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Ted doesn’t like anger. It’s hot in his chest, and he’d much rather be cold than hot. He feels like he can’t control himself when he gets mad. He speaks without thinking sometimes, words tripping over themselves trying to escape the burning in his throat as fast as they can. And while Bill is quick to reply when someone asks him something, Ted prefers to take his time and think over his answer, really consider what they say and how he will respond. So he takes a while to respond, yes, but his answers are thoughtful and he speaks them with the confidence that he could explain his logic behind them if necessary. So when Ted responds quickly, sometimes it doesn’t make sense, or it comes off as rude or insensitive. Which is another reason why he hates being angry.
He’s spent a lot of time getting insults hurled at him, getting tripped or shoved, being told he can’t play with the other kids. He knows how most non-non-non-non-non bodacious it is to be excluded or to be told he’s weird, or gross, or a freak. It hurts in a way that a scraped knee or busted lip doesn’t. It’s the kind of pain that settles deep in your stomach and never really goes away, just lies in waiting to strike when Ted least expects it. Ted never wants people to feel like that. He’s seen how people’s faces go from bright grins and joyous laughter to crestfallen frowns and watery eyes. And Ted may not be great at figuring out facial expressions, but he can’t help but to hurt in sympathy when he sees someone shift from open and excited to nervous shuffling and crossed arms. Ted knows that feeling because that’s how he spends most of his time- nervous and closed off. And yeah, Ted is kinda clumsy, and he’s not great at thinking on his feet, and he can sometimes hurt someone’s feelings without meaning to.
Like one time he told Melanie that he “thought her face looked totally bodacious!”. Unfortunately she thought he was talking about her acne, and had blushed as tears sprung to her eyes. Ted was trying to express his appreciation for her makeup- she had done something cool with green that really brought out her eyes. But she had been too embarrassed and had scurried away. Bill had elbowed him.
“C’mon, man, you made that babe cry! That was most heinous,” he had said. Ted, confused and embarrassed in equal turns, had stared after her in quiet shock.
“But Bill,” he had started after a few seconds, “I was just trying to compliment her most excellent use of green in her look today! I do not understand why she was most upset!”
“Ted, my most esteemed colleague, Mel thought you were joking about her acne most egregiously! You gotta apologize, dude.”
After Ted had written out his apology (just in case he misspoke again) and read it to her, Melanie was more understanding and much less upset. Ted patted her shoulder, twice, before retreating out of the library to tell Bill how it went. He didn’t want to accidentally mess up again. And just because he fucked up on accident, doesn’t mean that Melanie shouldn’t be upset by it! So he gave her space.
Most people are much less understanding than Melanie. Paul, a football player that Ted was sort-of friends with, had gotten quite angry when Ted tried to compliment him on his excellent form in gym class. He had ended up with a bloody nose and two black eyes, and Paul had spat on him as he called him a “fucking faggot” for the hundredth time. Ted doesn’t talk to him any more.
Regardless of people’s reactions, hurting someone’s feelings isn’t nice, and it makes Ted sick to his stomach to think about it. He sticks firmly to his belief that if he doesn’t have anything nice to say, then he shouldn’t say anything at all. There’s already enough pain and anger in the world, so why should he add to it? He would rather be someone who others look to as a chill, relaxed dude that you could talk to about anything without being scared of them. Because he hates having to talk to his dad.
His dad is angry all the time. Captain Logan goes to work pissed off for some reason and comes home angry about something else. Ted is usually the cause of his moods. He’s the family fuckup, with hair that makes him look like a fairy and clothes that make him look like a hoodlum. His grades are bad and his lackadaisical attitude is worse. He’s a horrible role model to Deacon, who is a star pupil and on the baseball team, and he has no prospects in life. So Ted bears the brunt of his father’s anger. An escaped detainee usually means dinner is terrible and being unable to get leads on a case ends up with Captain Logan tearing through Ted’s room, absolutely sure his eldest is hiding something there that’s illegal or incriminating. Ted never is- he’d learned after his first attempt at a candy stash was discovered when he was 10, that if he needed to hide something, it was either outside, or as he got older, at Bill’s house. He has a small amount of cash and a few personal items in a lockbox at Bill’s, wrapped in a blanket and tucked under his bed. Everything else in his room is something he’s willing to lose if he has to.
Ted doesn’t want anyone to feel like he does when Captain Logan is yelling at him. He’s taller than his dad, now, but he still feels small when it’s just him and his father in the living room, silent under the oppressive tension. He always feels just a little out of breath, a little shaky. His throat gets tight and his feet go numb and Captain Logan glowers at him, anger palpable and disappointment clear. Even after all these years he still isn’t used to it, still never sees it coming when Captain Logan smacks him. Ted’s never had a dog, but he feels like one when his father asks him to step into the living room for a “talk”- nervous and ready to bite as soon as someone raises a hand. He clamps down on the instinct and feels even more helpless in his inability to protect himself. But that feeling, that anger has to go somewhere.
Ted isn’t one for exercise, but when he gets to feel too much and when he can barely keep his mouth shut as Captain Logan glares at him from across the dinner table as Ted separates his food neatly, he puts on a pair of beat-to-shit sneakers and takes off in the night. He usually borrows Bill’s Walkman and cranks the volume as high as it can go, listens to angry music as he jogs or walks around San Dimas at night. He exhales his anger, releases the heat into the cold of the night, until he’s full of a calm chill and feels better. His chest aches, because Ted’s certainly not an athlete and won’t ever be, but he revels in the pain and only goes home once he’s back to normal. Ted doesn’t like to be around people when he’s angry. He doesn’t want to burn anyone.
Sometimes just running isn’t enough. Ted will stay out, later than he should, later than is safe, just to climb around at the park at night and swing from the swings as hard as he can. He likes to jump off, feel the swoop of his stomach going up and down, and land a little rougher than necessary. The jolt up his ankles isn’t pleasant but it helps with that feeling of angry hopelessness. Ted used to fall a lot, but he’s gotten better over the years, so he doesn’t scrape his knees as often. Which should be a good thing, but somehow it only makes Ted angrier. He kicks rocks and cans and steps on broken glass, pretending there isn’t a voice in the back of his head hoping he’ll break a toe or get a shard of glass in his foot. He’s punched walls before, scraping flesh off his knuckles and jarring his wrist so hard he couldn’t write the next day. Once, he had purposefully picked up the shattered remains of a bottle just to press it into his palm, cutting deep into his skin and causing a scar that Ted still cringes at when he sees it.
The worst of it is probably his scratching. He can’t not do something with his hands- he fidgets and tugs and taps and rubs his fingers together almost constantly. It’s not a conscious thing, which is why he has such a hard time stopping. Ted will have been shaking the table with his leg bouncing for a solid 5 minutes before he catches Deacon’s pointed look and his father’s glare and stops. He’s known in school for constantly dropping his pencil, tapping away on the desk, or for picking at his fingers. Ted took to carrying a tiny, homemade first aid kit in his backpack when he had to ask the teacher for a band aid for the 5th time that day after his finger started bleeding. Bill also keeps some in his backpack, but he doesn’t fidget like Ted does. Ted scratches at his neck, picks at his scabs and loose threads on his clothes. He can’t stand having any acne on his face- the texture of it as he skims his fingertips across his face is unbearable. His solution isn’t really any better. He pops his pimples and scratches at the deep cysts that form along his jawline and neck. Which just gives him more acne and more scabs to pick at, which makes him pick at them more. It’s an endless cycle that Ted can’t quit. His father, however, slaps his hands away from his face any time he sees Ted picking. That’s something else Ted hates about his dad. He knows it’s not good for him to pick, but he can’t help it. But his dad slapping his hands away doesn’t help him to not pick, it just means Ted gets mad every time his dad does it, and makes him flinch when Bill moves too suddenly.
Bill, contrary to his dad, just lets Ted pick. He has some small bandaids for when Ted bleeds, and doesn’t say anything when Ted has to wash his hands for the fourth time since they met up. Ted feels shameful every time, but Bill takes it in stride and Ted picks less when he’s with Bill anyways. Being anxious means his hands wander even more, and Bill has always calmed Ted down. He just hums some song as he hands Ted a bandaid without Ted having to ask. He teaches Ted how to sew and how to braid to keep his hands busy. Even when Ted pricks his finger and bleeds on Bill’s carpet, Bill doesn’t get mad. Sure, they freak out and end up using bleach on it, which only makes a bigger stain, but Bill just covers it with his laundry that’s on the floor and everyone but them is none the wiser. It’s another secret they keep together, just another piece of the puzzle that makes up BillandTed. No one has ever been as bodacious to Ted as Bill, and the worst thing Ted can imagine is hurting Bill.
Ted tries to never hurt Bill, intentionally or otherwise. He asks for space when he’s mad, and Bill probably knows what he’s doing, just like Bill knows everything about Ted, but Bill never presses Ted. It’s not often, and it’s never a lot, but Ted likes to see Bill after he goes on his walks. So he’ll either call him late at night, whispering into the receiver with it pressed as close as it can get to his ear just to hear Bill as clearly as he can, or he’ll drop by the Preston Esq. household. He’ll throw little pebbles at Bill’s window until he wakes him up, and Bill will let him in the back door and they’ll lay on Bill’s bed and talk until Ted falls asleep, trusting Bill to wake him up in time to either get to school or get home before Captain Logan notices he’s gone.
Ted knows there’s probably a scientific reason behind his emotional crash after he spends his anger, or maybe it’s the physical aspect of it. He’ll let Bill patch him up sometimes, even if it’s just putting bandaids on his knuckles or giving him ice for his ankle or wrist.
One night it goes like this.
Ted’s wrist aches and he feels hot all over and he knows he’s not quite done being angry but he’s tired and his eyes hurt and all he can think about is how nice Bill’s hands feel as he puts bandaids on Ted’s face and how sometimes, when Bill thinks he’s asleep, he’ll throw an arm over Ted’s body as they lay in Bill’s bed together and rub his thumb across Ted’s shoulders. So Ted’s throwing a pebble at Bill’s window and when it cracks open, Ted can’t find it in himself to say anything at all. But Bill understands, because he always does, and he’s opening the back door before Ted can really process what’s happening. He feels tight and angry and tired and tense all at once.
Bill looks stunning in the moonlight, like a Renaissance painting come to life as he crunches across the frost-covered grass to reach where Ted is standing on his front lawn, and Ted lets his best friend in the whole world usher him inside. Bill’s hand on his back is warm. He must sense this time is different, because he doesn’t start chattering away as he usually does when Ted shows up on his porch like a stray dog. This isn’t Ted burning off steam after Captain Logan tells him he’s a disappointment or that he needs a haircut. This is something worse. Ted takes off his shoes mechanically, slipping them off in the dark of the Preston Esq. house. Bill’s hand doesn’t leave his back and Ted is silently thankful for it. Bill walks them upstairs and into the bathroom. He only clicks on the one light and Ted flips the toilet seat down to sit on it like usual. Bill glances over Ted’s face. It’s worse than usual. There’s a few scabs on his temple and one on his cheekbone. Scratch marks trace up his neck on the right side and there’s blood and skin under Ted’s nails. His left wrist is throbbing and blood trickles down his fingers.
Bill gets out the first aid kit and gets some bandaids ready, a dollop of antibacterial on each. He presses the littler ones to Ted’s face first, and smoothes them over a few times. Ted still hasn’t said anything. The bandages on his neck are next- normally Ted does these himself. He can’t stand anyone touching his neck at all, not even Bill. But tonight is a night of firsts, it seems. Ted just tips his head to the left and bares his neck.
“Want me to-?” Bill asks out loud. Just to be sure. Ted nods mutely. Bill nods back and picks up the first bandaid. He sticks it over the worst part first and smoothes it over with firm fingers. Somehow it feels better than if he was overly gentle. Ted still feels vulnerable, but this is Bill. He trusts Bill. Two more bandaids go on his neck before Bill holds out an open palm. Ted stares at it for a moment, confused, before it clicks that Bill is asking for his hand. He raises his left hand and watches a droplet of blood drip off his fingertips. Bill wipes up the blood and then cleans Ted’s hand. He gets a bandaid across his knuckles and then Bill stops, standing in front of Ted, holding his hand in his own.
Ted doesn’t know why, but Bill just holds his hand, thumb brushing over the back of his hand and staring at the bandaids there. But it feels good, so he just lets Bill hold his hand. It’s nice, just the two of them in the bathroom. The world has never felt smaller. Ted feels his anger draining away and even though he’s not sure he could talk right now, he’s ok with that. Bill will understand. He always does. So Ted settles his gaze on Bill’s shoulder. Bill’s wearing an old Van Halen shirt that Ted realizes, belatedly, is his. Bill shifts, and then tosses his head towards the door.
“Let’s go to bed.”
Ted likes that, the sound of “let’s” rolling around in his head. Not “I’m” or “go to sleep”. Let’s go to bed. Together. Them against the world. He nods and Bill turns off the bathroom light as he walks them to his bedroom, Ted’s hand still in his. Mr. Preston is either asleep or somewhere else, because Bill doesn’t seem concerned with waking him as he opens his bedroom door and leads Ted inside. Moonlight spills into the room from the still open window and Bill sits on his bed, scoots over to let Ted shuffle on. He lets go of Ted’s hand and settles on his left side, facing Ted, who’s laying on his right. Ted feels heavy and tired, exhausted from the fight he had gotten into with his dad and the ensuing 4 hour wander around San Dimas. Bill reaches forward, slow and gentle. Ted doesn’t flinch away. It’s Bill, and he feels safer than he has in a long time, here in the darkness of Bill’s bedroom. Bill rests his hand on the side of Ted’s face, brushing fingers over the scabs and scars Ted has accumulated over the years. Ted fixes his eyes on the Van Halen logo on Bill’s chest.
“Was my dad. Said he was gonna ship me off to military school in Alaska,” he whispers. Bill’s hand pauses and Ted glances up at his face. Bill looks upset. His blond eyebrows furrow and he frowns. But Ted’s not done. They only talk about what happened when it’s bad- Ted doesn’t like to burden Bill with his issues and Bill never presses Ted on what happened. This time, Ted’s not sure he could keep everything inside without exploding.
“Said I was a goddamn fag, and he’s a failure of a father for having raised me. Usual shit, but then he said he wants them to beat the queer out of me there. That if I didn’t give up the band and start acting like a normal kid and not such a fuck-up, he was going to make sure that I would never embarrass him again. Guys down at the station have been giving him shit ‘cause they’ve seen me around. He said-” and Ted’s breath hitches here, his throat painfully tight. Bill’s watching him with an unreadable expression, hand still on his cheek. Ted’s right arm is pinned down by his side but it fidgets, flaps a little. His left wrist hurts too much to even try, but he tucks it close to his chest anyways, curling in a little. “Said he wished Mom died before having me.”
Ted squeezes his eyes shut as his face gets warm and tears start to gather in his eyes. Fresh anger pools in his throat, but hurt quickly overtakes it. He doesn’t have a ton of memories of his mom, but she had long black hair and was always, always kind. She had died in a freak plane crash on her way back from Hawai’i. She and Captain Logan had been fighting, and she had left to stay with family for a while as they sorted things out between them. She never made it back. It was just after Deacon had been born. Before he can lose himself in the grief, Ted feels Bill shuffle closer.
His arm moves to wrap around Ted’s shoulders and he shoves his other arm between Ted’s head and the pillow, and smooshes Ted into his chest. Ted takes a shuddering breath and tries to stop crying, because he doesn’t want to make Bill deal with all of his everything, but then Bill cradles the back of his head in his hand and pulls Ted closer, as if he could fix everything with a hug, and Ted hears his voice whisper in his ear.
“I got you, dude, ‘s ok.”
And that’s the straw that breaks it, because then Ted can’t get closer. He struggles closer, good hand clenching Bill’s (his) shirt and bad hand pressed between them. Ted tangles their legs together, wriggles as he tries to bury his face underneath Bill’s chin and sobs into his chest. Bill’s hand moves so that he’s petting Ted’s hair, scratching gently on his scalp and Ted grits his teeth. The need to get closer aches, and he sniffs loudly as snot drips out of his nose. He’s humming, rubbing the fabric of Bill’s shirt between his fingers as his injured wrist tries to flap. It hurts, and Ted wrenches it out from between them, so he and Bill can be closer. He curls up a little. Bill’s legs move with his and Ted tries to breathe, stuttering as he inhales. Over the noise and the tears he can hear Bill, faintly and then louder as he focuses, talking to him.
“-s’ ok, dude, I got you Ted. I got you, you’re ok. It’s ok. We’ll be ok, promise, dude.” Ted breathes a little easier, keeping his eyes shut and focusing on inhaling the scent of Bill. His grip on Bill’s shirt relaxes a little and he is hit by a wave of exhaustion. All at once the fight and the tension drain out of him. Ted just lets Bill hold him. Bill shifts and moves to press his cheek into Ted’s hair.
“We’ll get through this dude,” he mumbles. He presses a kiss to Ted’s (probably) greasy hair. Ted hums, this time out of happiness, and he can feel Bill grin a little.
“Yeah?” he teases. Ted nods into Bill’s chest, face flushed and stomach lighting up. Bill shuffles so that he’s more level with Ted and Ted tucks his face next to Bill’s, so their cheeks are pressed against each other’s. Bill’s face feels warm too. Ted’s tired, but he’s wide awake now. He takes a deep breath and pulls back, just enough to press a tiny kiss to Bill’s cheek and then he hides in Bill’s shoulder again. Bill’s face gets even warmer and Ted’s hands flap a little. He can feel Bill wiggle like he does when he’s excited and then they’re both moving to hold each other’s faces and then they’re kissing.
It’s short and sweet and they pull apart after a moment. Ted leans forward to press his forehead into Bill’s. They make nervous eye contact and break into quiet giggles. Bill wipes under Ted’s eyes with a gentle thumb and kisses his cheek. Ted returns the favor and then they kiss again.
“So, dude-” Bill begins. Ted smiles. It’s not his usual big grin, but a smaller, more sincere expression that makes Bill’s stomach feel weird. This thing between them is new and bright and more than either thought they could ever have. It’s almost too much. They lay there, silent in the dark for a few more seconds, just processing.
“That was most excellent,” Ted mumbles. Bill smiles and kisses his best friend again.
“Indeed, my most esteemed colleague.”
They trade kisses in the dark before Ted’s exhaustion catches up with him. Bill runs a hand through Ted’s hair and smiles as Ted can’t keep his eyes open and starts to fall asleep on Bill’s arm. He knows he has a lot to think about, and a lot to figure out in regards to his dad, but right now, with Bill, everything is dark and quiet and safe.
“Goodnight, dude.”
“Goodnight, bro.”
Ted hasn’t felt this good after a bad night ever.