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It was Reed’s voice that woke him. He’d always been a heavy sleeper, immune to the rattle of the subway, the snatches of radio from the cars driving down Yancy Street in the middle of the night for no good reason, Mr. Goldstein rattling around at all hours in his apartment, his TV blaring old episodes of I Love Lucy. Young Ben Grimm had always been too busy, dreaming about flying.
In college, Reed had mumbled to himself as he’d worked into the long hours of the night. Somehow, all those words Ben wasn’t even going to pretend he understood, spoken in that quiet whisper, rattled around his head louder than the R train ever could.
He’d lasted all of a month into the semester before he’d snapped and shouted at him about it.
Reed, ever the practical thinker, had designed ear plugs special for him.
Ol’ pencil-neck was lucky I was such an understanding roommate, he thought to himself as he drifted awake, warm and snug in his bed at the Baxter Building, wondering if he’d have to nag Reed to design a new pair of ear plugs for him, on account of his newly shaped ears.
He hadn’t thought about those college nights in a long time. The good old days, him, the football star, and Reed with his head in the clouds. It seemed like a different life, but it had only been a few years ago.
Then he realized that Reed was far from whispering equations as he worked, tying himself up into pretzel shapes as he balanced on his desk chair, prematurely grey temples flashing in the lamp light, back in their dorm room at State University.
Reed was shouting, his voice shot with panic.
Ben was out of bed in an instant.
The acrid smell of smoke hit him first. At first, he thought the building was under attack by supervillains again. It would only make it the third time this month.
Then he realized Reed’s voice was coming from the room Johnny stayed in when he and Sue slept over. It was happening more and more often these days, Sue in the process of selling the Storm home out on Long Island. Little by little, the impersonal living space Reed and Ben had moved into after the crash – taken care of by the first interior decorator Reed had spoken to – was starting to feel like a home, with an old quilt Sue said her grandmother had made tossed over the leather sofa, Johnny’s schoolbooks scattered across the coffee table. The faint scent of vanilla candles that lingered in Reed’s room.
Johnny might have slept in a repurposed guest bedroom, but Sue didn’t. What a stretchy guy and an invisible girl got up to in the dark, Ben didn’t want to contemplate.
Out of his room, he could pick up a jumble of voices. Reed was still shouting, but Ben could hear now that he sounded worried, not angry. Ben could hear Sue over him, alternatively low and soothing and high and panicked, and then there was a noise it took a moment to understand.
Johnny, screaming. He sounded more like the roar of an inferno than a boy.
Ben barreled down the hall. He knocked the door from its hinges bursting through it.
The heat was incredible. If Ben could feel it through his rocky hide, he didn’t know how Reed and Sue could stand being in the room at all, but there they were, as close to the bed as either of them could get.
Johnny was on the bed, and he was burning. Ben could just make out his form through the flames, legs pulled up to his chest and forehead dropped down on them, his arms locked tight around his knees. He shimmered through the flames, his hair a wild mass of fire. The lines of him blurred – it was hard to see where the fire began and Johnny ended.
Reed’s hand caught Ben straight in the chest, stretched to double its normal size, as if he could push him back.
“Ben, now’s not a good time,” he said. “Johnny, son, listen to me – you have to calm down!”
The flames along Johnny’s shoulders jumped, like a sob. The bedding was starting to scorch and blister, the headboard warp; Ben realized that the kid was burning too hot for Reed’s specially treated blankets and sheets to make any difference.
Johnny would set the whole place ablaze if he didn’t stop burning.
“What’s wrong with him?” Ben asked, but Reed only shook his head.
“Not now, Ben,” he said, with that look on his face that meant he was trying to solve a problem as fast as he could. When he spoke next, it was in the frantic, quiet tone that signaled he was trying to talk himself through the problem. “I have some things that might extinguish him in my lab, but I don’t want to hurt him –"
“Johnny, honey, please,” Sue begged, wide-eyed and frantic, her hands held out in front of her like she was warming them against a bonfire. Her fingertips flickered in and out of sight. Her platinum hair was stuck to her forehead and cheeks with sweat, her nightgown clinging damply to her. “Just turn it off, baby brother!”
“I can’t!” Johnny shouted, fingers clutching at his hair, blurring and flickering together. It was the first thing Ben had heard him say since he’d entered the room. “I can’t, I can’t – I can’t stop burning – I don’t remember how --”
The flames sprang higher, scorching the ceiling. Ben made a decision.
Reed yelped as hit the wall, Ben roughly pushing past him. An elastic hand shot out, but Ben moved as fast as his lumbering new form could take him. He heard the bed crack and felt it break underneath his weight as he hit it, grabbing Johnny with both hands.
Johnny gasped. Ben grit his teeth. It didn’t hurt like putting your palm down flat against a hot stove did – the way Ben had expected it to hurt – but it wasn’t exactly comfortable, either.
“Flame off!” he bellowed through gritted teeth, clutching Johnny hard against his chest.
Like he’d snapped his fingers, the flames were gone. Johnny collapsed, slumped sideways across Ben’s arm. His head lolled back, but not one golden hair was out of place. If it weren’t for the charred tatters of his pajamas, still smoking, Ben thought it was like you’d never even know anything had happened.
God, what a face the kid had. Just like his sister’s.
“Oh,” Johnny said, skinny chest heaving. He fumbled weakly for Ben’s hand, wrapping his fingers around his thumb. “Ben.”
“That’s it, ya overgrown firefly,” Ben said, gladly transferring Johnny into his sister’s arms as she joined them on the bed. “There ya go.”
He practically fell against her, still breathing hard even as she cradled his head against her shoulder and stroked his hair back. Her hands were shaking as she hummed to him, something that sounded like an old lullaby. The kid curled into her, his eyes shut tight.
“That was scary,” he whispered, voice hoarse.
“You don’t say,” Sue said, pressing her lips to the crown of his head. “What happened, Johnny?”
He mumbled at first, then repeated himself louder when Sue canted her head to the side so she could hear. “I had a dream I was burning.”
Ben couldn’t help it; he snorted. He looked at the charred bedspread, the ruined bedframe, the scorch marks on the ceiling. Johnny, shivering in his sister’s arms, all because of some stupid nightmare? Stupid, spoiled kid, he wanted to say.
Sue shot him a nasty look over the top of her brother’s head, like she knew what he was thinking, and wrapped her arms tighter around him.
“I’m sorry,” Johnny said wetly, turning his face into Sue’s neck.
Reed’s hand snaked past Ben to rest on Johnny’s back.
“Don’t be,” he said. “This is something we’ll work on controlling, so it doesn’t happen again. It’s all part of learning how to live with these powers.”
Sue just shushed Johnny, burying her hand in his hair. “It’s alright now, it’s all alright…”
Ben wanted to tell her she wasn’t doing any good, babying him like that. It was just going to make him softer than he already was. Sixteen years old, practically a man, and he’d nearly killed them all over a bad dream.
Unnaturally long fingers wrapped around Ben’s elbow.
“Ben,” Reed said quietly. “Let’s give them some space.”
Ben followed him into the hall, but he was unable to resist one last glance backwards into that dark, smoky room. Sue was speaking softly to Johnny, who was wiping at his eyes. He looked so small, sitting in that broken bed, most of his pajamas burned away. His shoulders were shaking.
Ben looked away.
“Are you injured?” Reed asked when they were out in the hall, eyeing Ben’s chest. Ben glanced down himself, but his rock-like skin looked ugly in only the usual way.
“Stings a little like a sunburn,” Ben grunted. “Nothin’ too bad.”
Reed nodded, a slight frown on his face. Ben steadied himself for the lecture -- that was reckless, what were you thinking, the usual schpiel. Reed had been all lectures ever since the accident. Ben knew the guy felt guilty, but he was getting pretty sick of it. As if it had been his idea to steal the shuttle and take Sue and that kid to the stars.
To his surprise, Reed only reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.
“Thank you, old friend,” he said.
Johnny wasn’t at breakfast.
“I’ll bring him something later,” Sue said, and before Ben had even opened his mouth she continued, “and don’t you say anything, Benjamin J. Grimm. You saw how scared he was last night. He always tries to play tough around you.”
“Who said anything?” Ben asked, his hands held up in front of him. “If the pipsqueak wants to hide in his room, let ‘im.”
Sue frowned at him as she cleared her plate away. Reed cleared his throat.
“Sue and I have a meeting at the Pentagon today,” he said. “If it was anything else, I’d try to postpone, given the events of last night, but I’m afraid that’s not really –”
“Ya want me to play babysitter to our junior arsonist,” Ben cut in. He shook out the Daily Bugle, flipping to the sports section. “Don’t get yer unstable molecules in a twist.”
“Be nice to him, Ben,” Sue called from the kitchen. “He was worried he hurt you. I told him a nuclear bomb couldn’t get through that thick head.”
“Aw, Suzie-gal, you’re all heart,” Ben said.
Reed and Sue departed shortly after breakfast. For a while, Ben just puttered around the shared living room. He read the rest of the Bugle, flipped through about a thousand channels, and listened for the creak of Johnny’s door.
When noon had come and gone and there was still no sight or spark of Johnny, Ben took a detour to the kitchen then set off in search of him. Reed had pointed out the room they’d moved him before he and Sue had left, laughing off Ben’s choice words about what they needed so many rooms for when it was just the four of them. Too much damn space, and nothing filling it.
Hesitantly, Ben knocked on the door.
“It’s open!” Johnny called after a beat.
He was sitting on the bed, a comic book open in his hands and a stack of them beside him. Ben was a little surprised to see they were on the older side, covers faded and dog-eared, not glossy and new. He looked surprised to see Ben, even though it was only the two of them at home.
“Hey,” Ben said. His fingertips hadn’t left the doorknob. “Yer up. I wuzn’t sure.”
“Yeah,” Johnny said, shifting back a little. He eyed Ben’s chest and hands. “Are you … okay?”
“Palms feel a little skinned,” Ben admitted. “Nothin’ too bad.” He hefted the plate in his hand higher. “Made you a sandwich, since you didn’t show for lunch.”
Johnny eyed it with distrust, which Ben took as an affront to his sandwich making skills. He knew how the kid took his roast beef – it was why he’d stooped to putting mayonnaise on it, and left off the lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles, hot peppers, spicy mustard, and olives.
What could Ben say? He was a gourmand.
“I’m not really that hungry, big buddy,” Johnny said, toying with the edge of a page.
“I’ll just leave it here,” Ben said, setting it down on the bedside table like a peace offering. He never could stay mad at the kid for very long; it would be like kicking a puppy. “In case ya get hungry later.”
He turned to leave.
“Why’d you do it?” Johnny asked abruptly, sitting up and discarding the comic. He pulled his knees up to his chest, making room for Ben on the bed.
Ben took a step and the reinforced floor creaked. Sometimes it felt like the whole damn building would give way beneath his feet. He remembered the crack of the bed the other night as he’d reached for Johnny. He hadn’t been thinking, just acting, heedless of his own body in his rush to extinguish Johnny’s flames.
He curled his stinging hands into fists.
“I could have,” Johnny said, looking away. He swallowed hard. “I could have burned you really badly.”
“You was damned near about to do that already,” Ben said and Johnny cringed, shoulders practically up to his ears. Ben sighed.
The bed dipped as he sat down on the very edge of it, still close enough to touch. He’d always been a big guy, tall and broad-shouldered, and always thought of himself as the kind who could take up a whole room – but never this literally.
The ceilings in the Baxter Building weren’t tall because Reed liked the look of them.
“What was so bad anyway, huh?” he asked, hunkering down. Johnny flinched when Ben nailed him with a stare. “Well? Guy nearly does himself in putting you out, he deserves to know why.”
“I was dreaming about the crash,” Johnny said, fidgeting with the cuff of his sweater; it was one of Reed’s old ones, if the elbow patches were anything to go by. His bare toes curled against the sheets. He looked so small in that king-sized bed, his hair free of product and his cheeks pale. Like any regular kid. “When I couldn’t stop burning and I thought I was going to die.”
He lit up just the tips of his fingers, little birthday candle flames dancing against his skin. So much for the regular kid. Reed had taken that away from him.
(Who was Ben kidding? It had been him who’d flown the damn ship.)
“I almost killed Reed and Sue on that island,” Johnny said, extinguishing his fingertips. “I couldn’t stop burning. Reed says I absorbed the heat from the explosion and that’s why –”
“Big brain’s whys don’t matter,” Ben cut him off, thinking of all Reed's explanations, all of his clinical words for ‘I don't know how to change you back, Ben.’ “What matters is that it happened.”
Johnny ducked his head, blond hair shining in the lamplight. His voice was tight when he said, “Yeah. Reed and Sue don’t understand. You’re the only one who gets it.”
“Gets what?” Ben asked, a shade too gruff, but he and Johnny didn’t have anything common. Johnny was just a kid, soft in the head and the heart, obsessed with his own appearance, his smooth skin and those gold curls and whatever the latest magazine told him was the style of the season. Women fawned over him, young and old – the teenage girls wanted to date him and the old biddies wanted to pinch his cheeks and feed him cookies.
The same old biddies fainted when they saw Ben. Hardened criminals ran screaming when they saw him on the street. Even the most unflappable of cabbies refused to stop for him. Ben had been handsome, once.
Johnny had a smile like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Ben’s new face could crack a mirror.
“What it’s like to be able to hurt people without meaning to,” Johnny said, looking up at him with an expression on his face like he just dared Ben to say otherwise. His eyes were just as blue as his sister’s, but where Sue’s gaze was cool as the ocean, Johnny’s was all heat. Ben exhaled like he’d been hit by the Mole Man’s pet monster. “I could have killed them last night and then, on the island –”
His breath hitched. His gaze dropped.
Ben didn’t like thinking about the crash, either.
“You saved them,” Johnny said after a tense second. He wet his lips. “Why’d you put me out like that? You don’t even like me.”
That one stung. Ben only remembered flashes from that day – the ship’s controls under his hands. Reed’s steady voice, his unshakable confidence at the beginning of the flight. Sue’s bright smile from behind the glass of her helmet, his best friend’s girl giving him butterflies. The tac-tac-tac of the cosmic rays and the creeping awareness that something was very wrong. The crash. Sue dragging Reed from the waves, his limbs stretched out like spaghetti. The growing heaviness of Ben's own body. Johnny’s screams.
He knew he’d flung himself on top of Reed and Sue when the kid had exploded into flame, but he only had the barest recollection of it. He’d just moved. Ben hadn’t been thinking when he’d covered Reed and Sue, just like he hadn’t been thinking when he’d crushed Johnny against him and told him to flame off. Just like he hadn’t been thinking when he’d braced himself over the kid as the shields had failed, trying, in vain, to shield him, this scrawny, unlucky kid Reed and Sue had dragged up to space with them.
“You wanna know why I did it?” Ben said, his voice rumbling through him like a rockslide. Deep as the earth. “Because I knew ya wouldn’t hurt me.”
Johnny looked up at him, surprised. He yelped when Ben covered the top of his head with his palm, messing up those blond locks. He scrabbled at his hand, trying to knock it away, and when Ben laughed he really meant it.
It had been a while, since he’d really laughed. The kid staring up at him with that wet cat look of betrayal as he pawed at his hair didn’t do anything to discourage him from throwing his head back with it and enjoying the moment, just for a minute.
“It’s not funny,” Johnny whined. “You could have gotten hurt!”
“Nah,” Ben said, laughter subsiding. He shook his head. “Not a chance.”
He might not have been thinking the other night, but he’d never for a second believed Johnny would hurt him. That kind of thing wasn’t in the kid. Ben knew it, bone deep, and as much as it drove him crazy, he was glad for it, too.
A hand brushed his elbow, the kind of light touch he could barely feel anymore. “Ben?”
“It’s nothin’, small fry,” Ben said, shaking his head. “Just thinkin’.”
A corner of that smart mouth curled, finally. “Does it hurt?”
“Uh-huh. Worse than your little bonfire night,” Ben groused.
Johnny laughed, eyes shining. He leaned into Ben and wrapped both his arms around Ben’s elbow, pressing his forehead down against Ben’s arm.
“Just don’t let me hurt them,” he murmured.
Ben leaned back, just the tiniest amount. Not enough to crush him. “It’s a deal.”
“I see you two have made up.”
Johnny was stretched out on the other end of the couch; he obligingly tilted his head back when his sister leaned over to peck him on the forehead. For once, Ben didn’t grumble.
“You’re looking better,” she said to him. She nailed Ben with a cool look, the twitch of her lips the only thing revealing her amusement. “You, too, Ben.”
“What’s the blue-eyed idol of millions got to be down about?” Ben said. “D’ya mind, Suzie? We’re trying to watch the game here.”
Ben was trying to watch the game, anyway. Johnny had been alternatively nodding off and complaining, but at least the kid was out of his room at last. Ben had been trying to teach him the finer points of football – he guessed Johnny hadn’t had much exposure, living with his sister and their old aunt and then with the egghead on top of that.
Ben wouldn’t have minded going out and tossing the old pigskin proper – flamed on, Johnny could go as long as Ben’s new strength would need, and it’d be good for the kid. One quick glance at Johnny told Ben that any little bit of interest he had was long gone.
“How’d it go, Reed?” Johnny asked, jumping over the back of the couch, leaving Ben alone to watch his alma mater tackle ESU’s sorry excuse for a team.
“As well as can be expected,” Reed hummed, hanging up his jacket. “Still, progress is progress.”
“Reed’s underselling himself, as per usual,” Sue said, hooking her arm through Johnny’s. “He impressed everyone from the moment he opened his mouth. Come on, help me pick out somewhere to order a celebratory dinner from?”
Johnny hummed an affirmative, but he glanced over his shoulder at Ben with an apprehensive look on his face. It took Ben a second to catch on, but then he nodded at Johnny, pointing two rocky fingers at his own eyes, then at Johnny. Johnny stuck his tongue out, but his shoulders relaxed as he followed his sister into the kitchen.
“Brat,” Ben grumbled under his breath.
"Don’t let me hurt them." Johnny had said Ben understood, but that wasn’t quite true. There was no turning it off for Ben – but there weren’t any surprises, either, stuck in a body made out of stone. The only volatile thing about him had always been his temper.
Still, someone had to look out for the kid.
“Alright, Ben?” Reed asked, leaning over the back of the couch. His tone was careful, like he was expecting some kind of argument. He peered curiously at the screen. “Are we winning?”
Ben gave him a sideways glance before he settled back against the couch, turning his attention to the game again. “We’re getting there, Stretch.”