498. Chapter 498
His key scrapes the lock in such a familiar pattern – such an Adrian pattern – that Alex doesn’t even reach for her gun.
Instead, she gets up and heads to the freezer, because their – hers and Maggie’s – boy is upset. She can tell from the way his key hits the lock.
She doesn’t say anything to him when he walks in, muttering an apology for interrupting her evening. She just arches her eyebrows at him and tosses him an unopened pint of vegan Ben and Jerry’s.
He catches it with a slow grin forming on his mouth, and the spoon follows.
“Tough day, kiddo?”
He doesn’t answer immediately, instead opting to scoop into the ice cream, moaning softly as his eyes flutter closed as peanut buttery goodness melts on his tongue.
“Misgendered in calculus again, but mostly nothing. Had an early dinner with my parents, and that was nice – it’s always good to see them – but I dunno… generally? Just… bleh.”
Alex nods and grabs her own pint – decidedly not vegan – out of the freezer and crosses over to join him on the couch.
They crash down simultaneously, and they eat in silence for a long while.
“How you holding up?” he asks after a while. “The whole… thing?”
Alex glances sideways at him. She knows he was the one Maggie spent her nights with, when Kara and the others were with her. After… after. But she doesn’t know how much she’s told him.
About how close she’d been to dead.
“Holding on,” she shrugs, and he nods, the ghosts of his queer mama’s tears in his eyes.
He holds her gaze with his deep brown eyes for a long, long moment, spoons in both of their mouths contemplatively.
“Kara says you had a punk phase.”
Alex’s lips purse as her eyebrow arches.
“You proposing something, Rodriguez?”
He grins and stands, putting his pint down on the coffee table and encouraging Alex to do the same before tugging the table away.
“We gonna rearrange Maggie’s apartment?” Alex asks, bemused, and Adrian shakes his head.
“Dance floor,” he tells her, and her heart leaps as a wicked smile grows on her face.
Neither of them have any idea how long it takes – how long they last, banging their heads and flailing their arms and jumping up and down and air guitaring, more than actually dancing – for Maggie to come home.
All they know is that they warm up with The Ghost of You, holding each other’s hands and lip syncing passionately to each other, spoons as microphones, kneeling in their desperate proclamations of need for each other during verses, head banging during the chorus.
All they know is that from there, they get into Welcome to the Black Parade, Alex and Adrian both closing their eyes to passionately, tears in both of their eyes – for so many of the same, yet for so many different, reasons – open it up: “When I was a young boy. My father. Took me into the city. To see a marching band. He said, ‘son when you grow up. Would you be. The savior of the broken? The beaten and the damned?”
Tears leak out of both of their eyes when they sing-speak about defeating their own demons, the non-believers.
Alex chokes on “someday I’ll leave you, a phantom, to lead you into summer, to join the Black Parade”, and Adrian takes her hand and they hold each other’s eyes through the instrumental, through the throaty repetition of the opening lines.
But smiles crawl across both of their faces when the drums start, when the bass starts to slam, and the jump and shout and head bang the rest of the song through.
Because they’re certainly carrying on.
All they know is that when they finally notice Maggie standing just inside the doorway, a broad grin on her face, they’re both covered in sweat, a thin layer of Alex’s hair slicked down onto her forehead, Adrian’s binder slung over the back of the couch because damn it’s hard to head bang in it, and both of them are apparently not afraid to keep on living.
All they know is that they finally notice Maggie at the exact same moment, and they both freeze. Alex grabs the remote and flicks off the blasting stereo, but Maggie shakes her head as she steps into the apartment. Her apartment.
No.
Their apartment.
Her family’s apartment.
Alex squints for a moment through her slightly labored breathing, and then Maggie meaning hits her in a rush.
She runs to her.
She kisses her solid, hard, deep.
She knows Maggie doesn’t care how sweaty she is, because god, does Maggie kiss her back.
“Child present!” Adrian calls after a while, and their laughter finally brings their lips apart.
“Why is it that you insist you’re not a child until the moments when it’s convenient for you?” Maggie asks, grinning as she pulls Adrian into a hug.
Her waggles his eyebrows at Alex over Maggie’s shoulder.
“Perk of being a teenager,” he practically preens, and Maggie laughs as she takes the remote from Alex’s hand.
“Mmmm. Speaking of which…”
She grins as she flips on Teenagers, and the family dance party?
Continues long, long, long into the night.