Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He was bleeding.

Which – in retrospect, shouldn’t have been surprising. Expected even, given the events of the day.

(or days really….weeks, months …)

It hurt.

Johnny couldn’t even pinpoint where the pain was exactly, just – well, everywhere. The dull thud at the base of his skull was drowned out by a sharp stabbing sensation in his chest that made breathing a challenge at best. His legs felt like liquid and he was pretty sure there was some sort of sprained appendage that made walking more difficult than it needed to be. It wasn’t fair, really – they’d won, right?  The world was saved and Franklin was safe and his sister was alive and -

There was blood in his teeth.

He spends a good ten minutes or so just staring at himself in the mirror, then tries wiping it off with the back of his hand. Except it just spreads the stuff around further and he has to dig around for water bottle to rinse his mouth out. This would be the type of thing his sister would have noticed, if not for –

Well.

She and Reed had other things on their mind right now.

He’s fine.

It’s been about nine hours since the fight with Galactus, and he’s still bleeding.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, or even changing out of his clothes. He brushes his fingers against the fabric of his uniform – dirty still, covered in dust and other particles he wouldn’t be able to put a name to. She’d thrown him into a building, Shalla-Bal. She saved his life. She slammed him with her board and his body became friends with the concrete infrastructure below.

There’s blood on his sheets.

He rises to his feet – slowly, this type of thing takes a bit of effort now, and attempts to peel the uniform from his saturated skin. His movements were stiff. Uncoordinated. He grinds his teeth as he forces the fabric over his head, and flings it onto the floor.

Johnny might not be a genius in the same way that his brother-in-law was, but even he could surmise that the dark purple bruises across his ribcage were probably a bad sign for the state of his health. The stabbing sensation was back, or maybe it never really went away. Maybe it had been going on for so long that his brain started to block it out for the sake of his sanity.

Lucky him.

Still – it doesn’t help the fact that it is now becoming increasingly difficult to breathe.  Johnny does consider the possibility of a broken rib – several, even. He runs his fingers gently over his mottled skin and even the slight pressure causes the pain to radiate downwards. Also not a great sign.

Fine then. So what now?   

He eyes the door to his room, opened just a crack, and thinks about going down to Reed’s lab. His brother-in-law would run one of his funky scanners over him and pinpoint the source of the problem. Maybe give him some pills and a stern talking to about not getting distracted by pretty aliens and then send him off to bed like a disobedient child. 

(It sucks being the baby of the group).

Well, not anymore with Franklin crawling around. A new little human to soak up all the parental affection that had been inflicted on him for well over a decade. Johnny winces as he traverses down the stairs, leaning heavily against the railing for support. Speaking of his nephew – maybe he could spare some of his magic healing voodoo for his aching ribcage? It couldn’t possibly be that difficult a task after the whole ‘bringing Sue back to life’ thing, right?

He lets out a cough, and it almost brings him to his knees. He draws his hand away from his mouth and his fingers come back coated in red.

Damn. 

Reed’s lab was empty. Dark. Quiet. It probably should have been, since it was like four in the morning. Normal people usually slept at this time. Of course, Reed was never normal, not since the day they met, and it wasn’t uncommon to see him putzing around down here at all hours of the night.

Except for now apparently, when Johnny was actively dying. Still, the old man deserved some sleep after all that had gone down, him and Sue and Franklin, and who was he to spoil that? Going up the staircase took even longer than going down, and Johnny only makes it a few steps into the hallway before the pain forces him to stop. He slides down the wall until his butts hits the ground, and rests his head against the drywall with his eyes squeezed shut to stop the room from spinning.

He once fell out of a tree when he was five, and his medical doctor father had wrapped his ankle with tape and gave him some weird tasting medication until the pain went away and he could walk in a straight line.

This was nothing like that. It was worse. Probably. Johnny opens his eyes, and everything was just a bit too blurry to make out what was in front of him. Using the floor as leverage, he forces himself to his feet and grapples around for a bit in the dark, trying not to bump into anything and exacerbate the pain. He’s breathing hard by the time he makes it back to his room, or as hard as his lungs will allow. It didn’t feel like he was able to draw in enough oxygen, every lungful of air felt half empty. It was not helping with the dizziness.  

It takes him a few minutes to find a position on the bed that didn’t hurt – it was one at an angle, practically sitting up. For some asinine reason, lying down seemed to make everything worse. Still, he hopes he has reached the level of tiredness that would allow him to sleep through any ailments. And he was tired, no doubt about that. Exhaustion clung to him, soaking into his bones, refusing the release its grip. But sleep itself was not forthcoming, and it never failed to amaze him how long the night would stretch when one was awake through most of it.

Ten hours now, and he was still bleeding.

He sighs.

Sunlight streams through the window shade, and he angles his head to catch a glimpse. The sight nearly blinds him, and he rubs the spots from his eyes with an enclosed fist.

Everything ached.

It was supposed to go away by now – the pain. That’s what normally happened when he was injured before, he’d just sleep it off and everything would be sunshine and rainbows. Of course, he hasn’t actually slept a wink and it was getting harder and harder for him to put a coherent thought together. Johnny stifles a yawn with the crook of his elbow and works himself up to a sitting position, then standing, using the nightstand as support to prevent his legs from folding under the weight.

There was something wrong with him this time. Actually wrong. He lifts his shirt up with trembling fingers, and the bruising seems even more vivid now against his rapidly paling skin. That wasn’t good. He rolls his shirt back down, taking in a few slow breaths. The pain wasn’t sharp anymore on the inhale. Just – dull. Ever prevalent.

Inhale.

Hold.

Exhale.

Hold. 

Hold - 

Nope. 

He sinks back down to the floor. The fibers of the carpet rub against his skin, but he doesn’t have the energy to scratch the itch away. The ceiling was mocking him, he thinks, all popcorn-y and pristine. Everything was mocking him. It was a joke, a cosmic goddamn joke - his sister died yesterday and he watched it happen and watched her push that thing, that god - Galactus, into the void and he couldn’t even stand up for more than two seconds without keeling over.

Useless. You’re useless.

He bites his bottom lip with enough force to draw blood, and grabs for the edge of the vanity. It takes a few attempts, but he manages to haul himself up again, elbows resting against the polished wood, face inches away from the mirror.

And -

God, he looks terrible.

Maybe it was the result of not sleeping, or the blood loss, or his sister’s lifeless face embedded into his skull. Maybe he’s not handling any of this as well as he should be. And he should be better at this. Almost five years now, they’ve been doing this superhero thing. He’s not a child anymore – a boy. He rakes his fingers through his hair, trying to flatten it a bit. His ribs protest the movement, and another measured breath turns into a cough. A burning pain blossoms in his chest, and a few droplets of blood soak into the carpet below him. 

Now was probably a good time to tell Reed.

There seemed to be a disconnect between his feet and his brain, every step he took felt like slogging through concrete. Someone tied weights to his socks and it was causing him to sink into the floor. There was noise coming from the kitchen – Johnny could make out something that sounded like talking, the clattering of dishes, just loud enough to puncture a hole through the persistent buzzing around his ears.

Breakfast time, then. Maybe if he tried eating it would somehow fix everything.

“You’re up early,” Sue remarks. She has a little spoon in her hand, waving it around Franklin’s face to try and make the flavored goop more enticing. The baby giggles at the airplane noises, but the smile sours once said goop actually makes contact with his tongue. He spits it out onto the tray table and starts spreading stuff around with his hands.

Sue sighs at this, reaching for a napkin. “So much for this brand.”

“Where’s Reed?” Johnny asks. He hates how thready his voice sounds. Sue turns to look at him, brows furrowing once she gets a good look at his face. “In his lab,” she says. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t really know what the word ‘okay’ meant anymore. It was the word people used when they wanted other people to leave them alone. “Sure,” he responds, digging through the cabinets to find his half-eaten box of cereal. 

“Johnny - ” she starts, but is interrupted by the clatter of a baby food can that Franklin knocked onto the floor. He squeals, apparently pleased with himself.

“Brilliant,” she mutters, pinching the bridge of her nose. She grabs for more napkins and starts wiping the orange-ish gunk off of the kitchen floor. The entire area smelled sickly sweet - apples, maybe? Apricot? Johnny bites a lip and tries to stifle the nausea curdling in his stomach. He dumps some cereal into a bowl, but it tasted like cardboard and stuck to the back of his throat. 

It turns out that breakfast does not, in fact, fix everything. 

He closes his eyes - just briefly, trying to orient himself. He’d been thrown into a wall, some office building of some sort. Multiple walls, actually. Multiple, very hard walls. How did he not notice the ringing sound before? Or the way the world moved just a bit too slow, like his brain was struggling to catch up with his eyes. Adrenaline, probably. The whole ‘saving the world’ thing served as a pretty decent distraction. 

“Hey.” There was a blurry mesh of colors in front of him that was probably his sister. She was touching him. Familiar fingers were pushing the hair away from his eyes. He blinks - once, then once more, and the clarity sets in. She had that look on her face, the ‘mom’ look. It was one that he was far too familiar with. 

“Where does it hurt?” she asks. 

Her fingers were warm against his skin. Real. Warm. Alive. He feels an acute loss when she draws them away. 

“I don’t know,” he says. It wasn’t a lie, really. The hurt was everywhere. He was just a walking, talking mass of not feeling very well, and his brain was too slow at this point to differentiate the different sources of discomfort. 

Sue doesn’t answer immediately, but there was something in her eyes that resembled concern, or fear maybe, and she lifts his chin up with her hand, and frowns. “Your teeth are red,” she says. 

“Bit my tongue.”

“Johnny.”

“Kool-Aid?”

“Johnny,” she says again, firmer now. The mom-voice. He wonders if their mother talked like that too, if that’s where she got it from. “C’mon,” she says, tugging gently at his elbow. “We’re going to see Reed.” 

I tried that already, he wants to say, but he can’t force the words from his throat. She goes to grab Franklin from his high chair, and Johnny makes a valiant effort in trying to stand upright. 

(Mistake.)

The entire world titled - just slightly, but enough to completely disrupt his equilibrium. The spots in his vision returned, bright and dark and big and small and blurry and - well, he couldn’t see all too well. Or hear. Sue was talking to him, he realized. Or at least trying to. Her mouth was moving, but the only thing he could hear was static. Buzzing. Loud, shrill -

He takes a step forward, some last ditch effort to stabilize himself. 

(Mistake, Mistake…)

The dark spots in his vision expand, all encompassing. His knees buckle under the strain of supporting his own weight, and his last fleeting thought was relief that his sister managed to produce a force field beneath him before he hit the floor. 

Chapter Text

Sometimes, he dreams of his mother. 

He doesn’t remember her well, not in the way a good son probably should have. She was blonde and tall-ish - he knows that from the pictures, she used to model in her youth and apparently could hold a tune alright. He had a big book of poems that she would read to him before bedtime. A comfort, probably. 

He never liked the dark. 

“Johnny - ”

He never liked cars, either. Not back then. The one his family owned was small and cramped and the seatbelt itched him, restrained him, and he just wanted to run, run, far and fast and away from the people and the noise. So they left him behind. Sue was old enough to watch him, they reasoned, and he would be bored at a medical conference anyways. He’d whine, fuss, disrupt, the drive was long and a storm was rolling in and - well, just this once. Leave them behind just this once. 

“Ben, I need help with - ”

“Grab him - ”

“ -essure is dropping - ”

She died on impact, they told him. His mother. It was dark, it was raining, his father never saw the other car, never had the chance to - 

Well. 

When they buried their mother, she had been clean. Someone must have wiped off the debris. The blood. The - everything else. They folded her arms and closed her eyes and made it look like she was simply sleeping. He thought it fake, then. A sham. A lie. None of this made her any less dead, did it? 

Then Sue died. She died dirty and pale and sweat-drenched. She died with her eyes wide open, staring up into absolutely nothing. And he understands now, why they fake it. Because now those eyes - glassy and lifeless, are the only thing he could see. 

“Reed, he’s ”

“ doesn’t look - ”

“I know, just one more  - ”

Sometimes, he dreams of his mother. 

She was blonde, and tall-ish, and sang to him sometimes. But Sue was also blonde, and also tall-ish, and she couldn’t much carry a tune but she tried her best. She tried her best with a lot of things, and when he thinks back to the late nights in his childhood bedroom, the soft touches and the words of comfort, he doesn’t really know the difference between the two of them anymore. 

“Hang on, sweetie - ”

Someone was touching him. Squeezing his hand. He wants to squeeze it back, to let them know that he was still here, still with them, but his limbs were too heavy. Too slow. They wouldn’t cooperate, wouldn’t move, not in a strong enough way to be significant. He feels another hand in his hair, combing through it with trembling fingers. Words were being spoken, many words - fast and frantic overlapping with soft and smooth. He tries focusing on them.  

“Again….”

“Stretch, he’s not…..”

“... I know - ”

“Almost - ”

“ - blood on the - ”

“... too much - ”

He’s fading. Maybe from the blood loss. Maybe from whatever stuff Reed was pumping into him. But the words soon became unintelligible, nothing more than a loud concoction of sounds that he didn’t have the mental capacity to parse through. The overwhelming urge to sleep prods at him relentlessly, and Johnny lets himself be consumed by it. 

“Are you leaving?” he asks.

“Hmm?”

“Leaving,” he says again. His head was resting on her lap, drained from running around their neighborhood playground. It was too hot outside to be there, but Johnny had insisted. They always went on Friday afternoon. 

“Why would you think that?’ 

“Because Mikey Johnson’s brother is your age and he’s going to college in California.” 

She tilts her head. “Why would I go to California?”

“I dunno.”

She brushes away a sweaty strand of hair from in front of his eyes. “I’m okay here,” she says. 

“You don’t even like it here.”

“I - well. Not a lot, no. But living with Aunt Mary was only supposed to be temporary.”

Johnny lifts his head up, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. The sweat stings. “So you’re going to leave then?”

“At some point, Johnny. That was always the plan.”

He sniffles, turning his gaze back towards the playground. It was unnaturally quiet at this time of day - they were the only ones stupid enough to be there with the sun beating down. The bars of the bench burned at his legs. “Oh,” he says. His voice sounds - small. Like a baby. He wasn’t a baby. He didn’t need her anyways. He didn’t. He didn’t. He didn’t - 

“Hey,” she says, nudging him. “You don’t seriously think I’d leave you behind, did you?” He turns back around to see her lips quirked into something that almost resembled a smile. 

“But Mikey Johnson’s brother - ”

“ - is not me,” she interrupts. “Us Storms’ stick together, remember?”

“Always?”

She winds her arm around his shoulders, drawing him in close. “Always, baby.” 

There were fingers on his face. Tiny, slobbery fingers. 

He opens his eyes - slowly, and it takes a few seconds for the blurry blocks of color to become somewhat identifiable. “Hey buddy,” he tries to say, but the words don’t come out sounding quite right. Franklin, for his part, didn’t seem to care much, letting out an incoherent babble and reaching over a chubby fist to grab at his hair. 

“He’s in a better mood now that he’s had a nap,” Ben says. Johnny blinks, shifting his gaze. He recognizes this place. He was in his room. In his bed. There was pressure on his left side, a weight. And something else was poking his chest, a tube of some sort - sucking something out of him. His brain was a bit fuzzy around the edges, but that was also probably the reason why he wasn’t in much pain right now. 

He’ll take it. 

“You on babysitting duty?” he asks. It comes out a bit clearer this time. Ben snorts, shifting the baby in his grasp. Franklin squeals in protest, distressed at not being able to yank out a chunk of his hair. “Yer sister needed a break,” he says, gesturing to his left. 

“My - oh.” That explained the weight next to him. Sue was dead to the world, hair thrown up in a messy pony-tail with one arm splayed out across the pillow and the other brushing against his hand, as though looking for a pulse. 

“How long - ”

“Seventeen hours,” Reed interjects from the doorway. He was carrying some papers with him, probably scribbled with science-y things he wouldn’t begin to comprehend. He looked - tired. “You had two broken ribs, three cracked. All on the right side. One of them punctured your lung, led to some internal bleeding. Hemothorax.”

“Sounds bad.”

Reed sighs, not taking the bait. “Doctor Rosenberg will be back tomorrow morning to check for drainage and potentially remove the tube.”

Johnny rubs at his temple, trying to ward off an emergent headache. “I have to keep this thing in until tomorrow?”

“It’s already tomorrow, if that helps,” Reed says, walking over to the edge of the bed. “It’s helping to re-inflate your lung, so it’s best not to remove it too early.”

“Swell,” Johnny mumbles. “I hate it. It moves every time I breathe.”

“At least yer breathing,” Ben says. “You weren’t doin’ much of that earlier. Freaked us out a bit.”

“Just a bit, pebbles?”

Ben rolls his eyes. “A tiny amount.”

“Uh-huh.”

Reed reaches a hand down towards Sue, brushing gently against her arm. She shifts slightly at the touch, but doesn’t wake. “She wasn’t handling this very well,” he murmurs, and Johnny opens his mouth to respond, but the words never come. The silence stretches for a few moments before Reed speaks again. “Why didn’t you say anything?” he asks. 

“I didn't think it was that bad,” he says. It was a poor answer, and Reed didn’t look satisfied. “Johnny - ” he starts, voice strained. “You could have died.”

“I didn’t,” he insists. “I - look. I did go down. To your lab. But it was early in the morning, and you weren’t there, and…” he shifts a little bit, trying to raise himself up, but the tube pulls against his chest - sharp, and it forces him back down. “Ouch.” 

“Don’t strain yerself, matchstick,” Ben says. “Even if you are an idiot.” 

Johnny huffs at this. “The world almost ended and my nephew was almost kidnapped by a planet-eating alien, and my sister nearly - god, she died, Reed. She - ” He stops, biting a lip. “She died,” he says again, weakly. “I’m not exactly the priority here, okay?”

For a moment, a very fleeting moment, it was silent. Reed was looking at him in a way he didn’t like. In a way that made him want to shrink back into his pillow and disappear from view. It takes a few seconds for him to finally speak. “It would kill her, you know,” he says, voice dangerously low. “If anything were to happen to you.” Another pause. “It would kill all of us. But she feels things so…intensely, in a way I still have yet to comprehend. And don’t think for a moment - ever, that you aren’t a priority to her, or to me, any of us. Do you understand?”

Johnny wonders if this is what it felt like to have a father. He had no real basis for comparison - his own father spent most of his time drunk, or grieving, or both. By the time he was old enough to start disappointing him, the old man was already dead. He doesn’t love this feeling, though, of upsetting your parents. Sue was the closest he had to one, and he hated it when she cried. He drags his gaze back over to Reed, whose eyes were still burning a hole through his forehead. Ben was much the same. Even Franklin had stopped wriggling around, probably curious about the change in atmosphere.

“Yes,” he says softly, and after a few moments, Reed finally nods. It didn’t feel like much of a win. 

His brother-in-law does eventually depart with Franklin in tow, the infant desperately in need of a diaper change. Johnny finds himself once again staring at the ceiling, still popcorn-y. Still pristine. At least the pain wasn’t sharp anymore. Dull, maybe. The bandages pulled at his skin and he felt a soreness in his chest every time he took a breath. It was lucky that he was on drugs - there’d be no way he even attempt sleeping otherwise. Not with the damn tube digging into his ribcage. 

“You don’t have to stay, you know,” he says to Ben. Were his words slurring? He could feel the drowsiness start to take root, it was steadily becoming a bit more difficult to keep his eyes open. 

“I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to,” Ben responds, leaning back in the chair and reaching for a magazine. “Someone’s gotta babysit, ya know.”

“I have Sue.”

“Someone’s gotta babysit both of you.”

“Whatever,” he mutters. 

He turns towards his sister - face still rigid even in sleep. The sleeves of her shirt were stained red, dark and crusted over. I’m sorry, he thinks, brushing a finger against her cheek. I’m so sorry. He exhales slowly, trying to mitigate the pain of simply breathing, then slides his head back down onto his pillow. It wasn’t ideal - sleeping on his back, or with a lung full of blood, but he was alive. And safe, relatively. Sue was watching him, and Ben was watching them both. And Reed was watching - well, all of them. Probably. He hooks his arm around his sister’s, threading her fingers with his own. She shifts again, resting her head against his shoulder.

He’s nine years old again, lying in her bed in their aunt’s old boarding house as she reads to him stories of space and monsters and magic and adventure. 

“We’ll be okay,” she had told him then. 

“I know, ” he had said back. 

He closes his eyes. 

Chapter Text

Johnny sleeps like the dead. Like it’s going out of style. He spends so long pressed up against his pillow that he’s convinced the head-shaped indentation might become permanent. Doctor Rosenberg, a short mustachioed fellow with white hair and a crabby attitude, soon - rudely, interrupts his reprieve.

“Not yet,” he says. 

“Seriously?”

The older man side-eyes him before holding up the results of the chest x-ray. “Do you see these white shadows at the bottom of your lungs? That means there is blood pooling there.” 

“Hemo-something-or-other,” Johnny supplies. 

“Hemothorax.”

“That’s what I said.”

A pause, then a sigh. “Right. Well - it means that your lungs are not fully drained yet. Do you see this little white line here?” Johnny nods. “It is the chest tube,” he continues. “It should be near the lower part of your chest.”

“It’s not.”

“No. It must have gotten misplaced, which is why I stress …” he draws out the last word, “not to move around too much. It is only going to prolong the healing process.”

Johnny huffs at this, but can’t think of a good retort. He had spent most of the day sleeping, or trying to. How was it his fault that he was a restless sleeper? Of course, Galactus and Shalla and his sister’s dead eyes embedding themselves into his dreams - nightmares, like the plague weren’t helping with things either. He touches the edge of the chest tube, and wonders what his unconscious brain conjured up that startled him enough to yank the damn thing in the wrong direction. 

“So how much longer do I have to keep it in?” he asks. 

“Think you’ll be able to sit still for a little bit?”

“How long is a ‘little bit?’”

The corner of the doctor’s lip twitched. “Let’s say another twenty-four hours?”

He blanches. “That’s not - ”

“Johnny,” Reed interjects. His brother-in-law was hovering behind them, a constant presence for any medical-related conversations. Their cosmically irradiated DNA was too complicated - too misunderstood, not to have the subject matter expert on hand whenever a trip to the hospital was necessitated. “Thank you, Bill,” he continues. “We’ll keep him on bed rest.”

Johnny rolls his eyes, leaning back against his pillow. “I’m being imprisoned. I have rights”

“I imagine even if you wanted to move right now, you would find it decidedly - uncomfortable. If not painful,” Reed says. 

There was a part of him - the small, spiteful part, that wanted to jump out of bed to prove him wrong. That the x-ray was a lie and he wasn’t actively bleeding into his lungs. That he was fine. That everything was fine. 

But - well. It hurts to breathe. He didn’t really notice it until he started thinking about it. But now that he was thinking about it….damn. His entire body hurts and everything wasn’t fine. Everything was awful, actually. He sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. Was it normal to be this tired all the time? This…drained? All he’s done since Galactus is sleep, bleed, scare family members and annoy medical professionals - people that were just trying to help.

Useless, the voice in his head was telling him again.

Useless. 

“Johnny,” Reed prods, breaking him out of his reverie. 

“Hmm? Yeah - fine. Whatever. I’ll stay here. Not like I can go anywhere, right?” A chuckle escapes his lips, but it feels hollow. Cold. Reed is giving him a look that screams we’ll talk later, and pulls Doctor Rosenberg from the room. Their voices echo in the hall. 

Johnny stares at the ceiling. 

“In the great green room, there was a telephone, and a red balloon…”

His eyes were sticky. Johnny rubs at them with clammy fingers. 

“And a picture of - oh, see Frankie? What is that?”

“A cow,” Johnny says, or yawns more like. Franklin gurgles, pulling at the pages of the book. 

“Didn’t think you were awake,” Ben says. He lifts the book a bit higher, out of reach from Franklin’s slobbery baby hands. Someone had pulled over a chair next to his bed - one of the reinforced ones, strong enough to hold Ben’s weight. 

“Only half awake,” Johnny replies, stifling another yawn. His chest ached something fierce. He wanted to not be in pain anymore, but his heightened metabolism kept burning through the drugs.

“So like usual, then.” Ben flips through another page. “It’s a cow, Frankie. See?” He traces his large, rocky finger across the words of the page. “And a picture of the cow jumping over the moon.” His nephew lets out another gurgle, or maybe a squeal. “And there were three little bears, sitting in chairs …”

“Didn’t you read this one to him already?” Johnny asks. 

“He likes it. Builds, uh - language skills or something.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And, um. Suzie mentioned somethin’ about attention spans.” Franklin, for his part, reaches again for the book, trying to nibble on the edge of the page. 

“Yeah, he seems real invested in those bears.” 

He shifts slightly - mistake, immediate, painful, mistake. The movement itself is unconscious, like his body is fighting the pervasive stillness that he has forced upon it. The pain in his chest flares, and Johnny bites a lip to prevent a noise from escaping.

“You doing alright?” Ben asks.

“I hate it here.”

He sounds like a child. A stupid, spoiled child. There were tears in his eyes, but he didn’t know if they were from the pain, or the frustration, or the anger, resentment, all of the above. He sniffles, turning his head away. 

Useless. 

Ben doesn’t speak for a moment. Then - shuffling. Movement. The scraping of chair legs against wooden paneling. And…fingers. Tiny, soggy fingers, brushing against his arm. “Maybe it’s time for Franklin’s second favorite uncle to finish the story,” Ben says, handing the book - and the baby, over to him. Franklin coos, latching onto his arm. It was cheating, really. Giving him the baby. But despite his best efforts, Johnny could feel a smile pulling at his lips. His nephew had that effect on people. He nestles Franklin against his non-injured side, and brings the book down to eye level. It was a worn, faded thing, pages wrinkled from constant use. The first page had ink on it, less blue now than it was all those years ago. It spelled J-O-H-N-N-Y. The letters were big and messy and borderline illegible. 

“This used to be mine,” he tells Franklin, voice soft. “Your mommy used to read this to me, did you know that?” Franklin blinks, looking up at him with those big, blue eyes. Johnny gives a gentle tap to his head, and he gives another coo. “Alright then,” he says, flipping through the pages. “Where were we? Ah, yes. And two little kittens, and a pair of mittens ….”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ben smile.

“I brought this for you,” Sue says. She hands him a plate with a sandwich on it - peanut butter, it looks like. With marshmallows. A childhood classic. “I don’t like the crusts,” Johnny says, and Sue rolls her eyes. She takes a seat next to him in bed, pressing the back of her hand against his forehead. “You’re warm.”

“I’m always warm,” he responds. 

“Doctor Rosenberg was afraid of pneumonia. It’s a common complication following rib fractures.”

“I feel fine,” he says. Lie. It slips easily off his tongue - they usually did. Sue studies him in that way she does, like she’s looking through him. Like she’s pinpointing all of the things that he keeps buried beneath the surface, never to see the light of day. It was…invasive, almost. It takes a few moments before she draws her hand away from his face. “How is your breathing?”

“I have a hard tube digging into my ribcage. So - you know. It’s been better.”

“Johnny.” The mom voice again. This one had less of an edge to it than before. This one sounded…tired. Johnny looks at her - really looks, and could see the bags sitting heavily under her eyes. Of course, she looks better now than she did before. Her hair was brushed. Mostly. She changed her shirt to one that didn’t have his blood splattered all over it. It’s the small things. But still, those bags….

“It’s sore,” he finally says. “Not sharp, unless I move weirdly. But - I don’t know. Just kind of dull. If I’m focused on something else, then I don’t think about it. Kind of like a headache.”

Sue nods at this, not looking particularly satisfied. She pushes the plate towards him. “Eat,” she says. “You should be able to do solid foods as long as they are soft. If not, I can try making another fruit smoothie.”

What he really wanted was a burger. Or a steak. A fat, juicy steak. Not…whatever this was. Bread that was probably stale and peanut butter that stuck to the roof of his mouth. He tears off a small piece, chewing slowly. Swallowing felt odd. Not bad, or painful, just…odd. Tight. It sucks. He braves a couple of more bites before setting the plate back on the nightstand. “I tried,” he says. “The attempt was there.”

Sue didn’t laugh. She rubs at a temple, sighing under her breath. “I’ll make that smoothie,” she says. Johnny grabs at her arm before she has a chance to get up. “Don’t do it. Look, it’s fine. I’ll eat the sandwich. You have enough on your mind as it is.” 

It takes a concerted amount of effort, but he almost manages to finish it this time. Almost. There were some crusts still lingering around the edge of the plate, but he felt as though he made a large enough dent in the thing to satisfy his sister.

“Where’s everyone else?” he eventually asks. It’s afternoon now, if the sun was anything to go by. Sue was stretched out on the couch, reading a magazine. She’d pulled a television in front of his bed after lunch, and Johnny spent the last hour or so watching cartoons he was probably too old for to distract from his current ailments. “The press had some questions. About - ” she waves a hand. “Everything, basically. We’ll put out a formal statement later, but Reed is handling them for now. And Ben took Franklin to the park for some fresh air.” She checks her watch. “They should be back soon.”

“You should be with them,” Johnny says.

“I’m where I’m needed to be,” she responds, flipping the page. 

“Babysitting me?”

“If you want to think of it like that, then sure. I’d like to think of it more as - sibling bonding time.”

Johnny snorts. “The only thing I’m bonding with are my bedsheets. They’re part of me now.”

“Doctor Rosenberg is coming back tomorrow morning. You’ll make it.”

“Doubtful.”

Sue puts the magazine down, walking back over to the bed. She grabs for the remote and mutes the tv. “Don’t joke about things like that,” she says. “Not after what just happened.”

“Sorry,” he says, but it comes out as more of a mumble. “I didn’t mean…look, I’ll be fine, right? It’ll be fine. I promise.”

“Don’t promise things you don’t intend on keeping, Johnny.”

He turns to face her, all baggy-eyed and pale, and reaches for her hand. “I’m not planning on dying, Sue,” he says. The words just sit there for a few seconds. Finally she heaves a breath, squeezing at his fingers. “Reed told me what happened,” she says. Her voice sounded far away. “When I was - well. What you told Franklin. About how Uncle Johnny loves him.”

Oh. 

With all that had gone on, he didn’t think Reed would even remember what he’d said right before he resigned himself to his fate. He was prepared to die to save his nephew. His family. His planet. What was one life in the grand scheme of things? He wasn’t smart like Reed, strong like Ben, wise like Sue. He was just… him. Someone who happened to be at the right place at the right time. Someone with a lot less to lose, whose value was minute compared to the others. He wasn’t trying to put himself down. It was just the truth. The cold, hard truth. 

“I meant it,” he says back. 

“You would have died.” The words leave her throat sounding choked. “You would have died out there, on the other side of the galaxy. Alone. With…that - thing. That monster.”

“And I would do it again,” he says. “If I had the choice. I would do it every time, Sue. Every single time.”

“Dammit, Johnny,” she whispers. She wipes at her eyes, wet now, and sucks in a shaky breath. And then - quiet. For a good while, the only sound permeating the walls of his room was that of his own labored breathing. Sue turns her gaze towards the window, looking out at the pinkening sky. And Johnny just - lies there. He didn’t know how to make this better. To make her better. The woman who died. Whose son almost got kidnapped. Whose brother collapsed in front of her on the kitchen floor, choking on his own blood. 

“I’m sorry,” he ends up saying. 

“For what?”

“I - don’t know. Is everything an acceptable answer?”

“Johnny - ”

“Okay,” he says. “Not everything. But…well, a lot of things. I should have told you something was wrong. I should have told you sooner that I was hurting. I shouldn’t have scared you like that in the kitchen - not after everything else that had gone down. You deserve a break, Suzie. A real break. You deserve twelve hours of sleep, and a vacation somewhere pretty. You deserve not to get your life interrupted by my constant prob - ”

“Johnny, stop,” Sue interrupts, cutting him off. She was touching his hand again. “You keep doing that. You keep - putting yourself down. Stop it.”

“Putting myself - that’s not…” he trails off, frustrated. “You died, Sue. You pushed a god right into a machine created by your genius husband and you saved the entire planet. I - crap, the only thing I contributed was getting pushed out of the way.” He winces, rubbing his aching ribs. “I couldn’t even sacrifice myself correctly.” 

His sister clenches her hand into a fist, eyes narrowed. It spelled trouble. “You think the only way you can contribute is through death?” she says. Her voice was dangerously low. Johnny doesn’t like the way she words it, the whole thing sounded even more ridiculous when said out loud. “No,” he replies, maybe a tad too quickly. “I just - I don’t know.” Forming words into sentences was a harder task than he had anticipated. He exhales slowly, trying to avoid his sister’s burning gaze. He tries again. “I was young when we started this. You and Reed and Ben all had lives, careers. I was just along for the ride, you know? And all of a sudden, I have these powers, and everyone recognizes me - I mean, my face is all over billboards and television and comic books and all sorts of things. And we’re a team, right? Reed is the leader and Ben is the pilot and you are the archeologist and I’m…I’m what exactly? 

“You’re an engineer. You’ve built - ”

“I’m a star,” he interjects. “A bright, burning star that everyone will forget about the moment the sun rises.”

Sue shakes her head. “That’s not true, Johnny.”

His head hurts. Probably a result of disrupted sleep. Or maybe when he smacked it on the sidewalk after meeting the wrong end of a surfboard. But he was finding it increasingly difficult to articulate the growing knot of emotions sitting in his gut. 

“Maybe not,” he says. “I don’t know. I don’t know a lot of things.” He stops for a second, massaging his left temple. It didn’t help with the throbbing. “But what I do know is that my family was in trouble, and I had the ability to save them. And if sacrificing myself was the one thing I could do, could contribute, then it would be that. I’m not going to apologize for trying.”

Sue lets out a shaky breath, head resting against the palm of her hand. “God,” she murmurs, mostly to herself. Another second of silence passes - the room thick with tension and some other type of heaviness that Johnny couldn’t quite express. It takes about a minute before she finally looks back up at him, reaching out her hand to cup his chin. The motion forces him to make eye contact. “You are Johnny Storm,” she says. Her voice was steadier now. “You are smart, and funny, and kind. You light up the goddamn room every time you step into it. And don’t think for a second,” she stops, clenching her jaw. “- a second, that you are worth less than anyone else here. Reed brought you - all of us, on the mission for a reason. Because we needed to be there. Okay? You are my brother.” Her voice hitched when the last word left her lips. She removes her hand from his chin, resting it instead on top of his open palm. “You are my brother,” she says again, “ - my first baby, and I love you. Do you understand?”

Do you understand?

He ran away once, as a kid. He’d been arguing with his aunt again, probably about something his seven-year-old mind thought to be very important. Aunt Mary never warmed to him like she did his sister. Johnny was everything Sue wasn’t - loud. Troublesome. Annoying. 

He hated it there. 

So he shoved a few crumpled shirts into his backpack and set off into the streets. Sue was working that night, so there would be nobody to notice his absence. It also happened to be Christmas time, he recalls -  dark and cold and wet and miserable. He made it maybe half a mile before stopping under a tree, big enough to block some of the snowfall and sat for what felt like forever with his knees drawn up to his chest. 

Sue found him eventually. Sue and a lot of other people, volunteers probably. Some police. And Aunt Mary, arms crossed and lips pressed into a thin line. “Don’t do it again,” his sister had told him later. She was still in her work uniform - the ugly green one with the orange stripes. She never changed out of it. Her cheeks were red, maybe from the cold. Or from the crying. Johnny couldn’t quite tell. 

“I want to go home,” he said back to her. 

She took a moment to respond. “You are home, Johnny.”

“This isn’t - ”

She waved a hand, cutting him off. “I’m not talking about the boarding house. Home is just…well, where your family is.”

“What family?” he had responded. “We’re the only ones left.”

“So I guess that means we’re home, right?” she said, poking him in the ribs. “As long as we’re together.”

Do you understand?

Johnny doesn’t pretend to understand much. Life is hard and crazy and complicated, and it wasn’t always possible to make sense out of the chaos. But family, home … love? Maybe love was cutting the crusts off of peanut butter sandwiches because your brother refuses to eat them any other way. Maybe love was working three jobs just to make enough money to get an apartment far away from your crappy aunt. Maybe love was wandering around in the cold and dark for a scared, lonely little boy with no more tears left to cry. 

Maybe love wasn’t complicated after all. Maybe love - pure, unadulterated love, was the simplest damn thing in the world. 

Do you understand?

“Yeah, Sue,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “I do.”

Chapter Text

“Will I live, doc?” Johnny asks, but he receives no reply. Doctor Rosenberg was looking at something - another chest x-ray, he thinks, then went to talk to Reed for a while. A long while. Damn.

Johnny had been laying in this bed for so long he’s started getting twitchy. His muscles were probably wasting away laying here all day and waiting for two adults - adultier adults, to decide his fate. The whole thing was decidedly unfair. Shouldn’t he have a say in all of this? He’s the one with the atrophying limbs, after all. 

(“Noticeable decline in muscle strength wouldn’t happen for about a week,” Reed had said, to which Johnny responded by sticking his tongue out at him.) 

Whatever. He’s fine. Fantastic, even. 

“Doc?” he prods, drumming his fingers against the edge of his mattress. 

“You’ll live,” he says back. 

“So this means - ” Johnny starts, but is unceremoniously cut off by a wave of the other man’s hand. “What this means is that there are no more remaining air pockets or significant fluid. And the drainage,” he gestures towards the collection box, “is minimal. No fresh red blood.”

“And that’s good, right?”

“Yes,” he confirms. “That’s good. How do you feel?”

Johnny has been asked that question a lot. Incessantly, almost. The answer changes every time. He feels good. He feels bad. He feels tired, or sore, or numb. He feels anxious and sad and relieved. He feels a lot of things, all at once, and he doesn't know how to articulate it properly in a way that other people would understand. But that wouldn’t resolve the immediate problem of getting out of here. It was a simple solution, really - tell the doc that everything was good and then he was home free.

Was everything good though? His chest still hurts. An ache - a constant, dull pain that flared sharply with an odd movement. Was that normal? That had to be normal, right? “I - uh,” he stops. “Yeah. I feel great.”

“Great,” Doctor Rosenberg repeats flatly. 

Johnny wasn’t sure if that was supposed to come out as a question. “Good, I mean,” he expands. “It’s - I don’t know. I guess, I don’t feel normal. Just kind of…sore.” He chews on the bottom of his lip, trying to figure out the next words to come out of his mouth. The older man beats him to it. 

“That’s expected,” he says. “The tube irritates the muscles between your ribs, and sudden movements will cause it to pull in ways that will feel uncomfortable, if not painful.”

“So - it’s ready to come out then?”

“How does it feel to breathe?”

“Easier,” Johnny admits. “Like - if I don’t think about it, I don’t really notice the soreness.”

Doctor Rosenberg tilts his head, scribbling something down on his sheet. “Okay,” he eventually says. “From my perspective - and from Dr. Richards, it is time to remove the tube. Oxygen levels are good and your vitals are stable. We’ll remove it here at your bedside - it only takes a few seconds. It may sting, but you’ll feel better once it’s out.”

Johnny nods. The doctor leaves the room briefly - probably explaining things to the rest of the family, and re-enters the room shortly after. He’s followed in by two humans and a robot. No baby, though. It was probably Franklin’s nap time, or at least attempted nap time. Sue was trying to get him on something resembling a schedule. “Didn’t realize there was going to be an audience,” Johnny jokes.

Sue rolls her eyes, smoothing out the hair hanging in front of his face. “You need a hairbrush,” she says. 

“Thanks, sis,” he mutters. 

She grabs a few pillows to prop him up, while the two men discuss….something, an important something, probably. “How’s Franklin?” Johnny asks. He wanted to distract himself with literally any other topic of conversation. “Sleeping,” Sue responds. “Or at least, Ben is trying to put him down. He’s been - fussy, lately. Takes after you.”

“I couldn’t be prouder.” 

Sue flicks him on the arm. “You ready?” she asks, gesturing to Reed and Doctor Rosenberg. They were both walking towards the bed. “Always,” he says, though it wasn’t quite loud enough for anyone else to hear. 

She squeezes his hand anyways. 

It wasn’t bad, really. The dressing and tape were removed, tugging at his skin a bit more than he would have liked. The tube burned with every inch of movement, sharp and entirely unpleasant. But it thankfully didn’t take long to pull the thing out, and it was over soon enough. Mostly. There was a residual aching at the site, and his head swam a bit from holding his breath. But the tube was gone. He was untethered - released. 

He was free. 

“I want to fly,” he says to Reed. 

They’re in the living room, watching Franklin mash a foam block between his hands. Ben was at Shul, and he’d taken Sue with him. A friend of a friend’s kid was getting Bat-Mitzvah’d, and Johnny wasn’t quite well enough to watch the baby on his own. Or at least, that’s what everybody kept telling him.

He was so sick of feeling useless. He hadn’t remained in place for this long in - well, forever. His constant movement used to drive his aunt insane. Then again, everything he did drove his aunt insane. 

“Give it another couple of days,” Reed says. He pulls the block from Franklin’s enclosed fist, wiping off the slobber with a sanitized towel. It had rolled under the couch earlier, attracting dust, dirt and all sorts of particles that shouldn’t end up in the baby’s mouth. Franklin whines, but soon grabs instead for his blanket, bunching it between his tiny fingers. 

Johnny leans back into the couch cushion, rubbing at his sternum. “I wish I could be entertained with blocks.”

“It’s all yours,” Reed says, throwing the (mostly) cleaned piece of foam onto his lap. 

“I’d rather be flying.”

“You would have to be on fire to do so, and that will melt through the sutures.”

Johnny picks up the block, twisting the thing around his hand. It was soft to touch, light - pastel almost. Purple-ish and pink. Too pristine a thing for a baby to play with. He doubts the dirt stains would ever really come out. “I’m bored,” he says. It comes out as more of a complaint, despite his best efforts. 

He expects Reed to berate him, to tell him to suck it up and stop being a child. But the words never come. Johnny shifts his gaze towards his brother-in-law, who was looking back at him with a hard look on his face. A calculating one. The one reserved for solving puzzles that nobody else would dare to attempt. 

“I’m not made of glass,” Johnny says. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“I never said you were,” Reed responds after a few moments. “We’re just - worried about you, is all.”

“Worried about what, exactly?”

“About you injuring yourself again.”

Johnny purses his lips. “It’s not like I did it on purpose.”

Franklin babbles, seemingly losing interest in the blanket. Eyeing the block in his hands, he reaches his little arms out for it, face scrunched up in determination. “Here ya go, kid,” Johnny says, tossing it to him. The corner of the block immediately ends up in the baby’s mouth, and Reed sighs. “I was trying to avoid that.”

“You just cleaned it, didn’t you? He’ll be fine.”

“And you?” he asks.

“I’m not chewing on blocks, Reed.” It wasn’t a real answer, and both of them knew it. Johnny looks away, tugging on the bottom of his shirt. It felt oddly loose now. He hadn’t really been eating well since Galactus, though not for lack of trying on his sister’s part. 

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

He wonders how much Sue told him of their conversation a couple of nights ago. He wonders if Sue told him at all. Even if she didn’t, Reed was nothing if not perceptive. Something had been discussed, even if the topic wasn’t entirely clear. “I’ve - been better,” the words feel forced. “And I don’t mean just physically.”

“How so?”

Franklin squeals, ramming the block into the carpet and pulling it back up to dangle in front of his face. Johnny could feel his lip twitch. To be a kid again…

“Did you hear me?” Reed asks. Johnny mumbles something that approximates an acknowledgment, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“We are just trying to help you," he continues. 

“You’re sounding like my therapist.”

“You don’t have a therapist.”

“Yeah, well - if I had one, they’d probably sound like you.” 

Reed tilts his head. “Is that a bad thing?”

Johnny pulls at a loose thread on the hem of his shirt. It unwinds quickly, and he bunches the fabric with his fingers.  “I - don’t know. I guess not.”

Franklin lets out another whine. Reed reaches over, lifting him off the carpet and onto his lap. The baby immediately burrows his face into his father’s wrinkled button-down. “We could have lost him,” Reed says. “We almost did.”

“But we didn’t. Sue made sure of that.”

“We all made sure of that,” he says back. 

Johnny swallows thickly. “I didn’t - ”

“Stop,” he interrupts. “You translated an alien language from scratch with sparse information. You turned Shalla-Bal to our side. It was her that made the final push to get Galactus through the portal, was it not?”

It should have been me, Johnny thinks. The words stick to the roof of his mouth. 

“Without you, or Sue, or Ben, or - myself,” he runs a hand through the fine hairs on Franklin’s head, “he wouldn’t be here. The Earth wouldn’t be here.”

“You’ve been talking with Sue, haven’t you?” Johnny questions. 

“She’s been - concerned.”

He snorts, pulling apart the wad of fabric that used to comprise the bottom part of his polo. “That’s her default state.”

Another pause. Reed pulls the baby from his lap and deposits him into Johnny’s own. Franklin yawns at the motion but doesn’t resist, instead resting his little cheek against the fabric of his shirt. Johnny rubs a hand in slow circles against his back. 

“Do you know why I invited you on the mission?” Reed asks.

Johnny didn’t need to ask which one he was referring to. “Nepotism?” he suggests.

“Because you are smart. Because you can build. Because you can perform under pressure. Because you can see things that nobody else can see.” Reed stops for a second, shifting slightly on the couch. His eyes don’t ever leave his face.  “Because,” he continues, “despite your insistence otherwise, you were the best man for the job. And I don’t pick anybody less than that.”

Johnny blinks, his hand stilling on Franklin’s back. He had never believed his reasoning - even back then, back when all of this was still new. He’s just a kid, the press had said. Why bring him? What purpose does he serve?

He builds things. Cars, mostly. Motorcycles. An occasional rocket. He has a degree - two, in fact. But he also smiles and waves and does the commercials and photo shoots. He was pretty and people liked pretty. They trusted pretty. There was no reason to go to space anymore after the first mission and the fantasticar was already built, so he could be that. He could be pretty. He could do the interviews and go on fake dates with girls he couldn’t really remember the name of. It felt like a play. An act. A farce. 

Why bring him?

“I - ” he starts, but doesn’t quite know how to finish the sentence. He takes a breath - contemplating, then takes a few more after that. “Thank you,” he ends up saying. Franklin coos softly against his chest. 

“For what?”

“Everyone in school thought I was slow. But you knew that, didn’t you? I never did very well. Was never very good at sitting still, or paying attention. I had teachers call me a loafer. Or a dreamer. A deadbeat.” The word felt bitter on his tongue. He turns to face him, keeping the baby - now sleeping, tightly in his grasp. “Then I met you. You showed me how to put the letters in the right places and the numbers in the right formulas. You put a wrench in my hand and told me to start building things out of bits of scrap metal. You taught me how to fly because you knew I was capable of doing so. You believed in something that nobody else bothered to look for. You believed in me.” The words came out shaky, and he bites his bottom lip to try and stop anything else from spilling out. After a second or two, he looks back up - calmer now, to see Reed giving him something that closely resembled a smile. 

“Lad,” the older man says, reaching out to clasp his shoulder. “I never stopped.”

Ben barbequed the following night. 

It was a clear kind of evening - not too hot or too cold, and they all ended up having dinner on the roof of the Baxter Building as the stars twinkled above them. Johnny still struggled a bit with the whole ‘chewing and swallowing’ thing, there was continued tightness lingering in his chest that made these types of activities a bit more uncomfortable than he would care to admit. 

But it’s good, he tells himself. It’s fine. It’s not a big deal, in the grand scheme of things. He cuts the burger into small pieces, setting the bun aside. “Your mom is always telling me I eat like a toddler,” he says to Franklin, and his nephew responds with an incoherent babble as he reaches for a piece of burger. Johnny pushes his plate out of reach. “No solid foods for you yet, buddy.” Franklin’s lips twitch in disappointment, and Johnny can’t help but marvel at how much he resembled his sister in that moment. “Yeah I know,” he says. “Don’t worry though. Once you’re old enough, we’re going to - ”

“Teach him the benefits of a healthy and balanced diet?” Sue interrupts, walking over to them with a half-open container of brown mush. 

Johnny crinkles his nose. “Ick.”

Franklin at least seemed a bit more amenable to whatever gross concoction that Sue was spooning into his mouth. “Turkey and gravy,” she would later inform him. Which, still - gross. Johnny was of the belief that savory things should not end up with that type of texture, but who was he to judge? He could barely ingest half a hamburger patty before calling it quits and grabbing for his previously discarded bun. 

Mmmm. Carbs. 

Sue was glaring at him with a look that screamed I’ll be force-feeding you nutrients later, before dabbing Franklin’s chin with a brightly colored napkin. Most of the Turkey-esque slop had ended up anywhere else but his actual stomach, at least from the mess Johnny was able to observe on both his nephew’s face and bib. Reed returns shortly after, having traversed down to the closet to grab a few more (clean) towels and (mostly in-tact) chairs. Beach chairs, actually. Ones that had been sitting in storage for a bit too long. 

(And still, somehow, covered in particles of sand). 

“Isn’t it a bit cold for the beach?” Johnny says. He tears off a piece of the hamburger bun, chewing it slowly. 

“It’s a beautiful night outside,” Reed responds. “And I’d like to not spend it sitting on concrete and food-stained towels.” Franklin squeals at that, flinging his sticky little fists out. 

“I think he’s offended,” Sue observes. Reed reaches out to pat his son on the head before going to unfold the chairs. There were four in total, three in varying stages of decrepitness. Ben’s was the fourth, a blue and white striped one made specially to carry his weight - and therefore it had not gone through the wear and tear of the others. Lucky him. Speaking of -

“Where’s the big guy?” Johnny asks.

“Shopping,” Sue says. “We’re missing graham crackers.”

“Huh?”

“For smore’s.” She gestures over towards the ice box, and Johnny could just about make out a bag of marshmallows peaking through the top. “Reed reassembled the fire pit. We figured it was probably cool enough outside to warrant it.”

His stomach grumbles. Suddenly the promise of chocolate felt like the only thing that could satiate the feeling of hunger clawing at his gut. Or maybe another hamburger bun. 

(Or both). 

Ben takes forever. More than forever. Ben takes so long that the ribs go cold and Sue starts talking about her book club or her hair dresser or that new onesie she found for Franklin that was so cute and so soft and some other adjective that Johnny couldn’t remember. Forty-five minutes later he finally walks in with some boxes in his hand - graham crackers, presumably, and explains that he ran into Rachel Rozman at the supermarket and that they talked for a while about who-knows-what. 

“But what about my needs?” Johnny teases, and Ben flings a marshmallow at his face. 

“Would you like to do the honors, Johnny?” Reed asks, gesturing towards the pitt. 

He’s a bit tired, and therefore a bit slow, and it takes him a second to figure out what his brother-in-law was asking. Fire, he thinks. Right. I can do that. 

Except he hadn’t done that. Not in almost a week. Not since - well. Yeah. The rest of them were watching him, he realizes. Sue’s head was cocked to the side, holding Franklin against her waist. Reed had his arms crossed. Ben was already munching on a chocolate square - the cheat. Johnny exhales slowly, taking a few steps closer to the pitt. He wasn’t fighting gods, this time. No aliens trying to hurt him. Trying to hurt his family. He stalls for a few seconds, but can’t really think of a reason why. Somebody reaches out to touch his shoulder, familiar fingers - Sue. She squeezes gently, a small form of comfort. 

It was like riding a bike. Johnny snaps his fingers, and the fire, warm and bright, dances across the tips. Mesmerizing in its simplicity. Franklin squeals behind him, and Johnny envisions him trying to reach out and touch it. He moves his hand down, past the kindling and the logs, and ignites the tinder at the base. The effect wasn’t immediate. A slow crawl of orange and red eats through paper and leaves and twigs, eventually setting course for the thick wood of the logs. The warmth radiates. It wouldn’t hurt him, but Johnny could feel it nonetheless. He wants to cocoon himself in it. 

“Well done,” Reed says softly. 

Not really. He’s had better feats. But he suspects that the commendation from his brother-in-law wasn’t really about the simple act of lighting a campfire. The logs finally catch, and Johnny’s eyes fixate on the patterns of the smoke as they waft up in the air. 

Beautiful. Damn beautiful. 

“Thanks, Reed,” he whispers. 

He doesn’t remember falling asleep.

He had been eating marshmallows - an excessive amount according to his sister, and somehow ended up passed out at an odd angle on his assigned beach chair, melted chocolate staining his fingers. There was a blanket covering him, some blue fuzzy one that he’s pretty sure wasn’t his. He pokes at it. 

“Yer sister got that for ya,” Ben says from beside him. “Thought you might get cold.” Johnny rubs the sleep from his eyes, trying to focus his vision. It was still dark out, the light from the fire slowly fizzling out beneath the charred logs and other such debris. 

“I don’t get cold,” he says.  

Ben hums a response, reaching for another graham cracker. Johnny tries to angle himself in a position that won’t leave him with permanent neck pain. Sue and Reed were still out here, sitting a few feet away. She had Franklin swaddled in his favorite blanket, the baby looking intently at the sky. Reed was speaking to him in low tones, probably out of the book he had clasped in his hands. Every so often he would point up at the sky, where the stars shone back at them. 

“What time is it?” Johnny asks. 

“Late.”

“Gee. Thanks.”

Ben shrugs, chewing on the graham cracker. The silence between them stretches for a few moments, but not in a way that was awkward. Never had been. He’d known Ben a long time - almost as long as Reed, and he was really the only one out of the group that never pushed him for answers he wasn’t ready to give. Sue and Reed were problem solvers. Doers. The righters of wrongs. Ben liked to let things simmer. Poke from the sidelines, but don’t interfere. He understood better than most that the only way for Johnny to solve a problem was to first let him solve himself. 

(He was his favorite, most of the time. Not that Johnny would ever admit it out loud.)

“You doing alright?” Ben asks. He wipes the crumbs from his fingers. 

Reed was holding Franklin on his shoulders, Sue leaning into his side. His brother-in-law must have said something funny, because his nephew giggles in that way babies do - loud, shrill. Full of wonder and joy and life. They were smiling, all three of them - four if you counted Ben, and Johnny could feel it tugging at the corner of his mouth as well. 

They were all happy. And safe. 

And loved. His sister’s words to him ring in his ears - you were my first baby, and the echo of her touch lingers on his skin. 

“Yeah,” he responds. “I think I am.” 

He means it.