Even when Ben and Johnny began dating, Ben had two primary reservations about their relationship.
The first was Ben himself, or rather, Ben's appearance.
"People are gonna talk," he warned. "All the tabloids are gonna be wondering why a guy like you is with, well . . . me ."
"People are always going to talk," Johnny informed him, unruffled. He planted a firm kiss to Ben's jaw. "As for the tabloids, they were already printing headlines about my love life when I was dating other people I met through in the fashion industry. This will be nothing new."
In his free time from being a superhero, Johnny worked as a model. Before he got involved with Ben, his flavor of the month was always some girl or guy he met on a photoshoot
Ben went to object, but when he opened his mouth, he just closed it again. He didn't want to argue that he shouldn't be dating Johnny, but sometimes he couldn't help but feel like he was holding him back.
Which was a huge part of Ben's second problem: Johnny's soul mark.
It was positioned on the underside of his left forearm, a white outline against Johnny's golden skin. He'd showed it to Ben even before they started dating. Ben thought it looked like a lotus flower from an overhead view, but Johnny insisted that it was actually an explosion.
Forty-nine of fifty people didn't have soul marks. Ben was one of them. And he couldn't help but wonder what that meant for their relationship.
He asked about it one night as they lay in bed together, finished with sex for the moment. Johnny was tracing the lines on Ben's chest as they talked, leaning forward every so often to kiss his neck.
"What if you meet the person with your matching mark?" Ben stared up at the ceiling, not sure he wanted to hear the answer. "Your—your soulmate?"
Johnny paused in pressing his lips against Ben's collarbone. "Then I'll politely tell them I'm with you, and if they get huffy about it, I'll tell them to get bent."
"Yeah, but this is the person made to be with you!" Ben protested. "Johnny, you can't neglect them to be with me."
Johnny pulled back to look Ben straight in the eye. "I don't care. I'm not waiting around to be with a person I might never even meet. I've made the choice to be with you, Ben. Nothing else matters."
Ben struggled with himself. He loved Johnny, he truly did, but he wanted the absolute best for him, and he couldn't help but doubt he was the optimal choice. "The other person might be better for you."
"The other person may not even exist at this point," Johnny retorted. "They could be dead for all we know."
Ben sighed. "For we know, you could meet them tomorrow." His stomach twisted in dread at the thought.
"Don't care," Johnny said stubbornly. "You're who I actually want to be with, and as far as I'm concerned, that automatically makes you a million times better for me."
With that, he pulled Ben into a fierce and possessive kiss.
And yet Ben couldn't erase his doubts.
Almost every other weekend, it seemed, the team was expected to attend some sort of ritzy gala, reception, or other red carpet event. With Reed and Sue's groundbreaking research and Johnny's modeling work, as well as all of their celebrity status in general, their combined social calendar was absolutely packed.
And when it came to parties, Johnny was in his element. Conversation came easy to him, and combined with his good looks and charisma, he was a natural people person. He had none of Ben's self-consciousness or current aversion to interacting with regular people.
Every time Ben spotted Johnny across the room at a party, and Johnny was readily chatting with another person who was clearly charmed by him, he could never suppress the pang in his chest. The jolt of worry that Johnny might have found his soulmate, and any minute he might come over to tell Ben that their relationship was over.
When Ben revealed this particular insecurity to his boyfriend, Johnny was very unhappy.
"I'm not gonna run out on you," Johnny said firmly. "I don't care if you're not my soulmate. You're my boyfriend. You're who I want."
"But would you still want me if you had another option?" Ben asked desperately.
"I have other options now," Johnny replied bluntly. "Ben, if I do actually meet my soulmate, what exactly is your plan? Are you just gonna stand down and insist I should be with them instead of you?"
"I don't know," Ben told him, even as his heart shattered at his own admission. "I don't know if I'm the right guy for you."
Johnny's jaw set. "I chose you, Ben. Nothing could make you more right for me. I'll fight anyone who says otherwise." His mouth tugging upward in a smile, he elbowed Ben in the side, a gesture Ben saw rather than truly felt due to the natural armor provided by his rock-like skin. "Including you. So be careful."
Ben smiled back, comforted by Johnny's insistence that he wanted to be with him, even if he was still worried. "I could take you any day of the week, Matchstick. Just name one."
But he still wrapped an arm around Johnny and held him close.
With Reed and Sue's research into other universes, the team often explored various alternate dimensions when they weren't stopping supervillains or providing relief from disasters. On one such occasion, Ben found himself separated from the group and fighting monsters for what seemed like a few hours at most. Curiously, during that time, though his skin cracked from the strain of battling the creatures and the intensity of combat, the rock coating seemed heal at an enormously accelerated pace, almost instantly.
When he returned to his usual place and time, he was shocked to find out he'd been gone nearly three months. Reed and Sue were both fascinated by everything he told them, and thrilled at the latest discovery in their research.
"I've been called that particular dimension the 'Negative Zone,' " Reed explained, typing frantically at one of his lab computers. "I'd theorized that time worked differently there compared to here, but this is confirmation! I wonder if I could find an algorithm . . ."
Sue sat at a lab table, Ben beside her and Johnny curled up in his lap, holding Ben's left arm under a lamp to examine the skin regrowth he'd pointed out.
"And since time was passing in an accelerated pace in the Negative Zone, your body healed itself at a rapid pace to match," Sue observed. "It's only a rough analysis, of course—we'll do more advanced tests—but the healing of the damage to your skin seems to directly match with the amount of time you've been gone from our dimension. Interesting." Turning Ben's arm over to look at the underside, her eyes widened, and she blinked several times.
"What is it?" Ben asked apprehensively. "Somethin' wrong?"
"No," Johnny breathed, leaning forward to get a closer look, and then pulling back to give Ben a solid kiss. "Everything's right ."
Frowning, Ben moved closer and squinted at his arm, examining his stone skin for anything unusual.
And then he saw it. On the new rock that had reformed over the damaged old was a very faint outline of what looked like a lotus flower, or, as Johnny was adamant, an explosion. A soul mark to match Johnny's.
"What did I tell you?" Johnny asked, curling up against him. "You are the right guy for me."
Ben grinned, relief washing over him. "Yeah. I guess I am."