Straight Up Typhoon – 10

Hope you all had good holidays! Mine sucked. Thanks so much for the reviews! You guys are all rock hard. BEWARE OF CLIFFS.

Reed couldn't believe it. Everything had somehow found its way to shambles, once again, and it was becoming something of a pattern. Graduates top of his class, his business fails. Gets funding from Victor to do his revolutionary space research, ends up with fundamentally altered DNA. Finally gets the one woman he'd ever loved back in his life, falls for her brother instead. And just when everything was starting to get to a semi sort of almost kind of normal, this had to happen. A few hours ago his life had been so close to decent, and now…

He almost never got drunk, but it had never sounded so good. However, thus far he'd only had the stomach to manage half a can of beer before he gave up. The last time Johnny had gotten drunk, it had placed a permanent image in his head of exactly what not to do and why, and erasing the memory of scrubbing vomit off the floor at four in the morning was pretty much impossible. Setting his can aside, he rested his elbows on his knees and sighed deeply. There was really no escape. All he could do was sit and think about how awful things were and hope that they got better. After Sue calmed down and the public got over this rumor and after Johnny came back…He hoped he would come back tonight. Already Reed was preparing himself for the routine of receiving Johnny's cold shoulder for the next few days until eventually he could guilt him into talking again. He knew that Johnny didn't really mean the things he said. …Did he?

Of course not. It's not like he was out getting drunk and having sex. As…like him as that would be… Reed suddenly reached for his beer again with a renewed urge.

"Reed?"

Reed slowly looked up in mid-drink, eyes drawing carefully to find his caller standing next to the couch. Sue. He had heard the footsteps down the hall just a few moments prior, but he hadn't made much note of it. For what reason would she possibly seek contact with him, after all? Still childishly afraid of his own voice, Reed mustered a rabbity smile and nodded.

"I uh…" she cleared her throat slightly, sitting in one of the chairs and glancing back out at the T.V., which was now on to much lighter matters than the sexual orientation of the city's best loved vigilantes. "I heard you and Johnny fighting earlier…" she only met his eyes in a brief flicker, playing with the ends of her hair in her fingertips.

Dear Reed; this is your brain. Please reflect upon your current situation. Susan Storm, a.k.a. your ex fiancé due to an affair you intended to have, i.e. one Jonathan Storm, is currently sitting not five feet away from you at the present time. As the governing organ of your physical being, I would like to inform you that this is the moment it would be most beneficial for you to remove yourself from the immediate location as soon as you are able in order to avoid bodily harm. "…Yeah…" he spoke at last, looking down at his drink. "It…it was stupid."

"With Johnny it usually is…" she barely murmured.

Reed was staring at the floor now, wondering nervously what she wanted. Did she just come out here hoping to find her brother? No, she must have heard him leave. Well, she wasn't yelling. Did that mean she actually wanted to…talk? His eyes found her another short time before returning to the floor.

"I guess…I guess Ben's out by now, huh?"

"Yep." Reed swallowed hard.

"Hm."

Reed blinked and slowly took another long drink. Were they going to sit here in silence until someone came home? Truth be told, he wasn't sure he didn't prefer that.

"Reed…I've been thinking," Sue began.

Reed felt a strange urge to duck. "Yes?"

"Maybe we should…"

"Talk?" he finished tentatively.

Sue looked at him for a second and nodded slightly, letting go of a small sigh. "Something like that, yeah."

"Okay." Reed agreed as he straightened up a little. He was terrified, but, well, he supposed he'd better get this over with. The notion of Sue not hating him for all of eternity was rather nice, as faint of a chance as he had of changing that. After all, if he had a brother and the situation were reversed…or…a sister as the case may be, he might have been more inclined to sulk forever than to talk about it. Of course, he sort of had felt that way when Sue showed up with Victor. Or at least, when he thought she was with Victor…

Sue paused for a long moment before biting her lower lip and letting out a frustrated breath. "I'm still mad, you know."

Reed instinctively lowered his head a little. "…I know."

"I mean, don't I have every right to be?" she continued. Obviously she received no protest. "…But…I'm…well I'm tired of being mad all the time."

Confused, Reed looked over to her.

"It's not that I'm not still mad—because I am," Sue clarified once again, giving him a bit of a look, "It's just that I'm…sick of it. I don't like thinking about it all the time, or avoiding the people I live with."

"Me neither…" Reed admitted. He was relieved to know that Sue felt the same way, though it was an odd time for her to be saying all of this when the situation had just gone from bad to horrendous.

"And I can't keep feeling like this about Johnny. He's my brother, he's…well…The other day I found myself thinking, 'God, I just hate him'."

Reed felt a tight cramp of guilt in his stomach.

"I've never actually hated him. Maybe I've said it before, but I've never meant it. Not until just then…All I can think now is…what am I hating him for? What's worth hating your only family? What I mean is…is…"

Reed was quiet for a moment before slowly letting out a breath. "That I'm not worth hating him over."

Sue gazed back at him with her mouth slightly open as if at a loss for words.

"And you're right. …I'm not." He finished timorously.

"…You make it really hard to say these things to you when you say them first."

"Sorry." Reed apologized. After a long moment of thinking, he shook his head and drew his eyes back to her. "I'm sorry, Sue…I-I guess…I've been meaning to say that for a while now."

"Well why didn't you say it before?" she said to her knees.

"I…was sort of afraid it…wasn't enough. I still don't really think it is. That and, you know, I was afraid you might throw something at me." He cleared his throat and rubbed an arm.

"You still should've said it."

"…I know."

Reed felt so much younger than he was, and certainly not in a good way.

"You're a jerk." Sue decided next.

Reed blinked in shock, trying to process the implications of that statement. He strung her along in their early relationship and eventually had driven her away with his science. He had given her a hard time with Victor and pleaded for her heart until she finally relented. He had fooled around with her brother behind her back and had subsequently left her for him. And all she could call him was a jerk. And he couldn't help it. He laughed.

And she smiled, just barely.

"Listen, Sue—"

"Reed," Sue suddenly stopped him, thrusting a hand out to silence him as she stared at the television. "Wait a minute, wait…"

Reed's eyes immediately followed hers to the T.V. "God, what now?" At first glance, Reed couldn't understand for the life of him what Sue was so worked up about all of a sudden. He barely had time to catch the sight of roaring flames and scattering firemen before he was able to deduce the scenario. Breaking news. A fire. A building on fire. Some previously unknown instinct in him flared up. "Where is that?" he asked immediately.

"I-I don't know, I…" Sue was squinting hard, eyes scanning the screen as she clutched a hand on the arm of her chair as though preparing to bolt. They were both frozen and dead silent waiting for some kind of clue before—"Oh my God," Sue gasped. "That's Alicia's building!"