Chapter Text
The taxi cab came to a halt and Ben Grimm stepped and breathed in the New York city air for the first time in almost five years. It was the summer, so the air smelled like burning garbage. Not the sort of thing you’d think you’d miss, but he did. Seated on 42nd street and Madison was his target. The Baxter Building. An old friend had extended to him an invitation, and being without a job for the last few months, he made him an offer that he’d be a fool not to take. He could hear the car’s radio as it pulled away.
“Dream Boy, dream Boy...You’re my only dreaaam boyyyy. Dreams faaade into the night, But rather than die awaaaayy. Why won't you staaaay? ” sang a melodious trio of girls over tinny speakers.
The Baxter was thirty-five or so stories tall and seemed to have a space-age gleam to it like something out of a pulp novel. Inside was a whole other story. The air was fouled by the pungent aroma of coffee and electrical fire, while every single table was practically overflowing with bits of odd technology, each was more awe-inspiring than the last. Then he saw a face that he recognized, or at least he thought he did.
Reed was a lot slimmer than the last time the two had seen one another, but it was him. Was his hair starting grey already? Had it really been that long? Reed was a skinny, kind of string bean of a man and had dark circles under his eyes. Oddly, despite his older appearance, it reminded him of their college days, just before Korea. Reed turned to focus his attention on Ben and it was like someone had flipped a switch. His eyes, widened with excitement like a kid all hopped up on sugar and he sprinted up to him, his leather shoes making an audible, machine gun ‘tak’ against the floor.
“Ben, good god. You have no idea how good it is to see you.”
“It’s good to see you too, pal. Are you okay? You need a sandwich or something?” said Ben as the two men shook hands. Ben watched as the thought crossed Reed’s mind. It was as though he hadn’t even considered that thought until Ben brought it up.
He made a dismissive breath sound and waved his hands about in an excited manner, “Nothing to worry about, how are you? Look at me, just look at this place. What do you think?”
Ben laughed, “I don’t know what to think, Reed. This seems a little out of my element.”
“Nonsense, I wouldn’t have asked you to come if I didn’t think you were up to the challenges ahead of us.” Reed yawned as the two men weaved through the maze of half-constructed devices, “I wouldn’t want anyone to accuse me of nepotism.”
“So, care to clue me into what your secret project is egghead?”
“In due time, in due time. We have so many things to work on, right now. It’s just,” Reed was practically bouncing on his heels as he flapped his hands, “We’re building the future.
“Impressive, is all of this you?”
“Only half. I speculate that by the decade’s end we’ll have an entire force of scientists operating here. Right now, all of our energy needs to be focused on the big project. But, I won’t get into that at the moment, make yourself at home in one of the rooms upstairs, Johnny should be up there if he isn’t out and about.”
An hour after getting set up in his apartment, Ben made his way back down to the lab space. He could hear one voice, a man, Reed while the other was the familiar But unplaced voice of a woman. As he stepped out he could see that Reed was leaning against the table talking about something with a shorter woman with a crown of curly brown hair.
“Is now not the best time?”
As soon as he spoke the pair turned to face him. Reed was already beaming, but as soon as the woman with him placed her eyes on Ben, he watched her face light up, “Ben, it’s good to see you again.”
Suddenly the dots connected in his head. It was Sue. Ben walked over and picked her up in a great bear hug before placing her back, safely on the ground. “It’s good to see you too, Susie. I should have figured you were working with Reed on this.”
Sue gesticulated by twirling a distended finger, “Working with a bit of a simplification. Johnny and I are kind of bankrolling this whole mess, but I’m not going to bore you with it, I’m sure Reed has told you all about it already.”
Ben could see Reed smiling slyly behind her, “Actually, our Reed’s been weirdly stingy with the details, what’s going on?”
“Ben, how familiar are you with the Baxter Building?” she said out of the blue.
“Not super, mind giving me the key points?”
“A couple of years ago, right after the Manhattan project, my dad sold a few invention ideas. Some ended up with the government, real hush-hush wetwork projects and the like. Some went elsewhere...but that isn’t important. The man delivered on the money before being locked up. The Baxter was originally a condominium in the 20s filled with all sorts of uppity socialities and the like. When dad bought it he intended to use it to house a rocket so we could beat the Russians into space.”
“So, that’s why you need me? You guys need a pilot for a rocket?”
“Oh far from it,” spoke Reed, “A rocket just doesn’t quite cover what this project is capable of. A rocket is a big cumbersome mass that doesn’t quite cover our intentions. After the war, Sue and I met up at a physics summit. We got to talking about a new possibility. Something that can transport a lot of people a great distance in seconds. I’m talking about teleportation, Ben.”
Ben took a moment to process the great set of statements that the pair had just dropped on his lap and he couldn’t help but laugh, “You guys are fucking nuts.”
“Ben, trust me on this. Reed and I have spent many nights awake talking about this. I think we can do it. I have the capital, Reed and I have the know-how. We just need an engineer to help us piece the thing together. We have Johnny, but he’s only a student.”
Ben dug his fingers into his hair and brushed them away from his sweaty brow, “Fine, you two have twisted my arm. Where do we begin?”
Reed walked over and clapped him on the shoulder, “See, I told you he was good for it. No faith I say, she has no faith in the inherent goodness of mankind.”
“Spoken like someone who’s never been kicked out of a bar for his skin colour, Richards.” She said with a smile, but a hint of a bite on Reed’s surname.
Reed’s expression dropped, “My apologies, Susan. I forget myself at times.”
“You’re fine, darling,” She smiled a more genuine smile at Reed. They both shared nearly the same sickly sweet smile. Ben would have found it heartwarming if he didn’t have to spend most of his teens watching the puppy love build-up to it. I mean, my god you spend like six years watching two people beat around the bush with their awkward feelings, then the next thing you know you’re serving in Korea.
She turned her attention back to Ben, “Have you by any chance met Johnny yet, I wasn’t sure if he’s upstairs or not.”
“I didn’t see anybody...Do you mean your brother Johnny?”
“Well I don’t really associate with very many other ‘Johnnies’ I can’t imagine it would be super nice.”
Ben remembered Johnny well enough from his youth, a very willful, energetic kid… but that was years ago, “He’d be about sixteen now, what’s he doing messing about on a project like what you two are suggesting?”
“Well...I...He does have some natural talent with engineering, but he’s very inexperienced so we were thinking maybe you could show him the ropes.”
When they found Johnny he was lying asleep in a deck chair. In his room. His room from which he had removed the bed and covered the floor in red coloured sand and porcelain seashells. As though that were not enough, Johnny was dressed as either Salieri or King Louis XIV while on his chest he balanced a martini glass that was loaded with what appeared to be Atomic Fireballs and Certs.
“So...this is your great engineering prodigy. I must say, not what I expected. I’m excited. Really, Reed, I’m thrilled to be working with some kind of dandy.”
Sue looked as though she were ready to throttle her younger brother. Then, as if on instinct he opened his eyes and looked first at the bright light above him and then to his sister. “Could you please keep it down Sue, your violent thoughts are interrupting my dreams. And she was such a gorgeous brunette too...”
Johnny Storm sat up and brushed the sand off of his clothes and proceeded to eat a Cert and a Fireball. Ben couldn’t imagine the cinnamon, mint hell that was his mouth, but he seemed unaffected by it.
“Huh, you’re Ben. You seem to have aged beautifully. What are you now, fifty? You look good for fifty.”
It crossed Ben’s mind that he could probably punch Johnny in the face and flee before Sue could retaliate, but he did not. Sue instead spoke, “Johnny, what are you wearing and why is your room full of sand?”
“It’s a funny thing, isn’t it. I wanted to imagine for a second that I wanted to have an idea about what it would be like to be Oscar Wilde, stranded on some martian beach, beautifully and totally drunk with an empty bottle of Jack Daniels and a martini glass of sugary treats.”
There was a moment of silence, and to be quite honest the experience kind of made Ben want to laugh. It made Sue want to slap him and Reed was too tired to focus on anything really. It was taking most of his energy to not immediately fall asleep on a pile of old t-shirt and liquor bottles.
Sue pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes in annoyance, “Go clean up and get a cup of coffee, we can talk about this. I need to see you some kind of sober before we begin things.”
Johnny mumbled a mixture of words that didn’t add up to much, it was mostly just a bunch of noise to mock his older sister. She stripped off his elegant jacket and his powdered wig and tossed them to the side. As he vanished down the hall, Sue, Reed and Ben exited the bedroom.
“I am so, so sorry about that Ben; this isn’t an everyday thing, I don’t know what’s going on with him.”
“Eh, it’s fine. Not the weirdest thing I’ve seen. What Johnny needs is some guidance. And to not drink right before helping to build a teleporter.”
Ben would watch Johnny polish off an entire pot of black coffee by himself. It was as impressive as it was disgusting. He just looked on with mute horror as this kid just finished off cup after cup of bitter, black coffee. It wasn’t just the fact that he was just drinking it like it was going out of style. It was also the crude viscosity of it. It seemed to be thicker than it should be. Like he was nursing himself on crude oil. Don’t get him wrong, Johnny was a good engineer and he and Ben worked quietly beside each other on the great machine on one of the lower levels. Just occasionally, Ben would see him do something grotesque and it would be all he could think about.
It was fine at first. The two would work on the teleporter while Sue and Reed ran diagnostics. Then he found out a new and frightening thing about Johnny. Johnny liked to perform pranks. Not, the typical sort of slapstick gags he was accustomed to, though. At the end of one workday, Ben decided to retire to his room and immediately go to sleep. Only, there was one issue. Johnny had at some point taken eight mannequins and set them up in Ben’s bedroom. Eight mannequins all immaculately decked out in two-tone mod dresses and bowler hats with their right arms aimed directly at the bed. Ben stood there for an alarmingly long time, trying to work through exactly what he was looking at. As though there was something that would be revealed if he could just find it. Ben discovered rage instead of answers. He threw a few of them over his shoulders and tossed them into a dumpster one after another. There was a little old woman and a little old dog that sat just outside the Baxter Building and looked at him like he was mad.
On the day of the first test, there was a buzz in the air. A sort of intense, perfect energy. The four of them were gathered in a secluded station that overlooked the teleporter and it’s subject. A single apple on the field before them, surrounded on all possible fronts by cameras.
“Is everybody prepared to make history?” asked Reed, his fingers resting on the key.
They all nodded and he pressed the key.