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It's around two weeks after Freddy turns a year old when it happens for the first time. At least, it's the first time either of them witness it.
Beca is mimicking her son's positioning, lying flat on her back with her knees bent and pulled towards her chest so that she can copy him when he kicks out aimlessly with his legs. They're sprawled across a large playmat that Stacie had sent them; made them, actually, having taken up crocheting as a hobby after Bella was born. It's soft and has numerous tassels and things for Freddy to grab hold of. It's made a nice change, having those things not be Beca’s strands of hair.
Now, it's as Beca is rolling over onto her front that she sees it. Or thinks she sees it.
"It" being her son hovering about a foot and a half off the floor.
She stumbles in her haste to right herself and by the time she's gotten to her knees, Freddy's back on the blanket, kicking his feet and laughing.
Beca spends a long time staring at him, waiting for him to do it again. But he doesn’t. Doesn't do anything out of the ordinary at all and so Beca shakes her head, feeling ridiculous, and chalks it up to some kind of weird optical illusion.
Later, she deletes her search history after asking Google if babies can float.
The second time it happens, there's no mistaking it for anything other than what it clearly is.
It's a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon and both Beca and Chloe are home. The latter washes dishes in the kitchen, while Beca tries to console a crying Freddy. She's bouncing him on her hip and murmuring soothing nonsense, but nothing is working.
"Have you tried Puffle?" Chloe calls out to her.
Puffle is a stuffed cow that had come into their house by way of a congratulatory gift basket that Jessica and Ashley had sent them when Freddy was born. He's made from something like parachute material and it has become the little boy's favourite now that he's grabbing everything in sight.
Chloe will insist that Freddy had named the thing himself and if she wants to interpret his spittle-infused babble as something resembling a word, Beca isn't about to stop her.
"I haven’t. I'm gonna put him down for a sec and go grab him." She places a now screaming Freddy on his back in his playpen and takes the stairs two at a time, grabs Puffle from Freddy’s crib and jogs back, pausing at the top of the stairs when she hears Freddy start to laugh. She smiles to herself, wondering what magic Chloe has used this time to calm him down, and heads back into the living room.
Only to stop dead in the doorway.
"Oh," she squeaks out, eyes wide and staring. Everything stops for a good twenty seconds and then Beca is nervously calling out to Chloe without taking her eyes off the sight in front of her. "Chloe, can you come here? Quickly." She hears the sound of the faucet being turned off and then Chloe’s soft footfalls approaching. And then....
“Is everything oka-- oh my god!! Oh my god, oh my god!! Beca!!”
"Don't yell at me!"
"How is-- what--"
"I don't know, I don't know!!"
"Help him!!"
"I don't think I can reach him!!"
Because their baby is floating a solid seven or eight feet off the ground.
"At least he isn't crying anymore?"
"Beca!!"
They take him to see a doctor, an older gentleman with a genuine love of children, who has no idea why they're really there. A check up, they'd told him.
They run some routine tests and when they sit to hear the results and Doctor Goodwin tells them everything came back normal, Beca almost bursts out laughing.
“What are we going to do?" Chloe asks later that night, while they're nestled close together on the couch with Freddy in Beca's lap. Chloe's head is resting on Beca's shoulder and she's got a hand curved around one of Freddy's chubby legs, thumb absently brushing back and forth over smooth skin.
Beca is quiet for a long moment, one she spends looking down at their son's slumbering face.
“Protect him."
It doesn't happen again for a while, but they know it's just a matter of time. Freddy is likely too preoccupied with walking – because that's a thing now – to focus on much else.
"I can't wait to tell him that he could fly before he could walk." Beca lets out a carelessly undignified snort and catches a manically laughing Freddy as he launches himself from Chloe who, like Beca, is sitting on the floor while their son toddles back and forth between them. They're facing one another, close enough for their outstretched legs to brush as they use them to create an area for Freddy to run between them, the safety bumpers to Freddy's bowling ball.
“Why is that so funny to you?" Chloe asks. rolling her eyes in a manner that would tell any onlookers this isn't the first time they've had this conversation.
"I honestly have no clue," she laughs like she knows it winds Chloe up. "But it is."
Freddy is at the midway point between them when he trips. Beca lurches forward to grab him from behind, Chloe reaches out to catch him from the front, and Freddy stumbles by them both.
And goes up, up, up....
Until his back is brushing the ceiling.
Beca and Chloe clamber to their feet and then there's panicked yelling as they run around underneath him, prepared to catch him or cushion his fall. He doesn't fall, though.
As they stand there in the middle of their living room, Freddy drops but then he curves upward like a wave and keeps going.
Around and around he goes, unsteadily at first, teetering like a spinning top that's slowing to a stop. But then he evens out and he's flying – flying – around the two of them. Giggling with the kind of wild glee that only babies are capable of as he spins around them and their panicked expressions slowly start to melt away, revealing teary-eyed wonder, and when their eyes aren't on Freddy, they're on each other.
There's a big enough learning curve as it is when it comes to raising kids, they could really do without the superpowers – plural, now, because Freddy also seems to enjoy creating his own brand of static shock – but even with the added difficulties, they manage.
Even if they worry about being good parents, they are.
Of course, taking him anywhere presents its own set of challenges, removed from the ones they've been tackling at home.
Play-dates, for example.
Which wouldn't be a problem if Jesse and Aubrey hadn't decided to procreate at the same time.
Autumn is three months younger than Freddy, and cute as a button. They live close enough now to meet up every other week, but Beca and Chloe have had to find excuses for either not going or only one of them showing up without Freddy.
They aren't sure what to do and surprisingly, there isn't a chapter on babies having superpowers in any of the books they’d bought when Chloe was pregnant. They talk about things endlessly and eventually decide it would be more beneficial to have one or two more people they can talk to.
So, Chloe calls Aubrey and Beca calls Jesse.
"Your baby... has super powers?"
"Look, I know how it sounds but--”
"Oh, I believe you."
"You... do?"
"Yeah. Your movie-hating brain doesn't have the imagination required to make something like this up.”
Unseen on her end of the line, Beca pinches the bridge of her nose and prays for patience.
“I really wanna yell at you right now but that isn’t the point of this conversation.”
“Putting something before insulting me.” Jesse fakes a pleased gasp. “See, this is how we know you’ve grown as a human,” he chuckles, then before Beca can say anything else, asks, “What do you need?”
The next time they arrange a play-date, Beca and Chloe both show up with Freddy in tow.
"Okay, make him do something." Jesse eagerly claps his hands together and stares at them with barely restrained excitement.
"Jesse, I can’t just make him do tricks,” Beca gripes, “he's not a dog.”
"Well, there goes my baby superheroes circus idea." Jesse deflates, stumping back against the couch. Aubrey rolls her eyes and slaps his knee as she settles beside him with Autumn in her arms. "People are too impatient, they won't sit around and wait, ever for a superhero baby. We live in dark, dark times."
They spend the next hour, or so just hanging out, Chloe sitting in an armchair across from the couch while Beca makes herself comfortable on the floor between her legs. Her knees are bent and she's got Freddy resting against her thighs. His hands are caught between her fists and she's shaking his arms gently, though wildly enough to make him shriek with laughter.
It's on the tail end of one of these bouts of lighter that it happens.
He floats right up out of Beca’s lap, but she's still got hold of his hands and so she ends up with her arms outstretched in front of her as he stretches his little body out like Superman.
Beca risks a glance in Jesse and Aubrey’s direction, sees their twin dumbfounded expressions and offers them an uncertain smile alongside a lacklustre, "Ta-da."