Chapter Text
Part 17 - Learning
It had been weeks since the cosmic accident. Weeks since their life changed forever, and today the baxter building felt less like a home, and more like a labratory with beds in it.
Reed had not meant for that to happen. He really didn’t. But weeks later reality had reorganized itself around a single truth: nothing about them worked the way it used to.
He had run all the test, done all the bloodwork, scans, everything he could think of. The results were.. fascinating. Absurd.
Ben’s mass density fluctuated depending on stress. Sue’s neural activity spiked sharply after extended forcefield use. Johnny’s core temperature never truly returned to baseline. Reed himself, well. That was another folder entirely.
They were changed forever. All of them. Reed just had the misfortune of being the one who noticed how much. And of being the one whos fault all of this was.
Ben had been the first problem.
Nothing fit. Chairs cracked. Cutlery bent. The stove knobs snapped off when he turned them too hard. Reed had quietly replaced nearly every appliance in the kitchen with reinforced versions, bolted furniture to the floor, commissioned custom clothes with stretch-weave seams that wouldn’t tear when Ben shifted his weight.
Ben pretended not to notice.
Johnny was another problem.
Fireproof sheets. Fireproof clothes. Fireproof mattress cover. Fireproof couch throw. Reed hadn’t said a word, just swapped them, one by one. Johnny flopped onto his bed one night and stared at the ceiling for a long time before muttering, “Okay. That’s.. kind of cool.”
Sue had been the hardest in a different way.
Her headaches came somtimes after she had used her powers a longer period of time. Not immediately, hours later. Dull pressure behind her eyes, light sensitivity, fatigue that made her hands shake.
Reed had suggested meditation, neural cooldowns, dietary adjustments. Sue had taken it seriously, learning breathing techniques, steeping strange-smelling teas, letting Reed fuss without complaining.
They were slowly learning each others new ways of functioning.
Which was why Johnny slipping through the cracks terrified Reed more than he wanted to admit.
It started small.
Johnny was always hungry now.
That wasn’t new. Reed had accounted for it, his caloric intake had tripled since the accident, sometimes more after heavy flame usage.
Johnny joked about it constantly, raiding the kitchen at all hours, shoveling food into his mouth like it might escape him.
But this was different.
“Hey, Reed?” Johnny said one evening, leaning against the counter with a protein bar in hand. “Is it normal to feel like you’re starving five minutes after eating?”
Reed glanced up from his computer.
“How long has it been since dinner?”
“Like… twenty minutes.”
Reed frowned. “And what did you have?”
Johnny ticked it off on his fingers. “Two plates of pasta, garlic bread, salad, that weird green smoothie Sue made me drink, and a steak.”
“And you’re still hungry.”
“Ravenous,” Johnny confirmed cheerfully. "Like, havent-eaten-in-days, hungry.”
"Hm." Reed made a mental note.
Then Johnny started drinking more and more water. A lot of it. Refilling his bottle constantly, draining glasses in seconds. Sue noticed first.
“You okay?” she asked one morning when Johnny downed his third glass before breakfast. “You look wiped.”
“I’m fine,” Johnny said, though his voice sounded a little thin. “Just tired. And hungry. And thirsty. So… fine.”
Ben snorted. "That sounds like you.”
Johnny grinned, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Days passed. Johnny got quieter.
He still joked, still flamed on during training, still pushed himself like he always did, but Reed noticed the small hesitations. The way he leaned against walls. The faint tremor in his hands when he reached for food. The way he sometimes stared at nothing, jaw clenched, like he was trying to outwait something inside himself.
It wasn’t until Johnny stood in the lab another evening, hands braced on the counter, face damp with sweat despite the cool air, that Reed finally looked up and really saw him.
“You okay?” Reed asked.
Johnny flashed a grin that came a second too late. “Never better. Just, feeling a bit.. off.”
“Off?”
Johnny shrugged. “Empty. Like no matter how much I eat, it just disappears.”
Sue frowned, taking in her little brother. He looked fatigued, slimmer. “You’ve lost weight.”
Johnny opened his mouth to protest, then stopped. “Have I?”
That made Reed worried.
He ran bloodwork that night. The first results didn’t make any sense. He recalibrated his scanner. Ran it again.
Still wrong.
Johnny’s glucose levels were dangerously unstable, plummeting, spiking, crashing again. Insulin readings were erratic, inconsistent with any known metabolic disorder.
“If I didnt know any better.. I would say this looks like diabetes,” Reed muttered, staring at the screen.
Sue stiffened. “What?”
Johnny went very still, sitting on the exam table. “Wait. Like… taking shots for the rest of my life diabetes?”
Reed swallowed. "lf you had a normal human physiology, yes.”
“But he doesn't” Sue said, a little too sharply. “It can’t be. He wasn’t sick before.”
“No,” Reed agreed. “He wasn’t. But diabetes can just come on quickily though.. I'm really not sure here..”
That was the problem.
“In Type 1 diabetes,” he explained, “the body stops producing insulin. Insulin is the hormone that allows glucose, sugar in the bloodstream, to enter cells and be used for energy. Without it, glucose builds up in the blood instead of fueling the body.”
Sue listened closely now.
“When blood sugar gets too high,” Reed continued, “the body tries to compensate. Excessive thirst. Frequent urination. Fatigue. Confusion. In severe cases, diabetic ketoacidosis.. where the body starts breaking down fat too rapidly, producing acids called ketones. That can cause rapid breathing, nausea, and eventually loss of consciousness.”
Johnny stared at him. “You think I’m diabetic?” he said slowly.
Reed exhaled slowly, forcing himself to think.
“No..” he said, shaking his head.
Johnny squinted at him. “You just said..”
“I said it was a possibility.” Reed corrected. “But the symptoms don’t align.”
He pushed his glasses up, slipping fully into explanation mode.
“You’re not lacking fuel. You’re overproducing output. Your cells aren’t failing to metabolize glucose.. they’re converting energy.”
Sue blinked. “So he’s not sick.”
“No,” Reed said quietly. "But.. this is still not right.."
Reed adjusted Johnny’s diet immediately. Complex carbs. Proteins. Carefully timed meals. He monitored glucose hourly, then every thirty minutes when the numbers refused to stabilize. Consulted with a real medical doctor.
Johnny followed every instruction without complaint, in the beginning.
“Reed,” Johnny said quietly one night as Reed checked his vitals again. “You’re hovering.”
Reed stilled. “I’m monitoring.”
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “That counts as hovering.”
Sue caught Reed’s eye across the room. Worried. Tired.
Reed didn’t say what he was thinking: I don’t know what I’m doing. Because he didn’t. Not really.
Medicine had rules. Human biology had rules. This.. this was rewritten DNA reacting to forces no one had ever survived before. He was guessing. Educated guessing, but guessing all the same.
Then one day Johnny collapsed.
It happened fast.
One moment he was in the air, not very high up fortunatly, flame blazing bright as he held a fractured building together. The next, his fire sputtered, and went out.
He hit the ground hard.
“Johnny!” Sue screamed.
Reed was there in seconds, scanner already active, hands shaking as numbers flashed red. Blood sugar critically low. Heart rate erratic. Body temperature dropping.
“No, no, no,” Reed whispered. “This shouldn’t be happening.”
Johnny’s eyes fluttered. “Hey,” he whisperd weakly. “Guess the new mealplans didnt work out?”
Reed’s voice broke. “Stay awake.”
Back at the Baxter Building Reed worked hard. IV with glucose barely helped. Johnny’s body burned through it almost instantly.
“This isn’t diabetes,” Reed said hoarsely. “It can’t be. He’s processing insulin too efficiently. His cells are consuming energy at an accelerated rate.”
Sue paced, worried. “So what does that mean?”
Reed stared at the data, dread pooling in his gut. “It means his body is functioning like a reactor without a regulator.”
Johnny stirred, shivering, weak. “Cool. I have always wanted to be a science problem.”
Reed squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry. I'm going to figure this out.”
That was when it clicked.
Fire wasn’t just output.
It was consumption.
Johnny’s altered cells weren’t storing energy, they were burning it continuously, even when he wasn’t flamed on. Every movement, every thought, every breath cost more than his body could sustain.
He wasn’t diabetic.
He was starving at cellular level.
That night, Reed didn’t sleep.
He went back to first principles.
Cellular respiration. Energy conversion. Flame output versus metabolic draw.
By morning, Reed had an answer. And a solution. The energy bars weren’t pretty. Dense, compact, packed with layered glucose polymers, proteins, trace minerals, and something Reed had synthesized specifically for Johnny’s altered cells, a stabilizer that slowed energy burn without dampening flame output.
He handed one to Johnny like it was fragile.
“Eat.” Reed said.
Johnny took a bite. Chewed. Paused. Soon the whole bar was gone.
“…Oh,” he said softly, after a while.
Sue leaned forward. “Oh, what?”
“I feel..” Johnny said, blinking, “better.”
Reed sagged against the counter, knees weak.
“Thank God.”
Within hours, the color returned to Johnnys face. The shaking stopped. By evening, he was cracking jokes again, sprawled on the couch with Ben, energy bar wrappers piled beside him.
“Guess I just need snacking on bars from now on,” Johnny said lightly. “All the time. Forever.”
Sue hugged him fiercely. “I’ll carry them... Actually, I'll have all of us carry some, all the time. Just in case.”
Johnny smiled at his sister.
Reed watched them, exhaustion crashing down now that another crisis had passed.
He’d been wrong first. But he’d figured it out in time.
And as Reed looked at Johnny, alive, laughing, safe, he knew this was the cost he had to pay, for taking them to space, for being their scientist, their doctor, their leader.
Not knowing everything.
But never stopping until he did.
"Reed, do you think we can make these bars in different flavors? This one is not.. my favroite." Johnny shouted from the living room.
Reed just laughed for himself.
Never a quiet moment.