No matter how many times he’d helped save the world, it always seemed that everyone else was getting praised. He was always criticized. One thing or another that he did wrong. A misstep here, a bad call there.

And in his mind, he deserved it.

Everyone else on the team was the opposite of all those things.

He was the annoying one, the loud one, the dumb one, the least strong, the smallest.

They didn’t need him to do anything. Nya was better at machines, Zane could handle anything electrical just fine. Even a four-player video game didn’t require him anymore with so many of them now.

Every article online seemed to let him sink into the back, even. Tabloids too. Once he and Nya had decided to break things off quietly, none of them needed him for sensationalism anymore.

Unless it was about that , but the people mentioning it were never in good faith. Still, searching your name online and having nothing other than speculation about your genitals come up wasn’t a good feeling.

He could hardly look in the mirror anymore. All he noticed were things he’d tried to run away from, but were plastered all over the place online. His face was too round, shoulders not wide enough, hips too noticeable, too short…

He brought it up once. Cole had noticed him looking upset while he scrolled through his phone and asked what was wrong.

And Jay had told him. Every little thing that they were plastering all over the internet. How he knew coming out publicly had been a bad idea. How he kept noticing the same things the articles would point out with their ‘we can always tell’ mentality.

“None of that’s important, Jay.” Cole said it so sincerely, “You’re you. That’s what matters.”