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† billy kaplan | wiccan

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WHO: Erik Lehnsherr, Billy Kaplan & Tommy Shepherd
WHERE: Residence #015
WHEN: June 23, evening
WHAT: it's a family reunion he just doesn't know it yet
WARNINGS: none, probably

Erik had his suspicions. It had been two weeks since he had seen Billy at the swear-in event, after all, and it had not taken very long for him to make mental connections and realize that the boy was practically a spitting image of himself at that age. Still, he was wary to jump to any conclusions. There were still too many unknown factors, especially given the knowledge that there were apparently numerous individuals here who came from an alternate universe in which Charles was bald and American.

He set aside his communicator as he waited for the teens to arrive, sitting back in his desk chair. In the portions of the room that had not been visible in the video, another map was pinned to one of the walls, this one of Europe. A small table in the corner held a chess set and a bottle of scotch. Several minutes earlier, he had been examining one of the more technologically advanced guns that this place had to offer, disassembling and reassembling it, but he had tucked it away in one of the drawers-- he did not imagine that having such a weapon floating mid-air would be a terribly welcoming sight.

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Billy had gone to get Tommy, and told him to meet him at residence #015 in two minutes - because they were both good enough to get there on time. On time, in this scenario, being almost instantly.

Maybe he should have chosen a better way, maybe he shouldn't have gone to see Erik, maybe they should have kept it a secret. But at the same time, he was endlessly fascinated with his family, and it would have come out at some point. Better it was this way, on their own terms.

He appeared at the front door, and looked around. The fact was that Tommy was probably already there, waiting for him.

To his credit, Tommy had even taken a couple of extra seconds to wear something nice(-ish) and brush his hair. He hadn't cared the last time they'd met their grandfather, but those circumstances hadn't been by choice, either. Even at a much younger age, Erik was an intimidating man, and Tommy didn't want to be a royal screwup if he could help it.

He had arrived there first - easy enough, since he still spent some of his time at #18 - and started going through the list of possible things to say when Billy joined him moments later. Of course he hadn't thought of anything, yet, but he'd at least come to the conclusion that his usual brand of charm might not cut it this time.

"Nervous?" he asked, half teasing and half looking for reassurance that he wasn't crazy for feeling that way, himself.

Royal screwup. That basically described them, didn't it? He didn't want to think about the fact that they talked about digestive issues from Taco Bell tacos on the Network in front of their young-seeming grandfather.

Billy smoothed his hair down and looked at his twin. The same face, just in different color schemes. And very close to appearance to the man they were about to meet.

And he nodded. Yeah. He was nervous. "Here, I'll..."

And he rang the doorbell, then.

"No sense in waiting, right?" He took a breath. "Also, I guess, if he asks, separated at birth story, okay?"

It was not long-- except perhaps by Tommy's standards-- before Erik answered the door. He noticed Tommy's change into nicer clothing since their discussion over the network only minutes earlier, but chose not to comment on it. Just as he was not going to comment on the discussion about tacos.

"Ah, please come in," he said, standing aside from the door. "I take it you did not have to travel far?" He had imagined that it would be closer to fifteen minutes before they arrived; not that he was bothered, only somewhat surprised.

Well, at least he wasn't going to ask them about the tacos. That was promising.

Tommy ignored the question and stepped inside, resisting the temptation to go through the house while Billy held Magneto's attention. Though 'Magneto' might be the wrong name to be using-- from what he'd noticed so far, there was no signature helmet and no Magneto-y outfit. Maybe the guy was that young.

"I'm a speedster," he finally replied, figuring they may as well be as honest as possible (except for the circumstances of their birth, like Billy had suggested). "Distance is nothing! But we don't live far, so that helped."

Oh. Billy was willing to let Tommy lead - it kept him from having to figure out answers and if Tommy was willing to let his power slip out that easily, then...

"I'm a reality bender, so I just teleported. Uh, hi. I'm Billy. Sorry about the thing at swear in." He looked over at Tommy for a second. "He just showed up a few days ago so I wasn't sure-" he stopped talking for a minute.

And just shrugged, and wondered if he was turning red. This was so much easier when it was his mom, even though she didn't really remember them at first, either.

"Anyway, hi, thanks for letting us over, and everything."

He smiled just slightly, obviously appreciating that they were being straightforward. "Are you mutants, then?" He was still getting used to the idea that there were superpowered individuals here who weren't considered mutants.

The door swung shut seemingly of its own accord once both of the teens were inside, and he gestured toward the living room. "Would you like to take a seat? I am not sure if any of my, ah, housemates are about."

"We're-- yeah," Tommy looked to Billy with raised eyebrows, not sure if magic reality warper counted as a mutant thing or something else entirely.

He kept talking, even as he went to drop himself into one of the seats in the living room. "I'm Tommy, but I think Billy said that already. It's short for Thomas." His sour expression at his proper name was hopefully more than enough to get across how much he didn't like it.

They hadn't explained yet why they were visiting, so maybe launching right into the introductions was weird. Then again, he hadn't asked why they'd wanted to come, either.

"Oh, Billy's short for William. Yeah, mutants. Our mother, too, and her father." He stopped for a moment, and turned to look at Tommy, eyebrows raised a bit. "Third-generation."

Maybe it was clear how nervous Billy was, but if it wasn't, suddenly he felt like maybe he was about to start an electric storm in the house. He did that once on a minor scale when he was still getting control of his powers.

But he managed to keep everything in check. He went and sat next to Tommy on the couch. "And, uh. Our mother's father, his name is Erik."

Happy belated father's day, Grandpa.

It took him a moment to process the rather roundabout way that Billy had gone about making the statement-- though it was not too difficult to put two-and-two together, given that he had already noted the family resemblance. Erik found himself blinking for a moment as it sunk in. He glanced at Tommy for a long moment, and then back at Billy.

"I see," he replied in a thoughtful tone, raising a hand to absently rub at his jaw for a moment.

"I am not reading too much into this by concluding that you mean to tell me that I am your grandfather."

Even though he'd nearly rolled his eyes into the back of his skull at Billy's hideously awkward phrasing, Tommy was grateful that it was out in the open and that Erik was smart enough to put the pieces together. Trying to explain it would have been so, so much worse.

"Unless there's another Erik Lehnsherr who also goes by Magneto and can control metal," he said, gesturing in the direction of the closed door, "and if that's the case, we'll get out of your hair." And, at the mention of hair, he glanced back to Billy, finally noticing just how much his little brother had picked up their grandfather's coloring.

He saw that, Tommy, and he decided that later he would get him back a little for the rolling of eyes - how was Tommy planning to break the news? - but for now he looked back up at Erik.

"Sorry I ended up following you the other day. I just didn't know how to say it, and then Tommy showed up, and we thought, well. That you might want to hear it from us and not from someone else." This time. Because last time, they definitely were not on board with project: Tell Magneto.

"Yes, well, it is a somewhat... peculiar situation," he replied, pacing a bit before disappearing into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a glass of scotch in hand. It seemed that he had not wasted much time in stocking up once he had arrived here.

He took a seat across from the teens, sipping from his glass and appearing pensive. After a pause, he spoke once more.

"I appreciate that you are telling me this. Truly."

The calm, quiet responses were unexpected, but not surprising.

"We were adopted," Tommy blurts out, filling up the silence, "to different families, in different states. I didn't believe any of it when we first met, but... uh, shit made sense eventually." And he hadn't meant to swear in front of Erik. Accidents happen.

He fidgeted in his seat and lightly elbowed Billy, tagging him in to say something endearing or intelligent to keep Erik from kicking them out on their asses.

He knows he has to go with adopted, even though a pang goes through his heart when he thinks about it. His mom and dad are amazing, terrific, excellent, and he knew that it was hard on everyone. But Billy couldn't help it. His perception of family was complicated and hard to handle. "I found him," Billy adds, "I found him, and we...found our mom."

He wasn't about to go into that disaster.

"You didn't know about us, not until we were sixteen. But we really...want to get to know you." He turns real quick, just to look at Tommy for a second. "You're our grandfather. It's important to us."

He spent some time with his gaze directed at the contents of his glass, before he finished it off and gave the pair a considering look.

"I understand," he replied. He closed his eyes for a moment. "Family is important. That is something that I can... appreciate."

It was still a lot to take in, of course, but he could at least make an effort not to scare them away.

Tommy had never thought much about the importance of family; his biological one had been a nightmare, and the Maximoffs were a headache. Toxic, even, as Teddy had described them once. But he nodded along with everything Billy said, despite his own uncertainty and hesitation.

"So I'm from juvie, and Billy's from a really nice Jewish family in New York," he skipped any mention of the Shepherds or his brief stay with the Kaplans, "and together, we fight crime." It's a weak joke.

Billy snorted a bit at the weak joke, because what, it was a little funny, and nodded. "Yeah, I broke him out of juvenile hall. He helped break me out of where they held me for refusing to register. And the Avengers tower." There have been a lot of breakouts in this family.

And Billy considered everything for a moment, before he asked, a little shyly, "Is there anything that we can answer?"

"Ah, then it would seem that we are related," he responded with a small chuckle. Really, they were lucky that they ended up with one of the few grandparents who would not react with immediate concern upon learning that his grandson had somehow ended up in a detention center.

A moment later, he frowned a bit, turning his attention to Billy. "You were being detained for refusing to register? When did this happen?"

"It wasn't here, it was years ago--" Tommy said and stopped himself with a glance at Billy. He hadn't been there when they were captured, and it'd be a bad idea to mention that he'd been distracted by babysitting instead of helping the team.

"It was back home. There was a war, a few years ago, between the registered and the unregistered superheroes. They were capturing us, even the kids, and we fought back. So I guess that answers the did we register here question, though. We're not big on having our names down on paper," Billy clarified. Besides, considering how registered superheroes worked - he thought of Cassie, briefly - he didn't want to not have the freedom to stop, whenever he wanted, without giving up part of who he is.

"Anyway, we're fine. It was years ago." And it was.

He listened thoughtfully, frowning a bit and giving a nod. "I see," he murmured. "I suppose I am not entirely unsurprised to learn of such things."

Letting out a small sigh, he gave a slight shake of his head as though to try to clear his thoughts. "Perhaps we should try to stick to lighter subjects, for the time being." He was quite aware of his own propensity for melancholy; Charles had not hesitated to point it out on more than one occasion.

"Will you, ah, tell me more about yourselves?"

"What's there to tell?" he asked, mentally going over what they'd already said. Everything about their mom was off the table, there wasn't much he could say about the team, and he'd spent the past few months working the shittiest possible job to be able to afford his solo heroics. At least Billy could talk about the Kaplans, or even Teddy. God, when had he let his life get so boring?

"I'm the more attractive one," Tommy started, "started out as the crazy almost-terrorist one, but Billy's been a tolerable influence - it's funny what good that'll do when you're desperate - and I'm not dating anyone, so don't do the grandpa thing of asking about my love life."

Billy flushed a little. "We're identical," he muttered, and it comes out with the ease of an argument long-had and never-won. "Except for the hair, that's natural." As if it wasn't obvious (which, admittedly, it's not).

"I'm dating. Well, he's not here, but I have a boyfriend back home in New York. His name is Teddy - Theodore. He's a shape-shifter." That was easier than explaining his boyfriend's squishy alien background. "I was supposed to go to college but I haven't really done anything for the past year except sit around and apparently drive Tommy away."

"Should I accept any blame for that?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at the term 'almost-terrorist'.

Erik let out a small chuckle at the minor dispute between the two, amusement in his eyes. He continued to listen patiently, though he soon found himself blinking.

"Boyfriend?"

He didn't sound judgemental, just... surprised. He had been brought here from 1962, after all. He was certainly well-aware of alternate lifestyles, though he was not used to such things being discussed in such a casual manner.

"I blew up my school. You're as much to blame for that as Billy is for why I moved out-- maybe like, a small factor, but not the main reason," he said, shooting Billy a pointed look as he talked.

He'd almost forgotten that the sixties had been a very different time for things like boys dating boys and being open about it. "And yeah, the future is way liberal about that kind of thing. Which is good, because those two are all over each other all the time, I don't think they could tone it down if they tried." He'd lived with it long enough, after all.

"Oh. Right. Yeah. It's more accepted and people don't judge as much," Billy clarified, although people still did judge, enough to threaten Teddy (once) and have Billy lose his temper (once).

"And we're not that bad," Billy argued, pushing Tommy a little, just a bit. "Uh. We're out of high school. We didn't join the X-men but to be fair they didn't invite us and once they tried to kill me. Scott apologized for it, by the way," he added, as much for Tommy's benefit as for Erik's.

"Perhaps there is hope for the world yet," he mused. At least Billy and Tommy could rest assured that they would never have to be subjected to any tirades about how things were better in the "good old days"; civil rights advancements and iPhones were all definite positives as far as Erik was concerned.

He raised his eyebrows at Billy's words. "That sounds like quite the misunderstanding."

"They're still assholes," he muttered in response to Billy's assurance about Scott. Tommy didn't hate the X-men, but he didn't have to like them, either. As far as he cared, the only good X-person was David, who'd quit.

Another thing jumped to mind: there'd be no mentioning M-day, either.

"Billy's too trusting, as you can tell, so there's a lot of incidents with people trying to take advantage of what he's got-- and things get messy. It was that kind of misunderstanding," he said, trying to explain what'd happened without going into any concrete details.

He hadn't planned on going into M-day, and if Tommy had thought he was derailing, well.

He did the job well.

"I'm not too trusting!" he argued, frowning a bit. "Anyway, uh, it's fine. It resolved itself. Sort of. You were there, too," he added, "but you know, older. And on our side, I should add."

Erik nodded at that. He could certainly tell that they were leaving out details, but he found it hard to blame them. It was undoubtedly complicated to determine what parts of the future should be revealed. Still, he found himself curious about the things that they were omitting, and briefly considered that it would be much more difficult to keep such secrets if Charles was around.

"Well, I am glad that it was resolved."

Resolved, and then Tommy lived with Billy for a while until he didn't. It sounds like a much nicer story when they leave most of it out.

"When I got here, and Billy told me about you, he really wanted to talk to you but some crazy lady told him not to," not naming names, but totally naming names, "but you're not overreacting at all. It's like you're used to kids telling you they're your grandchildren from the future."

Billy nodded in agreement. Definitely calmer than he would be if a pair of teenagers came up to him and professed that they were his grandchildren.

Granted, that would be weird. Could Teddy have kids? Who was the mom? What was going on? Did he create- Billy, focus - he scolded himself.

"And I appreciate it."

He raised an eyebrow, and then found himself letting out a laugh. "Miss Frost, by any chance?" he asked. Of all the people he had encountered since arriving here, she seemed to know him better than most-- not terribly surprising, since he had already met a version of her in his own world.

"I have been trying to adapt," he stated. "And... the idea of having children is not an entirely alien one."

Oh, right. There'd been a daughter before Pietro and Wanda, he remembered, but their grandfather was so young she might not have been born yet. Or maybe she had. Thinking in timelines was not something he enjoyed.

If someone claimed to be his own grandchild-- he'd only be mostly surprised. With their family? Just about anything could be possible.

"I think I get what you mean with the trying to adapt," he said. "The world feels like home, but it's different in all the little ways. Or big ways for you, I guess, with the technology and all. Yeah. You're better than I thought you'd be. Thanks."

For the life of him he couldn't remember why Billy was letting him talk.

Because despite everything, Billy was about as befuddled as Tommy, and worse at hiding it once his mouth opened. "Yeah, it was Emma Frost. She thought you wouldn't like it. Or that you might...I don't know. Anyway."

He took a moment. "Do you want us to call you anything...in specific? I don't know if you want us calling you grandfather, yet," he said, with a slight smile, for the first time, "but that's sort of what we're used to."

Sort of because really, the only other thing they called him was Magneto.

He blinked at the question. It wasn't something that he'd really considered... not that he had much time to put any consideration into it, before the twins had arrived here. He had to think about it for a moment. "Grandfather" was certainly something that would take some adapting to; it would be a stretch for him to even pass as their father at his age. Still, he was going to make an effort not to push them away.

"Call me whatever suits you." He paused. "Just not Mags."

"Erik? Mr. Lehnsherr?" No, Mr. Lehnsherr sounded wrong, and Magneto-- it didn't feel right, either. "... Erik." Being on a first name basis worked for him, though he wasn't sure how Billy would feel.

"If you wanted to hang out with us, we'd be cool with that," he said, fairly confident he could speak for the both of them on that point. "Imagine if the three of us had've teamed up for paintball! Kicking ass while forging those important family bonds."

Edited 2014-07-01 10:10 (UTC)

"Yeah, maybe more than one of us would have won," Billy said, a slight hint of satisfaction in his tone. Hey. He won. He's allowed to gloat just a bit.

But now he's brightened up a lot, he's actually smiling a bit. "Hey, I'm all for using Erik. If that's what you like."

He gave just a bit of a smile at that, accompanied by a small nod. "That works for me," he replied. It was certainly what he was most accustomed to, after all.

A moment later he was raising an eyebrow and letting out a small chuckle. "I'm not entirely sure that would be fair for everyone else playing," he stated with a bit of a smirk.

"Fair?" Tommy echoed, "Hey, what's fair about feeling like you're literally dying? For a second there I thought it was some twisted battle royale they hadn't given us the full scoop on and they were actually gonna kill off half the imPort population."

He caught himself mid-ramble and shifted again in the chair. The fact he'd managed to sit in one place for so long without too much fidgeting was no small feat, though it was probably still bad enough to be noticeable. It really wasn't a good time to be complaining about stupid paintball battles. "I was fine right after, by the way, so I guess it wasn't that bad. But I would've cheated more if I'd known."

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