let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
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will byers stan first human second
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dirt enthusiast
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blake kathryn
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noise dept.
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
roma★
Janaina Medeiros
taylor price
Product Placement
Cosmic Funnies
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@dynamoe
↓ all Billy Quizboy & Pete White content on this tumblr (2021-2025) ↓
→ Billy & White 1990-Y2K Spin-Off Pitch
→ SCHLEIGHBELLS RING! A Christmas Story (12/24) → Candy Cane Charge! 🎄 → Billy Has A New Hat 🎄
→ MY DINNER WITH WHITÉ *full story
→ THE FOOL AND THE MAGICIAN STICKER → Pete is the Magician (Tarot) → Billy is the Fool (Tarot) → Lunchbox Redrawn → Billy & Video Store Clerk: Anniversary✱ → Billy meets Billy → Eros!Billy in marble 💌 → Crystal Pepsi: Fanart of Fanart of Fanart
→ 2024
→ Billy Goes to Prom (again) ✱ → Merch! Key Chains (vs. Merch! Standee?) → One Quizboy Summer (1989) see also → Goodbye To Yesterday → Boogie Board → Love in the Video Store ✱ → Take a Bath → Tag Sale: You're It → Petesus Kylix → Leap Year (½ redrawn) → Eros!Billy 💌 Valentines (redrawn) → Sing Along With Billy (redrawn) → A Good Day At the Library (redrawn) 🎄Billy in Slade
✱ = w/ OC Alison the Video Clrrrk
- 2023 -
🎄Christmasplaining → The '90s Happened in Diners ✱ → 💋 Lift And Kiss ✱ → Snapple on the Sofa ✱ → 🎠 Carousel ✱ → 🌹Mothers Day🌹 → 🌹🌹🌹Triple Threat🌹🌹🌹 → 🥞 Too Many Pancakes → 🍈 Melon → Squish Face → One Tiny Doodle
A Year with Li'l Master Billy
Halloween Doodle
Happy Easchter (2023)
⟶ 2022 Li'l Billy
Lord of the Pies
What Christmas is ALL ABOUT
Trick-or-Treat (Li'l Billy's Rusty Venture Costume)
Debut Reboot
Back to School
Magical Maschter Mischtofeleesch
Saturn Devouring His Son
Chatty Breakfast (animated)/ Breakfast with the King 👑
Halloween Pumpkin 2.0 🎃
Li'l Billy Aces the SAT 💯
A Machine for Baby
Sad Stretch for Ballet Billy 🩰
← fiction moved to Failures_of_Science on AO3
see also— → Failures-of-Science on DeviantArt → Failures_of_Science on AO3
older indexes—
← 2022 Failures of Science index ← 2021 Failures of Science index
→ nobodyssweetheart.bigcartel.com
→ nobodyssweetheart.bigcartel.com
I have 300+ of this one:
→ nobodyssweetheart.bigcartel.com
→ nobodyssweetheart.bigcartel.com
I have 300+ of this one:
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2026!
↘ back to the Billy & White Index
the champagne goes straight to his head
→ A Cozy Quizboy Christmas Hang-Out Backstory Story on AO3
Because, like, Merry Christmas or Whatever...
↖ read the story on AO3 ↘ back to Billy & White Index
↓ The story looks better on AO3, but you can also read it HERE below the break ↓
“It started coming down just as White dropped me off,” Billy commented, walking through the front door of Video Madness, the door jingling to announce his entry. He shook off the light powder clinging to his jacket and fluffed his hair to dislodge any snow that had nestled behind his precisely styled upward cresting quiff.
“Shake the cornstarch off your mukluks and warm yourself by the cellophane,” Alison quoted cryptically from her elevated perch behind the register, looking bored and barely moving her eyes from the movie-screening monitors positioned around the shelves of VHS tapes available for rental.
“Nice window,” Billy gestured to the front window where the usual posters of new releases were now outlined with blinking multicolored Christmas lights and tinsel and large plastic lawn ornaments of a giant candy cane and leaping reindeer nipped at the bottom edges of Judge Dredd and Mortal Kombat in their posters.
“As likely to trigger a seizure as Holiday cheer,” Alison said in monotone, not moving her gaze from the in-store TV monitors.
The store was, as any sane person would expect at 5 PM on Christmas Eve, completely empty aside from the sole employee paid to be there and, now, Billy Quizboy.
“Aren’t you worried about being alone at night in the store? Seems like it could be dangerous.”
“Because of serial killers praying on nubile young co-eds?” On the monitor a spray of very clearly fake blood filled the screen, distracting Billy.
“What are we watching?” Billy asked, rushing up to the cashier’s desk, shrugging off his heavy wool jacket.
“1974’s own Black Christmas,” Alison recited monotonously, “Sorority sisters get threatening phone calls and are killed one-by-one by a knife-wielding maniac. Real heart-warming holiday magic.”
“Sure, but aren’t you worried about getting robbed or something? Being alone like this.”
“I’m not alone, you’re here,” Alison replied flatly, “Plus I got my AK under the cash drawer in case any two-bit punks wanna step to me.”
“Riiiiight,” Billy muttered, opening his messenger bag and putting two thermos bottles and a small metal tin of Danish Butter Cookies (stretching as much as he could to reach the high register counter), “I brought hot chocolate and cookies ”
“We’re down to the last sorority sister so it’ll be over soon,” Alison reassured him, “You missed National Lampoon’s Xmas Vacation and Die Hard earlier. Coming up next is—“ Alison rifled through the pile of VHS tapes below the counter “Ooh, The Apartment. I love a Christmas story with a suicide attempt in the middle of it.”
“Billy Wilder’s The Apartment is a fantaschtic movie and you know it,” Billy said, popping the tin of cookies open, selecting the one shaped like a pretzel and handing it to her, “You’re just acting too cool for school.”
“Not homemade?” Alison said snobbishly, regarding the cookie.
“I wanted to capture the feeling of an after-church social tea so cookies in a tin are a must,” Billy argued, “I’m coming up there. I can’t keep stretching up to your counter without pulling a hammy.”
“It’s against all company policies to have a civilian in the register station. I’m scandalized you’d propose such a thing.”
“I don’t respect any company policy that makes anyone work until 8 PM on Christmas Eve. Like, what kind of person rents a movie ON Christmas Eve?”
“Jews and Muslims and Atheists who are crap at planning ahead.”
Billy sighed.
“Don’t feel bad, Pumpkin Pie. I’m happy for the overtime. Not like I was doing anything else.”
“Your family doesn’t—“
“Mom thinks all American holidays are a scam to trick you into spending money and… she’s kinda not far off. I assume she’s sitting at the dining room table right now stamping and addressing 500 new Happy New Year/Sell Me Your Home flyers for her real estate business.”
“Oh,” Billy said, a little disheartened.
“And dad is ‘working,’” Alison air-quoted, “Meaning he’s half a dozen sheets to the wind in some grimy dive bar just south of the Air Force Academy campus.”
“Oh Alison, I’m so sorry—“
She shrugged, “What about your better half? Where’s Powder tonight?”
“He actually got a gig— DJing a New Wave Christmas dance party.”
“I wouldn’t imagine there are THAT many New Wave Christmas songs. What’s he doing? Playing Christmas Wrapping over and over for three hours?”
“You are so, so, so mischinformed,” Billy wagged his finger, “There are HUNDREDS of New Wave Christmas songs— Eurythmics, Cocteau Twins, XTC— and I’ve heard ALL of them over the last week.” Billy’s tone showed he was not thrilled with this discovery.
“The snow is actually sticking. Look at that. I hope my car can drive in this.” “It’s unusual for this time of year, too. While December is the COLDEST month, with an average temperature of 30.8 °F, statistically-speaking, March is the snowiest month in the Rocky Mountain Aero—“ “Don’t trivia-vomit your quizboy shit all over me, Gingerbread. I’ve had a long day.”
“We’re also the most active lightning strike areas in the US,” Billy added meekly, squeezing in one last fact. Alison grumbled. “Oh! I just remembered— I have eggnog, too!” Billy opened his bag again and pulled out a bottle of mayonnaise-colored beverage. “Alcoholic?” Billy made a face, “What do you think, schmart guy?” Alison frowned exaggeratedly, “I’ll stick with hot chocolate.” Billy poured and Alison sipped, thinking for a minute before announcing, “I know I say I hate everything but I, like, really don’t like the holidays.”
“Not Thanksgiving either,” Billy asked, surprised. “That one we really never celebrated. Being stationed all over the world on Air Force bases where they don’t have Thanksgiving, it became a real afterthought. At least at Christmastime the Air Force got some fat airman to dress up as Santa and hand out candy canes to kids on the base.” “Thanksgiving is the one time of year I really miss my mom, “ Billy said wistfully.
“Oh no, don’t go to pieces on me. Remember all the bad shit she did to you.” “No, it’s not like it erases why I’m not speaking to her or anything. It’s just she always made such a big deal about it, so worried I’d miss out on a traditional real American Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings even though it was just the two of us. So she roasted a full turkey and made stuffing and mashed potatoes and green beans and rolls and everything else." “Cranberry sauce?” “Yeah, not even from a can. From whole cranberries! She made just this over the top feast and at most it was me and her and whoever she was dating at the time. Which meant for the next four weeks all we ate was turkey leftovers for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I can’t even look at a turkey sandwich without a chill running up my spine.” “So what do you do in the absence of mom?” “This year,” Billy said, “White bet me he could heat up a turkey pot pie using only the laser we have in the lab. I called bullshit so Thanksgiving was watching him fiddle around with all these mirrors and aluminum foil for 40 minutes, get pissed off, point the laser directly at the still-frozen pie, fall forward and accidentally step on the pie and catch his pant leg on fire.” Alison bugged her eyes, “Jesus.” “Then we ordered a pizza and watched a WKRP marathon on Nick at Night while I treated his leg for third degree burns.” “That’s a holiday tradition for you,” Alison held up her cocoa mug. “May it never repeat,” Billy clinked his mug against hers.
__
“So, I got you something,” Billy said, hesitating momentarily over his bag before taking out the snowman-paper wrapped 12 x 12" flat square package.
“You’re supporting my dream of becoming a professional disc-golfer by getting me THE DOMINATOR pro-level Frisbee™?! Oh, my heart!”
“Shut up and open it,” Billy grumbled.
She tore into it revealing a stack of albums— Martin Denny “Exotic Moog,” Provocative Percussion, Switched on Bach and others, “Oh wow, these are GREAT. Some of these are really rare, too, how did you find them?
“White helped me,” Billy admitted, “With his record collector connections.”
“Remind me to thank him the next time I see him with a merry yuletide blowjob.”
“Jesus, Alison,” Billy rolled his eye, “Could you NOT? It’s f’ing Christmas.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry… I’m just sort of speechless. I never thought I’d own such exquisitely terrible records. Thank you.”
“That last one with the ventriloquist dummy passed out on the bar? I was told that it’s a standup album from Montreal’s premier X-rated ventriloquist but it might be in French, in which case I will translate it for you.”
“Only if you do all the voices, my precious polyglot knucklehead,” she leaned down and kissed him right on the soft spot on top of his skull.
“I got you something, too,” Alison rummaged below the register and brought out two packages wrapped in pages of the Sunday funnies, “Not as well-wrapped, clearly. But colorful!”
“You didn’t have to—”
“Of course I didn’t. But I did. I will warn you, I’m on a budget so I made both of them. So, like, manage your expectations, ok,” Alison muttered, uncharacteristically bashful, “So do you want naughty or nice first?” She wiggled the package in her right hand, then her left.
“Nice, please,” Billy said, receiving the package and delicately unpeeling the Garfield and Blondie strips around what appeared to be– “Some kind of… knitted… bag?”
“We went out thrifting a month ago and you went on a rant about how no hat will ever stay on your head and your ears were always cold in the winter unless you wrapped a whole scarf around your head like you had a toothache?”
“Did I? Honestly, I rant about everything. I can’t keep track of what I’m pissed off about most of the time,” Billy said, stretching out the pale green yarn bag in his hand, trying to figure out what he was looking at.
“I learned to crochet as a kid. Must have been for school or something and I hadn’t done it for years but after that rant I was determined to make you a snow hat that FITS.” Alison took her crocheted creation from his hands, inverted it and pulled it over his head (crushing his quiff in the process).
“It’s got tons of stitching mistakes in it, y’know, but it’ll keep the snow off your head and if I counted my stitches right it should cover your crazy unnaturally low ears.” Alison flipped up the lower edge to reveal Billy’s eyebrows and forehead.
“Oh my god, it fits. It covers my head without pulling apart, or crushing my skull. It’s like… a Christmas MIRACLE.”
“I assumed you knew this was coming when I measured your head a couple weeks ago.”
“I had no idea. I just assumed you were making fun of me with prop comedy,” Billy shrugged, feeling warm in his new green snow hat both in his ears and in his heart.
“The other thing is just a… it’s dumb,” Alison shrugged, handing the second package over.
“You’ve already blown my mind by making me a hat with your own two hands I can’t imagine…”Billy trailed off, opening it equally delicately, like he wanted to preserve the comics pages.
“Just tear into it! Rip it apart!” Alison urged. Billy ignored her and continued with his personal method of unwrapping presents.
“Is it a comic? Kind of a zine?” Billy described the folded xeroxed object in his hand.
The cover was obviously a xerox of her Rusty Venture Show lunchbox with a small photograph of Billy’s head cut out and placed over the cartoon of Rusty Venture. The title of the comic, written in letters cut out from magazines ransom note style was BILLY QUIZBOY: BOY ADVENTURER!
She must have lifted one of Billy’s old GOLD KEY cheap-o Rusty Venture cartoon cash-in comic books where the characters never stay on model— Rusty’s hair is colored yellow half the time and no one noticed— and xeroxed it page-by-page, always pasting that same photo of Billy’s half-smiling, squinting face over the cartoon Rusty in every panel. The dialogue bubbles had been completely pasted over with nonsense. Characters forgot each other’s names. Some bubbles were full of animal noises or phrases pasted in from Sassy magazine headlines. It was accidental Dadaism.
In the very last panel, the bubble over Billy-headed cartoon Rusty concluded, “Now that the adventure’s over I can go home and masturbate!!”
“So it really is a happy ending,” real life Billy’s face on Billy’s body said dryly, closing the bizarre hand-made comic book.
“Didja like it?” Alison said with an evil smile, unclear whether she was hoping for a yes or no answer.”
“That was… very strange but very you. Thank you. I love it, “ Billy said, a bit confused, “It must have taken so much time to do!”
“Time wasted excellently, if I do say so myself,” she pointed to the clock, “5 to Eight. We get to close up. If anyone shows up to rent a copy of The Burbs they are, my friend, shit out of luck on a Christmas cracker, woo-hoo!”
Billy was equally baffled and bowled over by her enthusiasm as she pulled a large vinyl zip-topped pouch from under the register and banged a key that made the drawer pop open.
“I have to count out the cash on hand, make sure it lines up with the purchases of the day— two of them, I’ll have you know— how much I started with and how much I’m closing with,” Alison said at motormouth speed as she counted out the ones, fives, tens, twenties without a break in her patter, “I started the day with 200 in small bills and Video Madness, your local and beloved VHS rental store is closing the night with an astonishing… two hundred and SEVEN dollars. Applause PLEASE!” She hip-checked the register drawer hard enough to send it reeling back into the machine. She dropped the cash in the pouch and zipped it with purpose.
Billy clapped enthusiastically.
“Now I have to drop this,” she held up the pouch of cash, “in the safe and sign out. And your job, as my unofficial Santa’s Little Helper—”
“Calling me that counts as heightist abuse…” Billy mumbled.
“— is to unplug all the Christmas lights in the display up there so this place doesn’t burn down before New Years. Then, pull down the grate outside in front of the window,” Alison handed him an antique and abused looking metal hook about two feet long.”
Billy enjoyed having a task with clear parameters. He saluted with his fleshy hand as the robot hand seized the metal hook.
“Then I’ll lock the front door and we’ll be outta here!” Alison almost sang as she ran to the back room to deposit the cash.
Nine different frayed, taped-together cords plugged into duct-taped, dust-clogged two surge protectors plugged into one extension cord later, the front window display went dark. She wasn’t joking— it was a Holly Jolly fire hazard.
He suited up in his winter gear again to tackle bringing the grate down. A simple task, despite the two or three inches of dry powder clinging to every surface, crunching under his boots. Nothing he couldn't handle.
He scanned the area for a trash can or a pile of boxes he could stand on but all around him everything had been transformed by the snowfall into unidentifiable white sparkling gumdrops. He looked back at the window glass and up to the edge of the gate, seven feet above him.
He held the hook with his fingertips, stood under the lip of the gate and jumped as high as he could. Not even close.
“If I get enough speed up, I can ricochet off the glass, redirect my velocity 90 degrees to jump up and grab the edge of the gate and bring it down with me,” Billy calculated, backing away from the front window.
He took a breath, looked at the straight line path ahead of him and gunned it. He hit the front window at full speed, splatting his face into the glass. He shook it off. Not the result he had hoped for.
He paced in front of the window, trying to think of an ingenious, novel solution to this relatively simple problem. He could get Alison out here and sit on her shoulders, but that was tantamount to admitting defeat. He swung the metal hook around on his finger as he paced. He looked up at the gate again, taunting him with its not-closed state. He furrowed his brow.
“Need a hand with that gate?” said a voice behind him, lifting the metal hook from his hand before waiting for an answer.
Billy started to protest when the guy (he assumed it was a guy) bundled up in a coat and scarf effortlessly leapt up, hooked the edge of the gate and brought it down in one smooth motion.
“No problem,” the voice said, handing Billy back the hook. Billy turned around to thank him but he was gone.
“Who was that?” Billy asked out loud. He looked down at the snow and didn’t see any tracks. He looked down the block to his left and didn’t see anyone.
Was it… his guardian angel? No, he was a scientist; he didn’t believe in that stuff. But, still. Could it have been… SANTA CLAUS HIMSELF?! HOLY COW!! He felt a jab in his side and looked to his right. The guy was there, pushing a suspiciously pistol-shaped item into his shoulder.
“Go back inside so you can give me all the money in the register, ok?”
Billy put his hands up. The guy poked him again, goading him towards the door.
Alison was back in her cashier’s booth, wrapping a scarf around her neck and reaching for her coat.
“DON’T MAKE ANY SUDDEN MOVES!” the stranger shouted, throwing Billy to one side as if he were a bag of particularly top-heavy garbage.
“Great, now this,” Alison said, bored, as if this was an everyday occurrence. It wasn’t, but her manner made it clear she was not impressed by her would-be robber.
“Alison, do what he says,” Billy gasped, worried for her safety and choosing cowardly self-preservation over heroism (usually Pete’s M.O.).
“Gimme all the money in the register! Hurry!” the ski mask-wearing burglar demanded.
“Can’t,” Alison said bluntly, “You have got the worst timing, pal.”
“GIMME THE MONEY OR I’LL SHOOT YOU!” the burglar thrust his scarf-wrapped pistol closer to her face. Alison didn’t flinch.
“You’ve wrapped everything but the barrel in that scarf but the orange on the tip tells me it’s a toy gun, genius. You gonna squirt me to death, Captain Ski Mask?”
“It’s a balaclava!” the burglar protested, pointing at his ski mask.
It was dawning on him that this wasn’t going to work out how he had planned. He dropped the fake gun and pulled out a pocket knife that wouldn’t cut a slice of bread, but he waved it menacingly.
”Balaclavas get their name from their use at the 1854 Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War…” Billy spat in a hysteric rush “But the first confirmed use of the term was much later— in 1881.”
“Billy, relax. You’re panic-quizboying, flooding the zone with trivia,” Alison tried to calm the situation,
The Balaclava Burglar kicked Billy in the head, flinging him across the room until he skidded to a stop in front of the turned-off Christmas display by the front window.
“Florence Nightingale came to prominence training nurses during the Crimean War, ” Billy muttered woozily, grabbing the sides of his head to stop the room from spinning, “She invented the pie chart.”
“Look, dude, the money’s in the safe and only my boss has the combination. You can rob me of my copy of…. Um… Darkman?” Alison picked up the nearest videotape.
The gun in the burglar’s hands shook a little. Alison looked him in the eyes. Red-rimmed. Tiny pupils.
“Although Friday’s probably more your speed since you’re obviously high as shit.”
“How could you rob a store… on Christmas,” Billy tried to shame him.
“SHUT UP.”
Billy looked into the display, hatching a plan. He grabbed the largest plastic lawn-ornament candy cane that was nearly taller than he was with both hands. Holding it above his head, he charged at the burglar, screaming at the top of his lungs. He leapt onto the New Releases shelf next to the register, pushing off to get enough lift to bring the candy cane down hard on the top of the robber’s head with all the force he could muster.
A resonant “Bonk!”
Bonk? That’s not the sound of a skull being crushed. Billy looked confused. The balaclava man seemed entirely unaffected. He looked at his deadly red-and-white-striped weapon… the plastic had caved in. It was hollow.
The burglar finally turned around and noticed Billy. He leaned down with his tiny pen knife to carve his vengeance in Billy’s tender skin when Alison interrupted.
“HEY! I’m the one you’re robbing,” Alison scolded, “Eyes up here, buddy.”
The addled robber turned his attention back to Alison at the register.
“What’s your name, man,” she asked.
The burglar hesitated. Was this a trap? “Um… Phil.”
“Look, Phil. I got… five, ten , eleven, twelve… Ok, fourteen bucks in my purse. You can have that and… the cookies,” she offered the metal tin of Danish butter cookies, “You take off and we don’t call the cops. Deal?”
Phil hesitated and then snapped the wad of small bills from Alison’s hand, stuffing them into the pockets of his baggy jeans.
“You want the cookies, too?”
Phil shook his head.
“C’mon. Take a couple. It’s Christmas," Alison urged.
Phil looked annoyed for a second, then dropped his shoulders and reached out, grabbing a fistful from the tin.
“Merry Christmas, Phil,” Alison said flatly, “Now fuck off.”
Phil backed towards the door, throwing a glance at Billy still sitting on the floor where he fell.
“Hey bro! NICE HAT,” Phil threw finger-guns at Billy before wrenching the door open with a faint jingle from the bell as he bolted through, disappearing into the night.
Alison glanced aside to the remaining cookies on the tin, “Aw, that douche bag took all the ring-shaped ones. What a dick!”
Billy steadied himself and struggled to his feet.
“How’s the head? No concussion?” Alison asked with a lesser, non-ring-shaped cookie in her mouth.
“As long as I don’t land on a soft spot, my brain seems to be well-cushioned by all the fluid in my head. No major malfunctions,” Billy said, hands on the sides of his face.
“It’s a Christmas miracle!”
“If you keep saying that phrase it starts to lose all meaning.”
“Isn’t that what Christmas is all about?” Alison asked, doe-eyed.
“That makes even less sense!”
Alison jangled her official employee ring-of–keys and marched to the door, “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
They walked outside the Video Madness shop, Alison giving the door a tug to make sure everything was securely locked up tight.
The air was cold. The night was clear. All around them the strip mall was blanketed in white. A few snowflakes started to fall.
“Oh. It’s snowing again,” Billy observed.
“It’s a Christmas mira—”
"Stop it."
↖ 🎄 read the story/leave comments on AO3 ↘ 🎄 back to Billy & White Index
_______
Alison the video clerk was created for the story Tomorrow's Just Another Day. All you need to know is she's a snarky clerk at their local video rental and Billy's friend (but could be more than a friend?) who likes cult movies, thrifting and insulting Billy (with affection).
❄️ revisit an old (2021) Christmas story on AO3 ❄️
→ https://archiveofourown.org/works/35938543
❄️ ❄️ ❄️ 1985: Pete White's first “big Hollywood industry party" (really just the holiday open house at radio station where he interns) upset by a case of mistaken identity ❄️ → with illustration ← ❄️
↪back to the Billy Quizboy & Pete White index
where I nicked the title style from—
Candy Cane Express! Coming At You!
↖ read the story on AO3 → back to Billy & White Index
a doodle for the upcoming holiday fiction extravaganza
↖ read the story on AO3
If I plug it a week in advance you'll all read it, right??
have a cookie.
I made Billy a winter hat.
Now his bizarrely low sideways ears won't get cold.
↖ read the story on AO3 → back to Billy & White Index
↖ read the story on AO3
"Heeeeyyyyyy..."
Billy gets kidnapped, misses a movie date with Alison* the Video Clerk. White steps in to explain how the world of Super Science really works.
The full story is now up on AO3. →→ I posted the story over here, too, for people who don't want to log into AO3.
→ back to Billy & White Index
This, I hope, is the beginning of a series of one-off one-chapter backstory stories of the early says of their partnership (1989-1999).
(It's been a long time since I wrote anything, so bear with me as I work out the details. Alison is Billy's friend, introduced in Tomorrow's Just Another Day, but you don't need to read that first.)
Honk honk honk-honk. Hoooooooooonk.
Neighborhood video clerk Alison leaned hard into the middle of her steering wheel, parked on the dirt “lawn” of the Conjectural Technologies trailer. Late afternoon, not dark yet so the neon sign remained off.
The door of the trailer creaked open and Pete White stuck his head out.
“Hey Bunny-bunny! Send your better half out, we got a matinee to catch,” Alison shouted out of the window of her car, nicknamed the Angel of Death for it's general state of disrepair. (A nickname that would prove as over-dramatic as it was prescient.)
↓ continued below the fold ↓ → Read THIS on AO3 instead
Late in the year as it was, the sun was already going down by mid-afternoon but Pete wasn’t taking any chances. He draped a towel over his head like a terry-cloth ghost costume as he walked from trailer to the Death Angel.
“I told him we gotta get there early to get a prime seat in the front. We’re gonna see Nixon and throw toilet paper whenever Anthony Hopkins’ accent slips,” Alison explained as if it was the most rational thing in the world.
Pete leaned into her open window, gripping the edge of the door, “Slight problem,” he flashed his rehearsed game show grin that eight years of orthodontia, multiple bleaching sessions, and a soul-deadening employment in show business had won him. The smile was designed to reassure people but outside its natural environment on set it did anything but.
“See, Billy’s been kidnapped,” White said, trying to sound upbeat, “Ah-gain.”
"Kidnapped, huh? Weird" Alison repeated back, not really processing the meaning, distracted my Pete's atypical manner. The usual rosy pink of under-cooked chicken was parboiled out of his complexion. He looked blanched.The corners of his smile twitched unnervingly.
"Are you OK, Powder?” Alison asked, the sincerity in her voice sounding alien even to her.
She shifted her eyes from his face to his fingernails digging into the vinyl of the car door. Gripping the edge of her car window so tightly his fingernails were leaving half-moon indentations in the Naugahyde and his knuckles were an even whiter shade of pale.
"I'm a little... tense, I guess." White admitted, sweating and forcing his plastic smile even wider, eye flinching.
“Wait...” the wheels in Alison’s brain turned, “You just said Billy's been KIDNAPPED?" Alison shouted, "For real, though?" Pete nodded.
“I was in the… radio studio,” Pete paused to see if Alison would call him on it actually being a garden shed, “We had a disagreement, and I took some time to cool off and when I got back fifteen minutes later, he was gone.”
“Maybe he just stepped out?” Alison offered, knowing full well the only thing within walking distance was desert scrub and a patchy mile of neglected blacktop
"Kidnapping confirmed. Got a fax just now claiming responsibility,” White pulled the crinkly fax paper from his pocket. In dot-matrix printing, the shadowy group claimed responsibility, warned him not to alert the authorities or attempt a rescue and that Billy Quizboy would be returned to him relatively unharmed in 48 hours. Yadda yadda. Standard boilerplate kidnapping stuff.
“Jeez...” Alison shook her head, “That kinda stuff really happens?”
“To Billy? It happens a lot. This is the third time this year!” White said, his tension undercut by a note of irritation, “So far he’s always come back OK, like the note says but every time it happens I can't help but worry that—“ White cut himself off and bit his lip to keep from fully breaking down.
“You look like you need a drink,” Alison said, jerking her head to the passenger side door, “Hop in.”
“No way I’m riding in that deathtrap. We’ll take the scooter.”
He walked the ConjectureScooter out of its makeshift carport. Alison parked her station wagon and walked over.
“I'll drive; you navigate.”
He tossed her the helmet sitting in the sidecar, “That’s meant for Billy so it’s not going to stay on unless you hold it on."
→ Read THIS on AO3 instead
"I thought you were taking me to get a drink."
"I'm underage, dimwit. I can't take you to a bar; I'd get carded, duh," Alison said with an eye roll, proving her moody teenage bona fides more than her words did, "If you're that desperate for booze I'm sure the fry cook has some 'cough medicine' you could pour all over your Moons Over My-hammy.”
“That’s at Denny’s. This is an International House of Pancakes," White said, offended.
“Well, pour it up your Rooty-Tooty-Fresh-and-Fruity, then,” she said sourly, stabbing a little coffee creamer with a fork.
The waitress came around and filled both of their coffee cups.
“Read me the fax they sent you,” Alison demanded, "All the details."
"They call themselves," he unfolded the fax sheet from his pocket and narrowed his eyes at the small, poorly-printed type, "The Masters?"
"The Masters? Masters of what? Renaissance Art? Puppets? The Universe?"
"The Shadow Masters," Pete corrected himself, confirming with the paper, he began to read out loud, "The Doom Foursome, Champions of the Shadow Masters has—"
"They mean The Masters as in the golf tournament 'The Masters'?" Alison interrupted as it dawned on her, "Golf? Oh my God that is so fucking lame. He was kidnapped by golfers."
Pete continued reading directly from the fax,"The Doom Foursome has recruited young Master Quizboy as our caddy for a round on the back nine. Do not contact the authorities and he will be returned to you within 48 hours. Footnote."
He squinted even harder at the bottom of the fax, mumbling to himself, "These guys need an editor. This metaphor's all over the place. And our fax machine is almost out of toner..."
"Need your reading glasses, grandma?" Alison asked mockingly.
He scowled and begrudgingly handed the fax to Alison who read out the tiny print at the bottom, "Kidnapping carried out within Guild of Calamitous Intent (GCI) approved guidelines for abducting minors outlined in Section IV, subsection 4-B, i.e. ‘Rusty's Law.’"
"Does it really say that?" Pete said cheerfully, snatching the paper back, "I gotta remember t' show Billy when he gets back. He'll get a real kick out of that!"
"Why would they write 'abducting a minor,' Billy's an adult," Alison asked, unsure, "He's twenty-two, right? He says he’s twenty-two."
Pete shook his head and held up a finger, "The Billy you know, your bosom companion, friend and sometimes backdoor lovah-lovah-man—“
Alison rolled her eyes, “Hardly.”
“That Billy Whalen— he's 22," Pete held up a second finger, "The Billy who got kidnapped, the one who's the world's greatest self-taught unlicensed doctor and professional boy genius, Billy Quizboy, is 12," Pete hesitated, "Maybe he’s 13 now. Gotta check that fake ID we made for him when I get back."
Alison frowned.
"It's part of the kayfabe," White explained, unhelpfully, with a shrug, "There's a lot of cognitive dissonance in the SuperScience biz, you just have to roll with it."
“We’re getting off topic here! Billy’s been kidnapped. Ten minutes ago, you were a gibbering wreck over him not coming back and I’m out the ten bucks I paid for movie tickets. Fuck it, let’s mount a rescue and get him back!”
White sipped his coffee
Alison continued, “Hire some mercenary soldier-of-fortune types to go get him. Like the A-Team but with a flying van! And... and... rocket-launchers! Or, like, signal a secret quasi-legit government agency.”
White held up the fax from the kidnappers, “The note said exactly not to do that and he’ll be returned in 48 hours. If we try to rescue him and it goes wrong, it puts Billy in even more danger!”
“That’s so lame. Do you always do what kidnapper’s faxes tell you to do?”
“But also,” White fidgeted, “If we tried to rescue him, Billy’d throw an absolute shit fit. He’d claim I’m ‘robbing him of agency’ and ‘infantilizing him’ and all that other lingo he picks up from reading college textbooks. And I don’t want Billy to yell at me. He uses big words I don’t understand and accidentally spits in my face while he’s saying them.”
“So all we can do is just… wait?”
“Billy always comes back OK. I mean, every time this happened before he’s been OK, so I assume he’ll be OK this time but the doubt keeps creepin’ in, y’know”
“Why kidnap Billy anyway? They’re not asking for ransom, not that you bozos have the money to pay it.”
“Look at this, White held up his index finger about an inch from her face.
“If you’re trying to flip me off, it’s one finger over, Snowflake.”
“No, really. Look at it. You can’t tell that I cut it off and Billy reattached it, can you?” White said. She bugged her eyes in disbelief, grabbed his hand and looked over the finger critically.
“You cut your finger off and he—”
“A perfect reattachment. Not a scar or a mark or even a bruise on it and that’s on an ALBINO skin. We bruise, like, if you breathe on us hard.”
“Wait a minute, why did you cut your finger off? How did you—”
White ignored her, “Billy’s just THAT good a surgeon. He’ll probably end up the best in the world, without ever settin’ foot in a medical school, and that’s why all these cranks and yahoos keep kidnapping him!”
White lowered his surgically reattached finger and fixed his pink gaze on her, "I'm saying this with the presumption that you care about Billy like I do, ok? Like you care what happens to him."
Alison felt scolded enough by his tone to shut her mouth.
White let out a sigh before plowing forward, "Billy's fragile, see."
"He's actually a lot more emotionally resilient than you give him credit for," Alison started to protest. White waved her off like he was shooing a fly.
"I don't mean metaphorically. I mean actually fragile. He's just a little guy. His bones are weak. His DNA is Swiss cheese with all kinds of genetic crap in it," White passionately, if inaccurately diagnosed, "You should see how many pills and supplements he takes in the morning not to die every day. He has a pill-organizer at 22!"
"Fragile, right," Alison rolled her eyes, “Billy told me you whacked him across the face with a Commodore 64 keyboard-hard drive because he called Tom-Tom Club a novelty act.”
“That was just friendly roughhousin’. Billy had no right to besmirch the heart and soul of Talking Heads’ rhythm section,” White dismissed, "My point is that if one of these rent-a-goons Mr. Pretend Bond Villain hires for their play-acting kidnap-a-boy-genius scene uses a little too much chloroform on the rag— Boom! Billy's in a coma.”
Alison looked upset, focusing instead on stabbing her pancakes with her fork, but White continued unrelentingly.
“The paid-by-the-hour henchman puts a little too much mustard on his back swing when trying to cosh Billy unconscious? Hits him right in the fontanelle? Boom! Fractured skull. Head trauma…. Billy's dead."
Alison dropped her silverware, “Stop. Don’t say stuff like that.”
"I'm saying it because that's what runs through my head every time this happens. It hasn't gone down like that yet. YET," White emphasized, "But the more he gets kidnapped, the likelier it gets, right?"
"I don’t know!” Alison said in a panic, “I failed Statistics, man!”
“Yeah,” Pete shrugged, “Hazard of operating in this business.”
“What business,” Alison accused, “The business of being easy targets?
Pete sat up in the booth as asked formally, “How much do you know about SUPER SCIENCE?”
Alison repeated mockingly, “SUPER SCIENCE!”
Pete tried to hold on to his dignity, “Yeah, it sounds goofy I guess, but that’s the common term for it. What we do.”
“Sooper-Science,” Alison whispered, still amused, giggling slightly.
“I guess you could call it ‘Fringe Science’ or ‘Alt Science,” but “Super Science” was Jonas Venture’s preferred term and he pretty much set the standard,” Pete explained, “It’s all a dumb PR exercise anyway when the US realized they couldn’t keep calling it “Mad Science” after the war when the “good guys” are the ones doing it, y’know?”
Alison listened as she ate a forkful of pancakes.
“So you don’t know anything about Super Science? Or, y’know, whatever you wanna call it.”
“I spent my whole childhood growing up on Air Force bases, of course I know about Super Science. There always was a black hangar, restricted access with nerdy science guys going in and out working on the next 100 Billion Dollar Super Stealth Fighter that can travel at the speed of sound and go backwards in time or whatever.”
“Well, yeah, that’s part of Super Science. Kinda the top elite level of it,” White admitted begrudgingly, annoyed he wasn’t starting from a clean slate, “Man, what Billy and I could do with a military contract, it’s basically a blank check. But, yeah, there’s more to it than that.”
He leaned back, getting into pontificating mode, “Like, designing stealth bombers for the Air Force would be like, U2-Playing-Sold-Out-Shows-At-The-Budokhan. Billy and I are still at the ‘playing open mics for three people" stage. We’ve got the talent, we have a small following, but we just need a label to sign us, y’know, to give us the resources and the money we need to actually play at our level. If that makes sense…”
Alison give him an A-OK sign as she swallowed her pancakes, “Nice metaphor, Chalky.”
“The trouble is, unless you’re a legacy with your own compound like Venture or already a billionaire or you’re affiliated with a university or a corporation like all these other Super Scientists, you gotta hustle.”
“You hustle… Super Science,” Alison looked incredulous.
“Every freakin’ day,” said White with a cocky smile, “We’re the scrappy independents. We’re starting from nothing but we have guile and we have hubris and we have hustle.”
“My friends give me shit all the time, saying I’m exploiting Billy’s genius,” White said, looking out the window, “Like, I’m a parasite, but I’d like to see Billy run this business on his own.”
“You have friends?” Alison asked dubiously. White ignored her.
“See Billy make a cold-call to some random Aerospace PR person fishing for info. He’d get all tongue-tied and probably be so nervous he’d piss himself,” White smirked, “Real smooth.” He snickered at the scenario running in his head.
“You’re being awfully mean behind his back, considering you’re in love with him.”
“Huh?” White asked, giving away he hadn’t been paying attention for the last five minutes. Alison shrugged.
“I never claimed to be the brains of the operation, sure— Billy’s a goddamned genius! A lot of the time I feel more like his manager than his partner in this. Like, I do all the behind-the-scenes work and cater to his whims, make sure ‘the talent’ is happy.” White continued to bitch.
“Billy’s the temperamental arteest type, huh?” Alison egged him on, “Follows his muse not directions.”
“You gotta remember, Billy’s never had a real job. Never been on a deadline or reported to a boss so I have to basically trick him to stay on task instead of falling off into some side-quest.”
“But how do you trick a genius?”
“I irritate him into working. Pretend I don’t understand what he’s doing until he breaks it down step-by-step to me like I’m an idiot, that way he has to confirm the project is on track,” Pete explained, tapping the side of the head, “Or I can suggest something that absolutely won’t work. Insist I’m right until, out of spite, he finishes the job to prove that I’m wrong. That usually works, too.”
“So pissing Billy off is all strategic?”
“It’s called tactical incompetence,” White said proudly, “I could write a book on it.”
Alison poked at the silver-dollar pancake on her plate, wondering if she was accidentally employing the same strategy in her friendship with Billy by just randomly being a dick to him most of the time.
“But it’s not just managing Billy, I gotta charm the potential clients, too, after I figure out who’s buying ideas and who’s looking for new inventions. To get the down-low I gotta listen for industry rumors from the super science community. Basically, there’s a bi-weekly poker game for State alums. I always lose like $50, but it’s the best way to know what’s going on in the scene.”
“The scene. THE SCENE,” Alison parroted, looking around the room for a distraction.
“All the shitty schmoozy stuff, the deal-making, the worming our way into conferences— stuff people pretend isn’t part of super science. That’s the stuff I do.”
“A real slime ball,” Alison muttered, “Who are you sliming up with your shitty, schmoozy, sleaze, though? Who wants to hire a super scientist other than the US Military, since you said they’re out of your league?”
“Government subcontractors,” White answered, “NASA-affiliates. Aerospace Industry. Medical Tech Companies. Some computer stuff, but less than I’d like. Sometimes for a specific product, sometimes just a general call for ideas. I got a thick rolodex and I know everybody’s business.”
“You’re like the hub that all super science gossip flows through.”
“Billy’d be hopeless at this stuff,” White concluded, adding a moment later— “Plus I know how to run QuickBooks. Billy gets a nosebleed from spreadsheets.”
“Should we get the check?” Alison asked, hoping to break White’s expositional flow. No dice.
“Besides pitching locally, we appear at about six conferences and conventions a year either as speakers or presenting a new invention or being on a discussion panel. Three days in a hotel, schmoozing and drinking. It’s all getting our name out there. Oh, plus bangin' all the Con pussy.”
Alison retched and mimed vomiting.
“I mean for me, not for Billy,” White backpedaled, “I mean, he’s supposed to be 12 or 13 years old at those conferences. We haven’t sunk as low to playing to the pedos for gigs yet.”
“I stand by my previous comment,” Alison said flatly and mimed vomiting again.
“A year ago, Billy figured out a good way to raise our profile was writing articles on spec for the Industry Publications. There’s about a half-dozen magazines that everybody reads.He’d submit something every week. Nothing heavy just, like, trend reports and lab product reviews. “Who’s hot in Super Science this month” Maybe some blandly funny-ish column like “The Lighter Side of Particle Accelerators. Y’know. Fluff.”
Alison waved to the waitress and mouthed "check please."
“One piece he wrote really took off. It was about cyborg prosthetics and maybe we’re all too hasty to replace severed arms with robot limbs when there’s a simpler way to reattach arms. It wasn’t peer-reviewed or anything, just a first-person opinion piece with funny anecdotes about cyborg arms. It was like a Super Science Dave Barry column."
The waitress handed Alison the bill and pointed back to the register to where she could pay it. Alison nodded thank you. Pete was oblivious to the entire exchange.
"The thing gets published, takes off like crazy, and now there’s a goon at our place with a rag soaked in chloroform every other day!"
Alison placed the paper check in front of White, indicating if she had to listen to this screed, pancake supper was on him.
“Why can't these clowns just make an appointment instead of kidnapping him? Billy’s so juiced to play God with a stranger’s body he’d gladly do it without the grabbing and bagging. Like they don't have a phone or somethin'?"
"Billy keeps getting kidnapped because he knows how to reattach arms?" Alison checked back into the conversation, "In a new and interesting way, of course."
White shook his head, "Yeah. Lots of reattaching arms and legs and treating laser blaster wounds… villain injuries."
"Villain injuries?" Alison questioned. White ignored her.
“There are some upsides. Like, they almost always ‘tip’ Billy for his work when they return him. A couple thou’ in possibly stolen and illegal currency,” Pete shrugged, “We make more on the kidnappings than we do on pitches, honestly.”
“One time when he was kidnapped, Billy found previously undetected early signs of cancer in this guy who had stuffed him in a bag a few hours earlier. He was so grateful he was in frickin’ tears by the end of it, and sent Billy home with 50,000 in gold Krugerrand— a bitch to convert to dollars, lemme tell ya. He’s in remission now. We got a card and some Harry & David pears from him at Christmas,” Pete mused, “Nice guy, y’know, for a kidnapper.”
A streak of bright red light flashed across the horizon outside the window.
“What the fuck was that,” Alison pressed her face to the glass, scanning for other phenomena, “A shooting star?”
“It was probably a Super Villain testing his gear in the desert,” Pete said, continuing his bored tone
“A whu—?” Alison cocked an eyebrow
“Past the highway out there up into the foothills is government owned no-man’s land so they’re free to go as fast as they want in their rocket-sleds or personal anti-grav saucers or whatevs,” White gestured vaguely, before suddenly recalling, “Billy and I designed a rocket-sled once but didn’t have the funding to actually build it.”
“I’m with you on the ‘super’ scientist thing,” Alison air-quoted heavily, “But you’re saying there are comic book-type supervillains out there?”
“Who do you think buys all the shit super scientists invents, duh.” White shrugged.
“Laughing maniacally, planning world domination,” Alison muttered in disbelief, "Is that who kidnapped Billy?" White nodded.
“They’re mostly just rich assholes into playing dress-up,” White corrected, “Except when you’ve got a million bucks to spend on your hobby you can hire fifty henchmen for $4.25 an hour and have a blaster gun that really shoots lasers.”
Alison rested her head on her hands, overwhelmed with either the waste or the stupidity. Or both.
“It’s somewhere between community theatre and, Civil War re-enactment,” Pete explained
“And you and Billy are the prop-masters?” Alison asked, incredulous.
“We could be, but Billy is dead against ‘working for the forces of evil,’ which sucks for our bank account since next to a government contract being a house designer for a super-villain is basically a blank check,” White started absentmindedly picking his teeth with the tine of a fork, “The irony is if it weren’t for the whole ‘villainy’ angle I know that Billy would be all over that comic book costumed shit.”
“You’re sure about that? Billy seems to have pretty good taste, but—”
“He collects toys. He obsesses over those Rusty Venture Saturday Morning cartoons from the 1970s. I’m sure he downplays it around you, acting cool and mature, but in his head… his great big cavernous head… he’s still a little kid.”
“But you Super Scientists don’t go for the costumes?”
“Super Science isn’t good or evil; we pursue knowledge regardless of the outcome. Driven by curiosity and, if I’m being honest, profit. The difference between pure science and super science is we’re expected to produce actual stuff— Death Rays, Transporter Cubes, Mind Control Helmets.
“A Super Scientist who produces a DEATH RAY isn’t considered evil?”
“Nah. Only using it for evil purposes would be evil.
“Well then, Montblanc,” Alison leaned in, “tell me some of the net-positive uses of a death ray?”
“Um…” White searched his mind, “Pest-control?”
Alison rolled her eyes yet again. This conversation was almost too stupid to continue but at least White wasn’t worrying about Billy as much now.
White started again, “Like Billy, there’s a lot of not-quite-grown-up man-children in the business so we’re starting to get some near-costume bleed. It starts innocently enough when a guy who’s not comfortable speaking in public has to present to a conference so maybe he dons the neon-green lab coat instead of the white one to jazz it up… You’re going to be wearing your mind-reading circlet for the presentation so why not spray paint it gold and add a few gems to it… And BAM!” White slammed his coffee cup on the table, startling Alison, “Before you know it you’re going to work in a unitard and chrome body armor.”
“It’s a slippery spandex slope.”
“Yeah, if I’m ever walking around with a big dumb hat and a goddamned cape on, put a bullet in my brain while I still have some dignity left.”
“Not with that haircut,” Alison said under her breath.
“Let’s pay the bill and get out of here," White said, grabbing the check and walking toward the register.
As if on cue, the door of the International House of Pancakes opened and a squat middle-aged man wearing an antlered helmet and a puffer jacket over a spandex catsuit came in and went to the counter.
“Picking up a dinner order for Imbolc the Horned God,” he said in a nasal voice, “I called ahead.”
The waitress at the register looked through her receipts and turned back to the kitchen to figure out where his to-go order was.
“It might be under ‘Doug,’" Imbolc called after her as she disappeared into the kitchen.
White got in line for the register behind him with the check in his hand. Imbolc looked over his shoulder.
“Hey man, didn’t expect to see another of us at the ol’ I-Hop”
“I’m a not… I mean,” White tried not to make eye contact, searching for the politest way to end the conversation before it started.
“I’ve never seen you at the Guild Hall; are you new?”
“I’m not a super villain,” White mumbled into his sleeve, trying not to be overheard, “I’m not a part of that whole…”
“But the costume and the red eyes, I assumed— I mean, you look evil.”
“I’m not in a costume, I just have albinism. It’s a genetic disorder, ok?” White snapped wearily as he leaned over Imbolc and put his check and a twenty on the register, not waiting for the waitress to get back.
Alison walked up to him and he ferried her to the door and away from Imbolc.
“Like I said,” White muttered to her under his breath with a glance back to the register, “Put a bullet right between my eyes if I end up like THAT.”
→ Read THIS on AO3 instead
White pushed in the screen door to find Billy on the couch. Not tied up. Not in a bag, but stabbing a plastic tub of hummus with a spear of carrot like he was mad at it. In his other hand, Billy absent-mindedly twirled a golf club
“What’s that?” White asked, pointing at the club
“I think it’s a mashie?” Billy said, “Maybe a niblick? Who knows?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be kidnapped?” White asked flatly, closing the screen door behind him.
“Standard arm-reattachment surgery,” Billy shrugged, wiggling a carrot stick between two fingers, “Since it only took me 15 minutes, I convinced them to cut the kidnapping short and let me go early.”
“Powers of persuasion,” White said with admiration, leaning over to take one of Billy’s carrots.
“They didn’t even have food for me! Can you believe it?” Billy shouted, his mouth full of humus. “How were they gonna keep me for 48 hours when they didn’t have any food in their Bunker HQ! Total amateurs.”
Billy jumped to his feet. “They tried to take me through a McDonald’s drive-thru!” He pointed at White with the butt of his golf club, You don’t take the kidnapping victim to a drive thru, especially when you’re driving a souped up golf cart with a mounted missile launcher on the fucking back of it,” Billy snarled.
Billy then pointed his club at the ordinary, if lumpy, plastic grocery bag on the couch, printed with “Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You” down the side.
“They said it was five thousand but I didn’t count it,” Billy said, calming down
White picked up the gratuitously grateful plastic bag, “You know the teller lady at the bank says they can’t take bills with blood on them any more. It’s a health code violation.”
Billy snapped, “I SAID I never touched the money. It’s clean! Jesus!”
White tried to assess the amount of money by shifting the weight of the bag in his hand before turning to head to the lab.
Billy looked down at his blood splattered t-shirt and open flannel, “These fuckin’ amateurs. Didn’t even have scrubs for me to change into. I had to do surgery in my civvies.“I really liked this shirt, too,” Billy muttered quietly to himself, “Maybe I can get it out with hydrogen peroxide and baking soda. Sometimes that can get out a blood stain…”
“Hey Billy—“
“Ugh, what?” Billy groaned.
“Your girl with the Buddy Holly glasses—“
“Alison! Fuck! We were supposed to go to the movies today. She must be so pissed I stood her up!” Billy scrambled for the cordless phone on the other side of the couch.
“Nah, don’t worry about it. I explained everything and we went out instead and…”
Billy stared at his roommate. “Alison and you went out? “
“…y’know, she’s not so bad.”
→ Read THIS on AO3 instead
NOTES:
The title is a knock off of My Dinner with Andre, a notorious(ly boring? YMMV) movie where two men just talk over dinner for two hours.
I'm pretty sure QuickBooks accounting software was still Quicken in 1995, but hopefully 1% more people will get this joke if I use the modern name
No one called International House of Pancakes "iHop" in 1995, despite the corporate name being ihop, inc. That branding was heavily pushed through advertising in the 2000s. Imbolc is ahead of the curve.
I would love more billy quizboy and pete white headcanons whenever you get the chance <3
Hey! It's my old pal Anonymous! You used to ask questions all the time, back in the day. Where you been, buddy?
I said it last time but I'm not quite clear on the dividing line between "head canon" and "premise for stories," and I don't want to spoil anything I might wanna write in the future, so I have to be careful here.
I'm most interested in their backstory, so I lot of my "head canon" has to do with that, but I'll stick to the present right now.
Start with the one that makes me unpopular with the fan community: Neither Billy or Pete are gay, especially not for each other. Their relationship, while platonic, is way more complicated with them alternately acting as each other's parent-figure, brother-figure, mentor, rival, best friend, co-dependents, worst enemy, etc. over the years. They love each other, but they don't love each other. (That kind of relationship is more interesting to me than just being closeted and pining or openly married)
→ back to Billy & White Index
Pete was born in '66. Billy in '74. They're the opposite ends of Generation X, but both Gen-X. I did the math to work this out here.
Billy smokes (cigarettes), Pete doesn't and is judgy about Billy's smoking. They discuss why he started smoking in my story Boy Genius.
Pete is obsessed with his teeth, paying out of pocket for dental cleaning and cosmetic bleaching. "I can't have my teeth be darker than my skin, right?" He's overly proud of his "TV host smile," which is, frankly, very fake and creepy. He wore braces (complicated and painful ones, with head gear) all through his childhood into college (as seen in VB episode S01E12 Past Tense).
Pete smoked weed all through high school and college (S01E12 again), but prefers stimulants now. Billy is a real Narc about (non-prescribed, illegal) drugs, but can whip up pretty much anything in the lab if he has the ingredients.
Billy takes a lot of medication (self-prescribed) for his genetic deficiencies/medical problems. Pete takes Lamictal, a mood-stabilizer for his bipolar depression. At present, neither has health insurance, being self-employed. Any other head-canon/premises you'll have to ask more specifically and I'll try to oblige as long as it doesn't spoil anything.
Thanks for being interested in my opinions, which are just opinions and don't matter in the slightest. ← previous ASKS & ANSWERS → back to Billy & White Index
ATTENTION HOLIDAY SHOPPERS & VENTURE BROS FANS:
There are only 7 BILLY and 9 PETE TAROT CARD STICKERS LEFT EDIT TO ADD: [SOLD OUT]
SOLD OUT
I will NEVER print any Billy & White stickers again, I swear, for the rest of my life, so here's your one and only shot to get them.
Typed up sort of by request... I don't really know what counts as head canon and what counts as just a premise you're using. So here are some conjecture I've introduced in my Billy & White fiction or meant to but never got around to it. Make of it what you will.
Billy can read and understand about 25 languages, but his attempts to speak them and be understood are undercut by his speech impediment.
Pete is legally blind (common with oculocutaneous albinism). He wears contacts (and prescription sunglasses) that help a little bit but the prescription isn't nearly strong enough so pretty much everything is a blur to him.
Pete White believes in conspiracy theories and is easily persuaded to believe in more, no matter how stupid. His central belief is all great performers (actors, musicians, TV personalities, politicians) were secretly albino and passing using make-up/wigs like he was. In the mid 1990s, top of that list was Kurt Cobain who he believes was killed by the CIA for threatening to "come out" of the melanin closet.
Pete was friends with Mike Sorayama before he was friends with Rusty, who lived the same dorm floor. They met at the Out-of-State Students of State Orientation, a small gathering since not many students from outside the state go to State. (Werner was also there, but he refused to talk to anyone.) Mike and Pete were both Computer Science majors before Mike switched to Robotics because Blade Runner was so COOL. They were the only two of their friend group who graduated, but had a falling out over how to treat women their Junior year (kicked off by White mocking him on the radio) and stopped speaking entirely before graduation. Mike was a proto-incel, fully invested in his virgin-whore view of women (with Leslie being perfect and all other females being disgusting whores) while Pete was a amicable get-along guy who was used by their entire Super Science department as the town bicycle— every girl got a ride (and no one wanted a second one because he was such a lousy lay).
Billy's mom was a part-time dance teacher at the Y when he was a kid and made him attend all of her classes for the first 10 years of his life. He hated it and wasn't able to keep up most of the time, due to his hydrocephalus-related balance issues, but he ended up becoming a really good dancer, but no one can partner with him because of the height difference.
Related to above, Billy has great balance and general peak physical dexterity after all the physical therapy he endured as a kid to deal with his disproportionate head. The world is an obstacle course to him, so he thinks nothing of jumping onto a counter, climbing onto a chair or whatever he needs to make things work. Pete picks up his physical cues and usually gets in position to give him a leg up when he needs it.
Before she retired, Billy's Mom outranked Hunter and everyone else in OSI which was their motivation to not return Billy to his mother after having his memory wiped. OSI is a secret division of the US Government with a military-style hierarchy whereas "Triple Threat" was an independent contractor to reported directly to the president as a part of his personal vigilante squad. Hunter's background check didn't reveal whose kid he was until it was too late.
Rose first became Triple Threat as a teen hero, a PR push from the government in the mid-1960s to combat the rise of the counterculture— super-powered youth who loved America (regardless of what it did) and mainstream family-friendly American culture. They toured the US doing rah-rah stay in school rallies for kids during the day while secretly beating the shit out of suspected communists and alleged pot-smokers by night.
She doesn't know who Billy's father is— doesn't want to know— but suspects it's Jonas Venture. The one time she went to a party at the Venture Compound in 1972 (age 25, the height of her Triple Threat career), she got slipped a Mickey and passed out. A month later she found out she was pregnant. She wasn't so naive to not know what happened to her, but she doesn't want to think about it. She was fired from being Triple Threat for getting pregnant while unmarried (violating the morals clause of her contract). She didn't get back into superheroism until 1980 (after Billy had started school) while campaigning for Ronald Reagan and his people contacted her directly to be a part of his personal squad.
Billy says: "cannon" & "canon" are homonyms, not interchangeable
I probably have other stuff, but I don't remember it at the moment. I'll add to this if I think of it. Bear with me.
This has crashed Adobe Illustrator so often, I'm declaring it done just to stop working on it.
Alison lost her coffee cup at some point. And there's no food on the table. Shit, I have to keep working. DOOM.
10/3 - Her outfit is done (I owned 90% of these clothes in high school), but Pete still needs work. She's all dark colors and he's all light (as usual) for good contrast
I rejected this jacket design as looking too cool. I want White to suffer for his fashion
9/8 - worked on this over the weekend but I'm not feeling it.
Britpop Casual is kind of a tough lewk to pull off. Going to draw a vintage track jacket over a turtleneck sweater and gray/faded jeans + desert boots. AlbinOasis.
The table needs condiments
return of Li'l Pumpkin (2025)
🎃 → to Billy & White Index
Today is October 31, but tomorrow is Nov 1 which means...
TRULY SCARY!
13 and 24 ? :-)
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13. Talk about a WIP you like.
I have three WIPs on Tumblr going right now—
Story Illustration My Dinner with White, Mama Whalen as the Empress Tarot Card and the Rusty Venture Lunchbox of which I only redrew one side out of four (I bet you forgot about that one).
The first two are all but done, so not worth talking about and I haven't even thought about the lunchbox in months. I'm going to talk about a non-Billy project that's been a work slowly progressing for more than a year now— my first animatic.
↓ continued below ↓
I've been trying to sell an animated TV show (QUIZBOWL) for a couple years now, despite the apparent collapse of the animation industry, all streaming shows and Los Angeles itself.
The advice I've always gotten is no one is going to "get" it unless you literally make it yourself to SHOW them. Friends, I'm not going to be able four million dollars on Kickstarter or fully produce my show on YouTube with the slave labor of animation students (unless you want to volunteer) so the best I can manage is an illustrated slideshow with a produced vocal track.
I recorded my friend and professional voice actor Brian Huskey ("Regular Size Rudy" on Bob's Burgers) last summer as the unctuous, ineffectual teacher Mr. Corbier. I recorded myself as Milo, the 7-year-old genius a month ago. Now I have to edit the takes, add sound effects and music and I'll have the first act of the first episode of QUIZBOWL in the can.
Then, in a job usually done by a team of multiple people getting a salary for the work they do, I need to draw out full-size storyboard panels with backgrounds for the scene. Some of these may be very detailed, with character movement shown in detail. The end result will be the mutant child of a PowerPoint and a flip book.
The scene has no real action— it's a conversation between a teacher and a kid. Teacher wants kid to join the trivia team. Kid says he's not interested, but gets tricked into coming to one practice. So, emphasis is going to be on emotion and facial expressions— semi-realistic but over-emoted
Putting this thing together has had a lot of stops and starts, usually hobbled by me freaking out that I have no idea what I'm doing and random Adobe Illustrator crashes. WHEN (not if) it gets done it'll be my biggest animation project since I graduated film school (where I rarely finished anything).
24. What's a compliment about your art that's always stuck with you?
Anyone wanna give me one right now?
People don't say much on tumblr— barely even bother to add a hashtag— but the highest compliment is re-blogging, right?
Artist question 6
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6. Favorite thing to draw?
but, lately, lettering is my go to.
This is not an interesting answer, sorry.