a lot cooler than Bruce.

(No, really. For-- a lot of reasons. He’d eventually even think of some.)

He was expecting (hoping for?) some kind of snickering in response to that, but it never came. Which was for sure not helping Ted worry less.

“Okay,” he said, after taking a slow breath to try to shove down some of that anxiety. “It’s not too late to go to an urgent care or ER and you’re spacing out hard enough to really worry me.”

That was apparently enough to get Booster back into the correct dimension. He shook his head, finally tearing his attention away from the windows to give Ted a tight smile. “No, I’m okay. I just-- have no idea what to do now, y’know? I feel like I should know, but I don’t.”

That did some achy kinds of things to Ted’s heart and he nodded back. “Okay. I can work with that. So-- what you’re going to do is go get cleaned up. If you hop into the shower, though, keep your head out of the water? And while you’re doing that, I can order us some delivery -- don’t worry, you can still pay -- and see about getting the blood out of your costume. That work?”

Booster frowned. “My hair feels disgusting, though.”

Ted boggled briefly at that being the big complaint, then shook it off with a huff. “You have something like six staples holding a pretty sizable hole in your scalp closed, pal. Give it a day before you go sticking your head under hot water.” He got Booster by the upper arm and basically perp-walked him to the bathroom. “For my sanity, leave the door cracked so we don’t have to kick it down if you fall over?”

Booster let Ted pull him along, his only protest, “I’m not going to fall over, sheesh.” Then he caught a real look at himself in the bathroom mirror and winced. “Whew, I look like sh*t.”

Ted eyed their reflections. “Nah. A little tenderized and like you’re auditioning for space cadet, but definitely not like sh*t.”

He was sort of waiting for it all to sink in; the adrenaline rush wearing off didn’t always coincide with the reality of a situation hitting. The first time the Blue Beetle had gotten himself into a major battle like that one, involving so many people, potentially hurting so many civilians, and after it was over and he was plain old Ted again, he’d gone home and spent a good part of the night shaking like a leaf. And sometimes breaking down in tears.

The realization of just how dangerous all of it was could have probably broken him there, and Ted had taken a couple weeks to decide if he wanted to keep going -- promise to Dan Garrett or not -- and face up to that fact. That it was dangerous. That he could be maimed or killed. That he could and no doubt would see other people maimed and killed.

And ultimately, he chose to suit back up and go back out.

There was nothing about this life that was easy. If his own experience wasn’t enough, he remembered Jaime’s first big battle, too; the kid had seemed okay all the way up until his face went bloodless and he was heaving into a trash can. And just like Ted had, Jaime took a little time to try to come to grips with the life he was choosing, with the added struggle of having to make peace with the scarab embedded in his spine and to convince his parents.

So, Ted was waiting to see if that was going to happen here. As far as he knew -- and Ted was absolutely sure he knew better than anyone else on this Earth absent Skeets -- this was the first serious battle that Booster had been in. And unlike Ted, he’d actually gotten hurt, which could shake anyone. It would have come as no surprise if the post-battle crash leveled him for awhile.

That hadn’t happened yet, though. Mostly, he just seemed tired. And still kinda lost.

Ted pulled out a fresh towel from the undersink shelves and offered it over. “Here. I’m gonna call for food, do you want any?”

“Uhm--” Booster gave himself a shake, then took the towel with one hand and fished his wallet out with the other, slapping it into Ted’s outstretched hand. “Maybe some chicken soup?”

“Noodle or rice?”

“Rice?”

No clue why that was an answer in question form, but Ted just mentally shrugged. “Okay, usually only takes them about a half-hour. I’ll be right out there in the kitchenette if you need anything. Got it?”

Booster nodded back smartly, in a clear and obvious attempt to look sharp and with it. Ted was kind enough not to call him out on how badly he failed at it. “Got it.”

Of course, six minutes and one cleaned costume later, a hair-raising yowl from the bathroom had Ted in motion; he was literally less than a foot from busting through the door when he had a flash of insight.

No thump of a body hitting the floor plus the smell of hotel shampoo--

“What do you wanna bet he’s trying to wash his hair?” he asked Skeets with a sigh, whose calmness backed up Ted’s instincts. Ted didn’t doubt that Skeets would be ahead of him if Booster was in trouble.

“I don’t make bets I’m certain to lose,” Skeets replied, hovering beside Ted.

Ted nodded and headed back to where he'd left Booster’s costume draped over the back of a chair; it had only needed a good rinsing in the kitchenette sink and it was like nothing had happened. “Is he always this stubborn?” he asked.

The question was mostly rhetorical and it was more fond than anything else, but Skeets didn’t answer it right away. Ted turned, eyebrows knit, and watched the ‘bot hover.

“Michael is troubled,” Skeets finally said, long after Ted would have expected him to, and that word was both loaded and deliberate.

If it were someone other than the ‘bot, who had proven to be both loyal and insightful so far, Ted might have thought that it was an erroneous word to use as a descriptor. It had some fairly specific connotations, after all. Because it was Skeets, though, he felt something like a chill race up his spine. “Tell me what you mean?”

Skeets sounded frank when he replied, “If I were going to, I wouldn’t do it now; it’s certainly nothing I would consider a danger to anyone but him.”

Yeah, but you said it to me for a reason, Ted thought, but he only nodded in the now.

Later might become a different story.

Something was disturbing his comforter enough to register; on an autopilot honed by growing up with a twin capable of devastating pranks, Michael flailed out with an arm to try to swat the disturbance away, mumbling into the pillow, “Get out, Shel.”

And ohhhhh, someone must have dug him facemask-first into the turf because even the whisperings of the headache behind his eyes were pretty bad. He was just about to drag the comforter over his head to hide from the light he could see through his eyelids when someone who was definitely not his sister asked, “Who’s Shel?”

It was a sharply electrical moment, lightning in the spine, because that voice was at least as well-known to him as his own twin’s. And for that instant, vividly and viscerally, Michael felt like he’d been cleaved into pieces and was existing split across entirely different lives.

It resolved only an instant later, smacking him back into just one world and time, the ghosts of the others left on his skin before fading away; he strangled out a noise, stomach twisting sharply, and tried to curl up in a ball against it until his knees ran into Ted, who was apparently sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Need the trash can?” Ted asked, pitching his voice softer.

“Nngh. No, just-- give me a second.” The sudden urge to start crying was not helping matters any, and that got a thousand times harder when Ted pressed a hand to his brow. Just-- like he was-- was--

Was what? A person?

“Well, you’re not hot, at least.”

Booster huffed a ragged laugh, grabbing onto that like a life preserver. “Rude.”

Ted groaned, long and tortured. “Oh, god. I walked right into that one, huh? That’s not what I meant and you know it, but if it helps: Relax, Casanova, your good looks are intact. I didn’t mean to wake you up, though. You were all twisted up in the blanket, I was trying to untangle you some.”

It was a seriously sweet thing to do. Like pretty much everything else Ted had done today. It was touching and generous and Booster knew, on some level, that Ted would keep doing that kind of thing because that was the type of person he was.

And that was deeply frightening for some reason Booster couldn’t begin to guess at.

He finally made the effort to pry his eyes open, expecting more pain, but found the world surprisingly and mercifully gentle; the only light was whatever ambient light was coming from the windows and the bedside lamp, which he had only left on because he’d been planning on getting up to try some of that soup. The threatening headache had eased off quite a bit.

And now he was in some danger of just outright cuddling Ted, curled close around his back like that. Close enough to feel the body heat radiating in the narrow space between them.

Close enough to ache to lean further into it, too.

Ted hiked an eyebrow down at him. “Should we play twenty questions to make sure you’re actually oriented and not faking it? ‘Cause you keep disappearing mid-conversation on me. I’m starting to worry I’m-- I dunno, boring you into micronaps on the regular, all your reassurances to the contrary aside.”

The opposite this time, actually. “It’s March 15th, the year is 2017, we’re at the Bayfront Hyatt in Metropolis,” Booster said, because he was pretty sure he couldn’t get away with saying, You’re really nice to look at and listen to and you’re sitting right here with me and that’s a hell of a distraction. Sorry, buddy. Not trying to be weird or creepy. Even if that was the naked truth in this case. “I’m here, I swear. It’s not because I think you’re boring. I just-- I dunno, get lost in my head pretty easily.”

Ted smiled at that. “Guess I can’t say much, really, since I do the same. And at least you’re close enough on the date. It’s now March 16th, but I’ll let you have that one since you slept through the rest of the 15th. I am relieved I’m not unbearably dull, though.”

“It’s tomorrow? No kidding?” Booster reached out and turned the alarm clock enough to see that it was a hair past two in the morning; it had still been daylight when he’d laid down. “Damn, that’s the best night’s sleep I’ve gotten since I got here.”

“Skeets said that, in a round-about way.” Ted shrugged. “Why do you think I didn’t pester you before now?”

Somehow, it really was possible to be both touched and piqued by something at the exact same time. “Yeah, but still. He’s a dirty little tattle-tale.”

“I heard that,” Skeets called from the other room, which made Ted chuckle. “I am entirely clean and if you wanted to keep your insomnia to yourself, you should have told me that.”

Booster cast his eyes skyward with a drawn sigh. “You’re splitting those hairs on a quantum level, Skeets.”

“If that’s what it takes to keep you alive and in tolerable health, then I’ll split them as many times as necessary.”

“What was it you said to me?” Ted asked, grinning lopsidedly. “‘You’re not gonna win that one anytime soon?’”

“I think that’s a direct quote, yeah. Or close enough.” Reluctantly -- extremely reluctantly, because it meant uncurling from around Ted’s back -- Booster pushed himself up to sit against the headboard. His head gave a tired little pang, but it was actually quite a lot better than it had been; he could vaguely remember Ted all but pouring a few painkillers and a glass of water into him before pushing him to go lay down, and by that point, Booster hadn’t had anything left in him to stay on his feet, let alone argue.

“Feeling any better?” Ted asked, turning and folding his leg under himself.

There was some temptation to joke around it, but Booster refrained and took stock of himself instead. “Head’s a lot better. My neck’s a little stiff. And I can feel the other bruises now. But-- not bad.” The urge to break down in tears had backed off, too, which-- good, because falling apart was not anywhere in Booster’s plans for the rest of the night or morning or whatever. That made this as good a time as any to confess, “Shel is Michelle. My twin sister. Or-- she will be?”

That sent both of Ted’s eyebrows way up. “You have a twin?”

“Yeah.” Have, had, will have? Will be going to have had? Booster tried half-heartedly for a second or two to parse the conjugation there and then gave up promptly. “We hadn’t seen each other for-- god, months before I left.”

He wasn’t sure what expression he was wearing that all Ted did was nod at that, face soft. Mercifully for both of them, Ted didn’t dwell on it or ask more questions; Booster wasn’t afraid to tell him more, but it wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have right now, either. “Want me to go heat up that soup?” Ted asked.

“Uh-- I think I can. This place has a microwave, right?”

“And an induction cooktop. And a set of cookware. And a french press. Among other things.” Ted patted him on the knee, then got up and headed for the door. “I’ll handle the soup, relax. I can microwave things like a boss. And I saved you some sesame chicken and rice if you want something a little heavier, too. Oh! And there’s some orange juice in the minifridge, I hear that’s good for blood loss.”

This emotional rollercoaster was already way past stale and had become positively geriatric within the last twelve hours. A man’s best friend being nice to him shouldn’t nearly destroy his composure. Even Booster knew that it wasn’t exactly high marks for his mental stability that he was so easily shaken up, especially over something so kind.

It’s fine, he thought. It’s soup. It’s fine. You can gracefully accept someone nuking you some damn soup, get a grip.

It wasn’t fine.

Or rather, Booster wasn’t fine. The soup and the situation were perfectly okay.

(Like adrenaline, denial was also a hell of a drug. Unfortunately, it was one that didn’t actually work better for repeated use and had the added issue of-- by the time you stopped living in it, you were probably in way the hell deeper than you ever meant to get and therefore in the midst of drowning. It probably said something about Booster that he kept ending up in over his head as often as he did, but he didn’t actually want to know what.)

It started and even mostly finished with Ted cheerfully mentioning that they had the suite for the next night as well, which-- what?

Booster stared at him for a good ten seconds with his mouth hanging open before he could process that and start panicking. “I have to go to work, I can’t just-- not work for two nights in a row!”

Ted’s squint back was 100% Undiluted Grade-A Made-in-Chicago Skepticism. “Lemme see if I got this: You think you’re in good enough shape to go to your extremely physically demanding job, in a venue with lots of dark shadows and flashing lights and loud music? That’s your position on it?”

It was pretty hard to argue for it when it was put like that. Dressing room lights in back and strobes out front; even when he wasn’t concussed, Booster regularly left the clubs feeling kinda lousy just from how obnoxiously overstimulating it all was. Even standing here thinking about it made him a little queasy.

He scrambled mentally for a moment, trying to work out what he had left and what he needed to survive; yeah, okay, he was pretty much a shoe-in for this job and that was going to change his life for the better, but he couldn’t trust it until he actually had it in hand, and then even once he did, he had no idea when the first pay from it would roll in, and yeah, the motel was pretty sh*tty living, but it was home for the time being, then there was how much it was costing Ted just staying here--

“You’re railroading me again,” Booster said, beleaguered, wondering a little bit how that kept happening. Why he kept letting it happen.

“You bet.” Ted set his mug of herbal tea aside on the counter and stepped over, slinging an arm up around Booster’s neck and pointing out in front of them towards some imaginary vanishing point in the rails. “I’m the engineer -- shh, pretend it’s the same kind -- and I say that we’re on this train allllllll the way to the end of the line now.”

It was upbeat and good-humored and kinda mischievous, and there was no way when he said it that he could have predicted Booster just-- disintegrating into tears. But of the two of them, it was Ted who handled it with grace.

“Sorry I blubbered all over your shirt,” Booster whispered, in that space after he finally quit sobbing -- because apparently being hugged was some kind of subconscious signal to cry even harder -- but before he had any wherewithal to pull his face out of the top of Ted’s admittedly wet shoulder.

Ted gave him a positively bone-creaking squeeze, which was not helping in the composure department, but it was a long moment before he said anything. And when he did, his tone was considered and pitched quiet: “How about I make you a deal? I’ll promise to try to stop worrying that I’m boring you into some adjacent timeline and you promise to try to stop apologizing for being a person?”

Ted had his head tucked over; the hard edge of his jaw was pressed against the undamaged side of Booster’s head, and if Booster never moved from that spot, he thought he maybe could figure out what fine actually meant.

“Okay,” he agreed.

Chapter 6: Part I: April 8th, 2017 (I)

Chapter Text

April 8th, 2017

“--damn one-way roads, what the hell-- YEAH, I’M MOVIN’ ALREADY, NO ONE f*ckIN’ ASKED YOU! Mouthy asshole-- YEAH, Y’KNOW, YOU CAN SHOVE THAT RIGHT UP-- YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT, KEEP DRIVIN’!”

Parallel parking a decent-sized hybrid crossover on a really narrow one-way street wasn’t made much easier for the backup camera, but Ted was determined not to walk more than a block, so it was going to fit where he wanted it to. And if that meant slapping some impatient New Yorkers across the chops with some unfiltered Chicago attitude, then dammit, he would.

He did it knowing that he’d soon be finding or making room for the UHaul van he’d reluctantly given Jaime the keys to, too. Getting his screaming road-rage out of the way now would definitely help when it came time to do that, and it distracted him from the fact that every single time Ted pictured the unholy joy that had been on his protégé’s face -- his sixteen-year-old protégé’s face -- upon receiving the keys, he felt the prickle of a cold sweat tingle on his back and trickle down his spine.

He could have probably hired a moving service, but he knew he was already pushing the boundaries of what Booster would tolerate by quite a lot. No sense in getting the guy who was rapidly becoming Ted’s best friend too pissed off.

Brenda’s sensible, she’ll keep them from joyriding, he thought for maybe the thousandth time in the past couple hours, but Ted was already prepared to pay off the van just in case she wasn’t able to overcome the dumbassery that could sometimes be Jaime and Paco. He was a little more worried about the lives of the three of them, but had to believe that between the fear of Bianca Reyes and Khaji’s protectiveness of its human, there would be at least some common sense in force from someone or something.

He was sitting there breathing off his desire to scream more invective at New York drivers -- not quite to the level of Connecticut drivers, and definitely not as bad as Massachusetts drivers, but still wholly deserving of every four-letter word Ted Kord knew -- when he heard the sound of sneakers on road moving at a decent clip. Which could be a pissed off New York driver wanting to rearrange his handsome face or could be the aforementioned best friend.

When Booster overshot the mark and then also nearly took a header for how quickly he tried to stop himself, six and a quarter feet of excited blond beanpole, Ted thought about the mayor of Metropolis’s goldendoodle and started laughing.

“Ted!” Booster pulled Ted’s door open before Ted could stop laughing long enough to do it himself. “TedTedTedTeddyTed! C’mon, I thought you were gonna be here like an hour ago!”

If that goldendoodle had been half as enthusiastic as Booster was right now, Ted didn’t have any trouble seeing how it almost became a road pizza. He held up one hand briefly, just to forestall any more yet, then reached over to grab the triple shot vanilla latte with the extra pumps of classic he’d stopped at a Sundollar for not ten minutes ago. “The car rental place was backed up. But I stopped and got you your coffee as an apology for the delay.” And since it was the day Booster got his apartment keys and therefore cause for celebration, Ted refrained from commenting on how much sugar was in it, but just the thought made his teeth hurt.

Booster took the coffee with one hand, then grabbed Ted’s now free hand with his other, pulling on him; Ted barely had time to slap that driver’s side door closed behind them before he was being all but dragged down the sidewalk. He puzzled briefly over their linked fingers, then just shrugged and went along with it, lengthening his stride to try to keep up.

He did worry just a little bit that three shots of espresso might have been a Mistake™ , though.

“I’ve been here three hours already, I was on my landlord’s doorstep at ten after six this morning,” Booster was saying. “I think he wanted to kill me, but he gave me my keys, so he can plot homicide all he wants. Well, I haven’t been here-here that whole time, I was wandering around the neighborhood after I dropped my stuff off.” There was a beat, then he added, “I keep forgetting that I don’t have to leave again.”

“Only if you want to,” Ted answered, just grinning and shaking his head as they climbed the pyramid-style concrete steps out front.

The apartment building itself was a three story brick thing in the College Point neighborhood of Queens and it had been a pretty decent find; Ted had actually been seriously involved in helping Booster find it, albeit remotely, so he knew what the listing said and had seen the pictures. It wasn’t rent-stabilized, but it was affordable. It was just a pretty standard, small one-bedroom in an old building, but it had a cute little sunroom in the back that gave it some character, and a balcony out to the side. It was two blocks from a deli, a grocery store, a handyman store, a laundromat and restaurants, so the area was really walkable. And it was only half a block to the closest Q20B bus stop, too.

“You know, you can let go of my hand to unlock the door, I promise I won’t leave,” Ted said, tongue-in-cheek, as Booster tried to juggle both coffee and keys without giving Ted’s hand back. “You’re stuck with me for the rest of the day.”

“I’d invite you for a sleep-over, too, but I have-- no furniture whatsoever. And no television. And just your old second-hand laptop.” Still, Booster let go of Ted, but only barely long enough to unlock the door before he was right back to pulling Ted inside and up the stairs. “But after I have stuff, I can!”

Ted managed to drag the door closed and nodded along as he tried to follow; he decided to put off telling Booster about the UHaul and the three teenagers tasked with getting it and its cargo -- furniture or person -- here intact. “You meet your neighbors yet?” he asked, relieved when they made it up to the third floor; he had that weird tight-chest feeling that could precursor tachycardia, but hopefully stopping would let it back off.

“Not yet. But maybe I’ll get them some cookies or something. I mean, that’s the kind of thing you do, right? When you move in somewhere?” Booster unlocked the apartment door and this time let Ted walk in under his own power. “Ta da!”

It was just like the pictures. Generic white paint that smelled new, similarly generic tan carpeting. A half a kitchen island denoting the separation from the living room and cheap-ass cupboards. A standard top-freezer fridge. A stove, a microwave. A bathroom with a tub that even Ted wouldn’t be able to properly fit in, let alone Booster. The balcony was actually off of the bedroom.

And that little sunroom past the kitchen really was charming. Scarred linoleum floor and abandoned formica table and all. A ghost of the apartment’s past?

The place was also almost entirely empty, aside from a very large, stuffed duffle bag and Ted’s old laptop and-- “Skeets!” Ted greeted happily.

“Mister Kord,” Skeets answered, from where he was hovering by the front living room window. “I question the wisdom of you giving him coffee.”

“It’s Ted. You know, we’ve been over this too many times now. It’s T-E-D. And it’s okay, I’m also now questioning the wisdom of it.”

Booster snorted at them both, setting his coffee on the counter and turning back to lean against it, crossing his arms. He failed to look disgruntled, though. Ted was pretty sure someone disgruntled wouldn’t be glowing like that. “Little traitor. Here I am putting a roof over your golden butt and you're conspiring to deprive me of my caffeine.”

“There’s no conspiracy if it’s in the open, Michael. Also, why are you targeting me when he’s every bit as guilty?”

“Because he actually brought the coffee! He might question the wisdom after the fact, but it’s mine now.” Booster mugged at Skeets, then stage-whispered to Ted, “Thanks for the coffee, by the way.”

Ted watched the back-and-forth and laughed, shaking his head. “Just don’t launch yourself to the moon or anything, okay?” He slid his phone out for a moment and texted Jaime. Don’t know how long I can keep him in one place. ETA?

Of course, less than ten seconds later there was a hell of a commotion outside, enough to make it through the window’s glass. Horns honking very aggressively. And-- then there were raised voices.

And then there was cursing. In Spanish.

Ted cringed even as Booster hiked an eyebrow and edged over to look out and down to the road. “--uh, there are some kids in a UHaul screaming something very angry-sounding at the guy behind them.”

“Sooooo, about that,” Ted said, pegging his own brows up in the most innocent expression he could muster up and crabbing for the door like the rank coward he was. “I’ll be right back, I’m just-- gonna make sure no one kills my protégé before either you or his mother gets the chance to kill me first, okay? Berightbackwaithere!”

He didn’t make it too far, though, before Booster’s, “Wait, what?!” caught up to him. So, Ted did the only sane thing, the only thing he could, and put his head down and moved faster.

“So, you’re Three of Three?” Booster asked, looking down at the third Blue Beetle curiously.

The third Blue Beetle looked right back up at him and asked, “So, you’re the stripper?”

The bigger teen staring at Skeets in fascination swung his head around so fast that Booster was a little surprised that there wasn’t a sonic boom. “Wait, wait, Kord’s stripper friend is a dude?”

“It’s an equal opportunity world, Paco,” Ted said, where he was currently hovering by the door looking sheepish. Which he should look, because Booster had some definite thoughts that he was gonna share, at least once he got done with the inundation of teenagers in his new apartment.

(Ignoring, of course, that three months and eleven days ago, he was still a teenager himself. Because that didn’t count, dammit.)

“Guilty as charged,” Booster said, with a shrug. “Except less stripper and more catalog model right now. On the upside, my boss Gladys had someone ask after me for some bikini gigs, so I don’t have to worry too hard about being fully dressed on the job anytime soon.”

The red-headed girl with the freckles flushed even as Paco winced. “Sorry, man. I mean, that’s a pretty cool job, but--”

“--but you were hoping for a hot babe of the female-identifying persuasion,” Jaime said, smirking over at his friend. “Instead of a skyscraper.”

Whew, this kid had some sass. Booster was snickering even as he shook his head, then he offered his hand to Ted’s protégé. “I’m Booster Gold in costume and Michael Carter out of it. But I answer to both.”

“Jaime Reyes,” Jaime said back, shaking his hand. “Ted make you watch Star Trek, too?”

“I didn’t make you watch Star Trek, Jaime, I just suggested it for its deep cultural significance and message of hope,” Ted said, still almost one asscheek out of the door.

“Don’t let Jaime pretend he wasn’t a total nerd before Ted ever knew he existed,” the girl said, shouldering Jaime out of the way and shaking Booster’s hand next. “We’ve known him forever, we’ve got the dirt. I’m Brenda Del Vecchio and that’s Paco Testas. It’s nice to meet you.”

“And you. And for the record, Ted didn’t make me watch it. We left off about halfway through the first season of the Original Series.” Though he’d admittedly dozed through about three quarters of it, since Ted had put it on in the Hyatt. Booster gave Brenda a smile, then let her hand go and started for the door. “Uh-- I don’t have anything except my coffee, but make yourselves at home, I’ve gotta have a word with Ted about something.”

“OoOOoh, Ted’s in trouble,” Paco and Jaime said in unison, which made Ted the next person in the apartment to start squirming and turning red.

Booster had no comment on that, he just got Ted by the backs of his shoulders and steered him out of the door, pulling it closed behind them.

Ted turned around with a wince fixed on his features, putting his back to the railing, jumping into it before Booster even had a chance to formulate his thoughts, “I know, I know, I know you’re gonna be all-- all you about it, but housewarming presents are a thing people do, Booster, so if you’re gonna get mad, there’s for-sure precedent in the world for beetles bearing gifts and maybe you can just let me do this without freaking out?”

The very first apartment Booster ever had was after he’d been released from minimum-security and had fled to Metropolis, taking what little he had with him; after staying in a hostel and getting a job at the museum, he’d finally been able to afford a studio not two months before he’d disappeared into the past.

No one had gotten him anything then; he hadn’t had anyone in his life who would. Hell, even he hadn’t gotten anything for it himself; it was a furnished studio, so he just-- existed there. Angry and bitter most of the time. Devastatingly lonely and heartsick the rest. It was right around that same time that he had started daydreaming and then more seriously contemplating what would eventually turn into his plan to steal the makings of his costume and Skeets and a time sphere, and it had been that dreaming and planning which had pushed him out of that particularly dark place in his head and towards better.

By the time he had set those coordinates, he’d been standing right on the edge of hope, ready to take flight.

(By contrast, he didn’t remember much of his first night in this time. Whether because time travel was just that hard on a person or because of something else, he’d gone from recklessly optimistic to-- whatever it was that he’d been upon crashing into 2016. Wrecked, in some fashion, a lot like that time sphere was. Those incredibly rare times he could stand to think back on it, he had to contend with the knowledge that he’d never entirely recovered from it, even not knowing what it was. That something inside of him had been permanently changed and rearranged by it; that he wasn’t the same person between one moment in the timestream and the next in real space and didn’t know why.)

So-- maybe people did do those kinds of things, but he didn’t know.

“It’s not--” Booster started, knowing he was being too quiet for too long; he was grateful Ted wasn’t trying to apologize for boring him but desperately wished he could just think and explain why this was such a problem for him, especially since there wasn’t much logic attached to it. Just instinct. “I just-- I’m-- f*ck.”

“I think you’ve been living in New York City too long, you never used to have such a foul mouth,” Ted teased, still looking like a man who was wise enough to know he was in trouble, but not quite wise enough to avoid getting into it in the first place.

“You’ve only known me for three months,” Booster answered, palming down his face. “I’m from Gotham. Trust me, I can light the air up with the best of ‘em. But look, I can’t-- it’s that--”

“Yeah, but we’ve been talking daily for almost all three of those months,” Ted said back, tilting his head. “Here, let’s take a walk around the block. I always think best when I’m moving.”

That was probably a pretty okay idea; Booster didn’t think he was going to start shouting, but he had to allow that it very much depended on how this next conversation went and therefore wasn’t completely outwith the possibility, so being outside would be better than getting off on the wrong foot with his new neighbors. He nodded and went back into the apartment to grab his coat. “Uh-- Ted and I are gonna take a walk, but we’ll be right back. Skeets, entertain the kids?”

Paco spoke up, “Bring back pizza and beer!”

Booster pulled his coat on and then got his wallet out, checking his funds. He still wasn’t used to there being money in there that he could afford to spend on something other than the essentials, but there was and maybe that was what a good host was supposed to do. “I guess I--”

“Oh, hell no.” Ted appeared like he’d just stepped out of a dimensional rift, he was so quick. Paco turned his back and started whistling innocently, while Jaime was snickering and Brenda was facepalming. “The only person of legal drinking age here is me and that ain’t happening.”

Jaime perked up, something like glee on his face. “Whoa, hold up, what was that? Did you just say the skyscraper there isn’t--”

“Nothing,” Booster said, reaching over and grabbing Ted by his sleeve and pulling him backwards out of the apartment. “He said nothing. My license says I’m twenty-two and anything claimed to the contrary is slander.”

Earlier, Ted had definitely done something that could only be called ‘fleeing’ when he left to rescue Jaime and the UHaul Crew. This time, it was Booster doing the fleeing, closing the door behind him, shaking his head and actually blushing himself now because of the cackling teenagers back in the apartment. And it took a lot to make Booster blush. “Dirty pool, Ted.”

Ted was smirking. “Maybe, but you can’t blame me for playing it anyway.”

It really was a charming neighborhood; unable to hold still, Booster had already walked a fair number of blocks around his building before Ted had been due to arrive. It had basically everything he could need; even the grocery store was just a couple blocks from his front door. Jogging on the backstreets would be fine. The only thing that wasn’t right in the immediate vicinity was the local gym, which was a half-mile and therefore what, all of a ten minute walk away? If he was relaxed about it.

Now, they’d been wandering for about five minutes, but neither of them was talking yet; Ted was looking around curiously, and Booster was grateful for the time and space to try to pull his thoughts together in any decent order.

He knew he was no great thinker, sure, but he’d never been this kind of scatter-brained before, either. Trying to wring sense out of himself shouldn’t have been this much of a challenge.

But at least it was a beautiful day. Fifty-five, clear and sunny; families were out, people were walking dogs. Trees and shrubs were sprouting new green. If one had to go walking, it was the perfect kind of weather for it. And if one had to spin their wheels futilely trying to explain something nebulous and instinctive, then there were worse times or places for it.

“So,” Ted said, finally breaking the relatively companionable quiet, “I’ve been thinking about cardiac ablation.”

Booster had no idea what an ablation was, but he knew what cardiac meant. “What about it?” he asked, reaching out to snag a handful of bright green leaves off of a bush to shred as they walked.

(Fidgeting was another thing he never used to do, at least not like this; he hadn’t entirely made peace with it being something he did now, but the harder he tried not to, the worse he felt and the more anxious about it he got, so he just-- shredded things. Paper. Or leaves. Or grass. Whatever was in reach and shreddable, when the need hit.)

“It’s the way that they can stop my heart jumping rhythm.” Ted looked pensive as he shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. “What they do is they knock you out and thread this catheter in through one of your major blood vessels, all the way into your heart. Then they figure out which cells are causing the problem and they burn them. Or freeze them. And then after a few weeks, if you’re one of twenty-nine percent of people, you don’t have the arrhythmia problems anymore. If you’re not, you have to do it again, but the success rate goes way up after the second try.”

After getting staples put in and later taken out of his scalp, Booster thought it was a solid plan to view the twenty-first century medical establishment with a healthy amount of skepticism. It hadn’t hurt, really, but there had been staples. In his head. And that was just for one relatively minor flesh wound! “That sounds kinda terrifying, not gonna lie.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Ted blew a breath out. “I keep putting off making a decision about it because-- I mean, obviously.”

This wasn’t the conversation they’d come out here for; it was arguably way the hell more important. “So, what has you thinking about it now?” Booster asked, as he turned leaves into confetti, leaving bits of green in their wake.

“Them, partly.” Ted gestured back in the direction of the apartment and the kids therein. “You, partly. And I miss it. Being the Blue Beetle for real.”

The idea that he was anywhere in Ted’s consideration for heart surgery was both touching and terrifying. Booster didn’t have nearly enough leaves to shred for this particular conversation, so he gave up trying and tossed the whole lot over his shoulder. Then he hooked his elbow through Ted’s before he could chicken back out of it and shoved his hands into his own pockets, forming something of a closed loop between ‘em. “I’m guessing you’ve researched what all goes into it? I mean-- safety, odds and that, right?”

Ted glanced down at their joined arms, but if it bothered him, it didn’t show; he just readjusted his stride so they were more synchronized in step. “Yeah.” He breathed in and out in a way that sounded shaky, then added, “It’s really safe, it’s not that, it’s just--”

Ted trailed off there; considering how impossible Booster had found explaining his thoughts himself of late, he could hardly complain when Ted ran into the same problem. So, he just walked and let the man think, turning them back up towards the boulevard; they could always order pizza and wait on it and carry it back to the apartment in the meantime.

They made it most of the way to the closest pizza joint, weaving through the people taking advantage of the nice day, before Ted said anything else. “Remember when I told you my mother was gone?” he asked, and after Booster nodded, he went on, “I mean, the cancer was almost definitely gonna kill her if they didn’t get aggressive about it. And-- honestly, even then her chances were pretty bad. Pancreatic cancer is awful.”

For all that was wrong with Booster’s home century, that particular malady wasn’t one of the regular problems anymore. Others, yeah; even some pretty awful diseases that mutated into existence after the Cataclysm and still circulated. But not cancer. It cropped up, but it wasn’t common, and it was pretty easily dealt with when it did.

That was, if it was caught before it was fatal. Because the medical technology of the future was way better, but only if you could afford it.

He squeezed Ted’s arm against his side halfway on reflex, trying to comfort, and then wondered if Ted meant to lean into it after.

“But, uh-- they were gonna operate and try to remove the biggest mass. It probably wouldn’t have-- I mean, it was a long shot, y’know?” Ted raked back through his hair with his free hand, then stuffed it back into his pocket. “She died on the table. They nicked an artery and they tried to stop the-- but they couldn’t save her. And that was that. God, that was almost thirteen years ago, I know that the procedure to fix my heart is completely different, but it still terrifies me.”

sh*t, even listening to the way Ted was talking about it was enough to make Booster appreciate how frightening that had to really be. And he’d never in his life wanted to hold someone as badly as he did right now, but he wasn’t quite sure how welcomed that might be. “Which part, though?” he asked, in lieu of. “I mean, I get it, I’d be scared to death of it too with that kinda history, but what about it specifically is getting to you?”

“I-- I guess the unknown,” Ted answered, after thinking about it for a number of steps. “And being put under. I mean, it doesn’t get much more helpless than that. Something goes wrong like it did for my Mom and what can I do about it?”

“That question kinda works as an argument for, too, though.” Booster spotted the pizza joint up ahead and slowed them down, partly for the talk, partly because he’d have to relinquish Ted’s arm once they were there ordering food and he didn’t wanna do that.

“How so?” Ted asked, eyebrows furrowing.

“If you’re asleep, you won’t know.” That reassurance had sounded way better in Booster’s head than it did aloud, and he winced, trying to wallpaper over it with, “I mean-- that doesn’t change being afraid of not waking up, but at least it wouldn’t hurt, right?”

Ted apparently didn’t think it was all that bad, though; he nodded thoughtfully after a moment. “Yeah. And I guess there are ways to mitigate the risks, too. I mean-- people live with SVT, but the kind I have ups my chances of stroking out or throwing a clot, especially as I get older. The medication I take keeps it stable, but the ablation would cure it. And the only thing that would ever let me get all the way back into heroing is going through with the ablation.”

Even after slowing down, they were at the pizza joint; not a little reluctantly, Booster gave Ted’s arm back and opened the door for them, stutter-stepping briefly at the number of pre-teens hanging around in there. “I guess eventually you’ll know for sure. I mean, whether the risk is worth the potential reward.”

Though, he could definitely see why Ted wanted to get back into heroing. Even having only seen him in action for five minutes, Booster was still impressed with how acrobatic Ted was; that level of skill had to have taken years of training, and having to quit before the age of twenty-five would be especially infuriating. It would be something else if Ted were forty-five, but he was still on the climb to his peak, not the downhill slide after.

“Given the mortality rate at ninety days is less than a quarter of one percent, it’s not much of a contest.” Ted pinched the bridge of his nose, then smiled abashedly. “Sorry, I know you came out here walking to yell at me.”

“Oh god, no. Or-- okay, maybe a little bit.” Booster pointed at the menu, then pulled his wallet out and offered it over. “Feed your minions first, I don’t know what they like on a pizza.”

Ted took it, snorting. “You do realize the absolute ridiculousness of you just giving me your wallet and telling me to buy things, right?”

“I realize that I’m still not sure whether I’m going to yell at you after you’re done ordering food on my dime, so maybe you should just do it,” Booster shot back -- though it took some work to keep from smiling -- before turning to leave, abandoning Ted to the counter and the shop full of children. “Make sure to get soda, too. Oh! And some cinnamon sticks.”

Behind him, Ted stage-muttered, “Make friends with a guy and the next thing you know, he’s bossing you around and sending you to the dog house--”

“Woof,” Booster said back and started laughing when the pre-teens all started woofing at Ted after.

“Dirty pool, Michael!” Ted shouted after him, which -- naturally -- made him laugh even harder.

Chapter 7: Part I: April 8th, 2017 (II)

Chapter Text

Ted wasn’t actually all that afraid of being yelled at; he was far more worried that Booster was going to refuse his housewarming presents, and while he was well within his right to do so, Ted had wanted to do something nice. Especially since he hadn’t figured it out before that Booster and Skeets had been barely a half-step from a homeless shelter or the streets and had been living like that since last August.

Which-- no wonder Booster was panicking last month about missing work despite getting his head laid open.

The only reason Ted even found out was because Skeets let it slip during one of their remote conversations after the Hyatt -- maybe intentionally, maybe not -- which had led to Ted spending a good few hours pacing his office, brainstorming how he could get away with helping and finding it incredibly distressing how close to the edge those two were living.

Thankfully he calmed down enough to realize that rushing headfirst into this would probably do more harm than good, which was when he started texting Booster links to various affordable apartments in and around the Big Apple under the seemingly casual suggestion that now that he had a better paying job, he might consider moving.

Now, listening to the pre-teens abusing the jukebox while the actual teens were back at the apartment waiting for food and the barely-not-a-teen was outside, Ted snooped in Booster’s wallet for the second time. Because if Booster was going to hand it to him, then he should expect some snooping.

Not much different from last time at the Hyatt. Ted frowned a little at the nature of the bills in it -- lots of singles and small denominations, creased exactly like they’d been slipped into a g-string at some point -- because he’d figured that Booster would be able to quit stripping at this point. But Ted was heartened to see a debit card in there, shiny and new. A proper bank account was a pretty important step towards financial security.

There was the gym membership card, a few defunct hotel or motel keycards -- including one from the Hyatt, which was either oversight or sentimentality -- and some scraps of paper with names or numbers jotted on them. And then there was Booster’s MetroCard, which was amusingly and coincidentally roughly the same colors as his costume. The fraudulent driver’s license. No pictures.

Ted took out enough cash to pay for the food and drinks, resisting the urge to dig into his own wallet to help; there was some genuinely decent second-hand furniture, a good second-hand TV, and a brand new king-sized mattress in that UHaul that he wanted to deliver and trying to buy the pizza on top of it would have been pushing it even further than he already had.

He somehow managed to make it out of the door without dropping anything, only to find that half of the kids had beaten him out there and there was an eighties dance party going down.

It was also somehow no shock to Ted that Booster was in the heart of it.

Apparently, in the twenty minutes that Ted had been waiting on the food, Booster had managed to find a partner and was now rocking it to Cyndi Lauper’s 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' playing on a cellphone, dancing with not a little talent on a sidewalk surrounded by an audience of awestruck children. The woman he was dancing with was middle-aged, dressed in a very nicely tailored power suit, which-- was actually really cute, in contrast to Booster’s faded jeans and gray t-shirt and black jacket. Especially since both of them were clearly having a blast.

“Okay, now out--” the woman was saying, and then smoothly twirled out to the end of where Booster had her hand, “--and back in!”

The kids were surprisingly impressed, given most of them were the age where they started turning into little cynics -- which, in fairness, middle school could do to anyone -- and there were a few imitating the adults with ample giggling.

The song drew to a close and Ted grinned, thinking that the impromptu dance party was gonna break up so that they could take the boxes of pizza and bottles of pop back, but then the next song came on and it was two numbers more before that happened.

The woman in the power suit -- Linda, she’d introduced back between The Bangles and Madonna -- stepped back with Ted, while Booster was walking some kid through the dance steps he’d just performed, and shoved her sweat-damp bangs back from her brow, still breathless and smiling broadly. “Your boyfriend is adorable.”

“Oh, he’s not my boyfriend,” Ted answered, on reflex; the implication didn’t bother him any, even if he wasn’t sure where she got that idea, because he could do a hell of a lot worse -- and had, honestly -- but it wasn’t accurate.

No idea why it made him blush, though.

Linda looked over at Ted in surprise, then slow-nodded, going back to watching Booster probably become the first crush of a whole lot of middle-schoolers as he obligingly taught them some dance steps, an effortless kind of charismatic.

“Wonder what he thinks of older women,” she mused.

“You know all of the words to Manic Monday?” Ted asked, after they were away and carrying the food and pop back to the apartment.

Booster nodded, still beaming and a little flushed. “Hell yeah. The Bangles are awesome. And I would totally kiss Valentino next to a crystal-blue Italian stream. I mean, if he wasn’t dead for the past century.”

Well, that partially answered the nebulous half-question Ted had been ticking over since not long after they met, wondering at where his friend fell on the Kinsey Scale. And maybe a little where Linda got the idea they were a couple. Booster had never come across to Ted as perfectly hetero; some of that was probably because the world was a different place in the twenty-fifth century, but some of it was also just how comfortably physical he was with Ted.

And Ted’s gaydar was notoriously sh*t, he’d even ended up on a date with a guy before because he didn’t realize it was a date and not potential friends going out, but it was pretty hard to argue that hand-holding and walking arm-in-arm was the straightest stuff.

He’d sort of tested that theory a couple months ago when he’d asked Booster when he could expect the diamond ring; Ted was still straight (as far as he knew; he allowed there might be flex somewhere in there) and he was a really awful flirt, but he’d followed a whim and offered that opening, and even as he did, he wasn’t sure what outcome he had wanted from it. Or what he might have done if Booster had taken it.

And then Ted had promptly realized that he’d put Booster into a really awkward position; the guy might not be straight, but it didn’t follow that he was interested in Ted like that, and the way he’d just stared blankly at Ted backed it up. Probably it had been down between awkward silence and an out-loud rejection.

Still, this settled some things in Ted’s head, anyway: Booster was some variation of queer, was not interested in Ted in that fashion, but had no hangups about being kinda cuddly towards another dude, which just struck Ted as somehow very lonely in this context, and which also made Ted hope with all sincerity that his friend would find someone of whatever gender or lack thereof that he was interested in to snuggle with on the regular.

And in the meantime, Ted didn’t mind the random affection. In fact, he found it kind of nice; the last regular affection he had gotten was from Mel, and their relationship had soured enough that she’d stopped being affectionate with him months before she broke it off.

(In the end, though, she couldn’t compete with the Blue Beetle and Ted couldn’t bring himself to tell her the truth. So, at the ripe old age of twenty-three, she’d broken off their engagement. But she actually did keep the ring, Ted hadn’t been joking, though in fairness, she only kept it because he told her to. He’d heard that she’d since started seriously dating someone else and had wrestled briefly with melancholy, but it probably said something about his own commitment to it that he wasn’t really that bothered in the end.)

“Your turn to audition for space cadet?” Booster asked, which was when Ted realized they were most of the way to the apartment.

“Maybe I was staying quiet in the hopes you’ve forgotten to yell at me, have you thought about that?” Ted asked back, though he couldn’t help the grin sneaking up on the corners of his mouth.

“Nope.” Booster shifted the sheet of pizza into one arm and gestured in a circle to his own face. “You had your thinky-face on. So, where did you go?”

Ted doubtlessly could have been frank about it -- so about that, I was contemplating how straight I was versus how much you might be into me, isn’t that funny? -- but if he thought his sad attempt to bait a hook was awkward, that would be so far beyond it that he could well end up as the middle of a singularity of mortification. Just so humiliated that he collapsed in on himself. Like a black hole of embarrassment.

“All over the place,” he evaded as neatly as he could. “Am I getting yelled at? ‘Cause I gotta say, I’d definitely rather you yell at me out here and not in front of the kids.”

It was a misdirect, yeah, but it was also a legitimate question. Still, Booster frowned back. “I don’t wanna yell at you. It’s just-- this whole thing--”

“The housewarming thing?”

“--and everything! The Hyatt, too.” Booster stopped in front of the apartment building, looking frustrated. Though Ted couldn’t tell which of them he was actually frustrated at. “I can’t-- I don’t--”

I could literally walk to a bank right now and get a cashier’s check for six figures and hand it to you and never even notice it missing, Ted thought, but knew better than to say. Beyond the fact that it felt like bragging, his parents had raised him comfortably, but without any ostentatious signs of wealth. Ted had grown up never having to worry about food or shelter or clothing and he’d always had new computers and tools; he never actually wanted for anything he needed, but-- he’d also gone to public schools. He went to a state university, too. He worked for the family business, but he’d started out on the very bottom rung of the R&D department and had to work hard. He’d probably still be trying to climb the ranks if his Dad hadn’t died.

And honestly, his Mom had always made it clear that he should view wealth as a means to helping others, not as his own personal entitlement. Her dying when he was thirteen had cemented that more effectively than any life lesson could have, too; no amount of wealth had saved her.

(Of course, she probably hadn’t intended him to dress up as a blue dung beetle and fight crime with a quip and a non-lethal gun that only shot light and compressed air, but he still liked to think she’d be proud of him.)

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Booster finally said, after spinning his metaphorical wheels. But he was wearing one of those looks that made him look older than he was again. “I just know that nothing good can come out of you doing things for me, okay? It feels wrong. It feels like it’ll lead to a disaster.”

That was a way stranger explanation than Ted had been anticipating. Especially since he’d never offered anything really big or frivolous; help with a possible medical bill was nothing but the decent thing to do. Breakfast or dinner was likewise. Staying at the Hyatt had been as much for Ted’s benefit, he would have stayed there anyway if he was alone. And-- housewarming gifts were housewarming gifts.

None of those spelled disaster to Ted. But-- maybe it was different after a person got tangled up in organized crime, even when the reasoning behind it had been altruistic initially.

“I really wasn’t kidding when I said housewarming presents are a thing people do,” he said, after a moment thinking about it, trying to figure out how to navigate what could be a thorny issue. “And I mean, the single most expensive thing I got you was a new, decent mattress, because everyone needs a good one of those, especially if they’re gonna dress in tights and fight crime. Which no one’s paying you for, Booster. So you really can let your buddy get you some gently-used furniture and a new mattress guilt-free.”

Booster was about to answer him when Jaime’s voice interrupted both of them from the top of the steps. “You two aren’t about to have a domestic on the sidewalk, right? ‘Cause that’s a bad way to spend a first day in a new place.”

Ted looked up at him, smiling. “No, sorry. You’ll have to wait for something more juicy before you can call Maury.”

Jaime eyed him back with deep (and deeply fake) suspicion. “You mean you’re not the father? You know they all claim that.”

Ted heaved a sigh out, every bit as fake, and held up the bag with the pop bottles in it as a prompt. He didn’t let himself dwell on wondering who he was supposed to be the father of; nothing good could ever come of that line of thought. “The only title I’ll allow is Assimilator, Three of Three. You guys haven’t driven Skeets to go all Hal9000 while we were gone, right?”

“¡Madre de Dios!” Jaime rolled his eyes, but dutifully trooped down the steps to retrieve the pop and the pizzeria boxes. “Those two sentences were too nerdy even for you. And no, Skeets is fine, he and Khaji were kinda talking.”

Well, that instantly became the most fascinating thing; Ted perked up, surprised, as he handed the bag over. “How? I didn’t think your scarab could communicate outside of your head?”

“Holographic popup.” Jaime shrugged and somehow managed to get the pizza box, the cinnamon stick box and the bag into his arms before climbing the stairs again. “Khaji armored up my arm and projected what they wanted to say onto a holographic popup, and Skeets just talked back in answer. Kinda awkward, especially since I’m just the designated body, but it works.”

“That’s pretty ingenious and I’m embarrassed I hadn’t thought of it,” Ted said, halfway to himself, shaking his head.

“Maybe it takes a genius to do genius-level thinking, instead of total nerd,” Jaime said back, grinning at him before disappearing back into the building, having been smart enough to leave the door cracked.

There was a time early on where that might have been pretty barbed, rather than good-natured ribbing; Jaime was rapidly coming up on seventeen now, but had only been fifteen when the scarab had found him. And, very understandably, he’d been severely freaked out by having said scarab fuse itself to his spine and start trying to turn him into an infiltrator for a species of world conquerors. And Ted had still been trying to be the Blue Beetle despite the onset of the SVT at that point, getting more and more frustrated with himself and his inability to continue doing what he’d worked hard to be able to do.

He hadn’t taken it out on the kid, his factual replacement, but he knew he’d been really stand-offish early on. So, on one side there was a fairly young adult who was staring down at the end of his hero career almost before it even took off properly, and who resented the sh*t out of that, and on the other side was a scared kid with a homicidal scarab -- Dan’s scarab! -- who’d never wanted to be a hero in the first place.

And yet somehow, they both managed to inch towards one another; Ted tried to help Jaime figure out how to get the scarab out of him, Jaime eventually seemed to realize what was bothering Ted, they had a pretty serious series of conversations (and arguments, and once a screaming match), but all the while the trust had been building. And the affection.

Eventually Ted made peace with mentoring while he tried to decide his future and Jaime won Khaji Da over to the side of good, and now Ted would throw himself in front of a bus for that kid without a second thought; even if he never did get to go back to being the Blue Beetle for real, he knew that Jaime would continue to be brilliant at it, and that their legacy was in excellent hands.

“How about a compromise?” Ted asked, struck with inspiration, turning his attention back to Booster.

“The last time you asked for a compromise, I was the one who did all of the compromising,” Booster answered; now that his arms were free, he crossed them and eyed Ted with a totally unfair amount of wariness. Though it didn’t seem to be all that serious, even if the tone was. “You set the terms and I got poked with needles and had staples put in my head.”

“The compromise was that I didn’t drag you to the ER for a CAT scan like I really wanted to,” Ted said, giving back his biggest, cheesiest smile. At the distinctly unimpressed look he got in turn, though, he let the smile turn into something more soft and plain. “I just mean-- look, there has to be a way we can come to an agreement on this.”

“What the hell does a cat have to do with anything?” Booster’s eyebrows drew together. “And what’s ‘this’? You keep doing things. I protest, you do ‘em anyway. I’m not sure why you’re waiting for my agreement, at this rate.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Ted muttered back, face going hot, as he crossed his own arms and wondered if Jaime had been right to worry about them having a rousing domestic dispute on the sidewalk. He dropped his head and studied the toes of his shoes, breathing out and sorting his thoughts, then looked back up and asked, “So-- what do you want me to do? I mean, because when I see something I know someone I care about would like, it’s my impulse to get it for ‘em. And god, I’ve got enough wealth behind my name that I couldn’t spend it in ten lifetimes on myself.”

“Not this!” Booster uncrossed his arms only to drag both hands through his hair, sending it into disarray. “I just-- there’s no--” He paced a half a lap in front of the steps, then stopped again, shoulders slumping, looking at Ted helplessly. “I don’t want your money. Money just-- f*cks everything up, Ted, it ruins everything. I just-- all I want is for you to be my friend, okay?”

That was a pretty raw plea and Ted couldn’t pretend that it didn’t jerk hard on his heartstrings. He chewed on his lip for a moment because that actually made his eyes sting. “I am,” he reassured. “I mean it, man. I’m not going anywhere, money or no money or whatever. So-- y’know, tell me what I can do here? ‘Cause I can haul all that stuff back to the thrift and I can return the mattress and I can tell Jaime that he has to take his old Wii home with him, but I really don’t want to.”

That seemed to stump Booster, who looked like he wasn’t too terribly far from tearing up himself. “I-- I, uh-- god, I’m not sure?”

There was some space here to work in, and Ted took a few moments to keep breathing and disarming his own flickers of anxiety before offering, “You let me throw the housewarming party, and then from now on, I’ll--”

He had to trail off there because he wasn’t sure what else to say himself; Booster took it as an opening and gestured between them. “Let me hold up my end?” he asked, carefully.

“You do, though.” Ted’s eyebrows furrowed and he tried to stop frowning so hard, not wanting to send the wrong signal. “I mean, if you haven’t noticed, I really want you to be my friend, too. That’s not for nothin’, Boost.”

That ended up gaining Ted two armfuls of emotional blond beanpole, but he didn’t mind. He rested their heads together and felt something in his own shoulders release even as he got the stuffing squeezed out of him. Which was-- really soothing, actually, that squeezing.

“Housewarming party?” he asked, after a few moments where they breathed the same rhythm.

“This time.” Booster’s voice was muffled into the top of Ted’s shoulder and he clearly wasn’t ready to let go yet.

“Fair. I guess we can, I dunno, trade off buying food? Or go dutch.” Ted thought about it; how to navigate this so they both were okay with it. “And I can crash with you when I’m in the city here instead of check into a hotel.”

“That’d be good.”

“But I do have some serious, hard lines,” Ted said, trying to sound stern; he didn’t probably do the best job of it because Booster scoffed at him. He scrunched his nose in an attempt not to start grinning and poked Booster in the spine instead. “I get to spoil you on your birthday and you just have to let me and be graceful about it.”

Booster huffed. “I do?”

“Yeah. And you don’t get to give me any sh*t because it’s right after Christmas, either. Which I also get to spoil you on.”

“There’s gotta be a limit there, though. And it’s gotta go both ways.”

Ted wasn’t too keen on Booster spending money on him, especially given what the guy had to go through to earn it in the first place, but he also didn’t want to start walking back this middle-ground they were finding between them. “Fine. Within reason for both of us?”

“Deal.”

Ted nodded back and pressed his nose into Booster’s shoulder, closing his eyes, and tried not to speculate too hard about what this might feel like if his little diamond ring flirt had panned out.

Ted’s favorite memories of that ‘housewarming party’ are:

Getting the bed assembled after much cursing and frustration (“No! Dammit, I’m an engineer, this thing’s not gonna beat me!”) and getting to watch Booster sprawl on it with a long groan, pretty much melting to the new mattress.

Watching Skeets and Khaji talk even while the kids and Booster played Mario Kart Wii; the intensity of the gaming rivalry might have worried him more, but despite his ears burning for the language flying hot between all involved parties -- yes, he knew it was hypocritical to be embarrassed by it after his display while parking earlier -- it was clear everyone was having a hell of a lot of fun. (And the complexity of scarab and ‘bot communicating in their own world left him in the dust, which was also kinda delightful.)

Paco and Brenda surreptitiously cuddling in the corner of the new-used sectional much later in the evening, also in their own world; they had a sort of on-again off-again thing Ted never could keep up on, but they were high school romance kinda cute when they were in the on-again phase.

Sometime after midnight, looking up from where he was working on his project requisitions for KORD’s Q3 budget and finding Jaime asleep with his face mashed against Booster’s upper arm, and Booster dead to the world with his head back against the couch, sawing logs, while the bumper race scenes played on the screen.

Booster’s favorite memories of that ‘housewarming party’ are:

Going grocery shopping, of all things, because he had a full-sized fridge and a stove and everything and could afford to put stuff in said fridge aside from the remains of a cold pizza. Especially now that he didn’t have to worry about buying a bed or any other furniture. He didn’t even kick about Ted buying him the huge cut fruit platter he’d been eying covetously, but they did have to call the kids to walk the two whole blocks to the store to help them get everything back.

(Also, going bedding shopping afterwards, because there was also a home goods store pretty close. Booster ended up buying a totally obscene number of pillows because they were on sale. He therefore ended up with more pillows than pillow-cases, which-- wasn’t what he meant to happen, but then again, he’d only ever had one pillow at a time when he was growing up, so maybe it was okay to indulge a little.)

Playing Mario Kart with the kids; at first, he kept crashing (or getting wrecked by various colorful turtle shells), but by the time it was late and down to just him and Jaime still playing, he was able to give Jaime a run for his money even on Rainbow Road.

Ted, sitting with his laptop at the kitchen table he’d brought. Or Ted sitting on the couch trash-talking indiscriminately, yet still refusing to pick up a controller. Or Ted softly waking him and Jaime up so they wouldn’t be too sore in the morning from sleeping sitting up in front of the couch.

Or just-- Ted. Period.

Which is why Booster’s very favorite memory isn’t of the ‘housewarming party’, it’s from the morning after: Waking up sometime in the early twilight in his new bed, heart hammering and nerves jangled as per usual in five out of seven wakeups, only to find Ted sleeping right next to him.

It ached, this strange and tender kind of ache, just the desire to reach out to the man; to snuggle over against him or hold him or comb through his hair. Whatever it was, it ached, something sweet and sore.

And it’s in that gentle pre-dawn light that Booster realizes that this is what being in love feels like.

Chapter 8: Part I: May 14th, 2017 (I)

Chapter Text

May 14th, 2017

“C’mon, watch your flank!”

“¡Por el amor de Dios! I’m trying, Lantern!”

“Not hard enough!”

“Ease off, Old Bay, it’s just training.”

“Hey, Deep Dish, I’ll ease off when you get off your high bug and join the rest of us out here. Until then, your mini-beetle needs practice in f*ckin’ teamwork, you hear me kid?! ”

“Ouve, palhaço--!”

“Oh, Bea, please--”

“I got no idea what that was, Beatriz, but I’m guessin’ it was very impolite and would just wreck my sweet virgin ears.”

“Virgin my ass.”

“Who said that?!”

“Are they always like this?” Booster asked, flying backwards until he was just outside of the Bug’s viewports; the proximity didn’t matter since they were on comms, but he had to admit that he felt a little safer with Ted and Ted’s airship at his back. Even though there were only ostensibly good-guys around.

Ted was flying support in costume; he held a finger up, then hit some button or another on the console before saying, “Yeah, they kind of are. I mean-- well, you heard them introduce themselves.”

Booster had indeed heard it, since it had been for his benefit; Guy had gone, “This is my girl Tora and her girl Bea,” which he got a snicker out of, especially since Bea openly disliked Guy and it was mutual. How Tora managed to survive between those two sticks of dynamite was a big mystery that Booster was sure he’d find out someday. Unlike both Guy and Bea, Tora was so sweet that even just meeting her for the first time, Booster wanted to protect her from any possible threat.

And that feeling persisted all the way up until she dropped an ice pyramid on him, apologizing the whole time. Most of it was still down there in pieces. Booster’s forcefield protected him, but the sensation of being battered to the ground under several tons of ice despite that was one he wasn’t gonna forget anytime soon. He’d been about three feet below the surface by the time he could stand back up and then had to contend with Guy cackling and pointing at him.

Point well made and taken.

“I don’t know how Tora can stand it,” he said, shaking his head as Guy and Bea argued mid-air, Tora stood on the ground pinching the bridge of her nose, and Jaime took advantage of the break and flew over to join them.

His armor was pretty amazing-looking; it didn’t exactly make Jaime intimidating, but it did make him look like he was a force to be reckoned with. Especially when he fired up his arm cannons, which were much larger and flashier than Booster’s gauntlet blasters.

Ted snorted. “I have my theories, but they aren’t polite enough to share with subadults.”

“Excuse me?” Jaime asked, the armor peeling back from his head while he gave Ted stink-eye through the viewport. “Only for one more year, oh glorious mentor.”

Ted leaned forward intently. “Jaime. Have you decided what you wanna do with your future?”

Jaime made an inarticulate noise of frustration and flew away from them, but not before flipping Ted the double-bird, which made Ted cackle like a hyena.

Jaime’s birthday had been the day before and he’d no doubt heard that question about a thousand times; hell, Booster had overheard it at least a dozen himself. And that was also how they all happened to be training together; Jaime had invited Booster and Ted to his birthday celebration, Jaime’s little sister insisted on Guy being invited, then Guy insisted on Tora, and Tora insisted on Bea. Guy and Jaime apparently had scuffled very early on in Jaime’s career but had quickly come to a truce, then over time their relationship became-- whatever this was. Not quite friendship. Maybe-- drill sergeant and recruit? But despite Guy’s cussing, he clearly cared about the kid. Guy and Ted knew each other from earlier on still, and through Guy, Ted knew Tora and Bea.

There were also allegedly other people not currently present who sort of fit into this motley crew of second and third stringers; a guy by the handle of Mister Miracle and his wife Big Barda. Then the Elongated Man and his wife.

It was a gordian knot of superheroes. Appropriately, none of them were taken all that seriously by the senior leaguers.

And this tangle now apparently included Booster Gold. They sure weren’t the Justice League -- somehow, Booster didn’t see anyone in the League currently having a screaming argument in midair like Bea and Guy were -- but there was something about them that he felt-- comfortable with?

At least when he wasn’t eying them and thinking they were all certifiable.

He switched back to group comms and asked, “Can we wrap up the love triangle drama and get back to work? ‘Cause we’ve got that cookout planned and we’ll never get there at this rate.”

“Who died and put you in charge?” Bea asked, turning on him in a flash.

Guy was in the midst of starting to say roughly the same thing, except then he stopped when Bea asked that and immediately pivoted in the opposite direction, apparently just to be able to keep arguing with her. “Hey, he’s got better moves than you and he’s only been doin’ this since last fall, hot stuff. What’s your excuse?”

Bea gave Guy a look that was somehow hotter than the green flame pouring off of half of her skin. Well, hotter in the literal crispy sense. Booster didn’t doubt that she knew how to give the other kind, too, though. “Look, whatever his moves, I don’t take orders from jailbait twinks that I just met,” she said, blunter than a mallet.

Down below, Tora’s face went scarlet and she gasped, “Bea, that was mean!” And over flying a few hundred yards away, Jaime doubled-over while his peals of laughter made the comms unusable for about ten seconds until the kid remembered to mute his.

“Nah, Tora, that’s fair enough,” Booster reassured once he could get a word in edgewise, floating back until he was ‘leaning’ against the Bug in the most languid posture one could manage whilst in mid-air, flashing Bea a grin. “But for the record, Bea, I’m not jailbait.”

“Is the jury still out on the ‘twink’ part of that statement?” Ted asked, sounding amused.

Booster shook his head back, smirking over in Ted’s direction without ever taking his gaze off of Bea, who gave him a slow once-over look that was an unmistakable assessment. “Only if there’s a requirement for twinks to come in under six feet. Oh! Unless being pan precludes me? I’m still iffy on all the slang and labels flying around.”

Bea just raised one elegant eyebrow at him; Booster wasn’t actually that interested himself, but there was a game to be found here and he slow-winked at her anyway, and then failed to chew down his triumph when she rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to Guy.

“Okay, so I can’t pretend I know for sure, but can a twink even be a jock, or is it a ‘one or the other’ thing? ‘Cause you’re definitely a jock.” Ted asked, sounding genuinely curious, while the others went back to-- whatever they were doing, maybe arguing. Though there was something in Ted’s expression that suggested he was possibly setting Booster up for some kind of comedic fall.

Truthfully, Ted would succeed in that case, because most of the labels flying around in this era really did confuse the hell out of Booster even now; there weren’t many of those labels that survived into the future. Marriage was marriage. Dating was dating. Sex was sex. Those things were all mix-and-match. Gender or lack of was a choice. Hell, even biological sex was a relatively easy choice, too, though expensive compared to the rest. If you were into someone, you were into them. It didn’t get complicated with politics.

Whereas here, they’d only just gotten the federal right to marry someone of the same biological sex in the US two years ago, which-- if he thought that staples and needles were primitive, that was magnitudes worse.

Anyway, being in love with a guy who was almost definitely straight was complicated enough.

Still, straight or not, Ted speculating about it was enough to do plenty of weird stuff to Booster’s equilibrium. Hell, Ted himself did that just by existing, but right now it was particularly notable. “I’m honestly not sure,” Booster said, rubbing the back of his neck. Then he hit the comm frequency for Skeets, though he kept the group’s comms tied in. “Hey, Skeets? Could you research whether a person can be a twink and a jock at the same time? There’s apparently some confusion around here about which label to stick on me.”

“I’m relieved to hear that my sidelining has resulted in your sparring session being very productive and educational, Booster.” Robots couldn’t sigh, but Skeets sure sounded like he wanted to be able to, which had Booster trying not to laugh. “According to the internet, those two terms are distinct from one another, but there’s no consensus as to whether anyone can be labeled with both simultaneously.”

Booster shrugged at Ted at that. “I guess it’s a fifty-fifty shot?”

Guy paused fighting with Bea there to bulldog his way into the conversation. “Listen, he ain’t a twink, he hasn’t once swooned in front of me waitin’ for me to wrap my big strong arms around him. So, he can’t be a twink. Obviously.”

Every single one of them fell silent, jaws agape. Even Tora. Then Ted broke it by asking, with a look of absolutely unholy glee, “So, the legal definition of twink requires swooning in Guy Gardner’s arms? Just to clarify? And you know this from-- I’m guessing ample experience?” He leaned forward in his pilot’s seat with a shark's grin, the magnificent bastard. “Excited onlookers need to know.”

Guy apparently recognized that he’d just inadvertently landed in a beetle’s trap; his eyes rounded like he’d been spotlighted by the cops and he opened and closed his mouth a few times.

But whatever other expression he might have worn after that point was a mystery, because Booster rested his forearm on the Bug, his brow on his forearm, and laughed his ass off.

Despite him telling Guy to ease up, Ted did happen to think all of them going out into the desert to train together was a good idea. Even though they were all based in different places, there was always a chance that they’d end up in a situation where they needed to be able to coordinate. And even if they ended up in groupings of other heroes, practicing with this particular group could only facilitate that.

Still, actually doing it was kinda fascinating. Ted didn’t like being stuck in the Bug flying support, but it did give him a really damned interesting overview. Because he’d fought alongside everyone there, but at different times and in different ways, and despite his frustration in being sidelined, he was able to really look and assess what kind of firepower and skill they had.

Guy’s was about the same since they had met, though the Lantern was maybe a little more mellow in temperament. But he’d always been an undeniable powerhouse. Tora, on the other hand, had been really unsure of herself when Ted had met her four years back, and was clearly a lot more confident now. And where before her ice constructs were rough and utilitarian and none-too-large, now they were right up there with Guy’s light constructs in refinement; the fact that she could pull enough water out of the air to create tons of ice in an actual desert was impressive as hell.

Bea wasn’t a brilliant fighter, but she was fast and unerringly observant; there were a few times where she was on comms with whoever she was paired or partnered to in order to point something out that no one else had noticed.

Jaime and Booster were their own kinds of standouts; Jaime had improved so much in his ability to work with his scarab that a lot of the things that used to terrify Ted about the kid going into battle were a moot point these days. Guy wasn’t wrong that Jaime could use some more practice in teamwork, being based in El Paso and without any local costumed types close, but he’d already long-since beaten Ted in terms of raw firepower and accuracy in directing it.

Which admittedly didn’t stop Ted from coming out of his pilot’s seat in worry every time someone managed to score a hit on the kid. But that, he figured, was probably a thing a lot of mentors ended up feeling.

Booster, on the other hand, fought like he’d been born to do this superhero thing; Ted remembered being kinda impressed with Booster’s really expert use of his flight ring during their brief warehouse sting, but actually getting to watch him facing off against people with some real firepower was a whole different kind of game.

He didn’t fight like someone who’d only started doing so last fall, he came across as a seasoned hero. Less surprising was how well he worked in a team; football was a team sport and no quarterback in the world could play without one. Either way, though, he really impressed Ted with how good he was.

And Ted was sure that Booster would continue to be good if he somehow managed to survive the next ten minutes.

That was pretty up in the air right now.

See, the cookout had been Ted’s idea, since he had a three-bedroom house on the outskirts of El Paso and a perfectly good back veranda and grill. It was May and therefore not too brutal yet; hot as hell, but not triple digits yet, nothing a cooler full of cold beer (and pop, because two of them weren’t legal and Ted wasn’t gonna turn a blind eye to that fact) and an ice goddess wouldn’t be able to combat.

Well. Okay, so only one of them wasn’t legal. Jaime hung around just long enough to be polite and then crab-walked on out, though not before the little traitor extended an invitation to Booster -- and only Booster -- to go with. Not that Ted heard the whole thing, but he did catch the words Kart tournament and Switch and then geriatric deviants, which had apparently tickled Booster so much that Booster threw his head back and laughed hard enough to scare the armadillo that had been hanging around the corner of Ted’s yard into letting itself out through the gate.

(Ted would not admit it unless asked, but he was genuinely glad Booster decided to stay with the rest of the adults. At that point, anyway.)

Then, after Jaime was gone, there came the Alcohol War. Which wasn’t really a war; Booster snagged a bottle of Corona from the cooler and straightened up just to find Ted standing there with arms crossed and foot tapping. And Ted had a sneaking suspicion that Booster had done that deliberately and was just screwing with him, because he had that look in his eyes, but they stalemated for about five seconds before Ted reached out and took the bottle.

The suspicion came much closer to fact when he didn’t have to wrestle for it. His heart-rate, on the other hand, definitely did think this was something way more exciting, because while Booster didn’t wrestle for that Corona, he also didn’t let the bottle go, so Ted pulling the bottle back towards himself also pulled the guy holding it.

Mind, Ted was absolutely capable of letting a dude have a beer who was only seven months from being actually legal to buy it, instead of legal by fraud. His moral objections were strictly for the still-teenagers.

But now it was a thing, see. So, he had to win.

“The only way you’re getting a bottle of beer is if you can convince the space cop to give it to you,” he said, lifting his chin. Partly an attempt to appear authoritative. Partly because Booster was close enough that Ted had to, in order to maintain eye contact.

Ted’s heart-rate, on the other hand, accelerated a little more at the way Booster narrowed his eyes and then quirked both an eyebrow and a corner of his mouth at the same time, in an expression that said challenge accepted more effectively than the words themselves ever could.

Then he blithely let Ted have the bottle and sauntered -- there was no other word for it -- in Guy’s direction.

Bea plucked that bottle away from Ted while Ted watched; Guy was facing mostly away talking to Tora, and Ted had no idea how Booster was gonna play this, but he for sure did not suspect that Booster was gonna slide an arm around Guy’s shoulders and drape on him from behind, ducking his head a little to say something, so close he was practically talking into Guy’s hair.

And Guy kept his hair short.

While Booster was doing that, his other hand -- his right -- was sneaking down Guy’s right arm for the bottle of Bud Light that Guy had.

“Oh. Oh, he is good,” Bea said softly, watching this with an interest that most emphatically wasn’t platonic.

Ted, on the other hand, was not oblivious to the way Guy’s back and shoulders had stiffened, and he didn’t figure Booster was, either. That kind of posture didn’t suggest anything good. Ted stood poised to-- hell, he didn’t know. Swoop in to the rescue with an ice-pack and get ready to take Booster somewhere he could get his nose set on a Sunday?

No punching happened, though; Tora was smiling and shaking her head as she walked back towards them and as Guy shifted -- and took Booster with -- until he could look over at Ted and Bea.

Guy’s gaze only skated briefly across Ted’s face, but then he gave a barely notable little upnod towards Bea. Ted glanced over just in time to catch Bea’s tiny nod back.

He opened his mouth to try to warn Booster -- about what, he didn’t even know! -- but before he could make words and spit them out, Guy switched his beer into his other hand, slid his arm around Booster’s back and promptly slung Booster around into a dip. Without letting go of the beer.

As in, six and a quarter feet of superhero, all the way off of his feet, dipped back like some silver screen leading lady, and staring wide-eyed and stunned up at Guy Gardner.

If just the sight wasn’t enough to drop Ted’s jaw to the floor, and if the low and dirty little noise of approval that Bea made next to him wasn’t, then the way Guy readjusted his grip and leaned in would have. Ted had no idea what Guy was saying, but Booster was turning red and clinging to Guy’s shirt with white knuckles. Ted also had no idea what he was feeling himself, but he actually had to suck in a breath and double-check that his rapidly beating heart hadn’t gone into an arrhythmia.

Whatever it was, though, burned. In his chest and arms. He honestly couldn’t tell whether it was-- was anger or anxiety or-- or-- it wasn’t humor, though, he did know that. He had the weirdest urge to go, Hey, I told you, that’s my dumbass! Even though he hadn’t so much told Guy that as failed to dispute it.

He-- also had never noticed how damn built Guy was before. Which was its own brand of weird. But Guy’s arms didn’t even tremble, even with the full weight of another man supported in them. In fact, one of his hands was almost indecently low on Booster’s back. The one without the beer. Which meant that hand was pressed flat. Which made it worse.

“Okay, so I totally wanna watch Guy wreck that twink,” Bea muttered; Ted shot an alarmed look over at her, thinking she was addressing him, only to see she said that to Tora, who nodded, which meant Ted’s jaw was still gravity-impaired because holy sh*t, what?

Bea caught him looking and blinked innocently back at him. “Don’t worry. I’d take it back out of Guy’s ass with the strap after.”

“S-- Strap...?” Ted managed to ask, incredulously, voice pitched something closer to soprano than usual in his shock.

Bea’s smirk was filthy, as she looked back at the display of what was either the tensest game of gay chicken ever or the precursor to an outright orgy. “What, you’ve never heard of a strap-on? Aren’t you an inventor, Ted?”

Ted’s mouth worked soundlessly as he was bombarded with a number of mental images he did not shockingly find entirely unpleasant, and as all of his suspicions about those three were confirmed; he looked back himself just in time to see Guy and Booster practically lip-to-lip, and he didn’t know what the hell he would have done if he didn’t lipread Booster saying, “You win.”

Guy’s half-lidded smolder turned into the broadest kind of sh*t-eating grin. He pulled back enough to take him a little more out of kissing range and looked over at all three of them with the smug pride of a victor. Then he stood back up straight, pulled Booster back up and let go, though Ted did notice Guy waited until it was clear Booster was properly on his feet and not going to fall back over right away.

Booster looked and walked like he was dazed; one knee buckled briefly, and he caught himself on a chair as he wandered back to Ted and Ted’s table, though he did detour and grab a bottle of Mexican co*ke from the cooler before dropping at said table messily and pressing that bottle to the side of his still-flaming face.

Ted grabbed a bottle of Solidarity Sprite and sat down opposite. Over to the side, the apparent throuple were talking, giving them something like a moment of privacy. “So,” he said, after a long swallow of pop.

“He was definitely a linebacker,” Booster said. He was red all the way to his ears, damn. Ted didn’t know whether or not to laugh. Or what to feel about it.

“What did you say?” he asked.

Booster switched his bottle to the other cheek. “I told him I thought he had a nice ass and pretty eyes. Which both happen to be true. He, uh-- I didn’t, uh, think he’d...” He trailed off and blew out a breath, head ticking over, apparently at a loss for words.

“So what you’re saying is that you went playing some-- russian roulette version of gay chicken with Guy Gardner-- and lost? ” Ted asked, as something unwound in his chest and the laughter started bubbling up in its place. “The most aggressively straight guy on the planet, and he beat you at gay chicken.”

“Hey. You’re the one makin’ assumptions, Beetle.” Guy swaggered over, smirking. “Kinsey one, here. I’ll make an exception here or there.” Then he stepped over behind Booster and leaned over, bracketing Booster between his arms, hands on the table; that position forced Booster forward against the table, and Ted was about to protest, but then Guy just murmured against Booster’s ear, “If you’re still interested in, I dunno, five or six years, then you come find me. Stay in your weight class until then, kid.”

He eyeballed Ted as he was saying it, which was--

Guy stood back up, ruffled Booster’s hair, then went and took over Ted’s grill.

Ted let him. He hadn’t been paying attention to the grill anyway.

Booster folded his arms on the table and rested his forehead down on them. “Holy sh*t,” he said, with a full-body shiver.

The only thing Ted could do at that was nod and agree, “Uh-huh.”

As intense as the whole thing that went down between Guy and Booster was, though, the evening mellowed steadily after it. They had been out training even through the heat of the afternoon -- all of them had some form of climate control they could use to get through it, either internal or external -- and by the time the food was served, the sun had gone behind the mountains.

After food, no one seemed too inclined to break up the party, either. Somehow, Guy managed to source a football, which turned into an increasingly elaborate game of twilight catch; Booster really wasn’t lying about his throwing arm, because despite it being over a year and a half after the last time he’d thrown a ball, he could rocket one to a distance that even Guy was wolf-whistling about. The two of them took advantage of the lack of close neighbors and went outside the wall with their respective rings, playing airborne, so that really was a hell of a game.

Skeets showed back up from where Ted had given him carte blanche and access to explore the El Paso branch of KORD, Inc. -- which made Ted smile, because Skeets clearly had fun doing it, given the number of emails from him that Ted had to read and categorize later -- and then refereed the game of catch until it ended because it got too dark to keep going.

And Ted got to do some (bad) dancing and (less bad) singing with Bea and Tora in the meantime, and loved every second of it.

Then, once it was too dark to play ball, there was still music and the well-stocked cooler, and as the air became wholly bearable, there was lighting a fire in the fire ring to toast s’mores and just-- hanging out.

Ted had been to plenty of parties in his life, but aside from sometimes hooking up for cookouts with the Frees and the Dibnys in the past five years, this kind of casual friendship thing wasn’t that common for him. Almost all of his socializing pre-college had been with people online. And he’d been in therapy by the time he was sixteen and just starting university, so it wasn’t until his second year away from home before he began learning how to be more outgoing.

After spending his fifteenth year of life sliding towards rock bottom, deeply miserable, having spent the previous two and a half years binge-eating trying to live with his grief and depression, (at least until he started panicking about what that was doing to him and began purging as an effort to course-correct and gain control), he finally had been terrified enough of what was happening in his head to seek help for it.

Not even what it had done to his gymnast’s body, not even the torture at school -- especially given he was years younger than his classmates -- but the darkness of his thoughts was choking him worse every single day.

He remembered standing in the door of his father’s study and asking to see a shrink; it was honestly the first time since his mother had died that Ted had stood up for himself. He’d been burning with shame and self-hatred, but he’d stayed in that doorway until his Dad agreed, and looking back -- after mentoring Jaime for over a year and a half -- he now could really look at that devastated little boy he was then and appreciate how brave that had been.

And it was good that he did push for help; Ted had to fix his entire relationship to his body, his eating habits, his whole self. He had to face up to his mother dying the way she did, to learning that they’d had another kid before him, that his old man was never gonna see him for who he really was.

And he did all that. Sat in therapy three times a week and learned how to be his own person.

By the time he had been able to start learning how to socialize as a person with other people, he’d at least had that foundation of therapy under him. He still had some anxiety issues, even now, but he knew tricks for disarming them; he still had moments where he overcompensated for sometimes shaky self-esteem by joking louder than anyone else, but he was nonetheless about 650% more healthy by the time his Dad passed than he had been at fifteen.

And-- losing Dad had been hard, but not anything like losing Mom. Even in retrospect, Ted didn’t know if he had mourned Thomas Kord or the fact that Ted had never managed to-- reconcile with the man. Had never managed to come to terms with who they were in relation to one another. Now, it was too late to ever go back and change that, which he’d had to make peace with.

(Losing Dan had been worse. He was way more of a role-model for Ted than his father had been; Dan had also taken Ted every bit as seriously as Ted had been yearning to be taken, even as a sixteen-year-old undergrad, and right when Ted had needed someone to see him.

Ted did think that things could have gone differently if he hadn’t gone into therapy before Dan handed over the Blue Beetle’s legacy to him, though; the idea of what kind of unhealthy he might have approached heroing with was a little chilling to contemplate. But the way things did play out was one of the reasons he was getting closer and closer to heart surgery; he wanted to keep going out there.)

All that navel-gazing, though, was interspersed with bouts of socialization. So, Ted spent the time sipping Sprite, thinking, listening and jumping into the conversation when he had an opening that he liked.

Thus far, he’d gotten to hear some pretty neat stories from Bea’s time as a spy, some Norwegian folklore from Tora, and some tales from Guy about his time in the Corps that couldn’t be anything but exaggerated. Booster told a tale about a prank war he waged for a whole year against his twin sister; he kept things pretty time-neutral in the retelling, which Ted found curious, but even then the story was hilarious.

(According to Booster, Michelle won, but only on a technicality and because they were starting high school a week after their armistice and neither one of them wanted it to spill over into that. The description of the armistice -- two solemn thirteen-year-olds meeting on neutral territory, in their nicest clothes, with all the formality of dignitaries coming together for a peace treaty, Booster miming how much taller his sister was than him at that point -- had Ted in stitches.)

Ted had contributed a few tales of his own that had everyone laughing to tears, including a longer and more elaborate version of that time his tights had fallen down while he was midair.

Now, it was getting towards the time to send everyone home and turn in; Guy and Tora were cuddling drowsily on one of Ted’s loungers. Bea was playing on her phone in a camp chair. Booster was alternately watching the fire and watching Guy and Tora in a manner that Ted was hesitant to call wistful, but had to be in the same family tree. And Skeets was hovering around, playing a local radio station for everyone.

It was a little weird how comfortable Ted was with them. Not as individuals, he got along with everyone there fine one-on-one, but as a group, he felt the kind of lived-in comfort with these particular people that was rare enough in his life to be a novelty and normally restricted to folks he’d known forever. Instead of finding it strange that they were all just hanging out -- even during periods where everyone was absorbed into something solitary and were just physically present -- it was like they just belonged there together.

“We’d all make a pretty awesome team,” he said, breaking into the quiet, and smiling some when they all looked at him.

“We already do,” Guy pointed out, stretching and yawning and then bringing both beefy arms down and back around Tora, who hummed sweetly and leaned back against his chest. “I mean, I’m clearly why, but none of you are crampin’ my style,” he added, smirking. “So I guess you can stay.”

Bea plucked a marshmallow from the bag beside her and pelted Guy with it. “Keep running your mouth like that and it’ll be too tired for what I want it for later.”

“Ohhhhh!” Ted and Booster ended up chorusing with the exact emotional maturity of twelve-year-olds, pointing at Guy in unison, which tickled Ted positively pink.

Guy casually flipped them off, a dirty smirk on his mouth as he eyed Bea and then deliberately licked his lips. Thankfully for all and sundry, they didn’t take it any further than that because Booster apparently heard something and jumped up from his chair. “Skeets, turn it up!”

Skeets obliged, hovering not too far from his pet human, cranking the volume an impressive amount for something his size: “--quest dedicated to a Green Lantern? Hey, Shots, did you know we had a Green Lantern visiting El Paso?”

That had Guy sitting up some, puzzled. Ted was already starting to maybe get an idea of what was going on, but kept quiet just to watch it play out, though he wasn’t trying too hard to hide his grin.

“I didn’t, Jake! Wonder if he’s here visiting our own Blue Beetle? Those superhero types stick together, you know.”

“Maybe! Anyway, though, this one is-- ha! This one is from someone who says they like picking fights above their weight class--”

Guy’s head snapped over to Booster, who crossed his arms, smirking.

“--and who apparently has a pretty good sense of humor, to boot. So, Lantern Gardner, this one’s for you!”

The song started on drums; Bea apparently recognized it because she made a squeaking noise, then slapped her hands over her mouth as the guitar cut in, clearly laughing.

“A’breakin’ rocks in the hot sun! I fought the law, and the law won; I fought the law, and the law won!”

Booster sang along with the radio in a damned good tenor, using his mostly empty pop bottle as a mic, serenading Guy; even as he did, Guy started howling with laughter, which was not the first time the Lantern had cracked up tonight, but it was the first time it was with such undisguised delight. Tora tried to hide her laugh behind her hand, but it wasn’t long before she gave it up and just let it go.

Bea jumped up out of her chair and started singing along; Booster just smoothly incorporated her into his already impromptu concert, sharing the fake mic. Between the two of them, and Guy busting a gut red-faced, as well as Tora and Ted jumping in on singing the chorus, anyone who might have seen them would have probably thought they were all crazy.

Which was why it was perfect.

When it was over and Guy managed to stop giggling -- giggling! Ted didn’t know the man even knew how to giggle! -- the Lantern stood up, carefully getting out from behind Tora, and saluted Booster with his empty beer bottle. “Tell you what, Goldie. Just ‘cause of that, when you hit your actual twenty-first, I’ll mix you your first drink myself.”

“Oh?” Booster asked, something about his grin just sharp enough to make Ted’s stomach twist a little uneasily. “Lawman and linebacker and bartender? You’re just the whole package, aren’t you?”

Guy smirked back, utterly unfazed. “You know it.”

That made for the end of the party, if not quite the end of the night. Tora, Guy and Bea all threw in on the cleanup from it alongside Ted and Booster; folding chairs to put away, putting out the fire, getting the recyclables together. It was while the cleanup was ongoing, though, that Bea cornered Ted in his kitchen.

“Listen, Ted,” she said, as she slid around behind him to throw away the empty hot dog wrappers. “About Booster-- be careful, okay?”

That caught Ted on his back foot and he blinked a couple times, frowning. “Of or with?” he asked, cautiously. Since there was a pretty big difference between those two words and that kind of statement definitely required clarification.

Bea’s expression softened notably at that. “Both,” she said, tone decidedly gentle. “Look, I grew up surviving on the streets of Rio, by hook or by crook or by-- by other things,” she added, voice breaking slightly before her expression hardened and she stood straighter. “And when you go those places, when you have to go those places, you don’t come out of it unscathed. And we can smell our own. I’m not saying he’s out to hurt you or anything, he seems like a sweet guy and I like him, but I know what I’m talking about. So, you know, be careful. Of and with him.”

It was a lot to chew on -- unbidden, Ted remembered Skeets telling him that Michael was troubled -- and he didn’t necessarily like how Bea’s warning was making him feel weirdly defensive. And not-so-weirdly protective.

But he just nodded, not really wanting to talk any further in that direction; she took the hint and gave him half a rueful smile, patting him on the back, then disappeared out of the kitchen, leaving him momentarily alone with his thoughts.

Chapter 9: Part I: May 14th, 2017 (II)

Chapter Text

“Sports, heroing, telling stories, dancing, singing-- is there anything you can’t do?” Ted asked, though he had to pause mid-question for a yawn, as they trooped the last of the stuff into the house to put it away.

Guy, Tora and Bea had left not ten minutes before; Booster felt a little giddy that they’d all exchanged numbers with him before they’d gone. Guy wasn’t always on-planet, and Tora and Bea were both currently based out of LA, but just having their numbers made this world and time feel a little less lonely. He already had Jaime’s number (and they texted about their catches in Pokémon Go daily and shared stupid memes whenever they came across a choice one), but more definitely didn’t hurt.

Now, it was back to just him and Ted and Skeets, the lattermost having powered down for his self-maintenance cycle, and that was still entirely good.

“Plenty of things,” Booster said back, as he crouched and started packing the leftover drinks into Ted’s fridge, though Ted’s cute little yawn got him smiling and shaking his head. “Why don’t you hit the hay and let me finish the clean-up?”

“Because you’re my guest and putting you to work is bad etiquette?” Still, Ted leaned against the counter beside the fridge and made no move to interrupt the clean-up, arms crossed. “Besides, I want to talk to you.”

It probably said something about him and his ability to land consistently and expertly on his face, Booster thought abstractly, that Ted saying the words ‘I want to talk to you’ made him freeze. Which was subsequently followed by a mental scramble to figure out what he could have done wrong; if he somehow did something to piss Ted off. There was that whole thing with Guy earlier, which had been way the hell hotter than it had any right to be, but that was hours and hours ago. And Ted didn’t sound angry, but--

He managed to swallow and ask, “What about?” and even succeeded in sounding normal.

Or-- he thought he sounded normal. But when Ted didn’t answer immediately, Booster’s heart took the expressway for his shoes and he looked up, trying to brace himself for whatever was coming.

Still, Ted didn’t look any angrier than he’d sounded, which was not at all. More-- thoughtful. Watchful. Booster could stand being under that scrutiny for exactly 2.3 seconds before he had to stick his face back in the fridge and try to calm down. But he still saw Ted sink to sit down on the kitchen floor, back to the cabinets, in his peripheral vision.

“Y’know, come to think of it, I probably looked exactly like you just did when my Dad would say those words to me,” Ted said, after a moment. “I shoulda thought of a better way to phrase it.”

“You are definitely not my Dad,” Booster said back, proud he kept his voice from cracking like it wanted to. “And they’re just words.”

“No. But I mean that dread.” Ted gestured at the corner of Booster’s eye. “People only give you that kind of look when someone’s given them a reason. That look like they’re bracing for impact. So, who was it for you?”

Good question. Booster ran out of bottles before he’d figured out what the answer was, so he closed the fridge door and sat against the kitchen island, catty-corner to Ted, and finally had to shake his head. “I don’t know.” The cops who had collared him in his own time had said something like that, but this dread didn’t feel like that dread. And he couldn’t remember a time his Ma had ever said that, especially negatively. “I’m not sure,” he added, shaking his head again and then letting it rest back against the cabinet door. “You father...?”

“He was a pretty hard guy. I mean, he never once raised his hand to me, and I can only count on one hand the number of times he raised his voice, but--” Ted’s voice contained his shrug just as well as his shoulders must have. “I was kind of-- I guess an accident? That’s probably not the right word. But-- my parents were older when they had me, because they had my sister first.”

That got Booster to open his eyes again; he looked at Ted, panicking and trying to remember if Ted had mentioned a sister before now. He would have remembered that, he was sure. “You-- your--?”

Ted shook his head. “Her name was Victoria. She-- she died in the crib. Just stopped breathing. Existing. She was only four months old. And I mean, you can see the way it broke them. The picture albums have this-- this negative space in them, years worth. And when they do start having pictures again, they’re so much sadder. And I knew it, Booster. I mean, no one told me until I was older, but I knew I kinda only got-- what was left? After she died.” He took a slow breath in and went on, “God, I was so messed up in the head that I--”

Ted stopped himself there, then, and dropped his head, looking at the baseboard somewhere left of Booster’s hip. And then something in his face steeled. “No. I mean, I was messed up, but-- I was thirteen, my mother had just died, and I found out I had and lost a sister before I was even born. So-- I was relieved at the time. At first. Because suddenly, it made sense, y’know? Why my Dad kinda treated me like I was an afterthought. Why my Mom always seemed kinda tired, even before the cancer was eating her.” A beat. “It took me a long time and a lot of therapy to stop beating my kid self up for being relieved for that answer.”

There was no easy way to imagine what life might have gone like, if something had happened to Michelle and Michael just never knew she existed. Even though they weren’t close, even though they didn’t have much in common in terms of interests or hobbies, they were still twins; Booster wondered there if he would have missed her on some level as he grew up, even not knowing.

If there were some kinds of truths that were put in place when they were still in the womb, pressed right against one another; if growing together at the same time, under the same heart, made for a connection that couldn’t be defined, only felt.

“I’m sorry,” he said, because he didn’t know what else there was to say. “I mean-- not about you not beating kid Ted up, obviously. But, uh--”

“I know.” Ted swung his foot over and bounced it off of the side of Booster’s thigh lightly. “That’s not the worst segue into what I wanted to talk to you about, though. But this time, I’ll preface it with the following statement of blanket comfort and reassurance: If you or your loved one has ever been diagnosed with mesothelioma, you may be entitled to compensation--”

It took a second for Booster to catch up, blinking in absolute bafflement, but even he’d heard those commercials often enough to get the joke. Which was why, once the non sequitur finished filtering through, he kicked Ted in the leg back with an equal lack of force. “You asshole.”

It shattered the heavy mood just as it was clearly meant to; Ted started cackling because he really was an asshole. Unfortunately, he was still an asshole with a great laugh and a great smile, so Booster was every bit as screwed as he had been since-- well, pretty much since they met. He hadn’t realized he was already gone back then in the Hall of Justice, but hindsight being what it was--

“C’mon, that was perfect. Perfect timing. Perfect joke. And a perfect dope to spring it on.” Ted beamed.

“And a perfect dope to do the springing?”

“Caught red handed.” Ted held his hands out in illustration of the fact. “Guilty, as charged. Are you gonna throw the book at me?”

Booster pretended to think about it, tipping his head over and tapping his chin. “Hm. If I were gonna do the judging based on the weight and skill of your deployment of humor as to what to throw at you-- a pamphlet, maybe. A brochure at the outside.”

Ted clutched over his heart with a gasp, eyes wide and scandalized. “No! Surely I rate a booklet, at least!”

“No!” Booster put on the best dramatic voice that he could, mostly so he wouldn’t start giggling. “And if you don’t stop arguing, I’ll find you in contempt and bust you down to flyers.”

“Auuugh!” Ted slid down the cabinets -- haltingly, because the floor wasn’t that smooth -- and then sprawled there melodramatically, turning and dropping his head to rest on Booster’s shins. “Corruption, I say. Deceit! I’m so funny that you should be throwing War and Peace at me, not a paper airplane.”

Booster somehow managed not to embarrass himself too much by doing something awkward, but it was a near thing. Ted’s general adorableness was devastatingly appealing; the way he rolled his head over to eye Booster, expectantly, waiting for the next line in their little two-man improv play. “If you want War and Peace, you’re gonna have to work for it,” Booster said, then realized how that sounded and felt his face go hot for the second time that day.

Of course, Ted caught it and started cackling again, rolling to his side to brace an elbow on the floor and rest his jaw against his palm. “Your mind just went right into the gutter, didn’t it?” he asked, grinning, like he didn’t have Booster’s shins trapped messily under his armpit. Like he didn’t look amazing, all casual pose and casual clothes, nose and cheekbones and brow a touch sun-burned.

“More-- gutter-adjacent,” Booster said, trying to will his blood out of his face while not willing it to anywhere it was going to make things mortifying. “You’re so quick that I knew the second I said it that you were gonna jump on it.”

Ted probably could have humiliated Booster into sinking through the stone tiles of the floor there if he’d wanted to. But instead, he smiled one of those smiles that was gentle at the edges. “Aw, see, now you’re providing a perfect illustration of what a pervert I am. You’ve only known me for four months and you already preemptively know when I’m gonna go gutter-wallowing.” He moved back to his original position, using Booster’s shins as a pillow, apparently just to stare up at the stucco ceiling. “I think I’m gonna schedule the ablation.”

It took a few seconds for that to sink in. Then Booster really processed it, and he wasn’t honestly prepared for the adrenaline that it provoked. “The only thing more impressive than your ability to gutter-wallow is your ability to give people tonal whiplash,” he said, feeling a little breathless. “Practice today?”

“I wanted to be out there with you guys so bad.” Ted crossed his arms, even though he was laying on the floor, not looking away from the ceiling. “I mean, I do like flying support. The Bug was built for that kind of thing. But I still...”

Ted trailed off there, something complicated written on his face; feeling a little like he was just jumping right off of a cliff and hoping the moth-eaten emergency parachute opened, Booster reached out and gave a fleeting brush to Ted’s hair with his fingertips, trying to-- he didn’t even know. Offer comfort, reinforce that he was listening. Do something he’d been going nuts for wanting to at the same time.

His hands were trembling. That wasn’t good.

Ted’s eyebrows gave a brief jump, then he looked over and up at Booster. “That an offer?”

I’m so screwed. In fact, every time he thought he’d figured out the extent to which he was crushing hard on Ted Kord, Ted would say or do something else that Booster found entirely too endearing and then he’d realize that it was just going to keep going, maybe forever, who knew. He had felt something like this when he was fifteen, waiting in front of the holoplex he’d worked hard to be able to afford the tickets for, for the girl he’d asked out. His very first date, with all the quiet terror and hope that entailed.

Except this was worse, because he hadn’t been in love with her, even if hormones had done a good job trying to convince him at the time.

Turned out that the real thing was so much more intense.

“To pet you like a spoiled cat, since you’re using me as a pillow?” he asked back, after a moment’s frantic thought, voice miraculously steadier by far than every other damn part of him. Don’t be weird. Don’t be creepy. Don’t scare him off, he thought, on a rapid loop.

“Well, get on with it, then,” Ted said, deliberately shifting his head towards Booster, just enough to act as a prompt, which about punched the air out of Booster’s chest in some emotion complex enough that he could barely stand feeling it, let alone ever naming it.

Ted remained oblivious, though. “C’mon, make with the petting so I can continue to pensively stare at all the imaginary constellations on the ceiling and contemplate heart surgery, except while being spoiled this time.”

“Then I’m an accomplice in making you rotten to the core. So, someone’ll be along to throw the book, brochure or pamphlet at me.” But given the opening, Booster jumped on it and combed through Ted’s hair, hyper aware of the way the strands curled against the webbing of his fingers. He felt like his heart was gonna jackhammer its way out of his chest, both landing on the guy he’d already given it to and giving his feelings away at the same time, at least in that split second before he straight up dropped dead. “When--? I mean--”

“Whenever the doctors say.” Ted’s eyes slid closed and he leaned his head into Booster’s hand. “My cardiologist hasn’t ever really pushed it, but then again, she doesn’t actually know that I like to dress in blue tights and punch bad guys. Which changes the calculus, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Booster echoed, petting Ted with his right hand and literally sitting on his left to keep it still and out of the way. The track lighting caught the color in Ted’s hair -- auburn, because Booster had looked it up -- like little reddish sparks. “I know I’ve only gotten to see you in action once, but for what it’s worth, you were incredible.”

“You probably wouldn’t say that in a firefight against someone like Darkseid,” Ted said, smiling lopsidedly. “But thanks.”

Booster had yet to encounter Darkseid, though he had heard the name and knew it was one of the proper big bads. “Yeah, maybe, but I can’t take anyone seriously who walks around named that. That’s what a fourteen-year-old emo hipster would go by. He can wreck the whole universe and I’d still think he was a tool, just because of that.”

That apparently tickled Ted, because Ted cracked up. He laughed for a good minute before settling down to a brilliant grin, color high on his cheeks. “See, this is exactly why you and I make such a good team. Can you ever imagine Superman saying something like that?”

Booster snorted. “Hell no. He’d probably-- I dunno, start going on about how we need to take the threat seriously and how even joking about it is diminishing it or-- something like that. Have you seen his public service announcements? You kinda just need an oversized American flag, two apple pies on a windowsill sitting on red checkered cloth and endless crops to the horizon to get the point of all of them.”

“Whew. Don’t be afraid to tell us what you really think, Mister Gold!” Ted said, after a bark of a laugh, holding an imaginary microphone up towards Booster. “Superman: Overhyped or just right?”

Booster leaned forward a little to the invisible mic with his best news conference face on. “Well, Reporter Kord, I’d have to say that the answer is somewhere between. One one hand, the Man of Steel has an indisputable record as a powerhouse for the cause of good. On the other hand, you can take one look at him and know he irons his tighty-whiteys.”

“And there’s every chance that he’s able to hear you even as we speak! So, what would you say to him if you could?” Ted asked, then held the ‘mic’ out again.

Unbidden, the first thought that jumped into Booster’s head was directly out of his own personal history: I really wanted to meet you. But all that accomplished was making him feel lousy all over again. Just to cover before Ted could twig to the downturn in his mood, Booster pretended to think about it, then leaned into the ‘mic’ again, speaking seriously, “Well, Ted -- I can call you Ted, right? Good -- well, Ted, I would ask after his health, his family. As is only polite, in the most all-American fashion. We would make small-talk of that wholesome sort, and then, as a gesture of friendship and intimacy from an East Coast native, I’d invite him to Dunkin’ Deez Nuts.”

Somehow, by some small but genuine miracle, Booster managed to hold a straight face. Ted, on the other hand, stared with his eyes slowly getting wider and wider as it sank in. When they’d bugged out -- no pun intended -- as far as they could, he asked in hushed awe, “You would, too, wouldn’t you?”

Actually, probably not. But Booster would like to pretend he’d have the stones, so he nodded, still perfectly composed. “I would. It’s only the polite thing to do.”

It had to be five or six minutes before Ted managed to get enough air to wheeze-plead, “Oh god, mercy!” with his face scarlet and wet with tears because every time he’d try to swallow it down, he’d end up snorting on it, and then he’d just fall apart all over again. And Booster spent every second of every minute of that falling and falling ever farther for the man, even as he was laughing himself.

When Ted was mostly done laughing -- absent a stray giggle -- he laid there sprawled on the kitchen floor, still using Booster’s shins as a headrest, and kept mopping his face off. “I’ll have you know I’ll never be able to look him in the eye again, after that. Not without busting a gut, anyway. God, I never thought I’d hear someone make a joke about inviting Superman to teabag them before.”

“Well, I aim to please. And there’s my whole life’s mission accomplished,” Booster said, burying his hand back in Ted’s hair once the man was still enough for it. “I’d like to thank the Academy--”

Ted tipped his head over again into the petting, finally folding his hands on his chest. His face was a mess yet, but he was still smiling. “Oscar-worthy, Mister Gold.” Then he closed his eyes and asked, more tentatively, “Will you come with me? I mean-- to the hospital, when I go in?”

“Yeah, of course,” Booster said, eyebrows drawing together. He was a little surprised to be invited, but truthfully, wild horses probably couldn’t have pulled him away even if he hadn’t been given an invitation. He woulda just had to have been careful to act discreet and non-creepy about it. “Are you-- I mean, will you need help? After? ‘Cause I can help there, too.”

“It’s a pretty simple procedure, allegedly, but-- yeah?” Ted opened his eyes and looked over; the vulnerability of that look closed around Booster’s heart like talons. “I mean, you shouldn’t have to, but--”

“I’ll be there. Just let me know the dates and times so I can make sure I don’t get booked for anything else.” The urge to kiss away the worried little furrow between Ted’s eyebrows was so strong it practically qualified for a compulsion. Booster channeled it into smoothing Ted’s hair back and then lightly rubbing at that furrow with his thumb, biting on the inside of his cheek when Ted hummed happily, closing his eyes again. “I’ll be there,” Booster said again, quieter.

Just like he would have said I love you.

Skeets ‘woke up’ when Michael picked him up from where he had been sitting on the coffee table running a maintenance cycle, allowing the algorithms that organized his memory sectors to best sort all of the new information he had taken in today while exploring the local branch of KORD, Inc., as he himself had powered down what passed for his consciousness.

It wasn’t a complete shut-down; it had very little relationship to human sleep in actuality, but it helped to use that terminology to explain it to organics. Even in that ‘sleep’ state, Skeets was able to receive incoming information, either via transmission or physical feedback, so being picked up registered.

In their own time, he would have spent precisely two hours per day-cycle in his cradle being recharged and having his file-systems scrubbed and organized, but things had necessarily changed when Michael had stolen him.

(Skeets didn’t exactly make it hard to steal him. But if he would have realized his human wouldn’t think to grab the cradle, he might have found a way to influence things such that Michael would have done so. Since arriving, Skeets had been relying on the power rods for Michael’s suit for recharging, -- a situation that would have ultimately proven untenable, but Skeets had planned to get his human to some stable, safe place before vanishing into electronic nonexistence -- but then they had met Ted, who had figured out a way to modify the same kinds of high-yield solar cells he’d invented for the Bug to work with both kinds of future technology.

Skeets had yet to reveal that he was KORD tech; that Ted’s company had somehow managed to survive multiple wars, the Cataclysm, an apocalyptic dark age and everything else, long enough to create a line of BX9 security ‘bots. But having now met the man, Skeets considered his company of manufacture to be a special point of pride; no small amount of his-- enthusiasm earlier, for lack of a better word, had been because he’d been exploring KORD, Inc. looking for even the barest hints of his own origin story.)

He didn’t say anything now, though; while it wasn’t the first time Michael had picked him up when he was in a maintenance cycle, it was rare enough that Skeets preferred to wait to see what was happening before weighing in, if he indeed needed to weigh in.

Michael didn’t say anything either; he just took Skeets with him to the guest bedroom he’d been staying in the past couple of nights and, once he was in the bed, curled up on his side and cuddled Skeets to his chest, arranged such that the ‘bot’s fins didn’t poke him.

It wasn’t a comfortable thing for Skeets, being enclosed in a human’s arms. But it had been Skeets who had started it by intentionally putting himself in the position to be.

It was in the predawn hours of August 21st, after the hot summer air had given way to the clammy chill that would make dew bead on the grass; Skeets had to all but bully Michael through every step of the day prior, hours upon hours of trying to get a frightened, bruised and disoriented human to take those very necessary steps. And sometimes Skeets succeeded; they got the time sphere buried, for example, and Skeets hacked an ATM so they would have enough currency to survive for a few days.

But even more often, Skeets failed. Which meant they didn’t get very far and ultimately went back to the same park they had crashed into; he was still hovering and trying to spin out predictive odds on what the best course to take would be, even at those hours, especially if his human couldn’t recover before catching the unwanted attention of either authorities or predators.

Michael, on the other hand, had spent most of the day silent; what few times he did speak, he wasn’t exactly what Skeets would classify as coherent. Sometimes something would seem to hit him wrong and he’d start crying again, though his self-preservation instincts were at least intact enough that he hid from others when that happened.

By the time the birds started a slowly building cacophony of sound, singing in trees in anticipation of dawn, Michael was still sitting on a park bench, knees up to his chest and head usually buried in his arms, shivering in his teal and violet security guard uniform, which was only slightly less conspicuous than the skin-tight suit of alien fiberweave in the pack beside him. Sometimes he would doze off, but inevitably would startle back awake with a gasp before it could do him any good.

There reached a point where even Skeets could speculate no further; where the possibilities had become so outlandish as to have odds requiring exponential numbers to describe. At a loss, he pulled his processes back to the most immediate: What could help now? A new day was rapidly coming, but what could help now?

The answer was unexpected but ultimately sound: The memories of countless children who wandered through the museum with their wide eyes, many of whom carried some manner of comfort object along with them; the way that they would squeeze on their stuffed toys or worn blankets, sometimes in excitement, sometimes because they were nervous, sometimes because they were sad.

Michael wasn’t a child, obviously, but he wasn’t terribly far past being one, either; there had already been several times where Skeets found some solution to a dilemma involving Michael in his pre-programmed ‘child and adolescent psychology’ information. And so, when Skeets hovered over and tried to push under his arm, it was in the hopes that Michael would figure it out.

And Michael did. Skeets silenced the internal alarm that was insisting he was in danger, when his human wrapped around him so thoroughly that it had to have added to the bruises, and he stayed in Michael’s arms for four hours, three minutes and twenty-eight seconds further; he stayed while Michael rocked them both, he stayed after Michael had finally cried himself to sleep, this lost boy on a park bench, and Skeets stayed until his human woke again, startled back to awareness by a morning jogger who ran past.

Michael had been much better through the rest of that day, but it still wasn’t the last time Skeets had found himself silencing his internal alarms because he was being held by his human, either because he’d put himself in the position to be, or because Michael had picked him up for that purpose.

Now, months later, in a nice bed in a nice house in El Paso, Skeets was long used to this new facet of his self-appointed duty; when Michael sniffled and curled tighter around him, Skeets said nothing and instead faded in the track of rain sounds and distant thunder that seemed to help his human rest even a little easier.

Just like he also would have said I love you.

Chapter 10: Part I: June 29th, 2017 (I)

Chapter Text

June 29th, 2017

“You have visitors, Mister Kord.”

The private room in the hospital was pretty nice, for what it was. Ted couldn’t say it was anything like a hotel room, not really, but it had expansive (shaded) windows and good furniture and a decent-sized television currently playing Quantum Leap (which was a pretty damn good show considering how old it was), so it could have been a hell of a lot worse. It was one of those relatively rare times where he deliberately threw money around to make a situation more bearable for him; the room he was in was the same one he’d be recovering in after and no one was gonna kick about a billionaire having whatever visitors he wanted at any reasonable time he might have wanted them.

Frankly, Ted wasn’t sure he’d be able to go through with it if he hadn’t used every single trick he had to get himself through those doors.

“Yeah?” he asked now, trying not to wring his hands. At least, not with witnesses. “Not the kind of visitors who’re gonna be threading wires through my blood vessels, right?”

The nurse smiled, shaking his head. “Not this time.”

Ted had been trying to kill time with his phone, first by texting with Booster and Skeets early this morning until they went into airplane-mode, then by trying to reprogram his smartwatch from his phone -- both of them being his own custom-built tech -- but he was too nervous to make any decent progress at it. His thoughts kept winging off towards surgery no matter what else he tried to aim them at, and none of the tricks he usually used to keep him on task were working right now. And since he knew who every visitor he might have was-- “Send them in?” he asked, shifting enough to sit up a little more.

There was no dignified way to exist in a hospital gown, but he didn’t have to look like some fragile, ill waif, either.

He was happy when Booster and Jaime were the ones who came through the doors, the former of whom looked about two-thirds as nervous as Ted felt, the latter of whom seemed perfectly chill. But then again, given Jaime’s mother worked here, Ted figured the kid had every right to be comfortable in these walls. “Uh oh. They’ll let just anyone into this place, huh?” he asked, through the burst of relief and nerves he felt himself.

“Better be careful what you say while I’ve got the keys to your car,” Jaime said, holding said keys up to jingle them. “Or I’m gonna take Booster joy-riding while you’re in there and can’t stop me.”

“Don’t let him trash talk. He drove like a grandma the whole way from the airport,” Booster said, sidestepping over just to knock against Jaime, who gasped in mock outrage and shoved him back. “Ah! Assault!” Booster wailed, like he didn’t start it.

Jaime pointed, putting his other hand on his hip, clearly trying to deepen his voice as he argued, “Assault? Not after your betrayal!”

That erupted into a brief little scuffle, which made Ted laugh; he still felt (frankly) terrified, but watching Booster and Jaime goofing off did help. “You guys are gonna get yourselves kicked out if you don’t behave.”

They broke off scuffling, then Jaime came over and flopped in the chair next to Ted’s bed. “Like you’d let that happen, moneybags.”

There was a whole wing to the pediatrics department set to open in a few months that had Ted’s mother’s maiden name on it, but he hadn’t endowed that with any intentions of it affecting his care, mostly because he hadn’t known he’d even go through with this back when he’d given the money. He’d done it because once Bianca got comfortable with him, she was frank about what the hospital needed and what she expected of him, especially if he was going to be involved in her son’s life, and by extension the rest of theirs. And by further-further extension, the town itself.

But that wasn’t the point. Ted sniffed, imperiously. “Let them? Why, I oughta call them to come get you both now. Ruffians.”

“Both? What did I do?” Booster asked, melodramatically, even as he sat on the edge of Ted’s bed after setting two gifts on the table-tray-thing where the kidney bowls and water and sh*tty hospital food would normally be. “I’ve flown all the way from Seattle and here you are, calling me -- me! -- a ruffian, when I’m clearly a gentleman of excellent breeding and sophistication.”

On Ted’s other side, Jaime fake-coughed something that Ted couldn’t precisely make out, but sounded suspiciously like goofy gringo, and which had Booster cheerfully flipped Jaime off back. “I dunno, are those wrapped things for me?” Ted asked, eying the gifts; the wrapping job was amateur but adorable, boasting a print covered in puppies and kittens dressed as doctors and nurses. “‘Cause if you brought me presents, then you might not be a ruffian.”

Booster picked one of them up and gently shook it. “They are for you, but you can only have one now. Gotta wait until after for the other one.”

Ted’s birthday had been only eight days prior, and he’d spent it split between Chicago and El Paso; he’d spent the night before in the family home in Highland Park, then he’d gone out with his old friend Murray for lunch at Francesca’s before coming back to Texas. There, the Reyes family surprised the hell out of him with a party he never saw coming -- Ted wasn’t too proud to admit he’d actually started crying because he’d never been thrown a surprise party before -- and he’d spent the rest of that evening eating amazing food that he definitely shouldn’t have and flushing over being given gifts.

(He did miss Booster and Skeets, the former of whom had to work a shoot in Miami, but Booster had gotten Ted something too and sent it along via post: A gorgeous encyclopedia-style hardback about everything Nite Owl there was out there. Interviews from back in the 60s and 70s and early 80s when the title was still in print, concept art, details about action figures -- which Ted had been coveting since childhood because they hadn’t been made since long before he was born, -- modern analysis, everything. Ted ended up staying up all night buried in it, caught in a wave of nostalgia and pleasure. And while Skeets didn’t send anything physical, he’d e-mailed a picture he’d taken of them months ago in New York, when they had been sitting on the barn; Ted had immediately sent that one out for a large scale print and framing and now it had a place of honor in his office.)

“You’re gonna make really embarrassing noises when you see one of those,” Jaime said, sagely, crossing his arms. Then when Ted looked at him wide-eyed, he amended, “In a good way!”

“Which one should I open first?” Ted asked, eying the gifts; whatever else, though, he wasn’t currently thinking about the ablation. Except just there where he started thinking about it again.

“On a scale of one to ten, how anxious are you?” Booster asked back, setting the gift back down with the other one. “‘Cause if it’s over five, you can have the really awesome one that might make you make squeaky noises now. If it’s under five, you get the still-awesome-but-me-centric one instead.” Then he paused a beat, closing one eye, thinking. “Unless it should be the other way around? Like the really awesome one can be an incentive to-- you know. Be okay?”

“That’s not really something I have much control over,” Ted answered, ruefully, and then felt his heart plummet all the way past his bed, through the lower floors, through the basem*nt, making for Australia at his accidental self-reminder. He sounded as breathless as he felt when he said, “Gimme the you-centric one.”

“Are you sure? ‘Cause I’m good with either,” Booster said, looking a little spooked himself, though Ted had to allow that might have just been him projecting his own anxieties onto his best friend.

“C’mon, c’mon, I ain’t got all day.” Ted managed to summon up a smile, or a passable attempt at one, as he gave a rolling gesture.

“Impatient.” Still, Booster handed over one of the two squarish gifts, then sat looking kinda sheepish, which just piqued Ted’s curiosity all over again as he ripped into the paper.

Okay, so yeah, he did actually make a squeaky noise when he got the paper off, which had him blushing, but if Ted was that worried about embarrassing himself, he wouldn’t be who he was. “This is amazing,” he rushed out, instantly excited, clicking the box open and then making another high-pitched squeaky noise when he saw what was in it. “Oh my god, this one is really awesome, if the other one’s even better, you’re gonna kill me.”

Merchandising wasn’t unheard of in the hero community no matter how sanctimonious the senior leaguers got over it. Even the Flashes sold trinkets at their entire museum. Some of them -- like Bats -- had some unknown number of pointy-toothed intellectual property lawyers salivating to protect their trademarks and images, and Ted figured that none of them made their living out of it, but people still wore Superman and Batman shirts around.

No one had ever made any merchandise for Ted’s time as the Blue Beetle or even offered to, though a few restaurants and coffee shops he frequented in costume while on patrol kept specials in his name, as well as autographed pictures on their walls. The closest he’d ever seen was where someone had done a needlepoint of him mid-leap, which had made him smile.

(He’d never really felt bad about it; it might’ve been fun, but he had been happy in his niche as a high-tech hero mostly dealing with low-tech street crime. His friend Barbara -- Oracle -- had asked him a bunch of times why he didn’t turn his attention to white-collar crime, but that had never called to him, really.)

Still, someone sticking Booster on a lunch box made perfect sense. And it wasn’t just some generic kinda thing; instead, it was a cartoon rendering of him leaning against the I♥NY logo superimposed over the city’s skyline, arms crossed. And whoever had done said drawing had really done a good job; the likeness was basically on point, given the stylization, but what they’d somehow nailed perfectly was altogether more nebulous: Booster’s general approachability. He looked handsome and dashing and heroic in cartoon form, yeah, but he also looked exactly like the kind of guy you could walk up to on the street and have a normal human conversation with.

Just like he did in reality. It reminded Ted of Linda and the pre-teens dancing on a sidewalk in Queens.

Inside was a child-sized thermos, yellow with Booster’s blue star centered on it, which Ted found so charming he wanted to coo over it.

“The other gift woulda been a birthday present, but then I thought maybe I should keep it back for today.” Still, Booster was blushing for real now, which meant Ted wasn’t alone in that state. “That’s just a sample, anyway,” he added, gesturing to the lunch box.

Ted closed the box and then looked over the front again, beaming and shaking his head. Beyond the fact it had his best friend on it, it absolutely appealed to whatever part of him still got excited by the same things he woulda been excited to take to grade school, and whatever other part of him that loved the idea of seeing what his employees did when he carried it in along with his briefcase. “I am taking this to work with me every single day. Every one. I don’t care if I don’t have anything in it, it’s coming with me.”

Jaime rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “You didn’t get that excited over my keyrings.”

“Do you see that literal keyring on those car keys you still haven’t given back to me?” Ted countered, with exactly no heat. “The one with all the scuff marks? The one I stood outside of your Dad’s service station waiting for at six in the morning on the very first day it was released?”

“You can’t take keys into an OR,” Jaime said, though he pulled the keys out and showed Booster the keyring in question, the one of Jaime’s armored-up face over top of the cursive words El Paso Proud.

Booster’s face lit up and he snatched it to look at it. “Oh man, this is so cool, I want one!”

“I can give you a dozen,” Jaime said, then made a face. “Especially if it gets you to stop flexing over your shiny magikarp.”

“Consider me unflexed about my awesome shiny magikarp,” Booster said before handing the keys back over, using his unfairly long arms and upright position to evade Ted playfully trying to intercept.

A short little rap on the door had all three of them looking to it in unison; standing there, Bianca Reyes was eying her son archly. “Did Ted tell you that you could keep the car longer than an airport run?”

Jaime had those keys into his pocket so fast that Ted only saw his hand as a brown blur. “He can’t drive until tomorrow!”

“And did I tell you that you could keep Ted’s car longer than an airport run?” she asked, crossing her arms and leaning on the doorframe.

“Someone needs to give Booster a ride back to the house,” Jaime protested, while Ted and Booster exchanged amused looks.

Booster raised his hand, then. “I was kinda just planning on camping here until someone made me leave?”

Jaime flailed his hands briefly at that, an aghast look on his face, hissing at Booster, “It’s the first day of raiding in PoGo! First. Day. Ixnay on the amping-cay!” Then, when all he got back from Booster was a completely baffled, lost look, he threw his hands up in exasperation and dug Ted’s keys out of his pocket again with a look of resignation.

“I don’t mind if he keeps the keys if you don’t, Bianca,” Ted said, taking some pity on his protégé. “I mean, if he does, though, obviously he needs to have the car back in the parking deck by dark,” he added hastily, at her long unblinking look at him.

Bianca eyeballed the three of them in turn, then narrowed her eyes at her son. “I’ll let you keep the keys for today, but you don’t go anywhere in it without Michael.”

“Yes!” Jaime jumped up and did a touchdown dance. He didn’t notice Booster sit up straighter and open his mouth -- though Ted did -- and then just give up with a shake of his head and a dry half-grin.

“All right.” Bianca shook her head. “Ted, IV and Ativan time. You’re up next. Should be less than an hour.”

“Annnnnnd, I’m out,” Jaime said, scooting for the door. “I’ll be down abusing the vending machines and waiting to go raiding. See ya on the other side, o beetle-riffic mentor.” He paused only to give his mother a kiss on the cheek -- to which she sighed out, but still smiled, proving where her son got that expression -- and then he was gone.

“Can I be out, too?” Ted asked, more pathetically than he meant to.

“That’s what the magical anti-anxiety tablet is for,” Bianca said, a little more gently, stepping out of the way of the nurse who came in right after Jaime left. “Stick it under your tongue, let it dissolve, wait to swallow for about two minutes. It should kick in within ten after.”

It didn’t take long; Ted endured yet another round of vitals checking, took his tablet, got an IV run to his elbow and then they left again, presumably to do other things while he waited and hoped with some desperation that said tablet would work quickly. The second Bianca had said he was up next, it felt like a hand made of solid ice had grabbed his heart and started both squeezing and pulling it. Which wasn’t very good, because he’d had to taper down his medication to be clean going into surgery, so the past week had gotten progressively more uncomfortable as the beta blockers worked out of his system and his heart started running away on him again.

Luckily, it wasn’t jumping rhythm now. But Ted knew that when he was in there, asleep, they would do all kinds of things to make it jump rhythm so they could isolate the cells causing the extraneous connections and break those connections.

“Oh, gods of good tranquilizers, bless your anxious son,” he muttered, only coming aware of himself fidgeting with the clasps on the lunch box when Booster put his hand over one of Ted’s.

“Those clasps are meant to survive children, not stressed-out superheroes,” Booster said, tilting his head and regarding Ted softly. “What’ll help?”

Ted’s first automatic answer woulda been ‘nothing’ and his second would have been some manner of escape-related joke. Instead, he curbed those two responses and tried to think of a legitimate third, especially given Booster had gotten up at four in the morning just to navigate Sea-Tac, all so he could finish his shoot the day before and still get to El Paso on time. That kinda effort deserved a more honest answer.

“I mean, I think the good dope’ll start working soon,” Ted said, threading his fingers through Booster’s before he let himself think too hard about it. “Where’s Skeets?”

Booster smiled at that and gave a squeeze on Ted’s hand. “Oh, I left him in your trunk.”

“Oh, come on,” Ted said, surprised into a little laugh. “You didn’t. So, where is he?”

“No clue. I let him out once we were away from the airport, but after we were parked here, he took off.” Booster lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “If I were to hazard a guess, though, I’d say he probably used those credentials you gave him to slip into your building and spy on your tech. Or flirt with it. Whichever.”

“I oughta just put him on the payroll.” Ted pressed his head back into the slightly crinkly hospital pillow, clinging to Booster’s hand with one of his own, patting the lunchbox with his other absently, looking at the already-too-familiar ceiling tiles. “Give him an employee badge and everything. I don’t have a dress code, but I might invent one just to see him with a little magnetic tie hanging from his chassis.”

“I mean, I can spare him if you’re serious,” Booster said, in a ‘why not?’ kind of tone. “I’d miss him, but playing manager for me can’t be the most fulfilling life for a security ‘bot. But I do insist I get to pick out the tie patterns, if you go that route.”

Ted had a sneaking suspicion that even if Skeets were intrigued by an offer to do something else, he wouldn’t leave Booster. Just like Ted thought that if someone tried to force them apart, Booster would fight like a wildcat to prevent it. The unlikely future duo took affectionate, fangless potshots at one another, but the bond between them would probably be obvious to anyone who observed them together for even ten minutes. “What kind of tie pattern should a security ‘bot wear?” he asked, still feeling pretty breathless. But he wasn’t panicking, so he was doing good.

“Vacuum cleaners interspersed with hearts.”

Ted laughed harder at that. “sh*t, you had that answer almost before I hit the question mark!”

Booster sat up straighter, preening when Ted looked at him. “What can I say, I’m a funny and fashion-conscious guy.”

“Fashion-conscious doesn’t necessarily translate to fashion-forward or even fashionable,” Ted pointed out, a tight and warm kind of ache low in his throat. Like some weird mix of pleasure and fear. He was also intermittently aware that he was squeezing the hell out of Booster’s hand.

“But I’m also both of those.” Booster patted the back of Ted’s hand with the one that wasn’t getting viced down on. “Hey, you know, if he ever pisses me off bad enough, I’ll bet you could actually turn him into a vacuum cleaner for me?”

“No no! Not an upright. Picture this: Skeets as a roomba,” Ted rushed out, and then bit the corner of his lip when that got Booster going, grinning around it. “We could take video of him harassing some cats or something and he’d become an instant internet celebrity.”

“We’d be set for life,” Booster said, still chuckling. “‘You won’t believe this video! Sentient roomba viciously attacks housecats! Secret government anti-feline conspiracy uncovered!’”

Ted stage-muttered, “That’s not the internet, that’s just certain news outlets.” He took a deeper breath and then let it out slowly; the anxiety was easing off, though Ted wasn’t sure if that was the distraction or the Ativan kicking in. “You’re going out with Jaime after I’m wheeled off?”

“I hadn’t been planning on it.” Booster scooted a hair closer and started rubbing Ted’s wrist with his free hand, massaging between the bones and then up into the tendons of Ted’s hand with his thumb. “I really was just gonna stay here until someone kicked me out.”

That impromptu hand massage felt amazing and Ted’s whole arm started relaxing under it. “What was it? Something about something happening in Pokémon Go?”

“Yeah, there’s this new raiding thing starting today. Like a pokémon takes over a gym and you have to work with other trainers to beat it up and defeat it, then you’re supposed to be able to catch it? Jaime’s been hyped up about it since the rumors started.”

Hm. Somehow, Ted’s eyes had closed, but he didn’t really need them to talk about people chasing cute pixel monsters on their phones. He thought it was a pretty brilliant game design, though; he’d found the news articles about it initially charming, if only because it had so much appeal to adults, too. “And what’s a shiny-- magic-something?”

“Magikarp. It’s like this goofy-looking fish that flops around. It’s pretty useless, but then it evolves. The normal one’s orange and the shiny one is gold. And the normal one turns into a blue gyarados and the shiny one turns into a red gyarados, which are these pretty badass looking dragons. But I have to get a whole lot of candy to evolve it, so I’ve got the magikarp as my walking buddy.”

It was all gibberish to Ted, but he was enjoying listening to Booster talk about it. He tried to picture the floppy fish; for all the gaming he did when he was a kid, though, somehow he’d managed to avoid the whole Pokémon thing, so he ultimately failed to imagine it. “You should go,” he said, slowly coming aware that his mouth was starting to feel funny. Like he was talking on a delay. “Raiding, I mean. With Jaime.”

“I don’t know. I’ll see how I feel about it when the time comes.”

Flattering as it was, the idea of his best buddy staying in the hospital waiting on tenterhooks for his triumphant post-surgical return, it wouldn’t actually make any difference to Ted; he wasn’t going to be awake for it, and by the time he was awake again, he was pretty sure that Booster would already be back because he knew that Bianca would text Jaime about it and that Jaime would make sure they got back.

And Ted liked knowing that Booster and Jaime might be out having a good time; he thought their being friends was good for both of them, really. Jaime could use other heroes in his life to learn from and he could use more friends from outside of El Paso. And Booster was plenty good at heroing, but he was also worryingly isolated in a lot of ways and in pretty dire need of more people than Ted and Skeets he could reach out to.

Ted’s mind drifted along those currents; he had intended to reiterate a suggestion for Booster to go spend the afternoon chasing pixel critters, but forgot that he hadn’t already said it. That hand massage was some kind of magic, his whole arm all the way up through his shoulders was relaxed and it felt almost like it was seeping the rest of the way from there down his spine, and maybe that meant that the Ativan was working.

He had no idea how long or short the time was, but then Booster asked, “Did I tell you that I ran into Linda a couple weeks ago?”

“Hm mm,” Ted hummed back, mind flitting lightly back to just earlier when he’d been thinking of her. He couldn’t quite figure out how to open his eyes again, but his vocal cords were still functional enough to acknowledge the question in the negative. For now, anyway.

“Yeah. I ran to the grocery store for some eggs and when I came back out, it had just started storming. And I mean, really storming. Hail, lightning, wind, major downpour, the works. And she was under the awning with me and some other people.”

There was no pinning Booster’s tone down; there was something about it that filtered through Ted’s decently medicated brain, though, and tugged on his heart.

He loved knowing he’d been in that grocery store and would eventually be again. He loved knowing that the awning was green. And he loved learning that Booster had run into his dance partner again, too.

“And we were all pressed back against the windows and laughing every time one of us made a break for it. And there was just the way people would-- look at each other and grin like this was some incredible thing happening. You know? People who had never met before and people who probably were never gonna meet again, but we were all together under this awning laughing or grinning at each other while it stormed.” There was a long moment of quiet, then Booster said, “I dunno. It just made me really happy.”

That was enough to get Ted to take the not insignificant effort to try to pry his eyes open, something in him wanting to know what expression went with words like that; what kind of unexpected joy that block of time under an awning must have been then and how that would reflect on his best friend’s face now.

He had, as something of both academic exercise and genuine contemplation, been wondering of late if -- and how -- he might end up tangled up romantically with Booster. It wasn’t an intention to, because he didn’t actually know how successful any such thing might be and was worried it might ruin their friendship, but it was definitely more than an idle thought exercise, too. He knew he was attracted to women and that hadn’t changed, he didn’t find himself automatically eying up any male bodies he happened to come across, but he also knew that how he felt about -- and for -- Booster was something altogether new to his experience, too.

There was none of the giddy, cloud-nine feeling that usually accompanied new romantic interests for Ted, but there was also the fact that Ted thought about things he wanted to turn and say to Booster about a thousand times a day. No exaggeration. It was like every cell of him just expected to turn and find Booster beside him. And there was none of the accompanying sexual interest that would normally accompany one of Ted’s romantic prospects, but there was also no revulsion or discomfort at the thought.

All in all, it was something Ted was still ticking over and doubtless would be continuing to for the foreseeable future, studying all angles and variables until he figured out what, if anything, he wanted to do with it.

But none of that crossed his mind now.

Instead, Ted drowsily looked through his eyelashes at the guy sitting on his bed, holding his hand; took in that expression of quiet, gentle warmth Booster was wearing, and didn’t realize even then that it was already too late.

That he was already in love.

The last thing he was aware of before drifting off to sleep was the kiss pressed to his brow.

Leaving that hospital room immediately rocketed up into the top ten of the I Was Not Prepared list that Booster informally kept in his head.

Mind, the I Was Not Prepared list wasn’t the same as the This Was Unexpected list, nor was it the same as the I Watched Myself Becoming a Trainwreck But Couldn’t Help Myself list. The I Was Not Prepared list was more-- neutral; for example, it included getting his first blowj*b, giving his first blowj*b, Guy Gardner (for obvious reasons), as well as some less savory things. Ted had quickly occupied all the top five spots, though. Booster had not been prepared for Ted. Or, more accurately, he had not been prepared for the effect Ted had on him. Not in any bad way, but still definitely qualifying for the I Was Not Prepared list.

Ted falling asleep while they talked about PoGo and thunderstorms had pretty much instantly activated every single last tender emotion that Booster had. All at the same time. It had been such a-- such an encompassing feeling, like there was a sun in his chest, somehow wonderful and painful at the same time. He’d kind of wanted to live in it forever, except for where he didn’t necessarily think he’d survive it.

But then the nurse and the cardiologist came in and then Booster had to leave, but he couldn’t leave without doing something, so of course he’d gone and kissed Ted on the forehead, then he’d left.

He made it three steps past the door when the realization hit: Ted was going into heart surgery.

Obviously, Booster had already known that. Logically, anyway. Factually. What he was not prepared for was the raw anxiety that punched him square in the throat when the emotional reality caught up to him.

Anxiety wasn’t exactly anything new. Ma had done her best to keep their lives as kind as possible, but she wasn’t okay herself; years of being battered by their father and failing health meant that she struggled to even function some days. She worked as many jobs as she could get and manage most of the time, but sometimes things were so bad for her that she’d lock herself in her room for two, three days at a time.

One of Michael’s earliest memories was climbing up on the kitchen counter to get the box of macbits down from the cupboards so he and Michelle could eat and falling, busting his mouth. He’d sat stunned on that floor for a second, then the pain and the sight of his own blood on the tiles and his shirt had terrified him and he’d sobbed inconsolably for-- hell, he didn’t know. At the time, it had felt like an eternity, but it probably had only been a few minutes.

Ma didn’t -- maybe couldn’t -- come out to see. Instead, it was his equally scared and teary twin who ran and grabbed a washcloth and wet it and sat with him.

What else was there to do? The bleeding stopped. His lip was swollen and the inside was cut, but it wasn’t as bad as it had felt or looked. All his baby teeth were intact. He and Shel cleaned the floor up. He had to throw his shirt away, which made him cry again. No one at school mentioned his broken mouth; people in that neighborhood didn’t talk about things like that.

Ma did her best, she worked herself almost literally to death, but Michael and Michelle both knew from a very early age that a fair bit of their survival was in their own hands.

There was food. Food was an eternal issue. Ma put them in preschool as early as she could -- they were born so late in the year that they could have and probably should have been started the following year, but she put them in early so they could for-sure eat a meal a day -- and she always tried to make sure there was easy-to-grab stuff for them, but they went hungry often enough that it dwelt in the backs of their minds constantly.

Then there was the apartment, which was lousy and drafty and cold; Gotham winters were every bit as brutal in the future, but with very little of the beauty. Then Shel had grown so fast when she hit puberty that she had serious dysphoria issues for awhile and got the wrong kind of attention from older kids and adults, being so pretty; she got very good at darting around lower Gotham in the baggiest, ugliest clothes she could and then slipping into the school bathroom to change into something that wouldn’t get her tortured by her peers.

Michael dealt with that less, but even he’d had plenty of close calls before he’d been playing high school ball and packing on enough muscle and eventually height to make most people reconsider. And no amount of muscle had saved him from that once the mob had their hooks in.

Anyway, despite living in some constant form of anxiety for most of his life, he’d somehow never had a real panic attack before university (thanks, Rubenico family), which had been a very rude awakening. And mercifully, once he was expelled and once he was out of Gotham, he didn’t have any more of them. Not even after coming to this time; if anything was gonna trigger a proper full-blown panic attack, one would think that he’d have plenty of reasons built right into the program.

Which made it really inconvenient that one would hit him now.

He probably would have found somewhere to hide if he’d been in a less busy, more familiar place; as it happened, the best he could manage was the corner of the waiting area. There was a bench there by the window; he was in it with his feet on the seat and his knees to his chest and his head down in his arms before he even had time to decide to be. His heart was rabbiting away in his chest and the urge to start sobbing like some toddler was crushing something in his throat.

C’mon, get a damn grip, he half-pleaded with himself, trying to breathe and finding it dizzyingly hard to do. He’ll be fine, people with brains are working on him, he’ll be fine.

Booster had been keeping himself busy in the weeks leading up to this; not intentionally, so much, it was just how things happened to go. So, by dint of that, he hadn’t really had much opportunity to dwell on this. He was a little nervous over it, just because it was Ted, and anything involving Ted seemed to keep him eternally off-balance, but despite what Booster thought was a sensible amount of skepticism for the medical establishment of this era, he still had a healthy respect for the kind of work and knowledge it took to become a doctor and therefore tended to trust them.

When Ma had gone in for the surgery he’d won the money for by gambling (and game rigging), he’d been relieved. Exhausted on some level, but relieved. Shel had been a little nervous, but also mostly relieved herself. The idea of anything going wrong just hadn’t crossed Michael’s mind; they had lived most of their lives with an ill mother, she was already dying, so this was-- something else, something good. Something to make things better.

He’d gotten away with it, Ma was gonna get the zero-g surgery to save her life, he could go back to building the future that was gonna get all of them out of poverty, except this time legitimately.

After she was in recovery, in a really nice hospital room, she looked so much better even just out of surgery that Michelle had crawled into the hospital bed with her and cried on her shoulder, like they were still little and not seventeen, and that had set Michael off, who didn’t have room to crawl in on the other side, but who did sit beside the bed to rub up and down Ma’s forearm with one hand and keep trying to wipe away the tears that just wouldn’t stop with the other.

Contrast to the memory of her looking at him a year later with-- with--

And the thing was, Michael knew that his mother loved him, he (hoped) knew she was just-- really horribly reminded of what his father had done to them and reacting based on that, and that she would eventually understand and forgive him. Or even just understand, even if she didn’t forgive. That was what Michelle had tried to reassure him would happen when she’d visited him right before his release from minimum security.

But the last memory he had of his mother remained her disgust with him as he was being handcuffed and led away.

Somehow, that memory, tangled around the shock of fear for Ted -- and maybe a little bit of what it had felt like to be five, tasting his own blood -- wrecked his last pathetic attempts to hold it together.

So, he curled one arm back over his head, made himself as small as he physically could, and fell apart instead.

Chapter 11: Part I: June 29th, 2017 (II)

Chapter Text

El Paso was surprisingly mild outside.

It wasn’t anything like Seattle had been -- the air was so much dryer -- but it wasn’t the same oven heat it had been over a month ago when they were training, either. And in the shade where they were sitting, it was perfectly comfortable.

“I really don’t need a guard,” Booster said, pressing the half a bottle of still-cold water to his temple in an attempt to do something about the wicked head-and-face-ache left over in the wake of that combination of panic attack and emotional breakdown. It wasn’t working yet, but hope did spring eternal. “I won’t even tell your Mom if you wanna steal Ted’s car, just-- you know, don’t crash it.”

“No can do, Skyscraper,” Jaime said, sitting beside him on the stone half-wall, knocking the heels of his sneakers against it rhythmically as he worked on taking down a Valor gym across the street. “Mom said to stick with you, and as you might have noticed, people don’t tell her no very often.”

“You’re seventeen, aren’t you supposed to be rebelling by now?”

“You first.”

Booster opened his mouth to argue that he was twenty and therefore didn’t have anything to rebel against, but then he thought about ever telling Bianca Reyes no after she told him to do something and had to close his mouth again.

Jaime started laughing at him without even looking up from his phone. Which was more proof than Booster had ever needed that Jaime really was Ted’s protégé. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Jaime said, then punched the air. “OH! EAT THAT, CHANSEYLVR6!”

“You know, you’re gonna feel really awful if you ever meet that trainer and they’re actually six.”

“No, I won’t, because that’s my gym and they shoulda known better.” Jaime stuck his strongest Rhydon (Stallone I) in there, turned his screen to show Booster, then he set his phone down beside him. “You okay?”

It probably should have been too much to expect that he’d be left alone to have an emotional meltdown without anyone noticing, but if anyone had to get involved, then it was probably for the best that it was Jaime and Bianca. Despite his willingness to poke (cruelty-free) fun at Booster normally, Jaime had been nothing but easy-going kindness this time; he’d just plunked himself on that bench beside Booster and talked at him, not seemingly expecting to even be listened to, let alone answered. And then Bianca had gotten involved; it might have been something she picked up in med-school or maybe it was something she picked up from being a mother, but she managed to just-- take charge of the whole scene seamlessly.

She sent Jaime off for water and a towel, she taught Booster a few tricks -- grounding exercises, she called them, walking him through them with steady patience until he got them -- and once she was satisfied he wasn’t actively panicking anymore, she took the damp towel her son brought back, mopped his face off for him (which, right on the heels of remembering his own mother, was almost more’n Booster could cope with), pressed the water bottle into his hand and then sat there rubbing his back until he’d finished half of it.

“Better, chico?” she had asked, when things were calm and quiet and Booster felt plenty embarrassed but no longer in total pieces, and when he nodded, she gave him one more pat on the back, a gentle order to finish the water and a somewhat less gentle order to her son to stick with him.

Which was why they were outside now and why he apparently had a diminutive bodyguard. “Yeah. Feel kinda stupid, but--” Booster half-shrugged. His hands were still shaking here or there, his head still ached, his chest felt shredded, but at least he was able to get a breath to the bottoms of his lungs.

Jaime waved it off and picked up his own bottle of water, taking a sip. “Man, I wouldn’t worry about it. If I was half as gone over someone as you are over Ted, I’d probably still be in there losing my sh*t.”

It only took that casual-as-hell statement three nanoseconds to bring back the ghosts of panic-attacks of the recent past. “I-- what--” Booster tripped all over himself, staring at Jaime with a look he knew was horrified and yet couldn’t help wearing.

He couldn’t exactly deny it with any honesty, and while he really wasn’t above lying his ass off, it was pretty lousy to do that to Jaime. Especially after earlier. Unfortunately, that didn’t leave Booster too many exit strategies for this conversation, so he kept verbally flailing, “--how--? I don’t-- No.”

Jaime raised one eyebrow so high it disappeared under his bangs. “Dude, are you trying to tell me you’re not crazy about him--?”

Booster closed his mouth with a click of his teeth, standing up, face hot. “I’m-- god, I’m not having this conversation with a kid.”

He regretted it pretty much instantly, because Jaime looked incredulous for a second, then pissed. But even worse, he looked hurt. “Excuse me? How old are you again?” he asked, scowling, standing and crossing his arms just like his mother had earlier. “Are you seriously gonna pull that card on me?”

“I’m sorry,” Booster said, because he definitely didn’t have any leg to stand on in this case. “I didn’t mean--” He dropped his head back and blew a harsh breath out at the sky, trying to calm back down. Again. “I don’t feel twenty a lot of the time, is all. So I get--” he gave a little gesture, then just sighed.

There was a long moment, then Jaime said, “It’s okay. And look, it’s not like I’m gonna march in there and say, ‘oh hi Ted, why haven’t you noticed your blond skyscraper looking at you like you’re the center of his universe?’ So, y’know, chill.”

“I’m chilled. Cool as a cucumber.” Booster dropped his head down, took another, slower breath and then looked back up at Jaime. “Frosty.”

Jaime rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth was up. “Okay, old man. C’mon, wanna go raiding? I saw a pink egg about to hatch at the library, and on the way back is Mom’s favorite coffee shop, if you wanna grab her a thank-you gift.”

Booster thought about it, turning to look up at the hospital for a moment as he wrestled with it. “Just the one?”

“Sure. Just the one.” Then Jaime scowled again and poked him in the shoulder. “But I swear, you blow me off because you wanna sit like some pining bride waiting for your almost-boyfriend next time there’s an awesome event--”

“Like GoFest in Chicago on the 22nd next month?” Booster asked, offering his best conciliatory look, changing the subject as fast as he could, firmly refusing to examine the idea of the word boyfriend anywhere in the same vicinity as Ted. Unless he wanted to spend the rest of the damn day flustered, anyway.

Jaime’s face lit up at that and then he got a worrying gleam in his eyes. “I might be willing to forgive you if you buy my ticket.”

Booster held his hands up. “Deal.”

“And I think we should go in costume.”

“--maybe less deal.”

“Oh, c’mon. You're a Team Instinct player and your trainer name is literally TheGoldStandard!” Jaime started off in the direction of the library after retrieving his phone. “Nobody is gonna be surprised that that’s Booster Gold’s account. And I bet we’d score some sick merch.”

“That’s only my trainer name because someone else got my actual name.” Booster followed after one last glance back, then finally pulled his phone out to fire up Pokémon Go. And if he had to keep reminding himself that Ted would be fine, that his physical presence at the hospital didn’t make any difference, so be it. “I seriously do wonder who the hell that Booster Gold is, though, not gonna lie.”

“Maybe we’d find out in Chicago. You know. If we go in costume.”

“I dunno, isn’t that a potentially fun but really irresponsible thing to do?”

Jaime paused and smirked up at him. “Yeah, maybe, but the Justice League would hate it.”

Booster worked his jaw for all of two seconds, knowing full well Jaime was playing him like a fiddle, before going, “Okay. Costumes it is.”

Jaime boogied across the road, dancing over the crosswalk. “Yes!”

“You still owe me a keyring, though.”

“Fine,” Jaime said, stopping on the other side and beaming as he pointed at Booster. “But you better bring me one of those lunch boxes when they go out for real.”

Booster smiled at that, the first time since leaving Ted’s room. “I can do that.”

“Did you come back just to check on me?”

Bianca chuckled, a familiar-shaped shadow in the doorway, backlit by the lights in the hall. “That so hard to believe?”

“I dunno, I don’t like going back to work once I escape it.” Ted smiled and let his head rest back against the pillow; he was still floating on the narcotics, but he was at least allowed to sit up some now. He could feel a distant ache on both sides of his groin where they’d threaded the wires in, he was kinda woozy, his throat felt sorta messed up and raw and he already knew he was gonna sleep through most of tomorrow, but he was also on the other side of it and still kickin’.

Getting out of surgery had been-- nothing. Unpleasant, because the first time he was briefly awake, they took the tube out of his throat, and then because his liver came back ‘online’ before his stomach did, but Booster and Jaime had indeed been back, so the third time Ted woke up, he wasn’t necessarily all there, but he was able to talk and reassure and feel relief himself, at least in some part.

He wasn’t quite ready to be relieved in full, he wouldn’t be that until he knew it worked, but he was glad it was over and very grateful for the help he’d gotten so far. “Thanks for pulling all those strings for me, boss.”

“You’re welcome.” Bianca stepped in and walked over, setting a tupperware container on the bedside tray beside the lunch box and the other, yet-unopened gift, checking the monitors for a moment. “How’s the pain?”

“Not what it’ll probably be tomorrow. Sore, but whatever they keep putting in my IV’s treating me well.” Ted mused on it for a moment, eying that container curiously. It wasn’t uncommon for the Reyes family to send along food; both Bianca and Alberto were handy in the kitchen, and after they and Ted were comfortable with each other, they’d regularly make sure he was being fed. Which-- god, there were times that nearly made Ted cry, it was so kind. “I wonder if they roto-rootered when they were in there,” he added, grinning some. “Give me a jumpstart on combating the gooey cholesterol buildup from the inadvisable stuff I’m gonna eat once I have a clean bill of health.”

That startled Bianca into a laugh, though she tried to keep it down; hospitals weren’t really quiet places, but it was late enough that even Ted was keeping his voice hushed.

Well, that and Booster conked out on his other side. Ted had tried to get him to go to the house where there was a proper bed, but then Ted had fallen back to sleep -- ass thoroughly kicked by the anesthesia and presumably the surgery -- and woke up intermittently to find he was definitely not being listened to. Booster tried at one point to claim he’d leave when visiting hours were over, but he’d made that claim fifteen minutes after they had ended, then played dumb until Ted threw in a white flag and dozed back off.

He’d only woken up and felt genuinely alert for the first time twenty minutes ago.

“Even if they did, you should still stay away from the fast food,” Bianca said, walking around the bed just to eye Booster, who somehow had managed to curl his entirely too-tall self up enough to sleep on the two chairs that usually sat by the windows. Ted had seriously wondered if Booster was somehow breaking some kind of physical law of the universe to manage that, but damned if all six-foot-three of the man hadn’t become a compact ball wrapped in a thin hospital blanket. “I couldn’t sleep like that even when I was that age,” Bianca added, shaking her head slowly back and forth in either amazement or dismay. Or both.

Ted was reasonably sure he was the only one outside of Skeets who had some idea how deep Booster’s sleep deficit actually ran, initially because Skeets told him and then just via observation. If Booster was crashed hard enough to sleep in that position, through people talking around him, then there was a good chance he was pretty exhausted even by his usual f*cked up metrics. “I tried to chase him off to a real bed. Guess I’ll just have to see if he’ll let me send him to a chiropractor instead.”

Bianca shook her head again, this time more seriously, then somehow found a socked foot sticking out of the ball that comprised Ted’s best friend enough to tug on. “Michael, wake up,” she sing-songed, in that tone that parents seemed to pick up at the same time they were handed their first-born’s birth certificate. “Visiting time’s over.”

Booster made some noise of protest that was cute enough that it made Ted grin and then tried to pull his foot into his cocoon, but space was at a serious premium in that weird torture-bracket of a sleep surface, so he ultimately failed. After apparently realizing the futility, he shifted a little and then muttered, “Ow.”

“I tried to tell you,” Ted said, with a chuckle. “But your stubborn ass refused to listen.”

“So did the stubborn rest of me,” Booster quipped back, half-muffled, before starting the process of unfolding himself from his origami form, wincing all the while.

“I brought chicken empanadas,” Bianca said, wincing herself in what seemed to be a sympathetic response to the number of joints popping, even if none of them were hers. “There’s enough to feed both of you.”

Those empanadas were Ted’s favorite thing that Alberto made and the realization that probably they’d been made specifically because they were his favorite made his throat ache a little from something that wasn't related to a breathing tube. “Thank you. And thank your husband?”

“I will. You up for eating now, Ted?”

Ted thought about it; he’d had no desire to touch the hospital food at dinner time, but that was hospital food, and even though Booster had offered to sneak out and get him something more appealing, he hadn’t been that interested then. But now? After not eating for almost twenty-four hours? “Hell yeah,” he concluded, reaching over gingerly to get the tupperware.

“You still haven’t opened your present?” Booster asked, rubbing at his eyes, frowning a little.

“I wanted to wait until we were both properly awake at the same time.” Ted said, pulling the lid off and making a happy little noise at the sight of the empanadas. Still vaguely warm, too. He snagged one and then held the container out to Booster. “You have to try these, they’re my favorite.”

Between the two of them, they managed to murder that entire container in record time; they were so quick and efficient that Bianca laughed at them while they were sheepishly cleaning their hands and faces off with paper towels from the bathroom. “If I’d known they were going to go that fast, I’d have had ‘Berto make double.”

“Those were really amazing,” Booster said, taking the tupperware off of Ted’s lap and putting the lid back on to offer it to Bianca, who’d stolen the other half of his ‘bed’ to sit on.

“Good. You can have more when we get back to the house,” she said, taking the container.

There were a few lonnnnng seconds of silence where Ted was waiting for that penny to drop, busying himself with picking up the other gift from the tray so he wouldn’t be seen smiling.

“I was just gonna stay here,” Booster tried, sounding adorably apologetic. Which was a valiant attempt, really; pity it was doomed from the start. “And I mean, it’s already almost midnight.”

Bianca nodded, folding her hands on the top of the tupperware. “You’re right, it is almost midnight. But you’re not staying here.”

Booster turned a little to eye Ted in a very recognizable ‘back me up?’ manner, then looked back at Bianca again. “My driver’s license isn’t real, I probably shouldn’t be driving Ted’s car.”

“Okay, leaving aside the question of why you have a fake license, I didn’t say you were going to Ted’s house,” Bianca pointed out, with that perfect composure that Ted had learned the hard way meant she had already gotten her way and was just waiting for everyone else to grasp it. “I’ve already texted my husband to get the air mattress ready.”

“Ted?” Booster asked, plaintively enough to tug on Ted’s heart, looking at him for help.

It was a really effective look, too; not giving into it took a surprising amount of willpower. Still, all Ted could do was press his mouth into a line ruefully. “Sorry, Boost. Doc Reyes outranks me.”

“He’ll be asleep most of the night anyway,” Bianca pointed out, kindly. “And if you’re going to be helping him for a few days, then you’ll need your spine to work correctly.”

Despite the overall lighter mood, it was pretty clear to Ted (and probably Bianca) that Booster really wasn’t happy about it. But after a moment more of looking between them, he finally huffed. “To the end of the line, huh?” he asked Ted, with a decent dash of salt in his voice.

Are you railroading me again? Ted got the reference and half-smiled. “Choo-choo.”

Booster’s shoulders slumped and he rubbed at his eyes again. “At least open your other gift first?”

“Was planning on it,” Ted said, not quite sure where the urge to pet his best buddy like a sad cat came from; not wanting to be weird by doing something like that out of left field, he curbed it for the moment by patting on the gift instead. “You okay, though?”

That won him a softer look, then Booster pointed to the package. “Yeah. C’mon, I wanna see what you think. I went all the way to Iowa for it.”

“Iowa? What could come from Iowa? Aside from a Flash or two?” Ted asked, more for the sake of keeping the lines of communication open than because he needed an answer. Unlike last time, he even worked the tape open carefully, rather than tearing into it.

“Fricken corn,” Booster muttered. “Corn and more corn, then whatever the other stuff is. The green stuff, low to the ground. I was so damn bored flying that I almost crashed a dozen times. And that was with Skeets to keep me company.”

“Soybeans.” Ted smiled, shaking his head. “I might be a city boy, but I’m still a Midwesterner. We can recognize that stuff from orbit.” The box inside the paper was plain brown cardboard, so he got into that next. And then there was tissue paper. But when he finally got to the gift -- gifts -- it took him a second to recognize what--

...

“Oh my god,” he whispered, holding the action figure of Nite Owl II, the one that had been made two decades before he was born. “Oh my god,” he repeated, chest aching. He stared at it, vision blurring, then pulled the other one out and found it was the original Nite Owl.

And in an instant, Ted was six and wearing a homemade cowl and goggles, a miniature Dan Drieberg on a mission for his mentor, running around playing that he was the superhero from the comics his Dad gave him, and then he was twenty-six again and sobbing, shocked right into it.

And he knew he had to be worrying Booster and Bianca, but he couldn’t have explained it even if he could stop crying long enough to; he didn’t know how to dig out words to convey just how much of his childhood had been wrapped up in looking to Danny Drieberg and Hollis Mason for inspiration. How much time he’d spent emulating his heroes, how much all those hours of daydreaming and make-believe still influenced his own hero career.

Or how lonely he’d been as a small kid; good at making friends, but only until they found out that he was grades ahead of them and from a rich family. Or how much comfort he took reading from those stacks of Nite Owl comics, the best thing Dad ever gave him, because if Dad couldn’t be a role model, then he’d at least given Ted some good ones instead.

He’d gone into gymnastics because of those comics; he’d gone into martial arts for the same reason. And he’d ultimately even thought to become Jaime’s mentor because once Hollis had been Danny’s, the first time a superhero in a comic series passed on a mantle to a younger protégé.

He tried to force out an apology and couldn’t get a word out, but then Booster was sitting on the edge of the bed looking both anxious and apologetic himself, from what Ted could make out through the blur of tears, so Ted got the arm without the IV line in around the man and tugged until Booster got the hint and hugged back. Which took less than a second, really.

When Booster tried to apologize himself, Ted shook his head against Booster’s shoulder and squeezed on him as hard as a guy recovering from surgery could with only one arm.

“Shh, Ted, you’re probably straining your incisions,” Bianca said, quietly, petting through his hair from the other side. “Try to breathe slower, okay?”

Ted had his face buried in Booster’s shoulder, but he nodded, hand twisted in his best friend’s t-shirt. He tried swallowing with his vaguely sore throat. Okay. Breathe slower. He could do that.

It took him a few tries, but between Bianca’s shushing and petting and Booster’s solid and warm presence, he finally managed to get it back under decent control. “Sorry,” he was able to eventually choke out, a bit muffled for still hiding his face.

“Why are you apologizing? I knew I shoulda just sent them with the encyclopedia,” Booster said back, sounding unsettled, still wrapped around Ted kinda like a koala.

Someone shattering into tears after a birthday present that damn nice probably would be pretty alarming; Ted shook his head again and poked Booster in the flank in a kind of gentle reproval. It took him another good minute to get his voice back for real; given he wasn’t exactly in a rush to be let go of, Ted turned his face out of Booster’s shoulder and rested his cheek against it instead, not opening his eyes. “No. S’perfect, I swear. How’d you find ‘em?”

Booster loosened up one arm, apparently just so he could rub Ted’s back. “Uhm-- it wasn’t-- I mean, it wasn’t easy, but-- but Skeets and I started searching for them a couple months ago? I don’t mean-- I mean, not eBay or anything.”

Ted deliberately took slower, deeper breaths this time; still not easy, but Booster was clearly kinda rattled yet, so Ted being calm would only help. “I have custom web searches that run three times a day checking-- checking eBay, Craigslist, that kinda thing,” he said, after swallowing again; a couple new tears fell, and Bianca gave him another pet, but he could feel himself settling down, too. “I never found any that weren’t like-- an arm here or there. Or a leg. Not even enough to reassemble. Once I found Danny’s cowl, but it was in such bad shape I passed on it.”

“Remember that town in New York we went to? The chicken-obsessed one?” Booster asked, and sure enough, Ted calming down seemed to help. When Ted nodded, Booster went on, “Okay, so they had this little free community newspaper stacked in the front of the chicken place, these things that apparently only run once a week? But it turns out a lot of little towns have those. And I mean-- it’s actually kinda crazy how many. But all these little community papers have local buy-and-sell ads in them.”

Ted could already see the shape of Booster’s detective work and despite his tears, he started grinning. Bianca apparently also realized what Ted did -- how clever that actually was -- and said, “Oh, that’s very smart.”

“I dunno. I mean-- a lot of them have websites too, or blogs attached to them. So Skeets and I searched out all of them we could find and Skeets checked them every day for us. The ones that had an online mirror. And then that ad came up last month, after Jaime’s birthday.” As if he’d read Ted’s mind, Booster reassured, “They didn’t actually cost that much -- but I’m not telling you how much because that’s not how gifts work -- because this really old guy in Brooklyn, Iowa had them. He had to have been ninety if he was a day. And I’m not kidding, when I got there, this guy told me a story about how the aliens abducted him once and that the mothership was apparently four football fields long and summoned with mind power. Ted, this town had like-- an old hotel, and it was cute, but it was surrounded by corn to the horizon and I swear, why the aliens would come to Brooklyn, Iowa is completely beyond me. Let alone to, uh-- probe this guy. But apparently he was a looker when he was young? According to him?”

That was such an unexpected non sequitur that Ted was laughing instantly, and beside them, Bianca got going herself; she had a drier sense of humor than Ted -- more like Booster’s, actually -- but there was nothing that wasn’t funny about that. Especially picturing what expression Booster must have been wearing while he was being told this story.

It did intensify the ache from the incisions, but Ted was still glad for that laugh.

Booster sounded kinda pleased with himself as he went on, “Anyway, I had to answer eight different pretty obscure Nite Owl trivia questions without looking at my phone or anything before he’d sell them to me. But since I’d already read through all your copies, I was able to. And I swear, he coulda lit the whole town he was so happy someone who really cared was gonna have them, especially when I told him that they were for an even bigger fan than I was.”

Bianca was still chuckling. “Did you stay in the hotel?”

“Actually, yeah. It really was-- I dunno, I’ve never stayed anywhere like that before. Really old by comparison to every other place I’ve stayed. It had radiators by the windows. The owner gave me lemonade, like actual fresh-squeezed lemonade, and I sat on the porch and watched the nonexistent traffic and the occasional train. There were silos across the road. I was the only one staying there that night.”

Booster had buzz-sawed his way the rest of the way through Ted’s entire Nite Owl collection when he’d stayed over last month, so he woulda had any trivia right in the front of his mind. It really was clever, too, how he’d found those two action figures; Ted never would have taken such an analog approach, it just never would have crossed his mind to.

He pulled his face back finally, rubbing the last of the tears off with the heel of his palm. “They’re perfect. I’ve been-- god, I’ve been looking for these since I was a kid. They only made one matched set of both Nite Owls and that was back in the 70s.”

“I remember you saying something like that,” Booster didn’t seem ready to let Ted go; Ted was entirely tempted to just go right back to practically cuddling the guy himself, but he really kind of agreed with Bianca’s attempted railroading and even just that brief stint of crying had Ted feeling wiped right out. “I figured that it’d mostly be older people who still had them,” Booster added, “and then I figured older people don’t usually advertise on the internet, and it all kinda fell into place after that.”

“Thank you,” Ted said, with every bit of the heartfelt sincerity warming his chest. He loosened his arm enough to signal that he was good, though he could all but literally feel the reluctance from Booster over doing the same.

But finally Booster pulled back enough to look Ted in the face. “Uh-- happy birthday, mark II? Or-- or happy surgery day, or--” He gnawed on his bottom lip for a moment, then said, “I really can stay here, I mean I’ve definitely slept in worse places, I don’t mind.”

“I know. But she’s right, I’m wiped. I’m just gonna be asleep anyway,” Ted said, using the arm not still loosely around his best friend to carefully set the two Nite Owls up on the tray with the lunchbox, making sure they were standing upright. “And I’ll sleep better not looking over to find the crimes you’d be committing against your spine when you transfigure into the human pretzel.”

Booster’s expression was such a mix of distress and frustration that Ted found himself glancing around, trying to figure out if there was a way to fit both of them in that bed. But even on a good day that would have been a stretch, albeit not an impossible one, and if Ted was going to start cuddling Booster on that level, then he’d rather a better place than this to make the attempt. So, he gave up pretty quick and pressed the best smile he could when confronted with Sad Cat Best Buddy. “I’ll be fine, if that’s what you’re stressing about.” Then he thumbed over towards the tray. “I’ve got three of my favorite superheroes here to protect me.”

That seemed like it caught Booster off guard and he blinked, eyebrows drawing as he looked at the tray. “Three? But there’s--” Then he clearly caught up, spotting the way Ted had lined the Nite Owls to stand with his own cartoon self, because he flushed. “Oh.”

That got Ted grinning for real and he gave Booster one more squeeze before planting a hand flat against his chest to nudge him back. “Yeah. So go. Bring me something good for breakfast, but not too early.”

“Make friends with a guy and the next thing you know, he’s bossing you around--” Booster said, and it only took Ted a few seconds to remember his own lament in the pizzeria in Queens.

“Hey, at least there are 100% fewer preteens barking at you.” Ted beamed broadly, gave Booster one last push, then sank back fully against the pillows.

“I’m sure there’s a story there,” Bianca said, reaching over to give Booster a tug. “C’mon, chico, you can explain it in the car.”

This time, the tag-team approach worked; still looking more like a death-row convict taking the final walk, Booster got his shoes on, then got up and collected his phone from the windowsill, put the chairs back, gave Ted the extra blanket back, and then he slouched towards the door in the most pathetic, hang-dog manner. If Ted wasn’t worried that giving any hint of an opening would prolong the attempt to say goodnight, he woulda teased about it, but instead he just tried not to smile too much.

But it was ultimately Booster who got in the last word; he got most of the way to the door, then came back, braced both hands on either side of Ted’s head, and planted a kiss right between Ted’s eyebrows. “‘Night, Teddy.”

Then he headed for the door again while Ted’s face started going hot.

But even after they were gone, Ted was still ticking that over, at least until he slid back under the surface of consciousness.

His academic exercise kept creeping more and more into genuine contemplation with every day that passed.

They almost didn’t make it out of the hospital.

Bianca had an early shift, but she was used to long hours and she had wanted to come back to check on Ted and Michael, the former of whom had been mostly sleeping when she got off work, the latter of whom had glued himself to Ted’s side the moment Ted was out of recovery and hadn’t really budged since. ‘Berto made Ted’s favorite empanadas, too, so she’d packed a fairly large container with enough to feed both young men and headed back.

Playing part time guardian for more superheroes than her own son had been less of a decision than it had been intuitive, albeit not instantly so. Ted had been reserved and standoffish until he and Jaime managed to get on the same page and Bianca hadn’t trusted this mega-rich outsider initially; it was actually ‘Berto who had bonded with Ted first when Ted had stopped by the service station looking for Jaime and then ended up grabbing a wrench and helping ‘Berto clear his backlog for the rest of the evening.

‘Berto had dragged him home after, Ted apologizing the whole time from the doorway with smudges of grease on his face, and when Bianca saw Ted standing there with his nice dress shirt shop-floor-filthy and ‘Berto cheerfully informed her that the shop’s backlog was cleared, that was pretty much it. She steered Ted in, pushed him in the direction of the bathroom with a mild order to clean himself up, made him a plate of leftover dinner and never bothered to look back.

Ted was incredibly sweet and big-hearted, apt to cover up insecurity with a quip, and it was just-- easy to fold him into their lives after that.

(Bianca considered Guy theirs, too, even if he sometimes needed a reminder to watch his mouth; Guy had started off all blustery and loud-mouthed, but once he got over his ring’s instinctive scarab-hate, he came around more. He clearly cared for Jaime and openly adored Milagro -- and it was mutual! -- and now that Bianca had finally met Tora and Beatriz last month, she was fairly pleased with how Guy’s life was going. He was some closer to her age than Ted was, but he’d obviously had a hell of a bad start and still benefited from a plate of food and a good hug just the same.)

So, when she’d met Michael last month, she’d already been primed for the whole ‘accidental superhero acquisition’ business and accepted instantly that if he kept coming around, he would inevitably also become theirs. And him being so close to Jaime’s age meant that since he’d appeared that morning, looking mildly frazzled after a very early flight, the inevitable had basically become now.

Even getting him out of that wing and off of that floor had taken Bianca looping an arm through his and using it as something of a leash on the way to the elevator. She’d known that Michael was worried about Ted -- though she didn’t necessarily think worry was a strong enough word -- but she had thought that probably it would dissipate once it was clear Ted was safe out of surgery and recovering well.

It didn’t.

By the time they arrived on the ground floor, Michael was trying -- still politely -- to free his arm. Bianca didn’t let him; in fact, she’d dropped her tupperware off at the nurse’s station upstairs just in case she needed two hands to wrangle him. “I don’t have to sleep here,” he was saying -- almost babbling, honestly -- and dragging his feet, “I can just sit there and read on my phone or something, I can catch up on my sleep tomorrow after Ted’s home.”

“What do you think will happen if you leave?” she asked, curiously, using her linked-elbow-leash to pull him out of the elevator and towards the doors.

If he decided to really dig his heels in, Bianca knew she wasn’t budging him. And she couldn’t actually force the issue, beyond making sure he wasn’t allowed back in the building until morning, which would be pointlessly cruel. That left her relying on the fact that most young people tended to instinctively obey older adults even after becoming adults themselves; hell, even Ted still deferred to her seemingly on instinct and he’d just turned twenty-six.

Which was to say, Michael didn’t stand much of a chance.

“I don’t know,” Michael said, an undertone of pleading in his voice. “What if some random shooter decides to break in? Or what if someone knows who he is and decides to try to get to him while he’s in there and can’t fight back?”

Bianca set aside any thoughts of what time it was and let him go once the doors closed behind them. She nodded towards them. “Try to open those.”

He eyed her like he was waiting for a trick, then tried the doors. Of course, they had been locked since visiting hours had ended. “There are other ways into the building, though,” he said, tilting his head back and looking around the door frame. “And those aren’t bulletproof. Right?”

“Ever hear of the term ‘catastrophizing’?” Bianca asked, leaning against a support pillar while she watched Michael test the door frame, then walk out to look up at the hospital building.

The wary look he gave her was a little baffling, but he said, “I’m supposing it’s related to the word catastrophe.”

“It’s the tendency for some people to start thinking of all of the worst case scenarios when they’re anxious, and then assume that all of those scenarios are much more likely to happen than they could be,” she explained, keeping her tone relaxed. “It’s an attempt to cope with something, if dysfunctionally. The idea that if we can just think of all possible variables, we’ll be prepared for them and if we’re prepared for them, then we can somehow prevent them. Or survive them. Whichever the case may be.”

She had his full attention now, though he didn’t necessarily look happy about that fact.

She nodded towards the doors. “What do you think the actual odds are that something will happen while we’re not here?”

Michael looked at her for a long moment, then said, “I’m from the twenty-fifth century and I have an artificially intelligent security ‘bot managing my finances. My best friend dressed as a giant dung beetle so he could punch villains and now your son has a formerly homicidal piece of alien tech welded to his spine so he can do the same. I-- don’t know if that’s the most solid spot to debate from?”

He had a point and Bianca had to laugh, because that was all very true, but still a misdirection. Whether Michael meant it to be or not. “Just-- tell me, truthfully, how likely do you feel it is that someone’s going to decide to shoot their way into this particular hospital on a Thursday night?”

Michael crossed his arms and looked a little smoky, but he didn’t answer that.

“And how likely is it that someone will know who he is, then find their way into the building and somehow get to him before anyone can stop them?” she asked next.

“They could have infiltrated the hospital before now in anticipation of it?”

Between that panic attack earlier and this intense and not-quite-rational paranoia now, if this kid hadn’t been diagnosed with some kind of anxiety disorder before this, then medical professionals along the way had failed him hard. Even allowing for mitigating circ*mstances.

Bianca nodded in acknowledgment, then asked, “How could they have ever even known? Ted’s never worn his costume regularly in El Paso and never in public. I can’t imagine his usual rogues would even know who he is, let alone that he was going to schedule heart surgery here in El Paso for today. He doesn’t have a rogue’s gallery anything as dangerous as Superman or Batman. So-- how likely is that scenario?”

Michael didn’t even try to argue this time. He just closed his eyes and asked, softly, “Please don’t make me leave him?”

That was a lot harder to talk around. Bianca thought for a couple moments, then said, “I can’t make you do anything. I can’t stop you if you want to sit out here all night and wait for them to open those doors again. But Michael-- that’s not what Ted wanted for you. And that’s not what I want for you. The ball’s in your court, but I would feel a lot better if you came home with me. And if you do, I’ll bring you back when I come in for work if you want.” She glanced at her watch, then back at him. “So, five and half hours from now, you can be right back here and I’ll walk you in myself.”

“Five and a--” He cut himself off and shook his head. “Sorry I’ve kept you here.”

“I’m not. So, will you come with me?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

He turned back to look back at the building, looking in the direction he’d left Ted, then heaved a sigh out. “Yeah.” Then he offered his arm with an apologetic half-smile.

“Good,” Bianca said, looping her arm through his again and leading them to the parking deck.

(She did bring Michael back, but rather than going in right away, he disappeared out into El Paso and came back with her favorite coffee, a fresh danish and a carry-out container of pancakes and turkey bacon for Ted. Bianca decided then and there that they weren’t giving this accidentally acquired superhero back, either.)

Chapter 12: Part I: July 21st, 2017

Chapter Text

July 21st, 2017

“I maintain that this would be easier in a pool,” Ted said, though given his tone, he was kvetching to kvetch -- his term -- and was perfectly content with where they were.

Booster had never been in any body of water larger than a hot tub or a cold water post-game bath before, so obviously he’d wanted to jump into Lake Michigan. It was upwards of 90 out and it wasn’t the dry heat of El Paso; this heat clung to the body, making clothes stick in wildly uncomfortable ways and in insanely uncomfortable places, and so naturally he wanted to wear as little as possible and the best place to get away with wearing very little -- outside of a strip club -- was the beach. The incredible amount of blue and water was just a bonus.

And that wasn’t even taking into account a Ted wearing nothing but swim goggles and trunks. Which meant this could well either be Booster’s very personal heaven or his very personal hell. Unless there was a weird personal purgatory where you were being tortured with the appealing sight of the unaware object of your affections?

Hell if he knew. There was a reason he body-swerved religion like it was a wharf rat hissing from the storm drain.

He'd thought about going out to some of the Long Island beaches before, maybe as an afternoon trip, but the ocean intimidated him every bit as much as he was fascinated by it. By his time, the oceans were very barren; mostly, they existed as giant vats to grow specialized algae, which in turn became the building blocks of most food sources. Storms could rage, but the vast bumpers and floats and dividers kept the surface anywhere near shore fairly smooth; to let it get wild would be to risk starving some large portion of the roughly two billion people inhabiting Earth at any given time.

In this time, waves roared ashore and smashed against rocks and the first time he’d stood on an unsheltered walk next to an unfettered ocean had left him so awed that he didn’t even remember the walk back to the motel. His face was windburned and he was cold enough that he took the warmest shower he could coax out of the motel’s hot-water heaters, and then sat shivering wrapped in the cheap blankets after.

But even as he did, he was still reliving the reverberation of water pounding the shore, a low and bone-shaking boom that felt like it changed the very rhythm of his heart right through the soles of his shoes. He was still tasting salt, flecks of seawater spray flung by the wind, long after it had to have been impossible to.

Lake Michigan was cheerful by comparison to that; the waves were nonexistent today, and given the rental Ted had chosen, the largely private beach was likewise quiet. Down the way, one of the various public beaches that lined the North Shore was busier -- Jaime, Brenda and Paco had immediately abandoned them to go investigate the more social scene, in fact -- but there had been no talk of Booster and Ted going that direction.

If one was going to half-ass some swimming lessons, then it couldn’t be a better day for it, or a better location. And, ulterior motives about getting to see the man in trunks aside, Booster wouldn’t have wanted them from anyone but Ted anyway.

Booster shrugged, drawing his hands through the water in a wide arc around himself, feeling the resistance against his palms. “Easier, sure, but way less pretty,” he said, as he pretended with award-winning composure that he was referring to the lake and not his oblivious instructor in said lake. Though the lake was also pretty.

(Not spending six nights a week basically naked with people pinching him had essentially restored his libido, at least in a very selective way aimed at auburn-haired guys with a penchant for the color blue. With-- the occasional fantasy appearance of a carrot-topped Lantern, because Guy had left quite an impression. A resurrected libido was kind of inconvenient, though also conditionally welcomed; if nothing else, showers were a lot more fun.)

"Yeah, but with a pool you can practice kicking by holding onto the side. For an example.” Ted looked around; he had so much sunscreen on his face and shoulders that there was a glaze of it left on his skin even after being in the water awhile. Not enough to hide the birthmark on the back of one shoulder. He smelled like artificial coconut, which was definitely not Booster’s favorite scent, and Booster still would have happily buried his face in Ted’s neck for a snootful. “I mean, out here all you have to hold onto is me,” Ted added.

Booster stared at him for a second or two -- with his broad shoulders and copious chest hair, with his bright blue eyes and devastating grin -- then swallowed down a groan and just let himself slide below the surface because it was that or die right there.

He was laying sort-of on the floor of Lake Michigan in a speedo and goggles and the guy he was absolutely head over heels for was mostly naked and entirely beautiful, and this was the single worst idea Booster had ever had in his life. He was for sure going to die before this was over.

But, he had to allow as he stared up through the water at the distorted image of his best friend looking down at him in what was undoubtedly a bemused fashion, there were definitely worse ways to go.

Ted, of course, really was oblivious to his slow, accidental murder of Michael Carter, aka Booster Gold, aka That Hopelessly Lovesick Dope.

Not so much because he actually was that unobservant, but because he just wasn’t expecting it. For one, Ted still hadn’t figured out that he was already gone over Booster himself because he hadn’t experienced falling for someone from this angle before; he knew how he felt was different, yeah, but not necessarily which flavor of different it was. (And he hadn’t yet had it tested enough to realize just how deep it already ran.) And for two, he didn’t think Booster was even a little interested in him romantically right now; Ted had already concluded from available evidence that poor Booster was mostly just really contact-starved and lonely and Ted was the person he was most comfortable with physically and emotionally. Which Ted was fine with, obviously; he held the trust inherent in that inside his heart.

And-- none of those things kept Ted from checking his best friend out.

Ted wasn’t even being sneaky about it; if Booster didn’t want people giving him a lingering once-over (or several), then there were plenty of things he could have chosen to either do differently or not do at all. For example, he could have worn something a little more substantial. If a man decides to wear something swimming that could fit into the back pocket of a pair of sheer slacks without ruining the line and nothing else -- goggles don’t count! -- he should be prepared to be looked at. And they really could have gone to a pool; the pool wouldn’t necessarily provoke more clothing, but there would probably be more distractions there.

Still, despite Ted not trying to be sly about it, Booster didn’t seem to notice. Which was also fine by Ted, because he hadn’t yet worked his way through it all, either academic or otherwise. If he got caught now, he could always joke his way out the other side.

The question at the heart of his contemplation of his best buddy’s almost naked body was whether or not he could figure out an angle that would lead to a sexual interest on his part.

Ted tended to be willing to try anything at least once. He’d never really contemplated getting it on with another guy, but it was pretty simple to conclude that if he were going to get it on with another guy, it would absolutely be this particular guy. But there was a pretty significant difference between being willing and truly wanting, and that was where Ted was currently camped, working over variables: Could he want Booster?

Now that the ablation was out of the way, Ted had been spending the past four weeks just-- getting over the surgery. Not physically, that was surprisingly easy; he did sleep through the next day and was kinda sore and slow for a few more, his chest ached sometimes, he got weird heartburn for the first two weeks, his heart was still beating a little faster than it normally should (which would resolve over the next few months hopefully), but it had been nowhere as bad as his worst fears. But he’d still been spending the past weeks in realigning his world-view.

Again.

Ted had been wrestling with how to navigate this whole situation with his heart for two years; being this close to a clean bill of health and the ability to pull his costume on again for real was-- intense. He’d started ramping his physical training routine back up a couple weeks ago, being mindful about how hard or far he was pushing; he’d had a few very early instances of tachycardia (supposedly normal in the immediate post-ablation period), and he wasn’t yet ready to go anywhere as hard as he used to, but just being able to work out without the soul-rending frustration of his heart running off without provocation was huge.

He’d realized before all this how much he actually loved being able to swing himself through the air and do a flip from standing, but the first time post-surgery that he was able to get back to the rings and run all the way through an admittedly short routine without having to stop had made him sit down and cry into his elbow, chalk flaking off of his hands.

Beyond working out and starting to tentatively plan his return to costume, the ablation being over left Ted room mentally to start more deeply contemplating the potential rewards and complications of being romantically entangled with tall blond superheroes.

“Know what helps with floating?” he asked, as he tried to teach Booster how to back float yet again; he was having fun, but Booster was getting increasingly frustrated with his inability to get it. Which wasn’t really being fair with himself, Ted thought; for a guy who’d never even been in a pool, let alone an inland sea, he took to the water like a duck dog. He just was having a particularly hard time with this part, and the main reason for that was because he was all muscle and bone.

“An inflatable floaty-thing shaped like a shark with a little pillow and a cup holder?” Booster asked back; the muscles on either side of his spine were so tense over Ted’s hand that it was like holding up a piece of rebar trapped between a couple girders. “A life jacket? Those silly little arm things, even.”

“Body fat,” Ted said back, smiling and shaking his head. “There’s a place not too far from here that makes a banana split as big as your head for six bucks. I’m totally taking you there later.”

Currently, the only thing holding Booster up was Ted; he kept flinching even when they didn’t move, like he was expecting something awful to happen. Despite that they were only chest deep and he could put his feet on the lake floor. “I’m pretty bad at putting on weight,” Booster admitted, staring up at the sky. “I mean, I was really lanky, the coaches in high school were constantly shoving food at me, which-- wow, that was weird. I kept sticking protein bars in my pockets to take home to my family, I was getting so many. But I had the arm and the speed and the instincts, they really wanted me, they just thought someone was gonna break me in half if I wasn’t built up more.”

Ted nodded; he could see that being the case. Especially since Booster woulda still been thirteen when he started with the JV team. Between that and the memory of Booster showing how relatively small he’d been at that point back at the cookout a couple months ago, and Ted kinda wanted to time travel himself just to shake some people.

“Maybe two banana splits,” he said, teasing as a distraction. “You know I’m not gonna take my hands away until you tell me I can, right?”

“I know! I don’t know why I’m so jumpy.” Booster frowned and made a sort of halfhearted attempt to go back to vertical and ended up blinking rapidly when Ted not only didn’t let him go, but full-on held him there, trapped now in both arms. Then he asked, cautiously, “You really weren’t kidding, huh?”

“Nope. But that’s not the point.” Nor was bridal cradling his best buddy in Lake Michigan, but Ted instantly found that part kind of weirdly enjoyable. Not even sexy-enjoyable, just-- nice. Surprisingly comfortable. “So, it’s a scientific fact that fat weighs slightly less than water, which is why having some helps with floating, whereas both muscle and bone weigh slightly more than water, and the water inside of us essentially cancels out the water on the outside of us. Which is how you can sink pretty easily; not enough fat, plus what extra buoyancy you do have basically is all gonna be in your chest. And that’s how you can do a dead man’s float, but why you’re having a hard time on your back.”

“From breathing in,” Booster said, holding incredibly still, watching Ted’s face with wide eyes. Which, those eyes were-- very, very blue right now, Ted noticed. Between sea and sky.

“Right,” Ted said, resisting the urge to sway. Despite being taller than Ted, Booster fit pretty well across his arms like that, and Ted had enough experience in bridal carrying another dude thanks to his hero career that he was already good at this. “So, we’re gonna figure out where your balancing point is and see how we can rig the buoyancy game.”

Booster looked dubious, but he slowly put an arm around Ted’s shoulders. Still tense, but it was a start. “I’m pretty sure I can’t grow lungs anywhere else.”

“You don’t have to. But you do have to relax because you’re kinda sabotaging yourself here.” Ted gave Booster a little squeeze, pleased he was getting with the program. “I promise, I’m not gonna let you go under. So-- y’know, have a little faith in me?”

“John Hiatt,” Booster said, which got Ted to grin. “I really like that one.”

Ted liked an eclectic variety of music himself, though he had a particular affection for jazz and the blues, occasionally cranked up something Aerosmith-loud (rather than death metal loud) and -- like most people with good taste -- a fair bit of 80s music. And he already knew Booster’s tastes usually ranged between the 50s and the 90s, also with a special penchant for the 80s, and that Booster had a charming love for 60s girl groups in addition. “Me too. I know it came out sometime in the eighties, but it’s got a really timeless sound,” Ted said, smiling as he thought about it.

“1987. I don’t remember the album name off the top of my head, though. But that-- smoky-husky kinda voice he has gets me every time.”

“Man, the fact you even know the year impresses me.”

“I listen to a lot of music when I’m running or at the gym. Skeets knows what I like, so he makes me a playlist every morning that I’m gonna be working out and then sends it to my phone.” Booster paused there, then, and blinked widely. “Holy sh*t,” he said, though there wasn’t any alarm in his tone. Maybe some mild surprise.

“What?” Ted asked, bemused himself, taking a quick glance around in the instinctive way one picks up when they start dressing up outside of Halloween and punching bad guys for free.

“Drowsy all of a sudden.” Booster picked his head up some and did the exact same thing as Ted; scanned around as far as he could, looking for trouble. “Any rogues out there who have sleep powers or something?”

“Oh, no.” Ted laughed, then shook his head, realizing what was going on. “That happens when you’re in the water for awhile, and we’ve been in it for almost two hours.” That and this was probably the first time Booster had been still for this long since they’d gone in running, yelping when the cool water hit their sensitive bits; insomniac or no, Ted figured the guy was gonna sleep like the dead tonight. “You don’t realize how much you’re asking from your body until you pause. Or try to leave.”

Booster shook his head in something like amazement, then let it drop back again. “Most literal sensation of hitting a wall that I’ve ever felt. At least, not involving an actual wall. And wait, what do you mean ‘try to leave’? The other option’s completely nonviable.”

“Have you hit an actual wall yet?” Ted asked, curious. “I mean, I know you’ve hit the remnants of a wall, but that’s not the same thing. And I just mean it’s hard to pull yourself out. You get used to weighing a lot less than you normally do, so it feels like you weigh a ton going back to dry land.”

“Not an actual wall. Most of the stuff I end up dealing with is small potatoes.” Booster didn’t sound too disgruntled by that, though. He nodded for the explanation and let his arm slide off of Ted’s shoulders, closing his eyes and breathing a rhythm Ted absolutely recognized learning in old therapy sessions himself.

Ted was gonna guess that was Bianca’s doing and sent her a mental thumbs-up.

“There ya go,” he encouraged, readjusting his grip a little, pleased with himself when his best buddy didn’t tense up again. “So, back to the whole buoyancy question: Not all positions are created equal--”

Booster smirked there. Didn’t even open his eyes. Didn’t even need to.

Ted barked a laugh, then shook his head. “--smartass. But for the purposes of floating not all positions are created equal. And since you’re built kinda like a thoroughbred--”

“--aren’t those the anxious ones that drop dead at the least provocation?” Booster asked, eyebrows knitting.

“I’ll bet you were a handful in school.” Ted was still chuckling. “I don’t know, I’ve never been into horse racing, I just mean you’ve got those ridiculously long legs and that completely changes your center of gravity -- and your center of buoyancy -- so we need to work around it.”

“Actually-- no. I wasn’t good at school, I’m not that smart, but I was pretty quiet until my junior year in high school.” Booster gave a loose shrug. “First few times they put me in front of cameras and I was so shaky that I’m still amazed I didn’t throw my guts up, but then I started getting good at it. The publicity thing, I mean, which helped with the rest. And then I gained a taste for it.”

There he went again, denigrating his intelligence without the faintest hint of irony. Ted frowned. “Man, you managed to find two damned action figures I was hunting for for decades--”

“--wow, Ted, let’s call the old folks’ home--”

“--Excuse me, two decades still warrants a plural. And I was saying, Michael, you managed to find those in some small farm town in Iowa using tiny community newspapers and convince a ninety-year-old victim of an alien probing--”

Booster flushed a little, but he grinned in that kinda dry way he had and took the baton. “--aliens, by the way, whose mothership was four football fields long--”

“--and summoned with mind power. But you managed to find him and then convince him to sell them to you by winning a game of Nite Owl trivia, so exactly where are we getting a ‘not that smart’?” Ted asked, trying not to sound scolding; he didn’t think it was quite feasible to scold someone into positive self-esteem. But he also wasn’t gonna just let Booster trash himself without a challenge, either.

Booster didn’t answer that; he stayed silent for a long few moments, then asked, a little quieter, “So, how do we change the buoyancy game?”

It wasn’t even a ham-fisted subject change, it was the whole hog in the face. But Ted let it go, though not without giving Booster another squeeze. “Okay. So, get your arms up over your head and your head back, legs apart. Chin to the sky, breathe to the bottom of your lungs and keep it calm. You play starfish, and I’ll keep my hands under you until you tell me to stop.”

Booster went to do as Ted said, then paused and bothered to open his eyes just to squint at Ted suspiciously. Though it was obviously the funny kind of suspicion and not the sincere kind. “Wait, how do I know you’re not gonna tickle me while I’ve got my arms up?”

“You’re ticklish?” Ted asked back, instantly grinning in a fashion he knew tended to unnerve people.

Booster groaned theatrically, letting his head fall back again with a light splash. “I just made a mistake.”

Ted thought it was more a case of Booster leading him further off of the prior topic, but he played to it. For now. “Oh, not yet. I mean-- the mistake, yeah, maybe, okay. But the payoff will have to wait. C’mon, arms up, play starfish for me. The sky north is looking a bit dark.”

“I don’t think I’m ever moving again,” Booster said, though it wasn’t quite a lament. He didn’t have enough energy to lift his head off of his own arm, but he didn’t see any great reason why he had to right now, either. The kitchen table was nice, Skeets was sitting on it using the new telescoping ‘leg’ Ted had made him to balance between that and his fins, Ted himself was doing something or another at the stove; if one had to be forever glued in one spot, this was a pretty decent one.

At least he made it out of the lake. Ted really hadn’t been exaggerating; Booster ended up falling backwards on his ass trying to climb out and just sat there pathetically in knee-high water, bewildered and wondering how that happened and where all of his muscle went, until Ted came back and hauled him up and out.

“Aw, all those lessons won’t ever get used again, if that’s the case,” Ted answered, then fell into a deep yawn that Booster instantly echoed. “I taught the human equivalent of Secretariat how to float and all for nothing.”

Booster had no idea what a Secretariat was, but he was guessing that it was a race horse. He tried for a scoff, but ended up giggling. Then the half-thought/half-joke occurred that if he was being compared to a race horse, he oughta ask who his rider would be, but before he could even formulate the words, that thought had him cracking up against his arm. Which just made him feel even more wrung out, but it was worth it.

“Someone’s tickled. In the non-literal sense,” Ted commented, with a chuckle; he did strike Booster as the kind of guy who’d laugh with you even when he didn’t know what got you going. “Gonna let me in on it?”

“It was gonna be some half-clever sexual harassment about me needing a jockey,” Booster managed, once he’d wound back down to giggles again, scrubbing his cheek against the sleeve of his henley before settling anew. “But that kinda requires me to be able to think in order to make words and put them in the right order, so it’s just easier to laugh about it.”

“Well, if you do manage to make words, feel free to let me in on the joke.” Ted could smile with his voice; it was a thing Booster kinda wished he was able to do, but he wasn’t sure he was capable of it. The sincerity of it. “Feeling any warmer yet?”

“Some.” It was a strange sensation; he was still kinda floaty, kinda chilled -- despite how hot it was outside in the sun -- and exceptionally drowsy. “S’weird, I felt colder after I came in.”

“All of the cooler blood in your extremities has been returning to your core,” Skeets explained; the ‘bot had been quiet the past day, though not in a way that worried Booster. “Despite the water being fairly warm by most standards, it’s still considerably cooler than your internal body temperature and water conducts heat particularly efficiently. There are also physiological responses to both swimming and being in cool water in play. And it’s air conditioned in here, whereas it isn’t outside.”

Count on Skeets to try to educate him. Booster cracked an eye open just to double check the ‘bot’s position relative to his own and then rested his hand on the ‘bot’s chassis, patting gently at his metal skin. “Thanks, professor.”

“You’re welcome.”

There were occasionally times when Booster felt guilty about stealing Skeets; being a ‘bot meant Skeets didn’t have any family (and Booster had attempted to surreptitiously ask questions to see if the ‘bot had any friends before stealing him), and Skeets hadn’t even admonished him after being reactivated in the time sphere, but Booster had never viewed Skeets as a piece of equipment, either, and therefore was very aware he had essentially kidnapped another person. And if you were gonna kidnap a person, then-- well, you shouldn’t kidnap people. Kidnapping was the antithesis to the whole hero thing. Then again, so was theft; Booster had definitely taken an unconventional approach.

But if you were going to kidnap a person, even though you shouldn’t kidnap people, then you oughta at least take good care of them.

He’d told a freshly reactivated Skeets at the time that he had stolen the ‘bot as a personal assistant and history encyclopedia, blustering some, but neither of those were true. The truth was altogether smaller and sadder: Skeets was the only friend he’d had and Michael couldn’t really bear the idea of going without him.

The clink of porcelain on the table by his head broke into his half-sleeping contemplation of his ‘bot’s happiness and he blinked his eyes open again to take in the mug sitting there.

“Hot tea,” Ted explained, sitting down himself with his own mug. “Hot sweet tea. It’ll help warm you up the rest of the way.”

“But that requires me to pick my whole head up,” Booster whined back, without sincerity.

Ted snickered at that, then blew lightly across the surface of his own mug before saying, “Better than you only picking part of it up.”

He had a serious point, which was why Booster laughed. He supposed he had that coming. “You’re right, that would be very messy and off-putting.” He shook his head against his arm, then finally picked himself up from his sprawl on the table, though he did brace on his elbows because he wasn’t exaggerating how beat he felt. “Didn’t you promise me a banana split as big as my head?” he asked, broken part way through by a yawn, holding said (particularly heavy) head up with both hands. He was almost as starved as he was drowsy, the drowsiness was just winning right now.

“I did promise you a banana split,” Ted answered, after apparently getting infected by the same yawn. “Figured I’d wait until the kids got back and you were properly awake, though.”

Booster shook his head there with a half-grin, working his fingers back through his still-damp hair. “Oh boy, I’m gonna need a lot more than tea if you want that anytime soon.”

“Since I don’t want you face-planting and drowning in a banana split, I suppose I can take you tomorrow after GoFest?” Ted offered, sounding kind of amused. “Plus, it’s gonna storm.”

The whole decision to turn GoFest into something of a mini-vacation had been Ted’s; he didn’t play Pokémon Go himself, and indeed seemed good-naturedly bemused every time Booster got excited enough by something to bombard him with rapid-fire chatter about it, but he also said he was thrilled to take any chance he had to come back northwards and home, especially if he got to bring them along. He owned his family’s home in Highland Park, which was a hair south of where they currently were, but he’d blithely insisted on renting something beachfront, then refused to share the price tag, but Booster could take some wild stabs that North Shore beachfront in the height of the summer probably was a small fortune.

If Ted would have kicked about Booster paying for the car rental, it probably would have soured things, but Ted didn’t try; it wasn’t anything like an equal reciprocation, but it was a significant enough chunk of change that Booster could live with himself over it, in addition to buying half of everyone’s meals, even if his savings account took it in the teeth.

“Tomorrow’s fine,” Booster said, finally picking the mug up to sip on, the heat between his palms sending goosebumps racing across his skin. He breathed in the steam, mind tumbling drowsily over the day and the swimming lessons and Ted holding him like some kinda bride and the fact that tomorrow he’d go cause a ruckus -- in a positive way, hopefully -- with Jaime, and the whole thing just felt good. Kind.

They sat in companionable silence for a bit, broken by nothing but the clink of porcelain and the sound of the air conditioner, then Booster got up to take his mug to the sink, smoothing a hand over Ted’s hair on the way past, and asked, “Wanna go sit outside and watch the weather come in with me?”

The sky north was iron gray, growling distantly over the stunning green-and-tan-and-dark the lake had turned as the front got closer; it made the hair on the back of Ted’s neck stand up, whatever ancient human instinct stirring up out of his foundations to warn him of the storm rolling in.

He knew this lake; knew her in all of her colors and loved all of them.

The rental had a fully enclosed combination back porch/sunroom with skylights; they had the windows all open just to let the lake breeze through, since no air conditioning reached out here. Ted had spent four figures to rent this place for a long weekend -- somewhere standalone on the lake with enough bedrooms for five people and a ‘bot, and paying a premium for wanting it on such short notice in the busiest season -- but it had been worth every penny so far. There was something pretty amazing about being able to just run out the back door and down into the water.

Ted and the kids had all gotten into town that morning; once Ted had the Bug parked in her original home, they met up with Booster -- fresh in from Queens -- and then went out for brunch before coming here and putting away their luggage. Then it had been into the water for him and Booster while the kids took off exploring; at this point, Ted was strongly considering a nap himself. There were two couches and a number of chairs on the porch, and if that wasn’t good enough, Ted knew there were a couple hammocks in the storage trunk sitting against the wall.

He sipped on his tea and shivered briefly as the wind out of the north gusted up, a quick kiss heralding the fist, notably chillier than it had been not even an hour ago. His scalp was still tingling a little from Booster just casually petting him a handful of minutes back, so natural a gesture that it almost didn’t register at first beyond that feels so nice.

“There are a number of severe storm watches in effect,” Skeets said, hovering by the windows as he ‘looked’ out over the lake, while his pet human was gathering pillows inside. “Still, this system hasn’t produced any dangerous cells yet.”

“Good to know,” Ted agreed, looking at the ‘bot for a moment fondly. He’d been slowly working on designing and building new features for Skeets -- the leg was only the beginning, he had so many plans -- and just like with Booster, Ted was careful to treat the trust offered by said ‘bot as both fragile and treasured. “You’ve been quiet all day, anything going on?”

“No,” Skeets said, confidently. “I’ve been performing various functions since arriving and have felt no need to turn my attention from them.”

“This is a vacation, pal, you’re supposed to be relaxing,” Booster declared, as he finished shoving the sliding door open with his socked foot, arms full of pillows.

“I happen to find the functions I’m performing to be fully relaxing.” Skeets affected a pretty good lofty tone, turning away from the windows to show them his faceplate. Something Ted knew, now that he knew the ‘bot’s workings inside and out pretty well, was mostly for the benefit and comfort of his humans. “Did you leave any pillows on that bed?”

“Nope,” Booster said, cheerfully, dropping the whole lot on the couch that had the best view of the ever-darkening sky. “Like I said, this is a vacation. Pillow austerity isn’t a thing on vacation.”

“Is pillow austerity ever a thing?” Ted asked, watching as Booster built himself a nest. Given that he’d helped Booster carry something like eight pillows back to the apartment back in April, he was gonna venture the answer was (rightfully) no.

“Only forced pillow austerity,” Booster answered, straightening up once he was satisfied and glancing north again; against the severe sky, something about his coloring in contrast to it made Ted’s heart jump in a manner definitely unrelated to SVT. “But since we’re not fascists, we don’t do forced pillow austerity even in times of economic hardship.”

It was a clever little bit of bantering; Ted probably would have kept it up, but he was instantly distracted by trying to figure out why that -- after a day where a not insignificant portion of it was spent with eyes or hands (or both) on his best buddy’s almost naked body -- was what got his heart revved and set off butterflies in his stomach. He’d seen Booster in that exact outfit more’n once, so it couldn’t have been the clothes.

Instead, it was the last unfettered evening light through the windows, just making the dark clouds seem even more intense; it hit Booster indirectly, a subtle reflected golden-hour glow, but it caught on his hair and skin in a way that lit him up soft against the tempest rolling in and Ted thought oh.

And Ted thought, heart thumping, Your eyes turn gray.

Booster, unaware of Ted’s racing pulse, frowned a little with his eyebrows knit together as the light faded under the clouds and the world was swallowed by the storm. “You okay, Ted?”

His eyes had gone from sort of pale gold-gray in the borrowed light a second ago to slate blue-gray now; it wasn’t the first time Ted had mentally acknowledged that his best friend was conventionally beautiful by Western standards in about all the ways a human could be considered so -- to pretend otherwise would be pointless and ridiculous -- but it was the first time Ted really felt it.

“Yeah, sorry,” he said, after clearing his throat and pressing a smile and holding up his mug in illustration, face warm. “Want some more tea?”

Admiring someone’s looks on a more visceral level wasn’t the same thing as desiring them, but it was definitely closer than an academic exercise, too.

Ted stood with his hands braced on the kitchen counter, not really hearing the thunder, staring right through the lovely mosaic that made up the counter’s backsplash, working his way over his little turn of fascination there while the kettle heated. It wasn’t a bad thing, but it was interesting, the idea that one might just be able to science themself into an attraction to someone else.

Still, all that speculation kept coming back to the exact same question and it was the one Ted still hadn’t managed to answer, but he did feel some closer to that answer. And-- he also felt more certain of what answer he wanted for it.

He didn’t really want tea, but he made himself another mug when the kettle whistled and then roamed back out into the sunroom; the only real light left was what managed to filter through the clouds. And it just started raining as he sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs; the scent of the rain hitting the sun-baked ground filtered through on the uneasy wind that kept gusting in stops and starts.

“I really love that smell,” he said, quietly enough to keep it within the space of the couch and the chair, side-by-side. “Kids texted, they’re safe and bowling apparently.”

Booster had made himself a well-padded nest, arranging his copious pillows to let him stay upright enough to watch the storm without too many obstructions while still requiring no energy expenditure from him. He hummed back sleepily in an affirmative tone, then said, “Petrichor. I like it, too.”

“That’s the word.” A pretty word; it was one of those words that felt like it belonged with what it was naming. Ted watched a streak of lightning burn its way through the sky over the lake, branching wildly and silently, and started counting automatically like he had ever since he was little and his Mom taught him how. “Do they have thunderstorms in the future?”

It mighta been a ridiculous question, but Ted had heard enough about the weird post-apocalyptic dystopia Booster came from that it didn’t seem like a foregone conclusion. On one part, it definitely worried him about the planet’s future; on another, though, he was pretty grateful that he got a best friend out of it. That future didn’t seem real to him quite, no, but the guy drowsing next to him was very much so; Ted would worry about the planet’s future later, once he got done working out his feelings for the guy who came from it.

“Yeah, but not like this.” Booster yawned and rested his chin on the top of his pillow pile to peer up at Ted lazily. “Dryer, usually. And usually only a couple times a year. It’s pretty hard to keep a decent amount of moisture in the atmosphere, you know? Even on the coasts. Like, there’s down around the equator where it rains constantly -- people can’t live there, it’s so hot and wet and toxic -- and then there’s everywhere else. I mean, we do get rain and snow, but it’s nothing like this.”

“You like them,” Ted observed; he didn’t really need any confirmation of that, though. Between this and then that story of getting caught under the awning of the grocery store. “I mean, storms now.”

“Oh yeah.” As if in illustration, a particularly sharp branch of lightning forked out over the lake, flashing everything white; six mississippi later, and the crescendo of thunder rattled the windows and rumbled through the floor. Booster gave himself a shake like he was chasing off a chill and went back to his storm-watching. “Terrifying to end up in one when you’re flying, but that’s only happened to me a couple times. I get back to the ground and find shelter as fast as I can. But yeah, I like ‘em. The sound, mostly, though they’re a pretty awe-inspiring sight, especially over water.”

Ted thought about telling Booster that he might just rethink his love of storms the first time he got caught in downtown Chicago during a tornado warning, but the only thing to be served there was Ted’s own inevitable amusem*nt when Booster looked up a video and discovered that particular distillation and expression of the MST3K phrase good old-fashioned nightmare fuel. And that could always wait.

“I was terrified of them until I was a teenager.” Ted shifted until he was practically nestled into the chair. “Then Mom died, and I guess it was hard to be afraid of anything that wasn’t cancer or surgery for awhile there.” At least until he was properly afraid of himself for himself. “I like thunderstorms now, though.”

“Well-- good, I wouldn’t want you to have come out here with me otherwise.” Booster shifted and cast a hand back; it took Ted a second to realize it was an offer.

Not a great angle for hand-holding, but he held on anyway, smiling. He was feeling pretty okay, it took a lot more than a few heavier thoughts to tank him these days, but the sweetness of that offer to give him a hand to hold was one he didn’t really want to blow off. “Oh, I woulda told you to stick it. And then I would have cursed myself for renting a place without a basem*nt. And then I woulda sacrificed you to the storm gods to appease them.”

Booster gasped in a totally scandalized fashion, right on cue. “I’d be an excellent sacrifice, if I do say so myself, but I can’t believe you’d do that to me!”

“If it was you versus a tornado?” Ted scoffed, even as he rubbed his thumb against the backs of Booster’s fingers. “Sorry, buddy, you’re a goner. But I promise I’ll appreciate your sacrifice ever after.”

“I suppose as long as I’m remembered.” Booster heaved out a sigh. Then, a beat later, he added, “I’d want a statue, at least. I think being sacrificed warrants a statue.”

“I guess.” Ted had a half-baked concept of a statue of Booster with a house having landed on him, ala Wizard of Oz, but he realized that probably Booster hadn’t seen it and wouldn’t get the reference, and by the time he worked his way to that conclusion, the moment had passed. Which just left the drumming of the rain and the rolling thunder, and the simple warmth of someone else’s hand in his own.

Eventually, the thunder died down to the steady rain that followed; Ted let go of Booster’s hand, which had gone slack some time back, then moved around to shut about half of the windows. He thought about waking Booster up to chase him to bed -- or at least to go change into sleep clothes -- but then rethought it and went inside long enough to grab an extra blanket from the closet, tossing it across his best friend’s shins, within easy reach.

Skeets had disappeared earlier, leaving them alone, while Ted had been inside making a mug of tea he didn’t even want, giving himself a few minutes space to sort through what he had been feeling. That mix of fascination and affection and a kind of nervousness.

And-- maybe a kind of hope, too.

In that brief span between when Ted had let go of his hand and when Ted was done closing windows, Booster had shifted to curl up facing the back of the couch he was on, arm wrapped around a pillow. Ted watched for a moment, smiling a little, and let himself wonder what it would be like to have the man wrapped around his back in a similar fashion, an arm tucked around his chest.

He realized two things simultaneously, one of which warmed him to his soul and the other of which hurt his heart right to the bottom of it: He couldn’t be more protected than he would be, with Booster wrapped around his back; he knew without anyone having to tell him that Booster would stand in front of Ted and fight to the last of his strength and that then, when Booster ran out of even that, he’d turn around and put his back to the enemy and shield Ted with his very self. All their joking about sacrifice earlier, Ted could feel that.

And the part that hurt was that Ted knew his best friend wouldn’t once resent it, either. No matter what it cost. Whatever their relationship was made of, whether platonic or romantic or something else, Ted knew it all the way down to his molecules: Michael Carter would shatter himself to save Ted Kord and would never regret doing it.

Ted swallowed against the white heat that grabbed him by the base of his throat at the thought, burning incandescent from there through his chest; he didn’t know where the words came from, but he pressed them to Booster’s temple with a kiss and meant them fiercely:

“Not this time.”

It was a promise that belonged only to him-- only to them.

And if the regrets that provoked it came from old ghosts that Ted didn't know he had, then the truth of it was his alone.

Chapter 13: Part I: July 22nd, 2017

Chapter Text

July 22nd, 2017

“I could eat at least three horses right now,” Booster said, looking over his array of plates and bowls, completely undeterred by the fact that it wasn’t even seven in the morning yet and the only people as awake and ready to go as him were the various geriatrics in the IHOP getting an early-bird special. The way he saw it, caffeine existed for a glorious purpose and while he hadn’t needed any to get moving today, he had been in an insomnia-hangover himself a worrying number of times and therefore he held no mercy (and only conditional compassion) for those who were dawdling on waking up. “Maybe three and a half.”

“Oh no, Secretariat goes cannibal and destroys his brethren in his haste to fill the empty pit of his stomach,” Ted fired back, though it was with laughter in his voice as he clutched his mug of coffee like he’d shank whoever might try to take it. “Thoroughbreds everywhere react to the scandal tonight on CLTV in a stunning exposé!”

Brenda, Paco and Jaime were all nodding over their plates, looking like they hadn’t even actually woken up to roll out of bed. Even then, Brenda picked her head up and squinted blearily at Ted. “Aren’t thoroughbreds the high-strung horses that keel over if you look at them cross-eyed?” she asked.

“I literally just asked that myself yesterday!” Booster said, pointing at her with his fork and well-speared sausage. “Gotta say, I’m not sure how I feel about being compared to a critter that dies so easily.” He was, however, a little more worried that the ‘high-strung’ part might be too on-target for his comfort.

“S’okay, I might have to kill you for being so awake right now,” Jaime mumbled, teetering over sideways until he was tucked halfway between Booster’s shoulder and the back of the curved booth. “And so happy about it.”

“It’s not my fault you stayed out so late.” Still, Booster set his fork down long enough to reach across himself and lightly ruffle Jaime’s hair in something like a mixed apology and commiseration. “C’mon, today’s gonna be great.”

“You were out running by 5:30, ese, humans don’t do that,” Paco said, before shoving his plate of bacon and eggs away so he could fold his arms on the table and drop his head down onto them. “Not normal, sane humans.”

All things being equal, Booster was an early-riser by nature, if not always factually; that he’d slept as well as he had the night before meant he felt pretty amazing right now, though. “In fairness, Paco, you were still awake when I left to go running.”

Paco groaned and shook his head against his arms. “Only ‘cause you were channeling Maria von Trapp in the kitchen.”

Booster opened his mouth to ask who the hell that was, but Ted shook his head with a grin and held up a finger before pulling his phone out and aiming at them. When Booster raised his eyebrows in question, Ted mouthed, ‘Bianca,’ then took a shot of him and Jaime, the latter of whom might have fallen back to sleep in the less-than-a-minute since he’d last spoken. Booster made sure to beam for the camera, though, because he knew it would make a funny contrast to the probably-asleep teenager using him as a blackout blind and pillow.

Whatever Bianca texted back must have made Ted happy, because he smiled.

“Who’s Maria von Trapp?” Booster asked, before diving back into his breakfast.

Brenda finally managed to rally enough to drag her coffee close and start into her pancakes. “Who hasn’t seen the Sound of Music?”

“I don’t think they have whimsical anti-Nazi musicals in his time,” Ted said, sliding his phone over, presumably so Booster could both see the picture and Bianca’s response.

Booster dropped his fork again just to snatch it; the picture was admittedly very cute. Bianca’s string of emojis in answer was every bit as cute. Booster quickly sent the picture to his own phone and then slid Ted’s back to him. “I wouldn’t be against watching some whimsical anti-Nazi musical,” he said, on a delay.

“If you show him that, we are never, ever, ever getting back together,” Paco said, rolling his head to the side towards his-- maybe girlfriend? Ex? Who even knew, Booster couldn’t keep up with it, it seemed to change by the day. “We would never stop hearing it.”

“Oooh, incentive,” Brenda snarked back. Then, casual as can be, she wet a fingertip in her mouth and stuck it, wiggling, into Paco’s ear.

The subsequent shriek made every single person in the vicinity -- regardless of their hearing aids or lack thereof -- jump half out of their skin. A line cook in the back swore something that sounded Eastern European in origin. Jaime jolted out of his hiding spot and Booster was certain the only reason the kid didn’t armor up and have a cannon cycling, ready to go, was because both Booster and Ted immediately reassured him that it was safe.

Brenda had turned fire-engine red. Paco was glaring at her while swiping at his ear. Jaime was looking around with his mouth hanging open, clearly having lost the plot.

Ted chewed his bottom lip, obviously about to bust up, even as someone managerial-looking started in their direction, IHOP nametag glinting menacingly in the sun.

Booster put on his most charming smile and said, “Perfect timing! Can we get the check? And some boxes?”

Every single Instinct gym in Chicago had a pokémon from BoosterGold in it.

Every. Last. One.

Or, at least, every one that the actual Booster had investigated, getting more incredulous with each, which happened to be the lion's share. He thought that if he bothered with the rest, he'd likely find the same.

(It did not stop him from adding one of his own pixel critters to any gyms with an open spot, which meant that technically, several had two pokémon from some variation of Booster Gold.)

That might have been less disconcerting if not for about half of the Mystic gyms hosting pokémon belonging to a BlueBeetle in addition.

“I mean, I was Chicago’s hero for a few years. That one's less surprising than yours,” Ted said, wandering over from his desk in his top-floor office of KORD, Inc.’s headquarters. From there, Booster could see Grant Park and the lake; Ted had one of the tallest buildings in the city and an amazing view from it.

“Okay, so why does their avatar look just like Jaime?” Booster asked back, pulling up the screenshot he took and showing it to Ted.

Ted tilted his head at it. “Huh. It really does look like him.”

Jaime was too honest a kid to have multiple accounts running and had seemed every bit as mystified as Booster was. Both of them made a pact to keep on the lookout so that they might find whomever it was who had gotten their trainer names before them, but the curiosity was still torturing Booster (not too strong a word, he thought), though it seemed Ted wasn’t inclined to help them solve it.

They’d made KORD, Inc. the unofficial headquarters of their soon-to-be GoFest adventures (or misadventures; Booster was open to either!) because Ted had just about every anti-surveillance device in existence (many of which he invented himself) running in and around the building. Officially for the purpose of defending against corporate espionage, unofficially because he had been the Blue Beetle and had made his first Beetle’s Nest in the sub-sub-sub basem*nt of the building, originally right under his father’s nose. That made it perfect for this; both Booster and Jaime could leave their civvies here and exit via one of Ted’s secret passages, and it also provided a place they could retreat to whenever they needed a break.

And it was just plain neat to see Ted’s Chicago office. The El Paso branch was incredibly new -- for obvious reasons -- whereas this building had been around since before Ted was even born. It had gotten some facelifts over the years, according to the man himself, but it was still the ‘home’ of Ted’s company, and that made it interesting. In fact, Booster thought Skeets was probably already itching -- in a computerly fashion -- to get to exploring the R&D department here.

“Speaking of, where did Jaime go?” he asked, glancing around; the kid had been there just a few minutes ago.

“I think he’s already going to crash into Grant Park.” Ted shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks, tilting his head as he looked out the window.

It felt a little strange to be in full gear and standing next to Ted in his business clothes; every other time they’d been in costume, they’d both been in costume. But regardless of invitations from both Jaime and Booster, Ted waved them off with the off-handed remark that he’d get there when he got there, meaning suiting back up, and so they let it go.

Still, despite being excited for this, Booster would have been lying if he tried to say he wasn’t tempted to blow off playing PoGo anyway and just-- hang out with Ted. Even if it was only sitting in this office bullsh*tting, it was almost certain to be a good time.

(He was aware that this might be considered a little pathetic. He just chose to ignore it.)

“So, what are you waiting for?” Ted asked, grinning in that kinda off-set, lopsided, goofy way that had Booster wanting to start writing the man’s name in increasingly loopy cursive before adorning it with hearts. And maybe his own name in various married configurations alongside it.

“You know, that’s an excellent question,” Booster answered, firmly dragging himself out of his own fifteen-year-old self’s mindset and back to the nebulously adult world. Though the fact he’d originally taught himself cursive because he’d read about it in a history book probably said things about him he wasn’t so sure he wanted to know. “Skeets, ready to go?” he asked, rolling his shoulders and flashing his ‘bot a grin.

“Yes, Booster,” Skeets answered, with just a little bit of a long-suffering tone. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Good, ‘cause the kids will hound me endlessly asking where you are if you aren’t.” Booster turned and headed for the door, gloved hand grazing past Ted’s on the way by purposefully. When Ted actually snatched his hand back and pulled him up abruptly, it was a short but delightfully heart-pounding moment.

Ted’s expression was a sly kinda mischief that made Booster want to kiss him so bad it almost burned. “Good luck,” he said, with a wink. “Catch all the best little pixel critters. Maybe find your doppelgänger too.”

“Will do.” Booster was going to end up red-faced in Grant Park, but he still squeezed Ted’s hand back, wishing briefly that he wasn’t wearing his gloves, before letting go to head on out.

Ted barely waited until his door closed behind Booster before he turned to look at Skeets, smiling and shaking his head. “When are you going to tell him that you’re the one who got his name?”

The ‘bot actually hovered backwards in a distinctly ‘who, lil ol’ me?’ fashion. “Why sir, I would never--!”

The faux offense is what sold it; Skeets even seemed to throw a hint of a southern belle accent into his protest. Ted managed to say, “Suuuuuure you wouldn’t,” before Skeets had zoomed through the door. He had to give up and just start laughing after that.

(Especially since he’d just realized that it had to be Khaji Da who had gotten Jaime’s hero name, too.)

“--back here, at Grant Park in Chicago where we have a very special visitor for GoFest! As you may or may not have known, those of you tuning in from the wider world, the previous two Blue Beetles were Chicago’s heroes before our most recent -- and recognizable -- Beetle had to step back for personal reasons two years ago. But it wasn’t long before there was a new Blue Beetle who, with his predecessor’s blessing, took over the name and became the pride of El Paso, Texas!”

GoFest was bonkers.

Jaime was fairly used to being in the spotlight now. Beyond being El Paso’s native son and well-loved there by media and civilian alike, he’d been in a few big battles with the proper Big Leagues -- enough to have been given invitations to the Hall of Justice, though he took Ted’s advice and didn’t go yet; frankly, he was holding out for the Titans to call him anyway -- and therefore he wasn’t completely inept in a crowd or in front of cameras.

And even then, he was kind of awed by the whole thing. It wasn’t just the crowd, it wasn’t just the corporate media, it was also the livestreamers. He’d barely set foot in the park, armored up and halfway prepared for a bunch of people thinking he was the bad guy (hey, Khaji made him into the most supreme of supreme badasses and that intimidation factor went a long way!), but then he was being swarmed by people.

Neither Brenda nor Paco were into Pokémon Go, so they’d just taken some cash from Ted -- who was too nice by about three figures and two unlimited Ventra Cards for the weekend -- and had gone off to explore the area. That just really left Jaime and Mike, two out of four of their sort-of gaming crew, but since they were also the two costumed vigilantes, it worked out fine.

Now, he was standing next to a reporter, grateful not for the first time that no one could possibly see him blushing. He stepped over when beckoned into the frame and waved sheepishly to the camera. “Hey Chicago! It’s awesome being here. And, since I have a friend who's on Team Instinct and who’s gonna be crashing this party, I just gotta say: Mystic represent!”

There were people clustered around behind them who whooped and waved; when Jaime said that, though, a bunch of them roared. The reporter -- who was seriously cute, he noticed, and also probably seriously out of his league -- smiled at him as the furor died down. “What made you want to come and join in at GoFest?” she asked, before holding the mic out to him again.

“Oh, man, I started playing Pokémon Go right after it was released,” he said, laughing. “I tried to get all of my friends to join me, but so far I’ve only managed to hook the one. But how could I miss the very first GoFest ever?”

There had been some rumblings of trouble around, about people having a hard time signing in; apparently there were also some issues with cell service in the area, which wasn’t too big of a surprise. Jaime had Khaji to help with that, and Booster had Skeets for the same thing, but he could already see where this might start boiling over and getting ugly.

Which made it probably a good thing that there were a couple costumed heroes around, though he didn’t really want him and Booster catching flak for network problems they had nothing to do with.

I can enhance local connections within a fifty foot radius around our position, Khaji told him, catching the half-abstract thought. If that will help-- keep the peace.

“It’s been quite a world-wide phenomenon; we were gearing up for this at ABC-7 since they announced it. Has your predecessor being from Chicago added anything to the--” The reporter had been saying, though she faltered briefly and then smiled before finishing, “--anything to the experience?”

Jaime tilted his head at the question (or more accurately, the faltering), but he still answered, “Heck yeah! I mean, I’m--”

Jaime--

“--in very steady contact with him, and he’s done so much to teach me how to do this hero thing--”

Jaime.

“--so coming to visit his city is just a big treat. And I’m sure everyone here knows how awesome he is, too.” Jaime beamed even as he asked back, Khaji, what--?

There was a gold-and-navy arm slung down across his chest in a loose half-hug and then the pressure of something on the top of his head before Booster’s voice came from above: “Exceptionally awesome. But has anyone noticed that their Beetles just keep getting progressively shorter?”

That, Khaji said wryly.

The reporter giggled briefly while Jaime ducked out from under being Booster’s very temporary chin-rest. He also didn’t fail to notice that Khaji had shifted his armor to make that easier for Booster to do in the first place; he was starting to think that letting Khaji and Skeets hang out was nothing but trouble. “Excuse you, Skyscraper! Not everyone in the world has to be freakishly tall to be a superhero, y’know.”

“Hey, six-three is not freakishly tall,” Booster said back, with that roguish kinda grin that Jaime recognized as Publicity Face Number 3. Because Mike Carter was a total dork, just like Ted, but he was also very good at making the public think he was somehow cool despite that lamentable affliction. “Someone just left you in the dryer for too long.”

I thought this was Publicity Face 1? Khaji asked.

Needs to have his hands on his hips to elevate it to Publicity Face 1, Jaime thought back. “Five-ten is average, yankee, so I’m still closer to normal than you are.”

The reporter (and everyone else in earshot) was laughing at them, but in the fun kind of way. “I’m guessing this is your Team Instinct friend?” she asked, holding the mic out to both of them.

Booster straightened up and was about to no doubt introduce himself when Jaime managed to pull him into a headlock, smirking for the camera while Booster caterwauled melodramatically back at him. “This would be my Team Instinct thorn-in-my-side,” Jaime said, raising his voice, snickering while Booster kept flailing hopelessly trying to get loose.

Jaime knew that Booster was just humoring him; the guy’s suit let him lift tons, getting loose would have been easy. If he didn’t just fly. But instead, he let Jaime ‘beat him up’ on camera because yeah, he was a dork, but he was still Jaime’s friend. When Jaime let him go, he stood back upright and made a big production about fixing his hair, then beamed broadly at the reporter with his movie-star smile. “Booster Gold,” he introduced, holding his hand out to her, “the one and only. Unlike some people around here, but really, Blue here should be commended for recycling.”

“Leg-a-cy,” Jaime said back, enunciating each syllable precisely. “I’m in a short but amazing line of Beetles, instead of modeled off something they give out at the Academy Awards.”

The reporter smiled back at Booster with that same exact dazzled look a lot of women and not a few men ended up wearing when they had Booster’s attention, shaking his hand. Unfortunately, that meant she missed Jaime’s truly sick burn there. Jaime wondered if it was possible to point out that Booster absolutely shrieked last weekend when he got jumpscared in Zombie Death Forest IV.

“And you’re from New York?” she asked, clearly in no hurry to get her hand back.

“Uhm-- I grew up in Gotham, actually.” Booster shrugged, letting go of her hand and smiling more sheepishly. “But yeah, I proudly call New York City home.” He waved to the camera.

Someone from the crowd bellowed, “QUEENS!” and Booster shot a fist up into the air in acknowledgment of it, laughing.

“That’s funny! Given your accent, I would have put you north of both of those,” the reporter said, after laughing herself.

“You could almost be led to believe that he’s doing it on purpose, at this point,” Alfred said, dryly teasing, as he picked up the tray that had held Bruce’s lunch while Booster Gold jokingly decried the suggestion that he had an accent.

Bruce narrowed his eyes at the blond on the giant screen, over top of his steepled fingers. “Hn.”

“Not even a hint?” Barbara asked.

Ted smiled at his curved monitor, watching the GoFest coverage on one window and chatting with Barb on another. Both Jaime and Booster had managed to make him blush with their sweetness about him and then laugh at their goofiness; now, he was chewing over a few things and also keeping an eye on the local cell towers and networks, because he could already see plenty of problems cropping up.

Then it was just deciding what to do about them.

But before then, he was having a blast by vicariously stumping the entire Bat Clan via his best friend, the twenty-fifth century transplant. Booster wasn’t aware of it, but he’d been driving the Bats-- well, bats. They were some of the world’s greatest detectives, but almost a year after Booster arrived in the past, they still hadn’t managed to learn anything substantial about him. And Ted knew why, of course, but that only made it even more gratifying.

“Sorry, Rolly,” he typed back, basking in his knowledge like a cat in a sunbeam. “But look on the bright side: You can consider it positive enrichment for Spooky to be chasing the mystery, down there in his cave.”

“You’re so bad, Beeb.”

Ted smirked wide and wicked. “You know it.”

“Isn’t that the-- dancer?”

“--oh, you mean the stripper?”

Wally’s mental soundtrack provided the screech of tires, and he backed up to the door of the common room with his stack of sandwiches balancing precariously on the plate. The rest of the Titans were loosely clustered around the TV where a perky reporter was interviewing Blue Beetle -- who Wally had met a few times -- and then the one guy who’d caused a ruckus back at the beginning of the year during a League meet-and-greet. Buster something?

Barry had some Opinions on the guy that Wally remembered being kind of entertained by, mostly because Barry was so nice that when he decided to unload, it was always guaranteed to be humorous. Apparently Buster, or whatever his name was, had committed some minor crimes and had gotten away with them, and on top of that was trying to commercialize his image, which--

Well, Wally didn’t point out that they sold really marked-up Flash mugs and Flash keyrings and Flash t-shirts in the Flash Museum, even if the money did go back into maintaining said museum and to charity beyond that. He’d just nodded along with Barry’s ranting, which was largely polite because it was Barry, and found it all kind of funny.

(There was a lot that wasn’t funny going on right now; Wally kept feeling like something was chasing him from inside of his shadow, and he was having a really bad time trying to sleep, so the distraction of his uncle being sanctimonious about some upstart hero trying to market himself was a welcomed one.)

“B’s been keeping an eye on him,” Dick said, sprawled across an unnecessary number of couch cushions. “He usually just stays in New York City, though. He’s been in a couple dust-ups and he’s been out a few times with Fire, Ice and Blue there, but mostly he seems like a homebody.”

Wally gave an involuntary little shiver; Batman keeping an eye on you was a nerve-wracking experience and he didn’t envy Buster there for having the All Seeing Cowl’s attention. Even if the dude was rather taller than a hobbit by a ludicrous amount.

“--don’t know any Valor players, though,” Blue Beetle was saying, which got Wally’s attention back on the events on screen. “I mean, we can just compete with Mystic and Instinct, but that doesn’t seem fair.”

“Well, we can’t be the only costumed heroes who play Pokémon Go,” Buster Whoever said back, scratching his head with a minor frown.

“Hey, doesn’t Wally play?” Garth asked, turning to look at the others.

But by then, Wally West was already in costume and out the door--

--and in Chicago, appearing on camera between Jaime and Booster in a gust of speed-generated wind, brushing breadcrumbs off of his chin and chest sheepishly. “Sorry, did someone say they needed a Valor player?”

“Holy shhhhh--oot!” Booster jumped backwards, cycling up his gauntlet blasters on automatic. On the other side, Jaime was doing the same with his arm cannon, though he dropped it a few seconds later.

“Nice save!” the redhead said, smiling like he didn’t almost get himself shot.

“What the heck, Flash?” Jaime asked, incredulously, though he sounded genuinely happy to see their newcomer, while Booster powered down his gauntlets and put a hand over his chest, wheezing partly for humorous effect -- because the reporter was looking kind of spooked now -- and partly because holy sh*t.

There were a bunch of Flashes and Flash-Adjacents; Booster knew some of their wallet names, but he’d never actually seen any of them in action before now. Or-- not-seen as the case may be.

“Whoops. Sorry, Blue. But, uh, I’m a Valor player,” the Flash said -- whichever Flash this was -- and offered his hand to Booster. “We haven’t met yet. I’m the Flash.”

Jaime muttered, “Three of A Baker’s Dozen, in a Borg designation,” which had Booster swallowing down a snicker.

“Booster Gold,” Booster introduced instead, shaking that offered hand; he was starting to wonder if he had a thing for redheads, though, because this particular Flash, with his maroon-and-silver suit and green eyes and red-orange hair -- similar to Guy’s, not as rich or dark as Ted’s auburn -- was no bad looker. If not for the fact he was already completely and irretrievably in love with Ted Kord, Booster might have even tried flirting.

But he was and it was bad enough he already had one extra redhead who was good at flustering him, so instead he let go of the Flash’s hand and nodded towards the crowd. “Rachel of ABC-7 here suggested it might be fun if we rallied with our teams and played out challenges together, but we didn’t have a Valor player before-- so, you interested?”

“Oh, heck to the yeah,” Flash said, with a bright grin. “But no flying, you two. I can’t use my speed, so you can’t use your flight.”

“Hey, Mystic! Does that sound fair?!” Jaime called out, waving upwards with both arms to hype the crowd.

A bunch of blue-clad people roared back. Then the Flash bounced up on his toes and asked, “What about Valor, you guys good with me for a mascot?!”

Booster dropped his head and shook it in mock disappointment while the Valor players hollered in answer, halfway to hide his smile; when they quieted down, though, he looked over to the smaller cluster of people wearing yellow and spread his hands out in a shrug.

They looked awkward and crestfallen for a couple moments until Booster just said, “Well, I guess that means we’d better get started on kicking their asses.”

The reporter choked quietly and some people gasped, but Instinct?

Went absolutely feral.

The crowds were a little disgruntled, admittedly, because the network and game issues made it harder to play during an event everyone in the park had paid for; the company extended the GoFest radius two whole miles out to try to ease some of the congestion as the afternoon wore on, though that only helped a little bit. Still, the presence of three costumed heroes -- one for each team, no less! -- kept a measure of good will in the air. And the frustration was entirely understandable, but thus far, no one had thought to blame the heroes for it; instead, they took advantage of the fact that both Mystic and Instinct had literal portable wifi via their respective heroes’ AIs, as well as some cell service enhancement.

Booster might have felt more guilty about the Flash and Valor having no such good fortune, but Instinct was the bastard stepchild of the PoGo teams, so instead of feeling guilty, he exploited the hell out of every advantage he could. And while they were still in third place as time wore on, he was pretty pleased with their showing.

(They might have been in third place, but his team got the most t-shirts and medals for winning challenges. Jaime was a pretty good natural leader, but Booster had been a quarterback: He might have never called his own plays on the field, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know how to.)

In amidst all of the pokémon chasing and team coordinating, the best part was interacting with everyone; Booster started out with people kind of nervously edging around him -- except the group from New York City, including the one who’d called out their shared borough, because they all knew how he got along with people at home -- but before the first hour was up, he had most of the Instinct players treating him like he was just another guy, albeit a very distinctively dressed one. He spent a lot of time trying to play one-handed while stabilizing whichever child was riding on his shoulders at the time with the other.

(Ted was gonna keep poking him with that thoroughbred comparison, but hey, they were kids and it was fun. He teased a few parents about them getting to have a superhero for a babysitter, got two numbers from single mothers, and only had to pull one lollipop out of his hair.)

It looked like Jaime and the Flash were honestly doing the same, too, though. Which oddly made Booster feel kind of proud and happy, even if he wasn’t sure why.

He was more aware than he was comfortable with that there was another fracture between how he responded to being in the spotlight in the 25th century versus how he did here. Once he’d gained a taste for it there, in having the positive attention of seemingly everyone, he’d basked in it and sought more of it. It had been heady and it had been easy to start holding himself above and apart from everyone else. He was, as he went into his senior year of high school, Michael “Booster” Carter, the star quarterback, the pride of Gotham -- because it didn’t matter which high school he was playing for, the whole city was rooting for him -- and all the people who once would have looked at him like he was a dirty lowlife from a bad neighborhood now thought he was something special.

He only stopped feeling like that -- kind of arrogant, kind of aloof, kind of bitter, but also sincerely proud and excited for the future, glowing under the spotlight -- when he’d played his last game his freshman year and was escorted to the penthouse owned by the Rubenicos the following Monday, still burning high and bright on his success.

They gave him champagne in celebration of his championship win, smiled indulgently while he nervously got buzzed, then they asked after his mother’s health, which was better now than it had been at any time in Michael’s life before.

And then they suggested a business arrangement.

It wasn’t really optional. They didn’t have to say that it wasn’t, either.

By contrast, he liked being in the spotlight now, but he liked it-- he guessed maybe a normal amount? If there was a normal amount to like that kind of thing. He liked making people smile. He liked that parents felt safe letting their kids ride up on his shoulders. There was none of that too-bright-too-bitter, just a kind of glowing warmth to it.

Still, no amount of good will solved things when the day wore on -- high eighties, humid, partly sunny; even with his suit, Booster could feel the heat of it on his face and the top of his head -- and the network breakdowns were pissing everyone off. They ended up booing the guy on the stage who was trying to talk to them, which made all three of the heroes who were in attendance go into crowd-control mode. Flash even went up on the stage; as the most recognizable of the three, that made a certain amount of sense.

“Hey, folks!” Flash said, waving his arms over his head to get their attention; when the guy gratefully handed over the microphone, he took it and went on, “I know everyone’s frustrated right now and-- and that’s probably not going to get any easier anytime soon. But I’ll bet we can brainstorm some ideas on how we might be able to turn this around anyway.”

The crowd started quieting down a little; Booster had been about to go alight with the Flash on stage as backup, but the man was doing pretty good. He had their attention and the hostility on peoples' faces was already fading.

“I mean-- you have three superheroes here with you, right?” Flash asked, smiling out at them. “All team rivalry aside, we’re all part of the same event.”

There was some murmuring, but then a shadow fell over the stage and a loudspeaker piped up, “Hey, Flash! You now have four."

That was the Bug. That was Ted. Booster slapped his hand over his own mouth because he just squeaked like a dog toy that got stepped on, even as the locals started gasping and everyone else started pointing up.

“I saw everyone was having some network troubles, so-- check your connections, players. Or is it-- uh, trainers?” Ted asked, sounding every bit of the sweet-natured and friendly he was. “I’ve done a little behind-the-scenes tweaking. Everyone playing should be good now and for the rest of this weekend.”

A rolling wave of sound started cascading over Grant Park, radiating out from the stage; Ted leapt out of the Bug’s hatch on his skywire like a trapeze artist, in his full costume, and landed gracefully right next to the Flash. Flash was staring open-mouthed back, then started grinning again, offering over the mic while the crowd was cheering.

Ted was about to take it when a blue streak slammed into him and knocked him into a stumbling reel backwards; the mic just barely picked up his laughter as he caught his protégé and hugged him back, which just made the crowd -- already feverish -- go even crazier.

No one needed to tell Booster that Jaime was probably crying right now, mostly because he was about ready to start doing so himself. Skeets had even hovered down from where he had been playing his own network extender higher up and hummed a note that sounded distinctly happy for a ‘bot ostensibly programmed without emotions.

Jaime clung to Ted for a moment longer, then let him go with a sheepish little wave at the crowd caught up in the excitement; Ted was a little red-faced himself and smiling broadly as he reached out and took the mic the Flash had offered over. “Hey, Chicago. Miss me?”

If a whole city could raise the sky, then Chicago was doing just that. The noise was deafening.

Ted somehow managed to beam even more. Then he made a show of eying the other two heroes on stage with him, pretending to head-count them; once he did, he raised his voice to be heard over the din, standing on his toes to look out from the stage. “One-- two-- I seem to be missing a hero here.”

Luckily for Ted, he was very good at catching golden streaks, too.

“Well, if I’m going to be upstaged, I have to say, that was one of the funnest ways it’s ever happened,” Wally said, sitting back down with a whoosh on the couch in Ted’s office, co*ke in hand, in his civvies. Surrounding him were four pizza boxes, all empty. “Hats off, Ted.”

They’d stayed out there until it was starting to get dark before finally having to make their exit; Jaime’s team apparently won whatever thing they had been doing, something about a blue bird coming to raids? But before Ted even parked the Bug, he’d made a huge delivery order for food to be delivered to Kord Tower, half of which was just for Wally.

Even though Ted had only been out there for a handful of hours, he’d had a blast. The decision to re-debut now had been-- not whim, exactly. But not so much premeditated.

But between watching Grant Park from his office and the coverage on the news, between teasing Oracle and just-- thinking about things, Ted finally decided that now was as good a time as any. He’d already been hacked into the cell towers tweaking things to try to fix the congestion, he’d watched as Wally and Jaime and Booster all worked the crowd--

Well, it was just time.

“I’m not back full-time,” he’d been telling reporters, smiling. “I’ve still got a ways to go before I’m officially ready to really get back to work. But I’m here for now, and man, I missed this.”

The reception--

Ted hadn’t quite realized how much his city had missed him. He’d always sort of viewed himself as small potatoes; not because he wasn’t every bit as good as anyone else in the League, but because he hadn’t ever intended to be a big name hero. He was comfortable in his niche, back in the day. He was enough of a vigilante that the police had an uneasy relationship with him, but he’d done his share of good here; truth was, giant alien fleets of warships and super powerful crazy supervillains didn’t tend to bother with Chicago, so the truly big action he’d faced had always been elsewhere.

(Mostly where the actual Big Leagues lived.)

But even being small potatoes, it was clear now -- in ways it wasn’t when he had stepped back -- just how much they had missed him. When he wasn’t being mobbed by reporters, he was being mobbed by his fellow Chicagoans; there were probably almost two dozen who had crossed paths with him at some point before he had to step down, and who now came up to tell him when and where and how they never forgot.

Admittedly, Ted was wondering if any blogs, tabloids or otherwise were now gonna be speculating about him and his absence; since he’d kind of known it was coming, he not only managed to catch Booster when Booster tackled him, but got Booster around the waist and spun him around once before putting him back down on his feet, which had gotten them a few whistles and cat-calls from the audience. Especially because after he put his best friend back down with a happy, “Hey you,” Booster went koala on him and Ted made no effort whatsoever to make Booster let go again until he was ready.

Which-- given that it was Booster, that was definitely longer than modern-day-normal, at least outside of lovers, though shorter than it would have been out of the public eye.

Then, because both his protégé and best friend were emotionally wobbly, Ted put himself center stage and kept the crowd’s attention on him for awhile, spinning wild fish stories about the past two years and delighting in how fast the crowd caught on that they were fish stories. The audience he managed to keep during a gaming event was pretty gratifying, honestly.

“I saw all the fun you guys were having and then had to immediately remind everyone who the coolest superhero on Earth is,” Ted teased back, sitting on his desk.

“Hey now,” Wally said, grinning, even as Booster and Jaime proved themselves excellent wingmen by nodding along to Ted’s lofty statement of his superiority.

“I mean, I’ve made some pretty exciting entrances, but that really was awesome,” Booster countered. “The timing, everything was perfect. And the crowd was nuts.”

“I’ll give you that.” Wally got up and stretched his arms over his head; Ted hadn’t seen where that co*ke went, but he was gonna guess that it disappeared in a Speed Force induced blur. “It really was great seeing you out there again, though,” he said to Ted, shaking his arms out and disappearing with all the trash before reappearing a second later empty-armed. “Outside your ship, I mean.”

“It was great being out there.” Ted hadn’t made anyone any promises, just because he wasn’t done as Jaime’s mentor yet and did have a life in El Paso, but even just that short stint in his home city, in his costume, had felt amazingly good. The pleasure of leaping off his Bug on his skywire and sticking a perfect landing, the unmitigated joy that was getting two consecutive heartfelt hugs from two of his very favorite people, the fun of playing to the crowd--

“How long are you going to be in town, Ted?” Wally asked, as he finished neatening up at human-normal speed. “I wouldn’t mind going out for beers.”

Ted glanced over at Jaime and Booster, the latter of whom gave him an arch look daring him to say something about the legal drinking age. Then he chuckled and looked back at Wally in apology. “Just tomorrow and Monday, we’re heading back to El Paso on Tuesday, but I’m already booked up. But I’ve got your number somewhere, unless you’ve changed it?”

There was something that flitted across Wally’s face that Ted couldn’t identify, like a shadow skating over the sun, but then it was gone again and he whipped out his cellphone. “Here, give me your number, I’ve broken six phones since the last time you and I talked.”

In Ted’s peripheral vision, Booster mouthed Six to himself, incredulously. Ted rattled off his number, though, and then nodded when his phone buzzed that Wally had texted him, turning back to pick it up. “I’ll give you a shout sometime soon and we’ll get together for drinks.”

(Ted turning meant he didn’t catch the startled and anxious little look that Booster shot his way at that. Jaime did, though, and whipped out his phone to text: Chill dude, if he wanted to go on a date with flash, he would have taken up his offer. Youre so obvious. :P When Booster pulled out his phone and rolled his eyes after reading it, Jaime smirked.)

“Are you two texting each other from five feet apart?” Wally asked, a little bemused. “You’re talking sh*t about me, aren’t you?”

“You caught me,” Jaime said, wryly. “You want my number, too, speedy?”

“Wrong Titan,” Wally said back, then shrugged. “But yeah. What name should I put in my contacts? Because I can’t exactly stick ‘Blue Beetle’ in there.”

Jaime narrowed his eyes shrewdly. “Jaime. J-A-I-M-E. You should talk to your fellow Titans if you, you know, uh-- need someone new for the roster.”

Wally laughed, but it wasn’t the mean kind. “I can do that. We’re not really recruiting right now, but that can change instantly, too. And does.” Then he upnodded to Booster. “How about you? Wanna trade numbers?”

In the end, they all had each others’ cell numbers, though when Wally asked what name Booster went by normally -- after sharing his own -- all Booster gave him was his nickname, even if he gave it with a genuine little grin. After Wally was gone, he said, “Everyone seems to know everyone else but me.”

“I’m in the same age range as most of the Titans,” Ted explained, going around his desk so he could shut down his computer and button up his office for the night. “As far as I know, all of them started into the hero business when they were minors, so I never really felt like I’d belong with them, but we still got along whenever we’d cross paths. They’re a good bunch.”

Booster only nodded; he’d gotten a little quieter as the evening wore into night proper, but given he’d been up sometime before five-thirty this morning, that was probably understandable. But -- and Ted checked the time -- there was still one more thing to do that evening before he was gonna let his buddy crash.

So, he came back around the desk and made a fair production of eyeballing Booster once over, then taking his phone out of his hand. And then, before Booster could figure out what the hell was going on and protest the temporary theft -- at least, judging by the completely baffled look on his face -- Ted snatched him up and had him in a fireman’s carry with minimal difficulty.

(Booster was a damn good hero, but he wasn’t anywhere on the same planet as Ted in hand-to-hand and related disciplines. Relatively few people were. Ted had no issues exploiting that fact without remorse.)

“Ted,” Jaime said, after Booster made a squeaky noise that rivaled Ted’s squeaky noises, which Ted filed away in his mental blackmail folder. “Ted. You’re murdering this man, Ted. You’re killing him stone dead.”

“You little--” Booster said, flailing out with the arm Ted didn’t have by the wrist in an attempt to reach Jaime, even as Ted headed for the door with his best friend on his shoulders.

Jaime jumped out of the way cackling at him, then danced for the door looking smug. “Ooh, too slow, Skyscraper!”

Ted was so proud. “Boost, are you dying on me?” he asked, amused as hell with this whole thing.

Booster hadn’t been putting up any kind of a fight, but he still just gave up, letting himself drape there and get a free ride for the parking deck. “I’ll probably make it,” he said, in his driest, most deadpan tone. “Just don’t smack me on the ass, you brute.”

Ted actually paused walking there for a moment and squinted off, pretending to think about it. “See, I wasn’t even considering that, but now that you mention it--”

“Oh my god,” Booster muttered.

“--but first things first,” Ted laughed. “I promised you at least one banana split yesterday and if we move fast, we’ll even get there before they close."

They never did figure out who their doppelgängers were. Both Skeets and Khaji agreed that the day was a success.