797. Chapter 797

Adrian leaned over Miles, mouth all agape at the doodles Miles thought were “just okay.”

“No, man, they’re amazing.”

“Yeah, okay, just like sticking to everything is amazing,” Miles rolled his eyes without taking his eyes off his sketchpad, but he grinned anyway.

Peter looked down from where he was clinging to the ceiling, hair flopping down chaotically. “Your stuff really is amazing, Miles. And come on, you know you love the sticking.” Peter released his fingers so he was straight-up upside down, almost thwacking Adrian in the head with his own.

“You’re like a damn bat now,” Adrian muttered, and Miles snickered.

Peter squinted, arms crossed across his chest like he wasn’t, in fact, hanging upside down. “I feel like Barry said there’s already a Batman. But I don’t think he’s got our particular brand of charm.”

A gush of wind threatening Miles’ entire sketchbook, but he and Peter had Barry-proofed it since the first disastrous incident. “Did I hear someone talk about Batman? Yeah, Gotham is hardcore.” Barry shook his head, collapsing his head onto Alex’s lap, who rolled their eyes but patted Barry’s shoulder anyway. “Your wife’s doing a great job down there, by the way. Here, she gave me this to give you,” Barry told Alex as Adrian, Miles, and Peter cooed and giggled because Alex has a wife.

Alex blushed when they opened the short letter Barry slipped them. “What’s it say, Alex?” Adrian tried waggling his eyebrows. Alex threw a pillow at him.

“There are children about,” they winked at Barry.

“I’m not a children!” Adrian pouted.

“We’re not kids!” Peter protested, still upside down with his hair absolutely everywhere.

“Who’s a child? What’s a child?” Miles asked.

Alex snorted at the boys’ antics. Barry took advantage of their distraction to steal the note from Alex, but he only blushed and spluttered intensely when they let him succeed. “Um, well, yes, these are… I need to step up my note-writing to Iris…”

Someone else stepped into the door Barry had left open, and Alex surrendered any hope of alone time. They’d been more than happy to open their home to all the trans superheroes they knew (Winn and Nia were with Maggie in Gotham for the weekend, and Fitz and Daisy were off in space somewhere with their girlfriend), because at least it protected them from numbness. At least these boys understood.

So they grinned when they looked up to see Steve towering over all the tiny boys, plus Alex. They could see how he could seem threatening, all muscley white man, but even the bulge of his biceps - the man didn’t seem to know what sleeves were except when in uniform - couldn’t take away from the sheer kindness of his eyes.

“Just checking,” he gave everyone a little wave, but his eyes found Miles. “Did you take off your binder today, kid? Stretch yet?”

Miles groaned and glared, utterly non-menacing, at everyone around him. “Just because I’m the youngest doesn’t mean you all have to take care of me - ”

“Sure we do,” Peter finally dropped down from the ceiling. “You’re a fetus.”

“A zygote, even,” Adrian added. Barry, Alex, and Steve met each other’s eyes and tried not to laugh.

“But did you, Miles?” Alex cut in.

“No,” he muttered, padding out of the room to take a binder break in Alex’s gigantic bathroom. “Thanks for looking out, guys. Pero no soy un niñito,” he added under his breath as he went.

Steve smiled after Miles before turning to Alex, leaning against the doorframe as he squinted at them critically. “You okay, Danvers? You seem off today. Do you need us to clear out?”

Barry sat up, ready to leave if Alex needed it, and Adrian and Peter looked over carefully. But Alex tugged Barry back down to relax, and just shook their head, leaning back against the wall and closing their eyes.

“Just. All the different timelines, all the different planets, right? All the different Earths.”

Steve sighed and crouched down to listen, nodding like he knew where this was going, and felt it, too.

Adrian crouched closer to Alex, and when Miles came back into the room, he climbed the walls quietly to be nearer to Peter, nearer to Alex.

“And none of them get it, you know? And you’d think, right, you’d think that at least some of them would be better. That it wouldn’t be such a rare damn relief to sit in a room and have everyone just get it, right? It shouldn’t be this hard. It shouldn’t be every day, not being enough of anything, or being too much of one thing or the other. It’s a double life with superheroing, it’s a double life with gender, and you and Miles, Adrian, and Daisy, I know you three have got an even tighter vice around you than even we do.”

Barry nodded, quiet, his fingers finding his wedding ring.

“But it’s not about the rest of the world, sometimes,” Miles put his hand on their shoulder. Alex grinned softly - from the mouth of the tiniest one - and let out a small chuckle when it took Miles a moment to unstick. “Sometimes, it’s about the refuge we give each other.”

“That’s a good one, Miles, you should catchphrase it or something,” Peter smiled, even as his hand found Alex’s.

“Or at least street art it somewhere,” Adrian agreed as he laid his head next to Barry’s on Alex’s lap.

“Or put it on a post-it for Alex for when they forget,” Steve smiled gently, his eyes never having left Alex’s face.

“You’ve lived for like, seven thousand generations, Cap,” Peter said earnestly. As an aside, he whispered to Miles and Adrian, “He’s great at helping with history homework.” But then he turned grave again. “What do you think? Is it worth it?”

“Worth being ourselves and finding solace in each other?” Steve asked. “Absolutely. Every single time, in every lifetime.”

“But sometimes it’s so…” Alex tossed up their hands, and they didn’t have to put the crush of depression into words. They all… knew.

“Yeah, it is,” Barry agreed. “It is so…” He played with his wedding ring again. “But the highs of it are better, too. We get the worst lows, sure, but we get the most amazing joy. I don’t think people can access it, when they don’t go through what we do.”

“Mood,” Miles muttered. Steve squinted, processing, but seemed to get the general idea.

“So you think I can do this?”

“This being… being you?” Adrian confirmed. Alex nodded, not bothering to hide the tears in their eyes. Some days were just like that, and if they couldn’t be real about that with their sister, that part of their family, and with these guys… they’d have no outlet, ever. And they needed one. Badly. So they let the tears drop.

“Yeah. Yeah, you can definitely do it. You taught me to be me,” Adrian shrugged, looking down with a small smile.

Alex leaned down to kiss his forehead. “Yeah, and I suffer for it every day,” they teased, and Adrian pretended to be offended. But only for a moment.

“I love you, Alex. We all do. And sometimes, that’s the bit that matters most, even when the world… all the worlds… just suck.”

“Permanent mood,” Peter muttered, and Steve looked, again, confounded.

Alex laughed. “We’ll get you into memes, Steve.”

“I think I’ll pass,” he laughed.

But suddenly Alex knew how to feel better. How to survive another day. They took out their phone, and pulled up the long set of images they sent around with the spider kids.

They pouted at Steve, and because it was the Danvers sibling pout, and because Steve’s heart was made of both marshmallows and steel, he relented right away, scooting closer until they were all leaning into Alex’s phone, teaching Captain America about memes.

It didn’t fix everything. But it made them more connected to the ground underneath their feet - ironic, since the spider boys were both now hanging from the ceiling for a better view - and Alex smiled. Because it didn’t need to fix everything to give them hope.