For Logan

[sayshazam]

This was so dumb. Billy had tried so hard to stay out of trouble, to not get kicked out and to do well in school and one little fight had pretty much negated all that hard work. He hadn't even thrown the first punch, hadn't even defend himself at first really. Now that he knew how to fight, to really fight, it didn't seem fair to fight the other kids. But the guy had gone after someone else and Billy couldn't just stand there and watch that happen. He'd only hit the other guy so that the bully wouldn't hurt someone else. But apparently the school had a "zero tolerance" policy for fighting.

Luckily he was able to reduce his punishment from a suspension to "After school community service detention". He'd been told to report to a fire station and someone there would oversee his "community service". Billy figured it would mean shoveling some snow or washing a firetruck or something dumb like that. He already flew around as a superhero, wasn't that community service?

Sighing, Billy tugged at the sleeves of his winter jacket because it- along with the rest of his clothes- had shrunk in the wash or something. He probably looked homeless, with his black eye, illfitting clothes and backpack. Maybe he should take Kurt up on his offer to get some new clothes. Later. Right now he had to get this over with.

"Hello?" he called out. "It's Billy Batson. I'm here from the high school? For, uh, community service?"

Comments

[spanningyears]

Logan doesn't know how he got stuck with the community service kid. At first, he was sure the other guys were playing a joke on him— there was a call a while back, a fucking cat up a tree, and they all had a good laugh about it, at his expense— and because there's precedent for it, he figures it's just another one of those things.

Only, a week later, they're giving him the paperwork for this Billy Batson kid, and today he's supposed to show up.

It's probably his own fault. Logan's on non-emergency services after the thing at Firepit fire for a while. But there's installing smoke detectors in old people's houses, and then there's this.

Logan Echolls, a role model for Darrow youth. It sounds like some kind of joke, considering his own high school years.

"Batson, right?" Logan says as the kid talks in, calling out for someone. Next time Logan decides to run into a burning building without his equipment on, he's going to think back tot his moment.

[sayshazam]

The guy immediately put a bad taste in Billy's mouth. He looked so clean cut that he immediately reminded Billy of every asshole whoever gave him crap for being an orphan in hand-me-down clothes and no money. It didn't help that he was already feeling surely for having to do this. It was like all the progress he had made since coming here was stripped away and he was a pissed-off 15 year old all over again.

"Yeah, I'm Billy," he said, shifting his backpack a bit as he drew in on himself. Maybe if he wished hard enough the magic of Shazam would make him invisible while in this form. "So do I clean the bathroom or something and then I can go home? How does this work?"

[spanningyears]

"Yeah, that's exactly it. Janitorial duties to build character. Mops, not guns," Logan says, sarcastic, and there's something about this kid that's kind of familiar. Maybe he doesn't remind Logan completely of himself— he would have rattled off about a dozen smartass comments in a row by now— but still... if they'd been in the practice of giving Logan community service instead of tossing him in a jail cell, he can imagine himself on the other side of this conversation.

A long time ago, at least.

"I'm Lieutenant Echolls," he says.

[sayshazam]

"Yeah, cleaning toilets is really going to teach me not to stand up for others," Billy said, pulling a face as he glanced around. The place didn't actually look too dirty if that really was what he was supposed to do. He would have thought it would be like a locker room or something, only with adult jocks instead of teenagers. This place didn't smell like a locker room at least.

"Do I, uh, do I salute you or something?" Billy asked, the question coming out far more sarcastic than he meant it to. He didn't do so well switching out of surly mode. "I've never met a fireman one-on-one before."

[spanningyears]

"I'll let you know when they make the fire department the fourth military branch," Logan says, eyebrows raised as he considers Billy for a second. Then he turns on his heels and starts to head further inside, in the direction of the garage.

"Okay, come on. Keep up," he says.

[sayshazam]

"That doesn't even make any sense, why would he not know if I should salute until then?" Billy muttered to himself as he watched the guy walk off. Keep up? Asshole, it wasn't like the guy was running away or going out of sight. It was all just tactics to belittle Billy. Well screw him, Billy would do exactly what he needed to do so that he could get through with this but not anything extra.

"So you been doing this long?"

[spanningyears]

"Little less than a year," Logan replies as he walks, and until he says it, doesn't realize just how long he's actually been in Darrow, how many days have passed since that morning when he thought he was just leaving Veronica for one hundred and eighty days instead of Neptune for however the hell ever long. He's still not in any hurry to head back just yet, though, as much as he misses the service, and as much as the Darrow Fire Department is just a substitute for it.

"A firetruck's not an F/ A-18 Hornet, but it's about as good as it gets here."

[sayshazam]

"That's cool," Billy said. But it wasn't, it totally wasn't cool because he could fly for real and didn't need a plane or anything like that. So take that, mister super-cool fire fighter who is also a fighter pilot! Only not, because it wasn't like Billy could actually tell the guy he could fly. So he would just have to do a half-hearted job of pretending to be impressed so they guy knew he wasn't. Well, he wasn't that impressed. A fighter pilot was kind of cool. "Less people probably shooting at you too."

[spanningyears]

"You'd think that," Logan replies, leaving it to the kid to figure out if he's joking or not.

Eventually, Logan leads the two of them to the garage, where one of the trucks happens to be parked for maintenance today. The mechanic's come and gone, already finished work on it so it can be back on the road tomorrow, but there's one step Logan specifically told him to skip.

"Okay," he says, "This truck could use a good wash, don't you think?"

[sayshazam]

"I think I have to wash it even if it doesn't need a good wash," Billy said, setting his bad down on the ground. It was a huge truck and would take him forever to clean but it probably wouldn't be hard work and it wasn't degrading either. It was something the firemen themselves probably did. Probably something this guy was supposed to do himself but was putting off on Billy.

"Where's the bucket and all that stuff? Soap? Do- do I get to spray it with the fire hose?"

[spanningyears]

"Closet in the corner," Logan replies, pointing to a storage closet in the garage, "Grab us a couple of buckets and brushes, I'll pull it around front."

He doesn't answer Billy's question about the firehose, mostly because Logan can't decide on the answer right away. Somehow, that seems like not much of a punishment if he says yes.

[sayshazam]

Well, at least it sounded like the guy was going to help, but probably only because he didn't trust Billy to do the job right. How hard could it be to wash a fire truck? You just scrubbed every inch of it with the brush then washed it off. The guy clearly thought he was an idiot. Well screw him, Billy was going to wash the hell out of this truck.

"So are you in trouble too and that's why you have to babysit me?" he asked once the guy pulled the truck around.

[spanningyears]

"Would you believe I thought the fire department was supposed to set the fires? Now that was a wacky mix-up," Logan says as he climbs down, out of the truck once it's parked out front.

"It's a big truck. I figured you could use the help. And we can talk about how you ended up with community service. Not to get all after-school special on you."

[sayshazam]

The joke should have been lame but something about the way he said it almost had Billy smiling. Except he wasn't going to let this guy think he was enjoying his presence or anything. This was a punishment so Billy was going to be miserable.

"How old are you? No one has after school specials anymore," Billy said, shaking his head. "And it's nothing. This kid was picking on someone so I told him to stop. He went after me instead. I let him hit me a few times but when he didn't stop I hit him back. Zero-tolerance policy for fighting, so here I am."

[spanningyears]

"They were on the way out when I was coming up too. Go figure," Logan says, and has to pause to consider what Billy says next. It reminds him a lot of his own high school experience, only if Neptune High had been zero tolerance, he would have been on the fast track to expulsion pretty early on in his sentence.

"Gotta love zero tolerance. So, this other kid. He a little guy? Maybe compensating for something?"

[sayshazam]

"No, typical asshole. Thinks he's better than people because he has money and parents who will bitch out the school," Billy said. Fortunately this time he hadn't had to hire a parents or anything like that. Although next time he would probably just be expelled, which would really suck.

"He just does it so all the other kids know how cool he is or whatever."

[spanningyears]

"Think I know the type," Logan says, and Sean Friedrich from back home comes to mind. Or just about any 09er from high school. come to think of it, including himself. More than once, Logan got out of being expelled, and he knows it wasn't because of his winning teenage personality.

"And let me guess, no community service for the other guy, right?"

[sayshazam]

"He's on some sports team so it's being handled through that. Doesn't matter, those guys always get away with stuff. Just how it is," Billy said with a shrug as he started to scrub down the truck. That was a lesson Billy had learned pretty early on, if you had parents AND money you could get away with just about anything.

"Maybe that's why some people put on tights and fight crime? Do crime fighters ever go after corrupt bankers and stuff?"