WIP: Young Avengers, Skrull President AU, PG-13
Don't you love it when your brain completely switches fandom tracks in the middle of writing a story? I know I do! Putting this here as a promise to myself to come back and finish it and not just let it get forgotten in my writing folder. D:
---
All feats of modern technology aside, the shuttle ride from Earth to Tarnax IV still takes 25 Earth hours, is severely lacking in the foot room department, and is air-conditioned to nearly arctic temperatures. Billy tries to compensate by watching C-SPAN repeat feeds on his laptop and ordering a copious array of drinks in tiny bottles from the in-flight menu, which he shares with Kate only because he knows he's likely to pass out around hour 18 and this might keep her from drawing on his face while he sleeps.
Of course, the problem with watching C-SPAN is that Earth news has been slow for the last month, and so every news cycle seems to be made of about 7% Congress's Latest Attempt to Rename a National Park After that One Congressman who Got Eaten by a Bear and 93% the Skrull presidential race. And because the human race has decided to be not at all subtle about who their favourite candidate is that means endless streams of footage in which Dorrek "Theodore" Altman gets in and out of cars and smiles at small green infants and stares off into the distance with determined expressions on his face.
Billy, watching a clip from five hours earlier in the day when Dorrek and his tiny, blonde aide stopped for ice cream somewhere, sighs.
Kate, watching over his shoulder with a half-finished bottle of Taylors Late Vintage pinched between her thumb and index finger, opines, "When we get there, you should write a press release about how his flaxen hair in the sunlight is the colour of freedom."
"Given the audience," Billy replies with a barely contained snort, "it should probably be about how his hair in the sunlight is the colour of dawn on the day we vanquish our enemies and eat their livers for afternoon tea."
Kate, obviously, does not even pretend to have listened to him and immediately starts whapping him on the arm instead, pointing at the tiny laptop screen with the unabashed joy of someone on her third miniature bottle of port. "Oh, oh," she cheers, "gratuitous smiling b-roll. Take a shot!"
With a wrinkle of his nose, Billy downs the last of his brandy. "You make up the worst drinking games," he tells her seriously.
"Only another one-point-seven-five million light-years to go." She gives him her most dazzling smile.
---
Billy never planned on going the professional media-wrangler route after college. Having majored in journalism, he'd walked out firm in the knowledge that people who work in PR and PR-related activities were the Enemy, soul-sucking demonspawn whose entire purpose in life was to distort the Truth and keep the wool pulled firmly over the eyes of the American public.
But then, Billy had also believed that people were wrong about the print journalism industry's steady march down the toilet and that a young man living in Manhattan could totally make enough money on investigative journalism alone to still actually eat, so Billy must admit that, in retrospect, he was kind of a tit back then.
It was his bubbe who had eventually tossed him on the path that inevitably led to getting blazingly drunk on the Andromeda Galaxy red-eye three years later. She had been persistent, in a way that only bubbes could be persistent, about him working on the campaign of a well-intentioned son of a friend's cousin who had delusion of senatordom and absolutely no viable political prospects whatsoever.
After two weeks of guilt and disapproving tongue-clicking, Billy agreed, assuming that all he'd ever be asked to do would be stapling things together and answering phones. They worked out of a tiny office in midtown over a twenty-four hour grocery, and the staff seemed to change daily. The only people Billy could consistently recognize were the candidate himself and the young dark-haired woman who spent most of her time yelling at anyone who wandered into her line of sight.
On the anniversary of his fifth week with the campaign, the candidate had made a passing remark at a meeting of the Civic Planning Association about the future of cars running on fuel made of human waste, and Billy, the lone volunteer in the office that day, had found himself mobbed by the press within the hour.
"Does Mr. Reiss believe the FDA should approve human waste for other household uses?" asked one reporter.
"Was Mr. Reiss making a statement about American dependence on foreign oil?" asked another.
And Billy, in the face of about seven running microphones with their tiny, blinking red lights, found his brain stuck in a loop of God, reporters are ridiculous people at about the time his mouth decided to make a bid for autonomy and said, "It's the context that's important here. Mr. Reiss has been a long-time supporter of both the American small businessman and the preservation of our natural resources. He believes that our future lies where business and the environment meet and foster each other's growth. He'd also remind you that we've always been a country unafraid of innovation and exploration, and the challenges of the next few years are not beyond us as long as we remember that."
There'd been a few follow-up questions after that, but it wasn't until he'd shepherd them all out of the office that Billy realized he wasn't precisely alone after all. The dark-haired woman, Kate Bishop, was standing in the door to her cubicle, wearing the same shirt she'd worn the day before, looking at him with a curious expression.
"You're surprisingly good at that, you know," she said neutrally and then laughed. "Or, at least, that's the most eloquent way I've ever heard anyone say we should put our cultural-national tendency for being full of shit to good use."
Billy resisted the urge to put his head in the nearest garbage can only because it was filled with shredded draft press releases, and it would probably have all gotten stuck in his hair. "I'm not actually good at that," he corrected briskly. "I'm terrible with people."
Kate continued to stand in the doorway for a moment more before pushing away with only a click of her heels and a bare shift of her weight. She walked over to his desk and stared down at him, a focused light growing in her eyes. "I know. For some reason it works. D'you think you could do it again?"
When, four months later, David Reiss lost the New York senatorial race, Billy and Kate were already six hours away in Maine, celebrating getting their first senator elected.
---
By the time they get to their hotel, Billy is so bleary-eyed with shuttle-lag and hangover-induced dehydration that he can barely stand up straight in the lobby long enough for Kate to check them both in. He makes it to his room only by leaning on Kate for most of the elevator ride up to their floor and into bed only because that's where Kate chooses to deposit him with a pat on the head and an affectionate, "You utter lightweight. I'll come get you in a few hours, okay?"
Billy manages to have the good sense and sufficient coordination to tug off his shirt and pants before collapsing spread-eagle on the bed. His pillows carry the universal hotel smell of detergent and stale air which has become as familiar and home-like to Billy over the past few years as his actual home. He's solidly asleep in under three minutes flat.
Sometime later – and Billy can't really judge how much later because the clock on his bedside table swears that the time is 27:34 – he wakes to the sound of his door chime going off enthusiastically and repeatedly. He blinks muzzily a few times and then slides off the bed to a symphony of cracking knee and elbow joints. As quickly as he can, he pulls on his shirt and pants and then goes to answer the door.
He fully expected it to be Kate on the other side but instead, he's greeted by a very human-looking girl dressed in a dark suit, with her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. It takes a few seconds before Billy can place her as the aide who always shows up behind Dorrek at press events. Improbably, she looks even younger in person.
"Mr. Kaplan?" she asks. "Ms. Bishop said I should come get you. We're about to start our full strategy meeting just down the hall."
"Um," says Billy, running a hand through his hair, aware that that only makes it stand up worse. "Do I have time to shave or brush my hair or gargle with industrial-strength disinfectant for, like, an hour?"
"Nope," she replies with pointed, obnoxious chipperness. "C'mon." And then without another word, she pivots on one toe and starts off back down the hall, leaving Billy to scramble for his keycard, shove it into his pocket, and stumble after her.
"So you're...?" he asks once he's fallen in step with her.
She doesn't turn to look at him, but her eyebrows rise and fall with amusement in profile. "Cassie Lang. I head up Teddy's security team."
For a moment, Billy isn't sure what part of that sentence is more surprising: the informal "Teddy" or the part where someone who looks about thirteen is supposed to be heading anyone's security team. Billy tries to keep the surprise out of his voice when he replies, "Really."
Cassie does glance his way then, and her eyes crinkle with a sort of mischievous glee that probably only develops in someone who has had to explain Yes, really over a hundred times already.
"I know thirty-five ways to kill a man with a piece of dental floss and a paper clip."
"Ah," says Billy.
Cassie nods and then adds reflectively, "I'm basically MacGyver if MacGyver was more into carnage and mayhem."
They walk a few more steps in silence before Billy says, "I should probably never introduce you to my brother."
---
Kate is already ensconced in one of the two high-backed chairs near the suite's wall of windows when Billy and Cassie arrive. She has her heels kicked off on the floor underneath the chair where they'll be out of the way, and her bare feet are tucked in beside her on the seat, her skirt coming down to just above the curve of her kneecap. She's sipping from a large glass of water with ice cubes, which reminds Billy immediately that he's still definitely dehydrated.
Eli Bradley, who Billy has never met but knows well by reputation and Kate's gossipy stories about "the old days," is pacing a loose loop in front of the coffee table with his hands clasped behind him. When the door swishes open to admit Billy and Cassie, he looks up and gives them a brief nod before his eyes flicker over to the half-closed bathroom door.
Dorrek, whose crisp, Skrull-inflected vowels and cadences Billy knows intimately from watching a solid fifty stump speeches over the last week, is speaking from behind the door, over the sound of running water. "I know it's not the popular thing to do," he's saying. "I'm trying to make a point."
Billy lets Cassie usher him over to one of the couches from where he continues to look longingly at Kate's glass of water.
"A point that no one who can actually vote for you cares about," counters Eli, frowning at the door.
The running water shuts off, and there are some shuffling noises from the bathroom and then Dorrek finally emerges. His signature blonde hair is damp and, as a result, more of a deep gold colour than usual. He has a towel wrapped around his neck to catch the drips, and it pushes down on the collar of his shirt in a way that makes it stick out at strange angles. He's also not green today and between moments of open-mouthed gapping, Billy wonders if he's done that for his and Kate's benefit.
Dorrek grins at Eli with his perfectly straight, white teeth. It's a sharper smile than the ones that has earned him legions of devoted and adoring fans at C-SPAN. "Since when is that a good enough reason not to make a point?" he asks.
Since you're a politician trying to get elected, Billy thinks, but he doesn't have the opportunity to say it because that's when Dorrek takes a look around the room and first notices his existence. It's like being a deer caught in headlights, except that instead of headlights it's a laser beam that could probably liquefy your digestive track.
"Oh," says Dorrek, "you're the other new guy. Hey."
Billy finds himself presented with a hand which he shakes because good manner have been inculcated into him at an early age hard enough that he can still manage things like handshakes while having a full-body seizure.
After a moment, still holding Dorrek's hand, he says, "Oh my fucking god."
Dorrek's eyebrows take on a worried expression. "Um?" he says.
Kate takes pity on both of them. "Don't worry," she says, smiling over her glass in a way that makes her bottom lip just touch the rim. "That's just the sound press secretaries make when they realize that you don't actually need hours with a make-up team to look that good."
Of all the things Billy has expected to see, Dorrek blushing, light and pink along the crest of his cheekbone, was not even on the list.
---
Dorrek – or Teddy as he apparently prefers to be called in private and among friends – was one of the first of a generation of truly galactic children. A war orphan like many of his contemporaries on Tarnax IV, he'd been raised by a relative of some sort who had felt that the best way to deal with a half-Skrull, half-Kree hybrid baby boy born in the aftermath of bitter war was to forego any attempt at instilling patriotic zeal in him and instead bounce him around the near-universe for a few years and let him choose where he wanted to stick when he was old enough to make the decision for himself.
So Teddy had spent his early years on Tarnax IV, learning to shapeshift and attending what probably amounted to Junior Warlord Academy. Then he'd moved on and served in the Kree military for a few years because the Kree, generally speaking, had never met a fourteen year-old they hadn't attempted to draft into military service.
And then, unexpected by everyone, he'd come to Earth and stayed just long enough to get a degree from Georgetown and win a couple of basketball games and write a thesis on comparative political philosophy before he'd flown back to Tarnax IV to work a mid-level paper-pushing job and bide his time.
All of which added up to the fact that Teddy spoke four languages at least, had a desk drawer full of military commendations, had a world-class education from three different worlds and a quiet but fierce dedication to ideals like peace and equality. He was, in essence, the perfect candidate, like someone had gift-wrapped him and left him waiting for Eli and Kate and Billy to discover.
And, Billy finds himself thinking repeatedly during his first week, if the Skrull could just get over being terrible racists for long enough to elect him, he might even do some good.
---
Their first two weeks of news cycles end up being kind of a circus. The thing is that Billy has plenty of experience now in fielding questions he likes and subtly ignoring ones he doesn't. He can probably find a way to make an illegitimate baby scandal into a positive if he just rambles long enough, but he's also thoroughly unused to being news himself. And yet, unexpectedly but inevitably, for the first few days after word that Teddy's flown in consultants from Earth begins circulating, that's what he becomes.
It strikes home the first day that a picture of him ends up at the top of the homepage for Tarnax IV's biggest publication. The phorographer had caught him behind the desk they'd set up in the unofficial press room, snapped in mid-point as he calls on a reporter to answer a question. "Dorrek Campaign Goes Intergalactic" reads the title of the article; the caption beneath the picture says, "William Kaplan, 25, is one of a team of humans candidate Dorrek has imported to aid in his presidential bid."
"It makes me sound like a crate of oranges," Billy complains morosely as they drive through the capital to the theatre where Teddy is supposed to be attending a performance of The Many Victories of X'ridak the Subduer. Traffic being notoriously bad through the centre of the city, the going's slow, and Billy splits his time between thumbing the touchpad on his phone to scroll up and down the article and tugging self-consciously on his bowtie.
On the opposite seat, Cassie gives him a slight, not particularly genuine smile of sympathy. Teddy tilts his head to one side and does a much better job of looking like he actually cares. Kate and Eli are not present, having been banished to their own car when it became obvious to everyone that they can't go five minutes without arguing at any time ever.
"If it makes you feel better," Teddy says, "I'm sure it was much worse for global warming to fly you up here than it would've been to fly a crate of oranges."
Billy feels strangely mollified by that, enough to agree to pocket his phone for the time being. There's only so long he can stare at a picture of his own face before he has to start wondering if he's secretly vain or just developing some shiny new self-esteem issues, anyway.
"I don't suppose you'd do a last minute reconsideration of the not-going-green thing, would you?" Billy asks, but his tone already gives away that he doesn't have much hope of getting a positive answer.
Sure enough, Teddy just grins, stretches his arm out along the back of the seat until he can almost touch the top of Cassie's up-do. "Nope," he says cheerfully.
"Right," Billy sighs and looks out the window.
To green or not to green, that's the question Billy can already foresee plaguing this campaign, the one already picking up some currency among the yellower journalists, the one that probably won't drive Eli to drink because Eli is twenty times the professional Billy is but will probably drive him a little nuts in the short term regardless. The one that Teddy absolutely won't budge on out of principle. Billy's dealt with stubborn politicians before. Without trying very hard, he can think back to a mayoral campaign in Texas, and a candidate who had levelly refused to stop sleeping with a stuffed racoon toy until Kate had somehow managed to get it arrested for public lewdness. That had been a fun press conference.
Teddy's decision to spend at least half his time looking human (or as he points out every time Eli raises the issue: "Looking Kree. You just can't tell the difference.") is on the same level of stubbornness if not the same level of blatant ridiculousness. He shoots down all pleas to reconsider with the same smile, the same faint amusement in his eyes, like he can't understand how they all fail to see the pointlessness of what they're asking.
And the most unfortunate part of it is that they all get it. They all know that Teddy's doing the right thing – or at least a thing that really shouldn't matter – regardless of how many green eyebrow ridges it raises every time he walks into a building with his skin pink. It's what makes it hard to ask.
The front of Teddy's shoe bumps the front of Billy's, and Billy can't suppress the moment of professional terror as he glances down to ensure that no scuff marks have been left behind. Teddy's shoes gleam back at him, as polished as when they first left the hotel.
"Ever been to a Skrull opera before?" he asks with the most forebodingly angelic look Billy has ever seen.
"No-oo," Billy says slowly, drawing out the word so that his eyes have enough time to narrow. Teddy just looks more angelic at him in return, so Billy continues: "But Kate makes me go see an off-off-off-off Broadway production of that musical where everyone dies every year, so I consider myself prepared and pre-psychologically scarred."
Teddy brings his hand up to his mouth, covering it to conceal his smile and then drumming his fingers against the side of his chin. "Ah, good," he says.
Three hours, four fake decapitations, and one probably burst ear drum later, Billy leans forward from his seat in the back of the box and taps Teddy on the shoulder. Teddy half-turns so that his profile is illuminated by the orange light streaming up from the stage where the actor playing X'ridak is singing about how he'll have to decapitate more people tomorrow.
Billy looks at him seriously. "I say this with all due respect: Your culture disturbs and alarms me."
"Guys," Kate hisses from over to Billy's left. "I just thought of a great new drinking game."
---
Most nights, they order take-out from the only place they've found that they can all agree on and eat while working. Kate has put up a whiteboard for tracking polling numbers in the living room of Teddy's suite; Cassie has made it pretty by drawing flowers all around the edge in blue and red dry-erase marker. Billy has claimed the spot right below it as his permanent position for all staff meetings and pseudo-staff meetings. It gives him a near endless supply of marker caps to throw at people when necessary.
It also gives him the bittersweet duty of being the one to chart the new numbers every morning, usually while ingesting coffee with one side of his mouth and grimacing with the other. The ups and downs are expected. Polling numbers, except when they are absolute bullshit, never stay steady in a campaign; things always shift. It's the overall trend that matters, not the day-to-day minutiae.
But as Billy learns quickly, the combination of Skrull militaristic obsessiveness and their fear-slash-awe of everything government tends to result in startling response rates on opinion polls, massive sample sizes, and nearly second-by-second figures. When Teddy drinks someone's least favourite brand of pop, they know about it. When Teddy's tie looks particularly nice with his eyes, they know it. Before long, Billy's had to scrub out the chart they started on the first day and redraw it, with all its heart-stopping jagged peaks and valleys.
With the first round of debates on the horizon, they're currently stuck in a protracted valley, broken up only by a small peak when Billy had less than subtly leaked some pictures of Teddy out to dinner with his mom earlier in the week. No Skrull alive could resist the family values angle, especially when Sarah Altman was a bit of a war hero in her own right.
"We already know that we've got no shot at the ultra-traditionalist vote," Eli says to Teddy over chapati and chicken madras as Billy scribbles an irritable letter to the editor that he will never actually send into the column of his briefing notes and Kate and Cassie pour over the security plans for the convention centre.
"Yes," Teddy says with a look of mixed amusement on his face. "I think we let that ship sail a while ago. Also, my aunt."
"Your aunt," Eli repeats, managing to agree and also make the word ‘aunt' sound like a swear word with barely a twitch of his eyebrows. "Exactly. Her base is never going to vote for you. Her base kind of hates you."
"It's hard being me," Teddy sighs, and Billy glances up just in time to catch three seconds of Teddy staring at him before he looks back at Eli.
Eli taps the table and continues on as if he wasn't interrupted. "Usually, I'd say just leave her alone. Forget about tearing down Veranke's qualifications, focus on building up yours. Focus on the other candidates. Focus on winning over people in the centre who think you're over-educated and soft on Earth." The tapping stops, and Eli grimaces. "Except," he says, and Billy interrupts without hesitation.
"Except the other candidates aren't really important right now."
Teddy looks at him again, and he doesn't look amused. By now, Billy has begun to recognize this expression as his "Serious Political Face," and it doesn't seem to matter if he's green or pink or mauve when he makes it, it always makes Billy suck in a breath and have weird pre-cognitive visions of what it will look like on currency in a few years.
"Because she's my aunt," Teddy says again, only barely keeping from frowning.
"Because it's too good a story." Billy waves his hand in the air, nearly toppling his notebook out of his lap. "Because she's the dynasty and the return to the way things were when everyone's parents were young, and Tarnax IV was a big military power with a truly stupid stupid defence budget. And you're the idea of what the Skrull could be in the future if they just leave that behind and move on. I guarantee whatever happens in the debate, short of an invasion of cows from the moon, that will be the story the day after."
Silently, Teddy presses his lips together and leans back in his chair. He crosses his arms over his chest, and the late afternoon sun coming in through the tinted hotel windows falls across his jaw and the creases in his shirt in a way that makes Billy's fingers itch to yank a photographer into the room.
Finally, Teddy looks at Eli and raises his eyebrows in solemn inquiry. "So I...?" he asks.
"Destroy her," Eli replies firmly.
---
Billy had known about Teddy long before he ever went to work for him. It was hard to miss given that Teddy's arrival on Earth had roughly coincided with Billy living on his own for the first time, and there were more than enough late night grocery shopping trips spent standing in line for the checkout, staring at Teddy's face on the cover of teen magazines.
He'd never bought into it. He'd never followed the tabloid stories about Teddy's weight loss secrets or the November Secret Baby scandal that had obsessed most of his first year reporting class. He could claim a certain amount of smugness over the fact that he had never cut clippings out of newspapers or bought the issue of Vanity Fair with the one official photoshoot and interview Teddy ever agreed to during his stay on Earth. He'd read it, yes, but he hadn't cut anything out.
The only thing he'd never really understood is that even when everyone else moved on, got over the first blush of celebrity obsession and returned to speculating about movie stars and the royalty of other countries, he didn't. And when Esquire had done a profile on Teddy a year ago, presciently choosing to catch up with him before he announced his candidacy and drove every intergalactic correspondent back into his arms in the same breath, Billy must admit he did cut things out of that one.
Billy used to think that the media loved Teddy because his story was so perfect that it was impossible not to. Tragedy and adventure and the plucky refusal to give in, all wrapped up into a devastatingly photogenic package, capable of sheltering a thousand different themes from redemption to the indomitable nature of the human – or Skrull as the case may be – spirit.
Now he thinks that it's a strange thing, knowing someone that you spent the most awkward years of your young adulthood reading about. Billy can see all the things in Teddy that those other journalists saw, but he can also see more, and the part of his brain that still insists he's a journalist can't stop wondering how he'd write the story if given the chance.
He thinks he'd start like this: "Teddy Altman bites his nails when distracted. As he likes to claim, it's probably the key to his political success that he can grow them back again immediately."
---
Two-thirds of the way through the first debate, Billy's heart basically stops beating and doesn't start again until they've made it back to the hotel and he's marched up to Teddy's suite and drawn a straight, swooping line up on the whiteboard. Official numbers won't be in for a few hours, but Billy's natural tendency towards scrappy pessimism has momentarily been swallowed up in a sense of Fuck yes, we're awesome, and he feels like embracing it for once.
Downstairs, he finds Kate and Cassie sitting on either side of Teddy in one of the high-backed booths in the hotel bar, alternating between plying him with drinks and examining Cassie's frightening array of concealed weaponry. The upholstery is plush black leather and less Spartan than Billy would have expected given his experiences of Tarnaxian interior design over the last few weeks. Teddy's hair is bright and unruly, and he's taken off his tie; he's cheeks are going pink, and he keeps laughing and screwing up his nose every time Kate mutters something to him and pushes another drink his way.
Billy leaves them to it and goes to sit at the bar with Eli instead. He gets as far as "I'd like an um" before realizing that he has never had to order alcohol on an alien planet before and doesn't know where to begin. For a twenty-something elite political operative, this is a distressing situation to be in.
"Order the thing in the blue bottle," Eli suggests. "Pretty sure it doesn't take more than one stomach to digest."
The thing in the blue bottle turns out to also be blue in colour, and pretty soon Billy is sitting with his shot glass, trying to decide if he actually wants to drink it, while Eli sips on a cup of coffee and gazes at the backlit fish tank that sits behind the bar.
"Tarnaxian acquatic life: surprisingly not scary," Billy observes and then tilts his head to one side. "Arguably kinda cute."
Eli snorts, knocking his spoon against the rim of his mug and taking another sip. After a moment, he says, "Probably still carnivorous."
"Probably," Billy agrees and then thinks Fuckit and tosses back his drink in one big gulp. It's the consistency of cough syrup but tart, not sweet, which makes it far more pleasant than the Blue Curacao horror he was anticipating. "He was good tonight," Billy says once he's swallowed, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder at Teddy as he says it.
"He was all right."
Billy motions at the bartender to bring him another and makes a face in Eli's direction. "Which is Eli for he was sensational."
Eli sips and then sips again until Billy is almost certain he's conceding the argument through a classic no-comment. But then he sets his cup down on the bar, the click of ceramic on metal lost as Cassie laughs behind them. "We've got a lot of work to do. This is just starting," Eli says.
Billy doesn't say any of the hundred things he knows that Eli already knows, like We could've been done tonight but we're not or Now we get to run the campaign we actually want to. Instead, he just says, "The next twenty-four are ours. Tell me what you want me to do."
---
Over the next four hours, Billy foregoes sleep and writes the following press releases:
"Presidential candidate Dorrek pledges recommitment to pension reform."
"Presidential candidate Dorrek to attend meeting on national-municipal partnership: for our cities' future."
"‘Harsher sentences are an answer but not the smart answer,' presidential candidate Dorrek says on opponent criminal justice policy."
And then somewhere around 6AM, "1001 Reasons You Need to Drop the Fucking Pink Thing, You Idiots; Yes, Tarnaxian Times, I'm Looking At You."
Serendipitously, Kate seems to predict this mental breakdown almost as it's occurring and tackles him to the couch before he can press send in a fit of pique. She forces Billy to sleep at that point and so he does, spread out on the couch in Teddy's suite with one of the cushions pressed over his face and his tie flung over the lamp. He dozes in and out for a few hours to the sound of Eli and Kate debating the pros and cons of highlighting Teddy's military service (pro: it's military service and these are Skrull; con: it was military service for the enemy).
He finally wakes up properly when Teddy almost sits on his feet, making him start and probably snort. There's a little rush of vertigo from sitting up too fast, and Billy claps a hand over his eyes reflexively to block out the light. But when he eases his hand away, he finds that the room is dim, the electric lights shut off and only the early morning light coming in through the window. They're also alone, the room quiet. Billy scrubs his hand over his face, and half-a-day's growth of stubble scratches against his palm.
"Kate said we should let you sleep for a while," Teddy explains and offers a glass of water like an apology.
Billy drinks the whole thing in three big gulps and then stares at Teddy while his brain reorients itself, skips several items down his mental to-do list. "Where are we at?"
"I think Eli's finally fallen asleep, and Cassie's teaching Kate how to throw someone twice her own body weight."
Billy blinks twice and says, "Civilization as we know it is doomed."
"That's what I said," says Teddy and grins brightly. "I've been given the task of going over what you've said I've said in the last few hours, so that I know I've said it."
He takes a moment to parse that sentence. Two moments actually. Then he squints. "Now? Have you even slept yet?"
It's a legitimate question because Teddy's voice has a rough-around-the-edges quality, like he's spent too much time talking without rest. But all Teddy does is shrug and say, "I can go longer without sleep than you can. Biologically."
"Biologically," Billy repeats and has the remote sense of his mind tipping off in strange, sleep deprivation-induced directions before he halts it and sets it back on its proper course. "Just a sec."
Billy rearranges himself, pulling his feet in from where they've been resting nearly touching Teddy's hip, reaching for his laptop with one hand while rubbing his eyes again with the other. Through it all, Teddy waits quietly with a patient but attentive expression on this face.
When Billy's finally got his laptop booted up again, he says, "We're considering being gracious in victory."
"I'd suspected as much."
"It's just better for you to look like the," Billy twirls his finger in the air, "whatchamacallit in this situation."
"The adult?" Teddy suggests, and Billy nods so firmly that he gets Teddy to laugh, his head tipping back. "Considering my aunt, that's not really a problem."
Billy shrugs his shoulders, not wanting to agree out loud no matter how much his own personal opinion of Veranke demands it. It's a family thing, and family things are tricky, and Billy still can't tell where the boundaries of Teddy's political opposition to his aunt are. Whether they extend beyond the political into the personal, whether there's more to his amiable sniping than meets the eye. Billy's started to suspect there is if only because it's hard to believe that anyone as generally amiable as Teddy could possibly exist.
"Do you think you could say that you've always respected her patriotism and desire to do what's best for the Skrull Empire with a straight face?" Billy asks.
Teddy presses his lips together for a moment and thinks about it. Then he shakes his head. "Nope," he says, "but if I just smile the whole way through maybe no one will notice that I'm laughing on the inside."
---
The problem with pension reform, like so many things that Billy has encountered in his relatively short professional life as an elite political operative, is that it is fundamentally, crucially, and unbearably important and also boring as hell. It is a thing that involves many, many meetings with people in many, many uniformly uninteresting boardrooms, looking at many, many pieces of boring paper with boring tables of numbers on them.
When Billy calls around the night before to see if anyone wants a chance at an exclusive photo-op of Teddy at these meetings, he mostly gets laughed, and he can't really blame them.
He sits next to Kate the entire time so that they can share a pad of paper to pass notes between them and listens as Teddy asks honestly intelligent questions about underfunding and coverage and the impact of investment expense ratios on pension adequacy.
We have managed to find the geekiest candidate in the entire universe, Billy observes in a scribble across the top of the page.
Kate reads it, gives a little sigh, and writes back Billy, Billy, Billy in her looping, casual cursive. Kate's handwriting conveys exasperation better than many people's faces.
When Billy waits but finds that no further explanation is forthcoming, he steals the pen back from her. What?
We've managed to find the only candidate in the entire universe who still really cares.
Billy looks at her, at the way she raises her eyebrows at him like she can't believe he hasn't figured this out already, and then he looks at Teddy who is flipping pages on the report in front of him and noting things down along the margins.
"Okay," Teddy's saying, "I wanted to talk a little bit about improving benefit portability," and Billy has to acknowledge that Kate has a point.
---
The third campaign Kate and Billy ever worked together was a nightmare of truly epic proportions, the kind of horror story that Billy refuses to talk about at parties not only because he doesn't like to relive it but also because he plans to write a tell-all book someday when he's old and crotchety (crotchetier) and retired from political life. He will title it Dfdhjkdsf: The Campaign that Almost Drove Me to Murder-Suicide.
They were in Oregon of all places, and it was raining all the time, long days of drizzling grey skies and eating Cheetos for dinner and explaining how writing a memo intervening on one pro-union case twenty million years ago did not a pinko commie left-wing wacko make.
And Billy can remember how Kate had to fight their candidate every step of the way, about the meetings he had to go to and the parties he couldn't go to and the briefs he absolutely had to read. He remembers how she'd grip her hair like she wanted to pull it out and fall asleep on his bed because she was too tired to remember that she was in his hotel room not hers when they finished work at night.
They were kids and almost no one knew them, and they had to take the work they could, but Kate had still grabbed him by the shoulder as the votes were coming in and steered him out the back entrance of the building. They'd stood under the awning and watched the rain and shivered in their shirtsleeves.
Kate had looked at him with bright, tired eyes and said, "Here's the plan. We get a reputation. We build that all the fucking way up and then we only work for people we'd actually vote for, okay? We only work for good people." She'd said it like either of them had any idea what that meant anymore, and Billy hadn't said anything because he'd wanted to agree but couldn't believe in it enough to form the words.
It's something Billy thinks about a lot after meeting Teddy: how all the things that happened in his life before now led him here.
---
All feats of modern technology aside, the shuttle ride from Earth to Tarnax IV still takes 25 Earth hours, is severely lacking in the foot room department, and is air-conditioned to nearly arctic temperatures. Billy tries to compensate by watching C-SPAN repeat feeds on his laptop and ordering a copious array of drinks in tiny bottles from the in-flight menu, which he shares with Kate only because he knows he's likely to pass out around hour 18 and this might keep her from drawing on his face while he sleeps.
Of course, the problem with watching C-SPAN is that Earth news has been slow for the last month, and so every news cycle seems to be made of about 7% Congress's Latest Attempt to Rename a National Park After that One Congressman who Got Eaten by a Bear and 93% the Skrull presidential race. And because the human race has decided to be not at all subtle about who their favourite candidate is that means endless streams of footage in which Dorrek "Theodore" Altman gets in and out of cars and smiles at small green infants and stares off into the distance with determined expressions on his face.
Billy, watching a clip from five hours earlier in the day when Dorrek and his tiny, blonde aide stopped for ice cream somewhere, sighs.
Kate, watching over his shoulder with a half-finished bottle of Taylors Late Vintage pinched between her thumb and index finger, opines, "When we get there, you should write a press release about how his flaxen hair in the sunlight is the colour of freedom."
"Given the audience," Billy replies with a barely contained snort, "it should probably be about how his hair in the sunlight is the colour of dawn on the day we vanquish our enemies and eat their livers for afternoon tea."
Kate, obviously, does not even pretend to have listened to him and immediately starts whapping him on the arm instead, pointing at the tiny laptop screen with the unabashed joy of someone on her third miniature bottle of port. "Oh, oh," she cheers, "gratuitous smiling b-roll. Take a shot!"
With a wrinkle of his nose, Billy downs the last of his brandy. "You make up the worst drinking games," he tells her seriously.
"Only another one-point-seven-five million light-years to go." She gives him her most dazzling smile.
---
Billy never planned on going the professional media-wrangler route after college. Having majored in journalism, he'd walked out firm in the knowledge that people who work in PR and PR-related activities were the Enemy, soul-sucking demonspawn whose entire purpose in life was to distort the Truth and keep the wool pulled firmly over the eyes of the American public.
But then, Billy had also believed that people were wrong about the print journalism industry's steady march down the toilet and that a young man living in Manhattan could totally make enough money on investigative journalism alone to still actually eat, so Billy must admit that, in retrospect, he was kind of a tit back then.
It was his bubbe who had eventually tossed him on the path that inevitably led to getting blazingly drunk on the Andromeda Galaxy red-eye three years later. She had been persistent, in a way that only bubbes could be persistent, about him working on the campaign of a well-intentioned son of a friend's cousin who had delusion of senatordom and absolutely no viable political prospects whatsoever.
After two weeks of guilt and disapproving tongue-clicking, Billy agreed, assuming that all he'd ever be asked to do would be stapling things together and answering phones. They worked out of a tiny office in midtown over a twenty-four hour grocery, and the staff seemed to change daily. The only people Billy could consistently recognize were the candidate himself and the young dark-haired woman who spent most of her time yelling at anyone who wandered into her line of sight.
On the anniversary of his fifth week with the campaign, the candidate had made a passing remark at a meeting of the Civic Planning Association about the future of cars running on fuel made of human waste, and Billy, the lone volunteer in the office that day, had found himself mobbed by the press within the hour.
"Does Mr. Reiss believe the FDA should approve human waste for other household uses?" asked one reporter.
"Was Mr. Reiss making a statement about American dependence on foreign oil?" asked another.
And Billy, in the face of about seven running microphones with their tiny, blinking red lights, found his brain stuck in a loop of God, reporters are ridiculous people at about the time his mouth decided to make a bid for autonomy and said, "It's the context that's important here. Mr. Reiss has been a long-time supporter of both the American small businessman and the preservation of our natural resources. He believes that our future lies where business and the environment meet and foster each other's growth. He'd also remind you that we've always been a country unafraid of innovation and exploration, and the challenges of the next few years are not beyond us as long as we remember that."
There'd been a few follow-up questions after that, but it wasn't until he'd shepherd them all out of the office that Billy realized he wasn't precisely alone after all. The dark-haired woman, Kate Bishop, was standing in the door to her cubicle, wearing the same shirt she'd worn the day before, looking at him with a curious expression.
"You're surprisingly good at that, you know," she said neutrally and then laughed. "Or, at least, that's the most eloquent way I've ever heard anyone say we should put our cultural-national tendency for being full of shit to good use."
Billy resisted the urge to put his head in the nearest garbage can only because it was filled with shredded draft press releases, and it would probably have all gotten stuck in his hair. "I'm not actually good at that," he corrected briskly. "I'm terrible with people."
Kate continued to stand in the doorway for a moment more before pushing away with only a click of her heels and a bare shift of her weight. She walked over to his desk and stared down at him, a focused light growing in her eyes. "I know. For some reason it works. D'you think you could do it again?"
When, four months later, David Reiss lost the New York senatorial race, Billy and Kate were already six hours away in Maine, celebrating getting their first senator elected.
---
By the time they get to their hotel, Billy is so bleary-eyed with shuttle-lag and hangover-induced dehydration that he can barely stand up straight in the lobby long enough for Kate to check them both in. He makes it to his room only by leaning on Kate for most of the elevator ride up to their floor and into bed only because that's where Kate chooses to deposit him with a pat on the head and an affectionate, "You utter lightweight. I'll come get you in a few hours, okay?"
Billy manages to have the good sense and sufficient coordination to tug off his shirt and pants before collapsing spread-eagle on the bed. His pillows carry the universal hotel smell of detergent and stale air which has become as familiar and home-like to Billy over the past few years as his actual home. He's solidly asleep in under three minutes flat.
Sometime later – and Billy can't really judge how much later because the clock on his bedside table swears that the time is 27:34 – he wakes to the sound of his door chime going off enthusiastically and repeatedly. He blinks muzzily a few times and then slides off the bed to a symphony of cracking knee and elbow joints. As quickly as he can, he pulls on his shirt and pants and then goes to answer the door.
He fully expected it to be Kate on the other side but instead, he's greeted by a very human-looking girl dressed in a dark suit, with her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. It takes a few seconds before Billy can place her as the aide who always shows up behind Dorrek at press events. Improbably, she looks even younger in person.
"Mr. Kaplan?" she asks. "Ms. Bishop said I should come get you. We're about to start our full strategy meeting just down the hall."
"Um," says Billy, running a hand through his hair, aware that that only makes it stand up worse. "Do I have time to shave or brush my hair or gargle with industrial-strength disinfectant for, like, an hour?"
"Nope," she replies with pointed, obnoxious chipperness. "C'mon." And then without another word, she pivots on one toe and starts off back down the hall, leaving Billy to scramble for his keycard, shove it into his pocket, and stumble after her.
"So you're...?" he asks once he's fallen in step with her.
She doesn't turn to look at him, but her eyebrows rise and fall with amusement in profile. "Cassie Lang. I head up Teddy's security team."
For a moment, Billy isn't sure what part of that sentence is more surprising: the informal "Teddy" or the part where someone who looks about thirteen is supposed to be heading anyone's security team. Billy tries to keep the surprise out of his voice when he replies, "Really."
Cassie does glance his way then, and her eyes crinkle with a sort of mischievous glee that probably only develops in someone who has had to explain Yes, really over a hundred times already.
"I know thirty-five ways to kill a man with a piece of dental floss and a paper clip."
"Ah," says Billy.
Cassie nods and then adds reflectively, "I'm basically MacGyver if MacGyver was more into carnage and mayhem."
They walk a few more steps in silence before Billy says, "I should probably never introduce you to my brother."
---
Kate is already ensconced in one of the two high-backed chairs near the suite's wall of windows when Billy and Cassie arrive. She has her heels kicked off on the floor underneath the chair where they'll be out of the way, and her bare feet are tucked in beside her on the seat, her skirt coming down to just above the curve of her kneecap. She's sipping from a large glass of water with ice cubes, which reminds Billy immediately that he's still definitely dehydrated.
Eli Bradley, who Billy has never met but knows well by reputation and Kate's gossipy stories about "the old days," is pacing a loose loop in front of the coffee table with his hands clasped behind him. When the door swishes open to admit Billy and Cassie, he looks up and gives them a brief nod before his eyes flicker over to the half-closed bathroom door.
Dorrek, whose crisp, Skrull-inflected vowels and cadences Billy knows intimately from watching a solid fifty stump speeches over the last week, is speaking from behind the door, over the sound of running water. "I know it's not the popular thing to do," he's saying. "I'm trying to make a point."
Billy lets Cassie usher him over to one of the couches from where he continues to look longingly at Kate's glass of water.
"A point that no one who can actually vote for you cares about," counters Eli, frowning at the door.
The running water shuts off, and there are some shuffling noises from the bathroom and then Dorrek finally emerges. His signature blonde hair is damp and, as a result, more of a deep gold colour than usual. He has a towel wrapped around his neck to catch the drips, and it pushes down on the collar of his shirt in a way that makes it stick out at strange angles. He's also not green today and between moments of open-mouthed gapping, Billy wonders if he's done that for his and Kate's benefit.
Dorrek grins at Eli with his perfectly straight, white teeth. It's a sharper smile than the ones that has earned him legions of devoted and adoring fans at C-SPAN. "Since when is that a good enough reason not to make a point?" he asks.
Since you're a politician trying to get elected, Billy thinks, but he doesn't have the opportunity to say it because that's when Dorrek takes a look around the room and first notices his existence. It's like being a deer caught in headlights, except that instead of headlights it's a laser beam that could probably liquefy your digestive track.
"Oh," says Dorrek, "you're the other new guy. Hey."
Billy finds himself presented with a hand which he shakes because good manner have been inculcated into him at an early age hard enough that he can still manage things like handshakes while having a full-body seizure.
After a moment, still holding Dorrek's hand, he says, "Oh my fucking god."
Dorrek's eyebrows take on a worried expression. "Um?" he says.
Kate takes pity on both of them. "Don't worry," she says, smiling over her glass in a way that makes her bottom lip just touch the rim. "That's just the sound press secretaries make when they realize that you don't actually need hours with a make-up team to look that good."
Of all the things Billy has expected to see, Dorrek blushing, light and pink along the crest of his cheekbone, was not even on the list.
---
Dorrek – or Teddy as he apparently prefers to be called in private and among friends – was one of the first of a generation of truly galactic children. A war orphan like many of his contemporaries on Tarnax IV, he'd been raised by a relative of some sort who had felt that the best way to deal with a half-Skrull, half-Kree hybrid baby boy born in the aftermath of bitter war was to forego any attempt at instilling patriotic zeal in him and instead bounce him around the near-universe for a few years and let him choose where he wanted to stick when he was old enough to make the decision for himself.
So Teddy had spent his early years on Tarnax IV, learning to shapeshift and attending what probably amounted to Junior Warlord Academy. Then he'd moved on and served in the Kree military for a few years because the Kree, generally speaking, had never met a fourteen year-old they hadn't attempted to draft into military service.
And then, unexpected by everyone, he'd come to Earth and stayed just long enough to get a degree from Georgetown and win a couple of basketball games and write a thesis on comparative political philosophy before he'd flown back to Tarnax IV to work a mid-level paper-pushing job and bide his time.
All of which added up to the fact that Teddy spoke four languages at least, had a desk drawer full of military commendations, had a world-class education from three different worlds and a quiet but fierce dedication to ideals like peace and equality. He was, in essence, the perfect candidate, like someone had gift-wrapped him and left him waiting for Eli and Kate and Billy to discover.
And, Billy finds himself thinking repeatedly during his first week, if the Skrull could just get over being terrible racists for long enough to elect him, he might even do some good.
---
Their first two weeks of news cycles end up being kind of a circus. The thing is that Billy has plenty of experience now in fielding questions he likes and subtly ignoring ones he doesn't. He can probably find a way to make an illegitimate baby scandal into a positive if he just rambles long enough, but he's also thoroughly unused to being news himself. And yet, unexpectedly but inevitably, for the first few days after word that Teddy's flown in consultants from Earth begins circulating, that's what he becomes.
It strikes home the first day that a picture of him ends up at the top of the homepage for Tarnax IV's biggest publication. The phorographer had caught him behind the desk they'd set up in the unofficial press room, snapped in mid-point as he calls on a reporter to answer a question. "Dorrek Campaign Goes Intergalactic" reads the title of the article; the caption beneath the picture says, "William Kaplan, 25, is one of a team of humans candidate Dorrek has imported to aid in his presidential bid."
"It makes me sound like a crate of oranges," Billy complains morosely as they drive through the capital to the theatre where Teddy is supposed to be attending a performance of The Many Victories of X'ridak the Subduer. Traffic being notoriously bad through the centre of the city, the going's slow, and Billy splits his time between thumbing the touchpad on his phone to scroll up and down the article and tugging self-consciously on his bowtie.
On the opposite seat, Cassie gives him a slight, not particularly genuine smile of sympathy. Teddy tilts his head to one side and does a much better job of looking like he actually cares. Kate and Eli are not present, having been banished to their own car when it became obvious to everyone that they can't go five minutes without arguing at any time ever.
"If it makes you feel better," Teddy says, "I'm sure it was much worse for global warming to fly you up here than it would've been to fly a crate of oranges."
Billy feels strangely mollified by that, enough to agree to pocket his phone for the time being. There's only so long he can stare at a picture of his own face before he has to start wondering if he's secretly vain or just developing some shiny new self-esteem issues, anyway.
"I don't suppose you'd do a last minute reconsideration of the not-going-green thing, would you?" Billy asks, but his tone already gives away that he doesn't have much hope of getting a positive answer.
Sure enough, Teddy just grins, stretches his arm out along the back of the seat until he can almost touch the top of Cassie's up-do. "Nope," he says cheerfully.
"Right," Billy sighs and looks out the window.
To green or not to green, that's the question Billy can already foresee plaguing this campaign, the one already picking up some currency among the yellower journalists, the one that probably won't drive Eli to drink because Eli is twenty times the professional Billy is but will probably drive him a little nuts in the short term regardless. The one that Teddy absolutely won't budge on out of principle. Billy's dealt with stubborn politicians before. Without trying very hard, he can think back to a mayoral campaign in Texas, and a candidate who had levelly refused to stop sleeping with a stuffed racoon toy until Kate had somehow managed to get it arrested for public lewdness. That had been a fun press conference.
Teddy's decision to spend at least half his time looking human (or as he points out every time Eli raises the issue: "Looking Kree. You just can't tell the difference.") is on the same level of stubbornness if not the same level of blatant ridiculousness. He shoots down all pleas to reconsider with the same smile, the same faint amusement in his eyes, like he can't understand how they all fail to see the pointlessness of what they're asking.
And the most unfortunate part of it is that they all get it. They all know that Teddy's doing the right thing – or at least a thing that really shouldn't matter – regardless of how many green eyebrow ridges it raises every time he walks into a building with his skin pink. It's what makes it hard to ask.
The front of Teddy's shoe bumps the front of Billy's, and Billy can't suppress the moment of professional terror as he glances down to ensure that no scuff marks have been left behind. Teddy's shoes gleam back at him, as polished as when they first left the hotel.
"Ever been to a Skrull opera before?" he asks with the most forebodingly angelic look Billy has ever seen.
"No-oo," Billy says slowly, drawing out the word so that his eyes have enough time to narrow. Teddy just looks more angelic at him in return, so Billy continues: "But Kate makes me go see an off-off-off-off Broadway production of that musical where everyone dies every year, so I consider myself prepared and pre-psychologically scarred."
Teddy brings his hand up to his mouth, covering it to conceal his smile and then drumming his fingers against the side of his chin. "Ah, good," he says.
Three hours, four fake decapitations, and one probably burst ear drum later, Billy leans forward from his seat in the back of the box and taps Teddy on the shoulder. Teddy half-turns so that his profile is illuminated by the orange light streaming up from the stage where the actor playing X'ridak is singing about how he'll have to decapitate more people tomorrow.
Billy looks at him seriously. "I say this with all due respect: Your culture disturbs and alarms me."
"Guys," Kate hisses from over to Billy's left. "I just thought of a great new drinking game."
---
Most nights, they order take-out from the only place they've found that they can all agree on and eat while working. Kate has put up a whiteboard for tracking polling numbers in the living room of Teddy's suite; Cassie has made it pretty by drawing flowers all around the edge in blue and red dry-erase marker. Billy has claimed the spot right below it as his permanent position for all staff meetings and pseudo-staff meetings. It gives him a near endless supply of marker caps to throw at people when necessary.
It also gives him the bittersweet duty of being the one to chart the new numbers every morning, usually while ingesting coffee with one side of his mouth and grimacing with the other. The ups and downs are expected. Polling numbers, except when they are absolute bullshit, never stay steady in a campaign; things always shift. It's the overall trend that matters, not the day-to-day minutiae.
But as Billy learns quickly, the combination of Skrull militaristic obsessiveness and their fear-slash-awe of everything government tends to result in startling response rates on opinion polls, massive sample sizes, and nearly second-by-second figures. When Teddy drinks someone's least favourite brand of pop, they know about it. When Teddy's tie looks particularly nice with his eyes, they know it. Before long, Billy's had to scrub out the chart they started on the first day and redraw it, with all its heart-stopping jagged peaks and valleys.
With the first round of debates on the horizon, they're currently stuck in a protracted valley, broken up only by a small peak when Billy had less than subtly leaked some pictures of Teddy out to dinner with his mom earlier in the week. No Skrull alive could resist the family values angle, especially when Sarah Altman was a bit of a war hero in her own right.
"We already know that we've got no shot at the ultra-traditionalist vote," Eli says to Teddy over chapati and chicken madras as Billy scribbles an irritable letter to the editor that he will never actually send into the column of his briefing notes and Kate and Cassie pour over the security plans for the convention centre.
"Yes," Teddy says with a look of mixed amusement on his face. "I think we let that ship sail a while ago. Also, my aunt."
"Your aunt," Eli repeats, managing to agree and also make the word ‘aunt' sound like a swear word with barely a twitch of his eyebrows. "Exactly. Her base is never going to vote for you. Her base kind of hates you."
"It's hard being me," Teddy sighs, and Billy glances up just in time to catch three seconds of Teddy staring at him before he looks back at Eli.
Eli taps the table and continues on as if he wasn't interrupted. "Usually, I'd say just leave her alone. Forget about tearing down Veranke's qualifications, focus on building up yours. Focus on the other candidates. Focus on winning over people in the centre who think you're over-educated and soft on Earth." The tapping stops, and Eli grimaces. "Except," he says, and Billy interrupts without hesitation.
"Except the other candidates aren't really important right now."
Teddy looks at him again, and he doesn't look amused. By now, Billy has begun to recognize this expression as his "Serious Political Face," and it doesn't seem to matter if he's green or pink or mauve when he makes it, it always makes Billy suck in a breath and have weird pre-cognitive visions of what it will look like on currency in a few years.
"Because she's my aunt," Teddy says again, only barely keeping from frowning.
"Because it's too good a story." Billy waves his hand in the air, nearly toppling his notebook out of his lap. "Because she's the dynasty and the return to the way things were when everyone's parents were young, and Tarnax IV was a big military power with a truly stupid stupid defence budget. And you're the idea of what the Skrull could be in the future if they just leave that behind and move on. I guarantee whatever happens in the debate, short of an invasion of cows from the moon, that will be the story the day after."
Silently, Teddy presses his lips together and leans back in his chair. He crosses his arms over his chest, and the late afternoon sun coming in through the tinted hotel windows falls across his jaw and the creases in his shirt in a way that makes Billy's fingers itch to yank a photographer into the room.
Finally, Teddy looks at Eli and raises his eyebrows in solemn inquiry. "So I...?" he asks.
"Destroy her," Eli replies firmly.
---
Billy had known about Teddy long before he ever went to work for him. It was hard to miss given that Teddy's arrival on Earth had roughly coincided with Billy living on his own for the first time, and there were more than enough late night grocery shopping trips spent standing in line for the checkout, staring at Teddy's face on the cover of teen magazines.
He'd never bought into it. He'd never followed the tabloid stories about Teddy's weight loss secrets or the November Secret Baby scandal that had obsessed most of his first year reporting class. He could claim a certain amount of smugness over the fact that he had never cut clippings out of newspapers or bought the issue of Vanity Fair with the one official photoshoot and interview Teddy ever agreed to during his stay on Earth. He'd read it, yes, but he hadn't cut anything out.
The only thing he'd never really understood is that even when everyone else moved on, got over the first blush of celebrity obsession and returned to speculating about movie stars and the royalty of other countries, he didn't. And when Esquire had done a profile on Teddy a year ago, presciently choosing to catch up with him before he announced his candidacy and drove every intergalactic correspondent back into his arms in the same breath, Billy must admit he did cut things out of that one.
Billy used to think that the media loved Teddy because his story was so perfect that it was impossible not to. Tragedy and adventure and the plucky refusal to give in, all wrapped up into a devastatingly photogenic package, capable of sheltering a thousand different themes from redemption to the indomitable nature of the human – or Skrull as the case may be – spirit.
Now he thinks that it's a strange thing, knowing someone that you spent the most awkward years of your young adulthood reading about. Billy can see all the things in Teddy that those other journalists saw, but he can also see more, and the part of his brain that still insists he's a journalist can't stop wondering how he'd write the story if given the chance.
He thinks he'd start like this: "Teddy Altman bites his nails when distracted. As he likes to claim, it's probably the key to his political success that he can grow them back again immediately."
---
Two-thirds of the way through the first debate, Billy's heart basically stops beating and doesn't start again until they've made it back to the hotel and he's marched up to Teddy's suite and drawn a straight, swooping line up on the whiteboard. Official numbers won't be in for a few hours, but Billy's natural tendency towards scrappy pessimism has momentarily been swallowed up in a sense of Fuck yes, we're awesome, and he feels like embracing it for once.
Downstairs, he finds Kate and Cassie sitting on either side of Teddy in one of the high-backed booths in the hotel bar, alternating between plying him with drinks and examining Cassie's frightening array of concealed weaponry. The upholstery is plush black leather and less Spartan than Billy would have expected given his experiences of Tarnaxian interior design over the last few weeks. Teddy's hair is bright and unruly, and he's taken off his tie; he's cheeks are going pink, and he keeps laughing and screwing up his nose every time Kate mutters something to him and pushes another drink his way.
Billy leaves them to it and goes to sit at the bar with Eli instead. He gets as far as "I'd like an um" before realizing that he has never had to order alcohol on an alien planet before and doesn't know where to begin. For a twenty-something elite political operative, this is a distressing situation to be in.
"Order the thing in the blue bottle," Eli suggests. "Pretty sure it doesn't take more than one stomach to digest."
The thing in the blue bottle turns out to also be blue in colour, and pretty soon Billy is sitting with his shot glass, trying to decide if he actually wants to drink it, while Eli sips on a cup of coffee and gazes at the backlit fish tank that sits behind the bar.
"Tarnaxian acquatic life: surprisingly not scary," Billy observes and then tilts his head to one side. "Arguably kinda cute."
Eli snorts, knocking his spoon against the rim of his mug and taking another sip. After a moment, he says, "Probably still carnivorous."
"Probably," Billy agrees and then thinks Fuckit and tosses back his drink in one big gulp. It's the consistency of cough syrup but tart, not sweet, which makes it far more pleasant than the Blue Curacao horror he was anticipating. "He was good tonight," Billy says once he's swallowed, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder at Teddy as he says it.
"He was all right."
Billy motions at the bartender to bring him another and makes a face in Eli's direction. "Which is Eli for he was sensational."
Eli sips and then sips again until Billy is almost certain he's conceding the argument through a classic no-comment. But then he sets his cup down on the bar, the click of ceramic on metal lost as Cassie laughs behind them. "We've got a lot of work to do. This is just starting," Eli says.
Billy doesn't say any of the hundred things he knows that Eli already knows, like We could've been done tonight but we're not or Now we get to run the campaign we actually want to. Instead, he just says, "The next twenty-four are ours. Tell me what you want me to do."
---
Over the next four hours, Billy foregoes sleep and writes the following press releases:
"Presidential candidate Dorrek pledges recommitment to pension reform."
"Presidential candidate Dorrek to attend meeting on national-municipal partnership: for our cities' future."
"‘Harsher sentences are an answer but not the smart answer,' presidential candidate Dorrek says on opponent criminal justice policy."
And then somewhere around 6AM, "1001 Reasons You Need to Drop the Fucking Pink Thing, You Idiots; Yes, Tarnaxian Times, I'm Looking At You."
Serendipitously, Kate seems to predict this mental breakdown almost as it's occurring and tackles him to the couch before he can press send in a fit of pique. She forces Billy to sleep at that point and so he does, spread out on the couch in Teddy's suite with one of the cushions pressed over his face and his tie flung over the lamp. He dozes in and out for a few hours to the sound of Eli and Kate debating the pros and cons of highlighting Teddy's military service (pro: it's military service and these are Skrull; con: it was military service for the enemy).
He finally wakes up properly when Teddy almost sits on his feet, making him start and probably snort. There's a little rush of vertigo from sitting up too fast, and Billy claps a hand over his eyes reflexively to block out the light. But when he eases his hand away, he finds that the room is dim, the electric lights shut off and only the early morning light coming in through the window. They're also alone, the room quiet. Billy scrubs his hand over his face, and half-a-day's growth of stubble scratches against his palm.
"Kate said we should let you sleep for a while," Teddy explains and offers a glass of water like an apology.
Billy drinks the whole thing in three big gulps and then stares at Teddy while his brain reorients itself, skips several items down his mental to-do list. "Where are we at?"
"I think Eli's finally fallen asleep, and Cassie's teaching Kate how to throw someone twice her own body weight."
Billy blinks twice and says, "Civilization as we know it is doomed."
"That's what I said," says Teddy and grins brightly. "I've been given the task of going over what you've said I've said in the last few hours, so that I know I've said it."
He takes a moment to parse that sentence. Two moments actually. Then he squints. "Now? Have you even slept yet?"
It's a legitimate question because Teddy's voice has a rough-around-the-edges quality, like he's spent too much time talking without rest. But all Teddy does is shrug and say, "I can go longer without sleep than you can. Biologically."
"Biologically," Billy repeats and has the remote sense of his mind tipping off in strange, sleep deprivation-induced directions before he halts it and sets it back on its proper course. "Just a sec."
Billy rearranges himself, pulling his feet in from where they've been resting nearly touching Teddy's hip, reaching for his laptop with one hand while rubbing his eyes again with the other. Through it all, Teddy waits quietly with a patient but attentive expression on this face.
When Billy's finally got his laptop booted up again, he says, "We're considering being gracious in victory."
"I'd suspected as much."
"It's just better for you to look like the," Billy twirls his finger in the air, "whatchamacallit in this situation."
"The adult?" Teddy suggests, and Billy nods so firmly that he gets Teddy to laugh, his head tipping back. "Considering my aunt, that's not really a problem."
Billy shrugs his shoulders, not wanting to agree out loud no matter how much his own personal opinion of Veranke demands it. It's a family thing, and family things are tricky, and Billy still can't tell where the boundaries of Teddy's political opposition to his aunt are. Whether they extend beyond the political into the personal, whether there's more to his amiable sniping than meets the eye. Billy's started to suspect there is if only because it's hard to believe that anyone as generally amiable as Teddy could possibly exist.
"Do you think you could say that you've always respected her patriotism and desire to do what's best for the Skrull Empire with a straight face?" Billy asks.
Teddy presses his lips together for a moment and thinks about it. Then he shakes his head. "Nope," he says, "but if I just smile the whole way through maybe no one will notice that I'm laughing on the inside."
---
The problem with pension reform, like so many things that Billy has encountered in his relatively short professional life as an elite political operative, is that it is fundamentally, crucially, and unbearably important and also boring as hell. It is a thing that involves many, many meetings with people in many, many uniformly uninteresting boardrooms, looking at many, many pieces of boring paper with boring tables of numbers on them.
When Billy calls around the night before to see if anyone wants a chance at an exclusive photo-op of Teddy at these meetings, he mostly gets laughed, and he can't really blame them.
He sits next to Kate the entire time so that they can share a pad of paper to pass notes between them and listens as Teddy asks honestly intelligent questions about underfunding and coverage and the impact of investment expense ratios on pension adequacy.
We have managed to find the geekiest candidate in the entire universe, Billy observes in a scribble across the top of the page.
Kate reads it, gives a little sigh, and writes back Billy, Billy, Billy in her looping, casual cursive. Kate's handwriting conveys exasperation better than many people's faces.
When Billy waits but finds that no further explanation is forthcoming, he steals the pen back from her. What?
We've managed to find the only candidate in the entire universe who still really cares.
Billy looks at her, at the way she raises her eyebrows at him like she can't believe he hasn't figured this out already, and then he looks at Teddy who is flipping pages on the report in front of him and noting things down along the margins.
"Okay," Teddy's saying, "I wanted to talk a little bit about improving benefit portability," and Billy has to acknowledge that Kate has a point.
---
The third campaign Kate and Billy ever worked together was a nightmare of truly epic proportions, the kind of horror story that Billy refuses to talk about at parties not only because he doesn't like to relive it but also because he plans to write a tell-all book someday when he's old and crotchety (crotchetier) and retired from political life. He will title it Dfdhjkdsf: The Campaign that Almost Drove Me to Murder-Suicide.
They were in Oregon of all places, and it was raining all the time, long days of drizzling grey skies and eating Cheetos for dinner and explaining how writing a memo intervening on one pro-union case twenty million years ago did not a pinko commie left-wing wacko make.
And Billy can remember how Kate had to fight their candidate every step of the way, about the meetings he had to go to and the parties he couldn't go to and the briefs he absolutely had to read. He remembers how she'd grip her hair like she wanted to pull it out and fall asleep on his bed because she was too tired to remember that she was in his hotel room not hers when they finished work at night.
They were kids and almost no one knew them, and they had to take the work they could, but Kate had still grabbed him by the shoulder as the votes were coming in and steered him out the back entrance of the building. They'd stood under the awning and watched the rain and shivered in their shirtsleeves.
Kate had looked at him with bright, tired eyes and said, "Here's the plan. We get a reputation. We build that all the fucking way up and then we only work for people we'd actually vote for, okay? We only work for good people." She'd said it like either of them had any idea what that meant anymore, and Billy hadn't said anything because he'd wanted to agree but couldn't believe in it enough to form the words.
It's something Billy thinks about a lot after meeting Teddy: how all the things that happened in his life before now led him here.