His Best Friend

Billy went outside his house and waited for Sandra to arrive at their usual meeting spot, which was just the coffee shop Sophie, his aunt, ran and was in charge of, since Billy was in **** need of cash, since if he didn't cough up thirty bucks in the next few months, then he'd most likely be **** out of his house.

And he knows his mother would do it too, as the only reason Billy knows the basics when it comes to camping and surviving in the woods is because when he was ten and didn't feel like doing chores around the house, she kicked him out of the house for an entire week. His sister also got the same treatment, but unlike Billy, it stopped after the first instance, as she couldn't live outside.

Meanwhile, Billy just straight up found that if he did so whenever he wanted to leave the house for a while for something as stupid as seeing his favorite superhero-themed band play with Sandra and her friend Denise since Sandra had the car, Denise knew where the venue was along with the tickets, and Billy was there because he was a guy and they needed help from a guy for both their bags of merchandise from the event and just in case the car broke down... which it did.

"Hey Sophie!" Billy called out to his aunt, who looked more than a little wasted, and after using his enhanced eyes, he saw that it was Wednesday, which sadly was the lowest point of the week for her, as if her stories were true, she's:

[A/n read it like a song.] Been put up for adoption at the tender age of five, then once again after two years, three years, and didn't stop till she hit fifteen! The first boyfriend she ever had turned out to be a pimp, and she only found out two months in; the first husband cheated on her, left her, and banged her friend all the same on just one little Wednesday afternoon.

Not to mention she lost her children, but before you ask, it wasn't ****; they just hate her guts as her father and his lover made it hard for them to connect, making things even worse was her favorite car, only house, and most of her stuff she lost in her divorce as her lawyer turned out to be the cousin of the bitch her ex-husband was fucking, and the only thing she managed to keep was the coffee shop he started one night high out of his mind.

Many more things probably have happened, but even when she was drunker than Billy's mother, she would never say a word as she tried her best to be the sweetest girl around, making it not that hard to understand why her shop is doing well, but at the same time, it makes it easy for others to use her like all her previous lovers had done with her.

[A/n Back to normal reading if you want.] Eventually, after looking around for a solid five minutes, Sophie eventually realizes Billy was calling out to her and stumbles across the room towards his table, which wasn't far enough where it'd take her a minute to reach.

"Hey kiddo! Sorry I wa- I was late. I just needed a little power nap, if you know what I mean." Sophie said as she giggled like Stephanie whenever she and Danni would party a little too hard whenever their mother had to leave the city or the house for at least the weekend. Billy doesn't really know what they were doing, as there weren't any smells or anything that might have pointed to ****, yet that face and laugh obviously meant they weren't in their right mind.

Billy places his hand down on his aunt's and gently strokes it as best he could in order to try and show her he cared about her, and now that he was both an adult and had powers, albeit that weren't useful for much of anything other than birdwatching, he still wanted to do something to show her how much he cared for her and worried for her.

What Billy did in fact not plan, however, was that when he did so, he felt the same feeling of being drained as when he started walking through his sister's head or dreams. "Okay, NO! No, no, no, no, no, x ♾️" was all Billy thought before he slowly passed out on the floor, causing his aunt and everyone else to worry about him because who the heck wouldn't be worried if someone just face-planted on the floor?

When Billy woke up, he was glad to realize that it had only been about fifteen minutes, but that didn't mean he was back to full power just yet, as he still felt like a sick old man who was struggling to move around. But he was somewhat happy to find out that if he was the only one asleep, then he couldn't enter other people's dreams or minds.

Looking around the room, Billy realized that he was in Sophie's office, considering there was only one couch in her coffee shop that wasn't in the lobby and that was inside her office, because whenever she needed to sleep something off or one of the part-time employees like Billy in the past needed a quick power nap to get through the rest of the day, she'd allow them to sleep there.

"I hate how this is basically her house." Billy thought as he angrily got off the couch and gently placed the pillows and now-folded-up blanket on the seats since he didn't want to make things difficult for Sophie even more so than she might have already been feeling.

Once outside the office, Billy saw that some customers were trying to get free stuff from Sophie for honestly, who cares what their reason was? They probably heard or saw her give away something for free to someone before and figured they could get it as well. But even though she's bad with people because of her life, she would never give anything away for free to anyone that she didn't consider family or felt like needed it.

Like actual superheroes, cops, vets, homeless people, or just anyone she feels like might be struggling to get through the day since she was that kind of woman. Yet here come some bastards who were yelling out some words while another of their group was slowly starting to get things heated, almost like they wanted a fight to go down with a saintly woman.

"Alright, that's enough of that." Billy says as he walks on over and snatches all their phones from them and quickly turns them off before putting them inside his pocket. "You've all obviously spent way too long on the internet if you think this kind of crap is going to ever get you laid." This seemed to piss off the already agitated men as they began smack talking even harder since that's all any of them could ever do.

Billy quickly forces them all out the door by just walking towards them, looking all mean and everything, even though, contrary to his looks, he is in fact skinnier than his sister and weaker to boot. Once they all get outside, one of them gets hit by a parked car, as they were too busy running away that they managed to run straight into one just as the person was getting out.

Who, funnily enough, was an officer of the law in their own car who was making a quick stop as they were a speedy cop and needed loads of caffeine and sugary delights to get them from passing out like she did when Billy was a kid. Shocking him in the process not only because he saw someone hit the floor so hard he heard it crack but also because the person in question did not look in any way, shape, or form like (at the time) a police officer.

Age hasn't changed them one bit, however, as they still look the same, with the only difference being they stopped wearing a police officer's uniform as they have since become an actual detective for the city.

"Who the heck was that?" She asked as she walked out with her slightly heel-like boots and casually slid him down her car (after taking a picture, of course) to see if this idiot had done anything to her baby, and unluckily for him, there was in fact a dent... one so damn small you'd need a magnifying glass or really be looking for it if you moved your finger across, but still a dent nonetheless.

And from the years Billy has known this strange detective/police officer, he's found out a few things: one, she loves cute things and gets all weird whenever she sees them; two, she likes a lot of sugar, and I mean so much to the point it was basically pouring in either half or a quarter of a bag into her desserts and coffee depending on how rough her day was, and this was well before she became a speedster, might I add. And thirdly, she became a demon whenever she felt like someone messed with something she cared about, which to Billy was only A) the coffee shop since it was supposedly close to her job and B) her car that she's quite literally sacrificed many things in life to get.

Walking inside the shop, everyone burst out and cheered her on like she was the one who stopped this shit show from getting even worse than it was. But whatever, Billy didn't really care since, unlike him, people actually seemed to know the police girl, even though Billy didn't, besides her name, since he never really needed to know more about her in his eyes, at least, as she was sort of like a distant friend that you'd chat with at least once a week or month.

The two say hello as Billy and Sophie give the officer her order, and she takes about five minutes to get everything to her car before she eventually leaves after paying a more than generous amount of money, which is another reason why Billy and Sophie like her; besides, just having a cop around has more than once helped them out over the years.

"Look, Sophie, you have to learn to sometimes tell them to fuck off, or just bring out the gun you carry around. Either of those will get those assholes to leave you alone and never come back... especially the gun part." Billy says as he tries to console Sophie and get her to try and take a stand for once, even though he knows it'll never happen as she's far too broken to do that.

The Sophie Billy knew as a kid and the one he knows now are two completely different people, and the only reason for it is because of all her past asshole boyfriends, husbands, or people she thought were her boyfriends but were actually using her in some way or another.

For the rest of the day, Billy went out of his way to help Sophie with her superhero-themed cafe along with Sandra, who eventually came, and once she realized that her usual helpers probably skipped working again, decided to help out. "Honestly, I don't know why she keeps those two around. I mean, I've known them almost as long as I've known you, and I can safely state I've seen them skip work more than actually work. And there's a very large margin for them skipping," Sandra said as she huffed and puffed as she did her best to clean the place up since any time she touched anything related to eating or drinking, she'd somehow find a way to turn it into poison.

What made things annoying for Billy had to be that during their entire job shift he couldn't touch Sandra a single time in order to try and use his dream or whatever powers on her. And when their makeshifts were done Billy stayed behind as Sandra went on home since Billy needed to check up with Sophie on her hero worker license to make sure he could work there full time like he used to.

Thankfully her license was in full working order, and he could start tomorrow if he wanted. For now, however, he wanted to go home and rest, as being drained from using his powers without his own input really drained him; add working a full eight hours in a hot kitchen and working with industrial-grade coffee machines, and things didn't make things easier either.

Once home, Billy looked over his mail and saw the usual bullshit, which he quickly tossed in the trash, along with some supplement companies trying to get him to work with them again, even though it was all **** by his mother, as she wanted him to actually get muscles since that's what Billy's been trying to do ever since he realized he wanted to be a hero.

"Oh, they finally approved me." Billy said with a smile on his face at the letter he got from the Hero's Association that he needed to go tomorrow at the earliest and by the end of the week at the latest... which was also tomorrow since it was Friday, but whatever, getting approved more than made up for how late it was in Billy's eyes.

As Billy pocketed the letter as he walked towards his room, trying his best to ignore his sister and future sister-in-law as they made out with one another in Stephanie's room, she would later send him the video of the things they'd be doing after Billy went to bed.

Once he got inside, Billy made sure to lock and close his room with his sister possibly doing the same since if Sophie was that hammered in the morning, it could only mean things were going to get worse later on tonight, and neither of them felt like dealing with their mother sneaking into their beds and using them as giant teddy bears like she used to when they were kids before they learned to lock their doors.

Checking his computer real quick to see if there was anything he needed to do before going to sleep, Billy found that besides the usual voyeuristic watching that people like him got paid to do, he was free.

Once in dreamland, Billy was fully prepared for whatever his aunt or sister had in store, or at least he thought he might; however, reality is stranger than fiction, especially when you have powers that let you see how others truly view themselves and the world.