Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Do you think they’re actually already dating behind our backs?” Rebecca asked conspiratorially the moment Adam’s gone upstairs. 

Eli laughed softly, “I don’t know, darling, it doesn’t seem like either of them actually knows what’s going on between them.” 

She does not understand how. It seemed so blatantly painted all over their faces. 

“I really like that boy, he makes Adam look so… lively.” Rebecca said, and if a touch of wistfulness sneaks into her voice, no one here will judge her, “I haven’t seen him smile that much since…” Something tightened in her chest when it occurred to her that the answer might be never. 

Neither of them finished that sentence, but the sentiment, the ‘we might be getting out of the woods soon’ filled their shared space, lifted some of the obligatory fear, letting enough relief in that neither of them could manage to stop smiling. They sat there in the feeling for a while, rested against each other, tipsy and grateful, and listened to the quiet sounds of their son moving around his bedroom. His bedroom door is closed, and for the first time in years, Rebecca’s search for the fear and unknowns that come along with that comes up empty. 

To break the silence, Elijah turned to his wife with a raised eyebrow, “So, darling, are we going to discuss that other theory of yours?” He inquired, his voice light. 

She felt her smile dim slightly, “It’s not a theory, you know that’s not how it works.” Rebecca reminded him. She didn’t totally get it – and she refused to tell Annabelle about her atypical-intusation, even if she very well could have all the answers. It wasn’t a real superpower, it wasn’t something she needed to experiment with, she was just… perceptive, that’s all. She’s kept her leverage to herself for years now and she won’t stop now, she won’t be responsible for any real harm. 

“So… our son’s new favorite person is Atypical, Class A, I’m guessing.” Elijah mused.

“Yeah, seems like we may have gotten someone else’s child drunk tonight, babe,” Maybe it’s the irony of Adam falling in love with… one of them, maybe it’s the wine, but  Rebecca found herself giggling. So undignified, the sound of her dad’s voice echoed in her head, but it didn’t matter, he’s dead and he can fuck off. There’s no one here to perform stone-faced dignity for.  

“Do you think Adam knows?” Elijah asks. 

“I doubt it, he would absolutely lose his shit, we’d know.” She pictures the looks on her son’s face if he overheard her cussing and almost laughes again. 

She thought of herself, young and fiery and as bright as her son; startled by the late-night call and rapt by her baby sister’s story about something called ‘Sodalis’, and a magic book where you could leave your legacy forever, and the Yale masters program her professor had told her about in hushed tones: Abnormal Neuro-Biology.  She had sounded so excited , she never sounded excited – not like that night. Rebecca could hear the stars in her eyes, she didn’t shut up about it for hours. She promised she would keep Rebecca updated about everything she discovered about superhumans. But Rebeca still scoured every library book and online resource she could find in a feverish, sleepless, rush, until she had to slow down because the concept of bringing life into the world is very all-consuming to consider.

She’d always dreamt about the day it was safe to share the wondrous world of Atypicality with her dear Adam, she’d been scripted the conversation in her mind in circles for years – dampened slightly when it became abundantly clear that Adam would not be following the family tradition into medicine. Belle had fought her on that every chance she got, and to this day she doesn’t understand why.  

But none of that matters now, because she knew they had lost their chance to control the way Adam discovered the reality-altering truth. She just hoped he didn’t get pulled too deep into the horrifying parts.

 But she was certain he had a good birthday – the strange, polite, cute, runningback’s sudden and disorienting disappearing act aside – and she was going to savor it. And go eat more cake, because his baking prowess is by far her favorite of his coping strategies. 

Chapter Text

1. Chloe says Frank’s really messed up from whatever you guys did to him.

Chloe the mind reader. Chloe the BU arts student they ran into at the grocery store the other day. The mundane. and the fantastical thing that seems to have changed their son forever, colliding.

She doesn’t know if she’s ever seen her son angry like that. That anger wasn’t rooted in exhaustion – it had energy, it felt like, as she and Eli retreated to their bedroom, to the sound of a door slam, the fury was going to last forever. She recognized so much of her own face in the look of her son filled with righteous, flowing, rage. And she was self-aware enough to realize that her and Annabelle had certainly taught the boy how to hold a grudge. 

Adam’s afraid of us now.

 No, she quickly chastises herself for being overdramatic, he’s just afraid of our work. She wasn’t sure the difference matters, most of the time it felt like she was nothing but her work. 

She couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he has every right to be. Chloe must have told him and Caleb more than she knows about the perspective of the only living subject. It’s impossible she hadn’t, considering she knew more about that perspective than any true human ever could. She and Elijah had never reached out to Frank Sawyer themselves; had they truly fucked up his mind repair? It would be an unintended, horrible consequence but… that didn’t make it less real. She had been worried about the man for years, it was almost reassuring to know that Adam could keep an eye for him, that she had people in his life. She remembered passing him sitting at the bus stop a couple times, selfishly thanking God for her tinted windows, wondering what she could ever do to repay him, and never doing a thing because she wasn’t certain he’d ever want to see her face again.  

She hates all of it so much she wants to run back in time like… – is Superman the one who could do that? Or possibly the red one with the lightning bolt on his head?  One of them. She doubted she could ask Adam to clarify it right now. 

“Everything is going to be alright, dearest,” Elijah murmured, standing over her to rub her back. She doesn’t remember sinking down to the edge of the mattress in the first place. 

She laughs, and is startled by the thickness trapped in her throat, “We need to go back into the kitchen to clean up that mug you dropped, Eli.” 

He gave her a soft smile, “You don’t look quite well enough for cleaning up glass duty, Becca, dear.” 

“We’re not even the ones who should be freaking out right now, really.” She points out. 

“I don’t know about you, but I didn’t factor in Adam making friends with a subject of our top-secret clinical trials because of his Empath boyfriend into the superpowers-are-real chat, go easy on yourself.” 

There’s something about hearing that series of facts out loud that make the whole thing seem even less real, somehow. 

“He will forgive us for doing our jobs, Rebeccca, he just needs time to process, you know that. It was all Annabelle’s pet project anyway.”

“If it makes him this angry, we really can’t ever tell him that,” she can’t help the edge of resentment that snuck into her voice. She understood, in principle, why Annabelle was preferable to her son, but god, she hated it. He didn’t know anything. Though it’s certainly a ticking time bomb now. And if this hurts him so much? The AM was going to crush him. 

She thought of that dark, loud, cramped basement hallway where her sister keeps her prized coma patient. She hopes they can get him awake before Adam ever has to hear that story. Truly, she hopes he never does. Annabelle says it was an accident, that hellish case, the worst accident of her career. She insists, and Rebecca believes her – though she doesn’t fully understand why Annabelle needs to extract the man’s DNA to revive him. What she can’t make sense of is the value of running that cursed experiment – whatever the hell it was, Belle is never clear what that poor kid’s ability actually is – when they knew the risk of harm was so insurmountable.  Didn’t Annabelle take a damn oath?

But that’s not the important thing right now. Adam has been happy for months now. Like… like he wasn’t just staying alive purely for someone else’s benefit or out of stubbornness, but because he had a life he was actively engaged in, one he wanted to stick around for. He had been getting out of bed nearly every morning. And now his boyfriend was scared of his family. Rebecca knew from personal experience that that was not often conducive to the best possible relationship. She had a feeling Caleb and Adam could survive this. Eventually. But she couldn’t see a world where her son – her dearest Adam – would ever look at her the same. 

This is not how any of this was supposed to happen. It feels very… immature, hyper fixating on the unfairness of fate, but she indulged herself just a moment. 

“Alright, Eli, I need dangerous and requiring of focus to do with my hands, don’t you say another word about  being in the wrong state of mind to pick up glass. I am spiraling, this will help.” The irony of using things that may cause someone to bleed as a family-wide coping mechanism is not lost on her. 

Eli tilts his head, “See, you say a thing like that and it suddenly makes sense why neither of us have people skills, I’ll help.”

As he walks passed he kisses her cheek, they’ve made a tradition out of leaving rooms that way. 

When they arrive in the kitchen, Adam is carefully throwing away a tray of shards, “I’m the one who came in swinging with  telepaths and scared you both shitless, right?” He shrugs, like this all been a very normal afternoon, “Figured I’d make myself useful. Since you came back you have to vacuum though. 

Rebecca had been so trapped in her head she hadn’t even heard her son’s footsteps coming back down the stairs. And then he’s gone again, drained of that passionate righteous fury from only a few minutes ago, but still refusing to look at either of them. 

He still refused to look his family in the eye for the next two months.