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Sue sighs in relief as she stumbles wearily into her bedroom, removing a pair of uncomfortable heels on her way to a bed that she’s been fantasizing about returning to with increasing desperation since the moment she got up.
This has just been…one of those days. One of those weeks, if she’s being honest.
There’s a knot somewhere in her lower back that hasn’t gone away for three days no matter how much she stretches, her shoulders are tense, and she is irritable and exhausted.
She’s been in the middle of tense negotiations over a deal to open up several new medical clinics in lower-income neighborhoods with a group of executives and politicians she soundly despises. It’s required quite the effort for her to behave politely towards a group of condescendingly sexist men when she’s so busy fantasizing about slamming one of her invisible force fields down right on their heads, as hard as she can.
Or maybe she’ll show off some of the martial arts skills she’s acquired over years of one-on-one training with Danny Rand.
Suffice it to say, the negotiations haven’t been going well.
Now that her day’s work is finally done, all she wants to do is collapse on her bed, curl up, and sleep for the next twelve hours.
So she doesn’t even bother taking off her makeup—she simply face-plants on her pillow and wills herself to go to sleep.
Sleep proves more elusive than she'd anticipated. Her mind keeps replaying those men’s smug faces and their odious, underhanded comments questioning her ability to run a multinational corporation—which she’s been doing brilliantly since she was twenty-five, thank you very much—because of her beauty. She thinks about it until she is seething and furious and aching to hit something.
The moment those papers are signed, she is going to tell those men exactly what she thinks of them. She doesn’t care if it’s splattered over the front page of every newspaper the next morning. They deserve it. No one who matters will care.
She hears the door click open and stiffens—whether it’s Reed or one of her children, she can’t deal with this right now. She scrunches her eyes tightly shut and hopes whoever it is will think she’s asleep and go away.
But they don’t—she hears their footsteps come closer and stop next to the bed. She can practically feel whoever it is, standing there, staring at her. She’s about to snap at them to go away, but she’s cut off by Reed’s voice whispering uncertainly, “Darling? Are you awake?”
Sue debates for a moment whether or not she wants to respond at all. “I don’t feel like talking right now, Reed,” she snaps. She puts her pillow over her head to emphasize her point. “Go away.”
Reed doesn’t leave. “Things at the negotiating table went badly, I gather?” he ventures.
“No,” Sue says shortly. “I’ll get what I want.” She sighs. “They’re just very unpleasant men, Reed. It’s hard negotiating with men you keep dreaming about punching.”
“Oh,” Reed says, as though he suddenly understands exactly what she means. But he doesn’t, and he can’t, not ever. He’s been a genius his whole life. Men like that…they fawn all over Reed in a way they never do with Sue, despite the fact that her accomplishments are no less impressive. She feels the bed dip down as Reed sits next to her, and she feels irritated and resentful. “So that’s what’s troubling you. I don’t suppose you feel like talking about it, dear?”
Sue sighs. She’s being unreasonable. She knows she’s being unreasonable. Reed’s trying to be supportive, but— “What I want is to live in a world where men like that don’t exist. Can you make that happen?”
Sue is expecting him to say, “Well, no,” so that she can then respond, “Then you can’t help, so go away.”
But Reed, as always, says something unexpected. “If I gave it ten minutes of sustained thought? I don’t see why not.”
Sue laughs, startled. Reed’s kidding, she thinks, but a part of her wishes she could talk him into it.
“Twenty-seven of the plans I am currently considering would require a time machine, however,” he continues, “not to mention the alteration of the entirety of human history, so perhaps we shouldn’t. The ethics of it are deplorable, after all—messing with space-time rarely ends well. Things tend to go boom, as Johnny would put it.”
Sue rolls over, smiling, planning on making a joke about how they should do it anyway because it would be worth the universe exploding. She’s sidetracked by what she sees, however—it’s taken her this long to realize that Reed’s dressed in his best suit—one she picked out for him, of course, because Reed never bothers buying himself clothes unless she drags him to a mall—and holding a giant bouquet of the most beautiful red roses she’s ever seen.
She sits up, eyes fixed on the flowers, and gasps. “Reed,” she says. “Are those for me?”
“No,” Reed says. “They’re for Ben.”
Sue’s hands freeze as she’s reaching out for her flowers. She looks at Reed uncertainly. “Was that a joke?”
It sounded like a joke, but his jokes are so rare that it is difficult even for her to tell at times, even after so many years of marriage.
“Of course it was a joke, dear,” Reed smiles as he hands her the flowers. “Ben prefers petunias. I would never buy him roses.”
“You, making a joke,” she smiles. “Darling, are you very sure the world isn’t about to explode?”
“Well, reasonably sure,” Reed says matter-of-factly. He starts hunting around in his pockets. “I could double-check if you want.”
Sue shakes her head as she bites down a laugh. She grabs his arm to stop him. “No, darling, it’s fine. I was just making a joke.”
Sue buries her face in her stunning bouquet and breathes in the sweet, sweet fragrance. It sends her mind careening back through the years to her aunt’s rose garden, where she spent many afternoons in her youth, curled up on a bench, reading whatever book struck her fancy. It was in that same rose garden, years later, that she first laid eyes on Reed. She was all of nineteen, he twenty-one and yet already working on his third Ph.D. He’d been so achingly young and sweet and, despite his indisputable genius, unassuming. He could accomplish the most miraculous, wondrous feats and yet think they were as ordinary as boiling a kettle of water--because for him they were.
He was her Mister Fantastic long before he came to belong to the rest of the world, and he’s still hers more than he is anyone else’s.
She glances up and discovers that he is watching her intently. She can see the thinly-veiled want in his eyes and smiles. “Why exactly are you getting all dressed up and bringing me flowers, Mr. Richards?” She narrows her eyes suspiciously. “Nothing’s exploded, has it? Oh, no! You haven’t been trying to improve the dishwasher again, have you? Reed, I told you to stop with that!”
It’s been Reed’s pet project for the past three months, and in that time there have been seven explosions and three accidental portals to other dimensions.
Sue is not exactly sure how he managed any of that, but she made him promise to stop after those dinosaurs launched an invasion. From space. In an alternate dimension.
Life with Reed is never boring, she’ll give him that, and she could do with some excitement right now.
“No,” Reed sighs resignedly. “I’ve given up on that.”
“Good. Make sure it stays that way.”
The corner of Reed’s mouth pulls upward. “For now.”
Sue whacks him in the face with a pillow, and he laughs, and so does Sue.
“You still haven’t told me why you bought me flowers. You’re not feeling guilty, are you?”
“No, that’s not it."
“Then what? Have Johnny and Ben been playing pranks on you, because I told them not to, and if they did—“
“No!” Reed says quickly. “No pranks. That I’ve noticed. Well. I admit sometimes I’m so caught up in my work I don’t entirely notice when they play their pranks on me, so I suppose it’s possible that they did.”
It is a source of never-ending frustration and amusement for Johnny and Ben that Reed can be entirely oblivious of their gags.
“I simply…it occurred to me that I haven’t bought you flowers in far too long, my dear,” Reed says. “That’s all.”
“Didn’t you buy me roses two weeks ago?” Sue ventures.
“Yes,” Reed says softly. “Like I said, my darling. Too long.”
Sue leans forward across her roses and presses a soft, loving kiss against her husband’s lips.
He presses his forehead against hers. “I love you,” he says with unmistakable sincerity. “I’ve always loved you. From the moment I first met you. And no matter what happens, I always will.”
Sue smiles and cups Reed’s cheek. “I love you too, my darling.”
Reed bites his lower lip. “Susan? Are you…feeling too tired to go on an adventure?”
“No,” Sue says. “Not at all.” She grins. “Why? Do you have something in mind, Mister Fantastic?”
Reed smiles warmly at her. He chose the name “Mister Fantastic” because of her, after all, because it was how she and she alone saw him. It’s a reminder of the strength of their love, of the way in which it has come to define them both. It was Sue’s vision of who Reed could become for the world – the man who blazed the way into the future – that he has constantly striven to live up to, after all.
“I discovered a new microuniverse this morning,” Reed explains, “and I’ve been observing it all day. There’s a planet I’ve been observing and it seems rather beautiful and I thought…perhaps…you and I could grab a bottle of champagne and go take a look.”
“What about the kids?”
“I already asked Ben and Johnny to look after them for the night.”
“Is it inhabited?”
Reed shakes his head. “It’ll be just you and me, my dear. No one around for…lightyears.”
Sue smiles. “You’re always showing me things no one’s ever seen before.”
A smile spreads slowly across Reed’s face. “Was that a yes?”
Sue kisses him again, her lovely, beautiful, wonder of a husband.
“That was a yes,” she says.
A half hour later, she’s straddling her husband and kissing him senseless beneath a sky full of strange stars, a sweet breeze wafting through the unfamiliar leaves of an alien forest.
Her life back on Earth seems…a million miles away. She wishes it could stay that way. She longs to spend the rest of her life wandering through the universe with the man she loves at her side. That would be true bliss.
Someday, once her children are grown, once there is nothing left to keep her on Earth, she’ll talk Reed into it. Someday, she won’t have to put up with the mundane realities of everyday life. Someday, every moment of her life will just be this, the life fantastic, with no need for compromise and no room for boredom.
But until that day comes, she’ll have to satisfy herself with this, with the fleeting, all-too-brief moments when she can lose herself in her own pleasure, when she can have the life of which she’s always dreamed.
She pulls back, her lips leaving Reed’s for the first time in ages, and says, “Reed? Let’s do this every week.”
“Agreed,” Reed says, and kisses her once more.