Title: Coming Around Again.
Pairing: Reed/Sue
Written by: Angel-death-dealer (Sammy) and Alexandizzie4eva (Maria)
For those of you who are comic fans as well as movie fans, this story is probably one that you'll enjoy. Remember the lovely fiasco surrounding Franklin's birth? Well, here it is. We've left out the busines with the negative zone so that it fits more for a Sue and Reed romance fic, but there's a moments with Johnny and their father, Sue and Johnny, and the others and Ben. Everyone's here in this fic, and everyone's affected. So, this is an ongoing fic, as it was originally designed to be a one-shot, but came out as eleven chapters worth. We didn't want to condense any of it down though, so this story is focusing closely on the week surrounding Franklin's birth.
Enjoy!
Sammy and Maria.
xxxxxx
Chapter 1.
I know nothing stays the same, I believe in love, (Lyrics from Carly Simon's Coming Around Again.)
But if you're willing to play the game,
We'll be coming around again.
So don't mind if I fall apart,
There's more room in a broken heart.
What else can I do?
I'm so in love with you.
Up until that moment, she hadn't actually panicked. Through the seemingly endless trimesters, she'd not once been worried about experiencing the pain, or anything else that could or might happen. Oh no, she was Susan Storm. For women all over the world, she was strength personified, they looked up to her like a role model these days, and nothing was supposed to scare her. She could handle childbirth - right? Well, that's what she'd first thought. Now, second thoughts were plaguing her, and even though she wished them all away, it didn't take her long to realise that she wasn't in control anymore.
She hadn't panicked when the contractions first hit her, less than an hour after Reed and Ben had left to give a university lecture. She hadn't even panicked when her water had broken all over the front seat of her brother's new car, even though he had started panicking at this point. She hadn't panicked, either, when they had pulled up to the hospital, and the nurses had all but thrown her into a wheelchair, shouting out to make way for her. The panic hadn't even set in when, after the sixth attempt at calling Reed or Ben's cell phone, Johnny finally got through to them and discovered that an accident in the city centre had most of the city in a gridlock, preventing them from getting to the hospital.
She was able to pinpoint the exact moment when the panic finally grasped her, but by then, she had realised that it wasn't something that had hit her with surprise, but instead something that had been slowly building upon her the entire time. When they had hastened down the corridor, with Johnny at her side desperately trying to reach his brother-in-law, and when they went into the delivery room for the first time, Sue started to feel uncertainty for the first time. Yet she didn't understand it as pure panic until they began taking blood samples, and preparing her for delivery - the same time when she realised that Reed should have definitely been there.
But he had to be there.
He said he would be there.
He wanted to be there.
He'd promised to be there.
Taking Reed's place, Johnny remained at her side the entire time whilst they waited, agonisingly in Sue's case, for Reed to arrive. In all honesty, the childbirth 'thing', as he called it, was freaking him out, and he'd much rather be at home on his X-Box, as he had been half an hour ago, but he knew that he couldn't leave his sister alone at a time like this. She'd kill him before he got to the door. Another contraction hit, undoubtedly the worst yet from her cries, and when it had finally passed, Sue's head rolled back onto the pillow that had been propped behind her. Her eyes found Johnny's, and he was shocked to find them tear-filled from the pain.
"You okay?" He asked stupidly. He knew that childbirth was meant to hurt; after all, she was pushing a baby out of her body, what could be painless about that? However, to make Sue cry was an achievement for anything. She could watch all the soppy romantic movies...Ghost, Beaches, Titanic...and not shed a tear. Now, however, she wasn't even holding back as tears flooded her eyes.
"It hurts." She croaked up at him.
Johnny bit his lip, not knowing what he could do to make her feel better. He wasn't a doctor, and he definitely knew nothing about babies. What could he do to help? Cracking jokes was hardly appropriate, and, even though it was something he did best, he felt that now wasn't the time to poke holes in Reed's ego. "I know it hurts." He nodded, stalling for time whilst he thought of something to do. Remembering what he had seen on television once, he held out his hand. "You wanna squeeze my hand?" He offered hesitantly, not wanting the sound of pain in the room to be his own instead, but at the same time, wanting to help his sister.
She looked at his extended hand for a moment, and from the despair in her eyes, he knew that she was wishing it was Reed at her side. Even though Johnny was completely out of his element, but still trying his hardest to do what he could, he wasn't Reed, and this, at the end of the day, was an experience she was meant to be sharing with Reed. He was her husband; he was supposed to be there. She was supposed to be shouting at him, screaming that he was never coming within a mile of her again for the pain this was causing her. But he wasn't there.
But Johnny was. Even though he wasn't her husband, he was her brother, and he was there. He was the little brother who had, for the most part of his childhood and teenage years, been raised with Sue as his maternal figure. He was the little boy who would fall of his bike, and sheepishly seek out help even though someone would say 'I told you so'. He was the little boy who acted first, and thought later, the boy who thought about himself first, and rarely anyone else, but he was still there, at her side, when no one else was. He was her brother, and for the first time in what felt like forever, he acting more like that than simply being annoying to his elder sister. He was helping her, and he was genuinely trying.
She lifted her arm from where it rested on the mattress beneath her, and took his hand. She squeezed it tightly, even though there was no contraction, just to assure herself that someone was there with her. He clutched her hand back, just as tightly, realising that this was their most intimate sibling moment since their mothers funeral, when they were both so young, and he had stood at her side, holding her hand so tightly he would have apologized for almost breaking it had he spoken to anyone that day.
"Chin up, okay?" He encouraged her, giving her the most assuring smile that he could. "It'll all be done soon, you heard the docs."
She had heard the doctors, but they hadn't said what Johnny told her. Her contractions were still at least five minutes apart, and she knew that it was going to get a lot worse in terms of pain. Every contraction was harder to work through than the one before, and they were steadily getting closer together. However, she was only three centimetres dilated, and she needed to be at ten before she could start pushing. It was going to be a long wait, and they both knew that, however she could see why Johnny was telling her otherwise. Where was the comfort in telling her that she might as well get comfy in her bed because she wasn't going anywhere?
"Where's Reed?" She asked him quietly, without looking around her. Even though she was asking, she knew that he wasn't in the room. She didn't have to look around to know that. He wasn't there. He'd be at her side for there.
"He's on his way." Johnny told her, for what felt like the thousandth time already. "Rock-brain's bringing him now."
He'd been expecting her usual chastising for insulting Ben, but it never came. There was no scolding tone from her, as instead, she released a deep, shaking breath as she prepared herself for the pain which she was now expecting at any moment. She bit her lip, so hard that she thought she could taste blood for a moment, and as she screwed up her eyes, tears began to fall rapidly from her cheeks, sending Johnny into even more of a panic. "I can't do this without him, Johnny." She almost whimpered, inhaling a sob afterwards.
"Yes, you can." He said firmly, trying to forget the unease in his mind when she started crying.
"I won't." She shook her head. "This is his baby, he should be here!" She protested.
"Aw, Hell, Sue!" Johnny told her wildly as she started to groan her way through another contraction, her breath hissing through her tightly clenched jaw. "Don't start the 'it's his baby' stuff. Reed's the reason why you're in this much pain in the first place!" He pointed out.
"Johnny!" She scolded, in the tone he had expected a moment ago. "Not helping!"
"I should be there."
"You'll be there."
Much the same argument was taking place on the other side of the city, where Ben and Reed were currently stuck in the back of a taxi-cab. All around them, cars were blaring their horns, some even getting out of their cars and walking further ahead to see what was going on. But there was no movement in the cars. In the front of their cab, the radio was turned up higher than usual, as the driver tried to listen out for any clue as to what was causing the hold up, but Reed wasn't listening to it, or the random chart songs that were playing in between news updates. No, he was more worried about Sue, and why he wasn't with her.
When the call from Johnny, which had, apparently, been his sixth attempt, had come through on Ben's cell phone, they had demanded that the cab be turned around mid-journey. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Ben had been amused to hear the two siblings squabbling on the other end of the phone, arguing about Sue's water breaking on Johnny's passenger seat. However, the cab couldn't turn around, because there was a tremendous flaw in their seemingly perfect plan to meet the pair at the hospital, and that was the massive traffic accident which seemed to have put a stop to the entire inner city.
Reed was getting antsy now, constantly squirming in his seat in the back of the cab, which hadn't moved for twenty minutes now. Somewhere ahead of them, a diversion was being set up, but with all of the cars around them taking the diversions, they wouldn't make it to the hospital before sundown, let alone before the baby was born.
"This isn't right." He complained for the twelfth time. "I should be with her."
Ben shrugged. "At least she's not on her own." He pointed out. "Johnny's with her."
Reed frowned. "Is that a good thing?" He wondered under his breath. Johnny never really handled intense situations with anything less than his annoying wit.
"Let's hope so." Ben grimaced. "I mean, this is his sister, and his niece or nephew that we're talking about. He's not going to be standing there making wisecracks, is he?"
"I mean, it could be worse." Johnny pointed out to Sue as she clenched his hand, the contraction fading into nothing but the dull and constant pain. "He could be standing there holding a camcorder up-"
"Johnny! Not helping!"
"I said I'd be there with her." Reed scolded himself, leaning forward in the back of the cab. He groaned loudly into his hands, accompanied by a simple thud when his head hit the back of the front seat. Somewhere, across the other side of the city, his wife was going into labour with their first child, and it didn't look like he was going to see that happen.
He should have known that she was showing sings of labour when he had left that morning. The midwife had warned them about the fact that, shortly before going into labour, pregnant women often got an unexplainable surge of energy. When Reed had woken up that morning, at half past six, Sue had already cleaned the entire apartment, which was still massive in size, and a nightmare to clean. Then, over breakfast, she admitted that there was a peculiar feeling that accompanied the baby's kicks that morning, which were already stronger than usual. He'd been concerned that the baby was kicking stronger, but when he suggested that he miss the lecture and reschedule it, Sue had insisted that it was just the baby complaining about the housework she'd made it endure with her, and had all but forced him out of the door when it was time to leave.
He should have known. She was already a week past her due date, and speaking with the midwife every day as she monitored the changes. They'd had her bag packed for a month now, sitting ready by the front door, and waiting for the sudden moment when the baby started to arrive. He wondered whether they had remembered to take it. Johnny certainly wouldn't have remembered, but Sue might have, as long as she'd been thinking clearly. Considering the time she had spent packing, and then re-packing, the bag, it didn't seem plausible that she would forget it.
He should have known.
He should have stayed with her.
His eyes fell out the window again, trying to focus on anything except the inside of his palms, which, with any justice should be currently being squeezed completely out of shape by Sue's hands. The side door of the cab opened, and a man got out of it, swearing all sorts of profanities as he looked at his watch impatiently. An idea dawned on Reed, and he felt stupid for not thinking of it before.
Reaching into his wallet, he pulled out some money, not counting how much was there, and passed it through to the front of the cab. Clearly, he had overpaid, because the driver look at it as if Reed were handing over a gold brick to him. Then, under Ben's confused look, he got out of the cab.
"Whoa, where are you going?" Ben asked him.
"To the hospital." He said simply, before taking off down the street, leaving Ben to follow him as quickly as he could.