MAGPIE
PART II
Press play...
Ben, who'd been so keen to judge for himself whether Azura was hot, had the honour of being the first to do so a couple of weeks after that night at The Bar With No Name. He was woken up in the middle of the night by the one thing that usually woke him up irritatingly in the middle of the night: Johnny making a racket as he got home from a night out. As usual, he wasn't alone, and his female companion kept trying to shush him, but was almost just as loud as Johnny was being just stomping around the penthouse, simply by giggling. So Ben got out of bed, ignoring the creak of the heavy duty frame, and went out to tell Johnny to shut the hell up.
He was silenced by the sight of Johnny also being silenced quickly by a tiny girl with blue hair kissing him passionately, and, without even drawing away for breath, Johnny led the way to his bedroom, and shut the door behind them. Leaving Ben, wide-eyed, in the hallway. He then made a face of approval, and went back to sleep.
Despite the noisy homecoming that night (and many nights after), for someone who lived so publicly, who liked to shout his exploits from the rooftops to the eager crowds and TV crew below, Johnny became almost worryingly private. When asked how things were going by any of the other members of Fantastic Four, he'd say 'fine' or 'great', grin, and leave. But they knew it was going well, from the number of times they'd seen Zura at the penthouse, wearing Johnny's shirts as he applied aloe to fresh burns, pretending to be mad at him whilst trying not to giggle because she was ticklish.
It was all there, in plain sight...
The media lapped it up as they always did, printing fuzzy phone camera shots of the two making out at parties or in clubs, and every time he addressed the TV crews to boast about the latest feat of heroics that he'd just performed, he got 'who's the girl?' again and again. He'd just ignore it, grinning as usual, and walk away when he was done talking. The next time he called the press parasites, he actually started to mean it. Particularly when they asked Zura, where they found her, 'is it true that you're dating Johnny Storm? Where did you meet? Is it true he has an extinguisher by his bed?' Unlike Johnny, who turned and teased the press with misdirection, she did her best to ignore them, and said absolutely nothing. Sometimes after she laughed about it. Other times, times that became more and more frequent as the weeks went by, that she didn't really find it very funny.
"I got asked today whether we're still dating because I like pyrotechnics in the bedroom," she told him once, finally losing it. "What?!" She said it much like Johnny did when explaining, for the first time, the extent of his first demonstration of his new abilities to Sue and Reed at Von Doom's medical facility in the mountains. Except that time he'd been ecstatic. She was fuming.
By some miracle it took two months before her name got leaked, by which point the pictures weren't fuzzy, but just professional shots of the two walking down the block together to pick up Chinese take out. Inevitably that's when it all got even harder. She stuck out her job at Barnes and Noble for another month, trying to put up with fans asking inappropriate questions instead of asking for books, or jealous girls wanting to check out who the Human Torch had lasted more than a week with. It was when the jealous girls turned into jealous exes that she reluctantly quit her job. It wasn't everything to her, it was just a job at the end of the day. But she had friends there, a team of girls who felt more like sisters, who had supported her by keeping their mouths shut about who she was seeing to the press, but gathered around the staffroom table to gossip like she was no different from them, and he was no different to any other boy that one of their group had started dating. That night she went home to her apartment, ignored Johnny's calls, and cried.
It became the first bump, the first thing they fought about. She couldn't help it, but she blamed him for the things that she was losing from her life so quickly, like her privacy, her income now even. Offering to support her whilst she figured out what she was going to do next just made things worse. What in the world could she do now that she was famous for being the girl that lasted in the Human Torch's bed? But when Johnny flamed up to fly out, to walk away from their argument, she grabbed his hand, burning herself badly in the process, and asked him to stay rather than run away. It shocked him, amazed him, that she was prepared to grab him when he was fully aflame, just to carry on arguing. They didn't though; he extinguished himself, landed back on the floor, and took her to her bathroom to put her hand under the cold tap, let her dig her fingernails into his arm as the water stung. The pain sparked fresh tears, and he held her, rocking her soothingly, apologising quietly into her ear for hurting her.
He told her this was why he hesitated instead of calling her, when they first met. He already had an inkling of how difficult it would be to seriously date someone who was normal, who was unused to and didn't crave the spotlight of the media. He knew how difficult it would be for her having her life trampled over by TV crews and overly enthusiastic fans, and how difficult it would be for him to do normal things with her, like take her out on a proper date, to the movies or to dinner. But then he'd hoped to whatever God there was that a) it would be worth it, and b) that he could make it work. And he said he was sorry, again, that so far he hadn't done b), even though he'd been right about a).
She wiped her tears away. "Now that was a line," she hiccoughed. And then she asked him to stay again.
She didn't know this, and he didn't tell her then, but that night marked the first time he apologised that much to anyone. He didn't apologise to his own sister like that.
So he stayed, and whilst she slept in the next morning - one of the luxuries of not having a job to wake up early for - he made a statement to the TV crew outside her apartment block: he was no fan of any 'fan' who harassed his girlfriend, and any reporter caught trailing her would learn first hand what 'pants on fire' felt like. Because "I'm a jealous boyfriend, it turns out, and I'm the only one who should be paying her that much attention."
We have all seen the signs...
It wasn't all bad, having the publicity; DJ Magpie took off like a storm, and got busy. Zura got regular bookings at Manhattan's biggest venues, and increasingly decent quotes from some of the most renown event organisers. As the media stopped calling her the girl Johnny Storm was dating and started calling her his girlfriend, her value went up all the more. It stung a little that it was because of Johnny's name rather than her talent, but then she'd actually go and perform, see everyone have a good time, and she cared a little less. Slowly, it became less Johnny's name and more about DJ Magpie.
Meanwhile, he stocked up on aloe, she cut her hair shorter after he singed it, and Johnny became a rare sight around the Baxter Building; he was either out saving the city, or he was taking her out before her sets, to laser tag, paint balling, or teaching her how to drive the Fantasticar so they could have races over the Long Island Sound. Instead of going to the theatre they got DVDs and popcorn for Johnny to cook up. Instead of going out for dinner they had picnics in the Fantasticar, parked into hover mode over the Hudson to watch lit up ferries shuttle to Ellis Island. He was either the Human Torch, or he was with her, or on the phone to her.
Whilst the jealous fans and exes left her alone, in fear of the Human Torch's wrath, they didn't leave him alone, which became the next thing they should have argued about. No woman wants to put up with her boyfriend being hit on by the female population of New York City night and day, no matter how good a boyfriend he was to her. Zura had known before that it was going to be a very weird time, dating one of New York's biggest players, the only bachelor left from the Fantastic Four, but she hadn't known how futile it would make things feel to her. Lapping up the attention he got was just what Johnny did, it was what he enjoyed doing. The only consolation was that he always went home with her. But it was a horrible feeling, watching as she did her set, trying to get swept up in the music, as her boyfriend danced with the hottest women in the club beneath her. But she never got the guts together to tell him how much she hated it. It didn't even seem fair. He never went out and sought it anymore, they would just flock to him like moths to the light. He'd never had to shake them off before, so he had no idea how to, or he used her as a shield. That was nice, sometimes, being claimed in front of these silly girls, and claiming him, by just holding his hand or kissing him. But the moment she stepped away, the pouting moths would flutter back.
Feeding off the dormant anger at the sacrifices that she had made, swallowing her own insecurities, her jealousy, Zura stopped laughing as much as she did when they first met. Sometimes she just wanted to turn off the music and yell foul names at the girls around her boyfriend, to tell them to go home or pull someone else's boyfriend. She hated it, absolutely hated it. But they'd only been going out for a few months, and already he could make her feel things with such extremity. At the same time she felt she had no right to feel like that, that he was free to behave as he wanted if he was having fun, and at the same time incensed that she thought that, felt like that, incensed that actually maybe that wasn't true. They were embarking on a relationship together. If he didn't feel that it wasn't worth... she didn't even know where that thought led. And already, she didn't like where she thought that thought was going.
Unlike Johnny, she had done this once before. She'd been younger, more trusting. And she had few good memories of her ex-boyfriend, Ryck, wherever he was now, compared to the hundreds of bad memories. It was the only comparison she had, and it didn't feel like a fair one. She'd had to learn to stand up for herself, to make people who she thought might hurt her leave her alone, from her ex, who she didn't even like to think of by name. Johnny, she reminded herself, had gone out and told the world that was watching and listening to back off the morning after they'd had an argument. She and Johnny had both gone out and tried to find each other after meeting by chance, had wanted to meet again. She and her ex had just fallen into their relationship after high school, after hooking up at too many drunken parties until they didn't have an excuse not to start seeing each other. Stupidly, she'd thought at the time that they just couldn't help themselves, like it was romantic. What wasn't romantic was the little effort he'd put in to get into their relationship and subsequently stay in it. He made an effort to see her after she decided she'd had enough of feeling unhappy with him.
One of her friends, returned from Harvard on scholarship, now some big shot in the city, invited her out to Ibiza for the summer to move on. On her first day on the beach she started sobbing because she was so far from home, and from her ex, and thus all her bad memories of him. A man in his early forties, a gay British ex-patriot, stopped and sat with her, listened as she poured her twenty-one year old heart out. He told her about the worst relationships he'd ever been in when he was her age, after he was her age, sharing bad memories. He unexpectedly shared better memories too, of relationships that had gone their course and ended, but that he looked back on well. Unlike her friends that she was with, who knew her ex far too well, this stranger, Nigel, had never met him. It was refreshing, being able to explain everything from her perspective, and not have a biased perspective returned to her. And he still thought he wasn't worth the tears. The time she'd wasted however, and so the things she could have done then, was definitely worth being upset about. They parted acquaintances, no longer strangers.
She bumped into him in Ibiza's clubs, realising only then that he was a resident DJ, and she learnt how to mix music from him. He recommended the best places to her, both on and off the beaten track. He took her to the tattoo parlour to have the phoenix done, and he'd put some headphones over her ears and played her his best stuff to drown out the pain of the needle. For a month, her best friend was a stranger she would not have met in any other corner of the world but there. On her last night on the island before flying back to her Mom's, he gave her his phone number, and told her to never ring it except to tell him she was returning to Ibiza, and so when to expect to play her that summer's tracks.
She kept her word. She got back to Queens, and got a new job at Barnes and Noble in Manhattan, and moved out. She saved up and bought a Mac with decent enough specs to practice mixing music on from her apartment. And when her friend invited her to Ibiza again, she called Nigel. His solicitor picked up to tell her that he had died, and had left his decks and music to her. She pieced together the last of his latest works, fine tuned them a little bit, hoping that he'd like her twists, and gave them to the club that he said he liked working at the most. The money she got from it paid the cost of shipping his decks back to the States, and set her up a bit for rainy days to come.
It was whilst she sat under melancholy at those same decks in her apartment, remembering how she had gotten to where she was now, that, at the six month mark, Johnny addressed things himself. He had a key, let himself in, wrapped his arms round her familiarly, smiling at the smell of her laundry softener in her dressing gown. Sighed with relief when she accepted him in.
"Could you do me a favour?" He asked, and, before she could answer, picked up her right hand and slipped a ring on to her ring finger. She stared at it, shocked. Then she squinted at it. A seemingly simple silver band, but streaking through it, unmistakably, was a man aflame.
"It's not an engagement ring, in case you were thinking that," Johnny pointed out quickly, almost too quickly. But she was too stunned to care at the glimmer of the commitment-phobe in him. "But... well, I guess it's not that far from being one anyway." He fidgeted nervously. She hadn't seen him nervous in a long while. "I know you don't like it when girls hit on me. And I don't want you to be unhappy because of that. I'd just rather it not happen, so it can't upset you. So, if having a ring on my finger," and he waved his own ring on his own right hand, magpie in flight across it cut into the metal, "keeps them away, then that's what I want." He reached in and kissed her gently, taking away the shock a bit. "Consider that my promise to you, okay?"
She just carried on staring at him. She wanted to cry. Ryck had never bothered to do this, would never have thought to have done this. As that thought flashed through her mind like a lightning bolt, Johnny wrapped his arms round her, already predicting the tears that started pouring down her face as she struggled for breath against his chest. He rocked her gently, hoping to God that things would get easier now.
As she calmed a seemingly trivial thought occurred to her. "Won't yours melt when you flame up?"
He grinned, shook his head, looked down at his own ring. "Nope, got them made specially; adamantium, some alloy that's über strong. Definitely not losing this one." He stroked her hair back, carefully rubbed her cheeks clear. "You get guys looking at you, you know. Sucks for me too."
She wrapped her arms tighter round his middle, rested her head in the crook of his neck. "At least they don't hit on me."
He sighed. "No, they do, they're just more subtle than I am."
The rings actually worked a lot of the time. The media absolutely loved it, even though they did ask 'when's the wedding?' a lot, which Johnny always found uncomfortable. But he never corrected them, and slowly as the news spread that Johnny Storm was spoken for, attached, complete with upcoming ball and chain, the droves of hot girls started leaving him alone. The ones that still didn't get the hint were clearly so loopy Zura just felt sorry for them. The most noticeable dip was when photos of Johnny meeting Zura's mother, Ceará Braith, who, Zura had told him when they first met, had given so much advice to keep troublesome boys away. Turned out that Zura got her shyness from her mother, making Johnny wonder who the 'once in the nose, once in the nuts' advice really came from.
One day she'd tell him what she learnt at twenty one on the other side of the Atlantic: that parents can't prepare you for matters of the heart. The best they could do was maybe set a good example. It was from strangers that you learnt how to deal with heartbreak.
It's all about the newfound...
Life continued. The Fantastic Four saved the world again and again, from those who wished to dominate it or destroy it altogether, even those too insane to know which one they wanted to do. And from the spectator line, Zura stood, waiting with bated breath, describing everything that was happening to Alicia. Zura wasn't sure who had it worse: she who could see everything, or Alicia who couldn't see a thing. After it all she'd do the cliché thing of pushing through the crowd to get to his arms. Back home, she'd do the un-cliché thing of trying not to cry. It was hard, really hard, watching her boyfriend risk his life time and again, hoping that he'd make it home safe. The worst when the fights were brutal, and she started to doubt that he would make it okay.
Once the fight took so much out of him she almost had to carry him to the Fantasticar, drive the Fantastic Four to the Baxter Building because they didn't have the strength to do it themselves. She sat Johnny down on the couch, cleaned up every cut, even put aloe on burns on his hands, having gotten so hot his body had reached the limit of what it could tolerate. When she finally burst into tears, sobbing uncontrollably, he never hugged her so tightly. They talked. It was hard for him too, having his confidence broken to the point where he worried he wouldn't be able to save her along with the world, wouldn't be able to see her again if this was his last fight.
Not every time that he suited up was so bad though. One chilly morning Johnny woke up lazily, groaning because he couldn't be bothered to get up. And why should he? His girlfriend was tucked up with him, pyjama-less, sheets ruffled up down around her lower back, his chest acting as her pillow. He smiled contentedly, enjoying the view, and ran his fingers lightly down her smooth, exposed back. He spotted the twitch in the corner of her mouth, telling him she was awake. "Cold?"
She shuffled up even closer. "With the Human Radiator on? No chance."
He grinned, kissed the top of her head. "Want to do something today?"
He felt her cheeks expand as she smiled against his skin. "That would be nice. Have anything in mind?"
He smirked, ran his fingers down her back slowly, seductively. "Oh, I always have something in mind..." She slapped his middle playfully as he chuckled teasingly. "I don't mind, anything you'd like to do?"
She lifted up her head, rested her chin on his chest. "It would be nice to get out of the city. Maybe the beach, just walk on the sand."
"We could fly out to the Keys..."
She rolled her eyes. "We don't need to go that far! I was thinking more like Montauk."
"Okay. Can I drive?"
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Only if you promise to not make me car-sick again."
Johnny started chuckling, remembering how fast he'd gotten the Fantasticar to go until she'd begged him to slow down, until the door practically exploded inwards.
In the second after, Zura snapped her head to the door and froze at the sight of Ben, who froze equally at the sight of her half sprawled, naked, across her equally naked boyfriend. In the same second, Johnny reacted instinctively, grabbing the sheet and pulling it up quickly around her, yelling at Ben. "Knock first much?!"
Ben, still somewhat stunned by the glimpse of the outline of Zura's curves, stammered a response. "Yeah, I... I did, but I knocked too hard..." He shook his head and focused. "Johnny, we need you, some 'tard is threatening to jump off the Empire State with his dog, apparently he'll only speak to us."
By this point, this wasn't outside the realms of normalcy. Although... "With his dog?" Zura asked.
Ben shrugged. "Yeah, apparently he bought a puppy for his son, I dunno..."
Johnny sighed. "Okay, fine. Just give me a minute, okay?" And, after an awkward moment where no one moved and everyone stared at each other awkwardly, he gestured to the door. After Ben left, he collapsed back against his pillow, groaning.
Zura sat up, wrapped the sheets around herself, over her shoulders like a cocoon. "Poor dog."
He smiled, sat up again. "I'll take you out to Montauk after, okay?" She nodded easily. He kissed her slowly, savouring the minute he'd bought. "Don't worry about this one. Just go have breakfast, have a shower, I'll be back before you know it. I'll make sure the dog gets taken care of," he teased. He then grinned at the sight of her, with her messy blue hair and brown roots showing, sleep still in her eyes, wrapped up to her chin. "I love you."
Her eyes widened a little, and then she just grinned back. "I love you too."
That was the first time they'd ever said it out loud to each other. Turned out the poor man threatening to jump had had a severe mental breakdown after his marriage had collapsed and ended, the first of a domino effect that had brought him to the top of the Empire State Building, hoping that if the Fantastic Four thought that his life was worth saving, then he was worth another chance from his ex-wife, and his two-year old son. Johnny watched as Reed told the guy that the only person who could fix his life was himself, and talked him down. Suffice it to say, the man was in custody, and the dog - a labrador puppy as cute as out of toilet roll ads - sat around waiting for his fate to be decided for it. The son couldn't take it; he was allergic.
So the puppy went with Johnny and Zura to Montauk, tail wagging as he stuck his head out the car into the wind as Zura laughed as Johnny copied him. When they got it back to the Baxter Building, wondering whether or not to keep it, the puppy clambered up on to Ben, frozen with uncertainty, and started licking his face, wagging its tail, making Ben chuckle with surprised delight. "Awe, ain't that cute?"
"See? We've got to keep him now, he even likes the Boulder!" Johnny argued with the reluctant cop who'd been sent to retrieve the dog.
Despite the fact that Johnny, of course, hadn't been referring to the dog with the name, Zura liked the idea of it, and Boulder the labrador moved to her apartment.
Summer became fall, fall became winter. In silent agreement that New York City in the winter was too cold, the bad guys - for the most part - hibernated. So many evil plans rest on having good weather. Sue started to see less and less of her brother, or when she saw him Zura, or Maggie as he called her - "Magpie, Maggie" - was there too. Her jobs made her verging on nocturnal, so she woke late, fed Boulder and took him for long walks in Central Park, went to her evening street-dancing classes, fed Boulder again, went to work late, got back late, went to sleep late, so when she was working Johnny stayed at her apartment. When she wasn't, they stayed at the Baxter Building, sleeping under summer sheets as Johnny kept them warm through the night, Boulder sleeping in his basket in the corner. The nights they spent apart became fewer and far between.
When Ben and Alicia got married, Zura was, without even needing to ask, Johnny's plus one. Whilst Johnny happily Armani-ed up, she reluctantly put on her bridesmaid dress and heels, and begged Johnny to burn the shoes the moment she took them off, having offended her feet so much. When the happy bride threw the bouquet, Zura stayed at his side, interested only in who actually caught it, rather than being amongst the group of women hoping to catch it themselves.
He asked her whether she actually wanted to join them, rather than appease him. She looked at him funnily. "Johnny, if we get married, I'd rather it be in our time, rather than next time."
We are the newborn...
Not long after Johnny sat Reed down for what was clearly going to be a serious, grown up conversation. Reed had no idea what to do with himself.
"We've been talking about moving in together," Johnny told him. At Reed's blank expression, he explained a little further to the smartest dumb guy he knew. "Y'know, Maggie and I."
"Oh... okay..." Reed smiled. "Good for you, Johnny."
Johnny shrugged. "We've been trying to figure out what to do. I mean, her apartment's nice, but it's kinda small, particularly for both her and the dog, and it's a bit far out from here. Even though you and Sue, and Ben and Alicia are doing your whole married-thing here, we're still a team. When shit goes down, it works better that we're all here, y'know? So..."
Reed frowned at him, not following. "So...?"
"Well, the building's yours now, right?" Reed nodded; saved being evicted because of Ben's stomping, the repeated attacks, minor explosions when his experiments went wrong, and, before, Johnny's parties. "You and Sue are in the floor below, and I know Ben and Alicia are thinking of moving into the floor below you guys. I was wondering whether we could have that floor instead, and Ben could take the floor below us. 'Cos no one wants to be living underneath Ben, we'd be worrying that he'd fall through the ceiling anytime."
"Just 'cos I don't have ears doesn't mean I can't hear you, jackass!"
The two men ignored Ben, shouting from across the penthouse, and Reed sat forward. "Are you sure Azura wants this?"
Johnny looked at him patiently. "We talked about it. She's been wanting to move out of her place for a while, now that's she's focusing on her music it's too small for her with all her kit, and there's no point in getting our own place if this is where I need to be." He shrugged. "Unless there's something she's not telling me, and I don't think there is, she doesn't mind. Besides, she likes you guys. Even Termite Mound guy."
"Oi!"
Johnny tried, and failed, to conceal his grin, and then sobered as he said, "Reed, I can't sleep the nights she's not here, or I'm not at hers." He shrugged helplessly. "I always feel like a kid that doesn't have his teddy bear with him. It just doesn't feel right any more."
Reed smiled understandingly. It wasn't the analogy he'd give, but he knew the feeling very well. "You know that floor's a wreck, right?"
Johnny just grinned. "Well, I had some design ideas..."
Reed raised an eyebrow. "Johnny, I'm not paying for a state of the art TV so you can watch games from a jacuzzi."
Johnny looked at him like he was insane. "Who said you had to?" Reed's turn to look at him like he was insane. "We just got sponsored by Adidas. They can pay for it."
Reed groaned. "Johnny, we're not wearing new uniforms with Adidas stripes on them..."
Again, Johnny looked at him like he was insane. "Not you, Maggie and I. She's the new face of their new street clothing line-up. You'll see the billboards soon enough."
Sure enough, as the renovation began on the Baxter Building, Reed stepped outside one day and saw Azura's face plastered up for the world to see. She was standing at her decks, grinning down, blue hair flying, one hand spinning a record, old-school, and the other was pointing up in the air to the unheard music she was playing. All her clothing was clearly branded and striped, from the crop top and the unzipped jacket she wore over it, but most notably the arm up she had a wristband with Adidas' logo, bold and clear, and on the other was a dark blue wrist band, Fantastic Four's own logo burning its outline. Till the sun comes up, the tag line read. When Reed asked her what changed her mind about being media shy, she just blushed sheepishly. "They put a lot of zeros on the cheque. And they redid my hair for the photo-shoot, the roots were starting to show. They gave me my own sneakers. I actually really like them, they're black and blue."
Reed, Sue and Ben were, for the most part, banished from Johnny's new floor during its transformation, making them all the more worried when new trucks would turn up with furniture, appliances and technology wrapped up, hidden. They had a collective picture of disco lights and over-loud speakers to make the building shake, the aforementioned jacuzzi and wall-sized TV. That Johnny would forget things like a kitchen. Eventually they caved and begged Zura to tell them what Johnny was building as their future home, and she laughed and laughed when they told her what they dreaded. She teased them at first, telling them the jacuzzi had expanded to a full-sized pool, and that the bass of the speakers would deafen all of New York. State, not city, she teased. She was just as bad as he was.
Then she relented, giggling, and snuck them downstairs. "It's almost finished, just need to paint the walls, but we can't decide on the colours yet," she told them as she typed in the code to the front door, and then pushed them open.
They were speechless.
Maybe it was just the lack of colour to finish it off, but for the youngest member of the Fantastic Four, the new apartment was... well, normal. A lot of it was open plan, or, like Reed's laboratory on the top floor, just had glass walls. The kitchen, evidently remembered, was big, spacious and light, everything in chrome so Johnny couldn't accidentally set anything on fire. In fact, a lot of the apartment had clearly been designed with that potential in mind. There was very little that Johnny could set alight with ease, except maybe the sofa covers. There were fire extinguishers everywhere. In the corner was a studio, fully set up for Zura to work in, the only corner of the apartment that didn't have windows, and instead had sound-proofing over the wall. And, right by the view of Manhattan, was Boulder's basket, so he could watch helicopters.
"All the glass is triple-glazed by the way," Zura told them. "I'm probably going to have my headphones on most of the time, but in case I need to test it out loud, so to speak, you shouldn't hear too much." She grinned at them. "And sorry to disappoint, but there's no pool, no jacuzzi. The bath tub's pretty big though."
It was the most anti-climactic Johnny had ever been in his life. The finished product looked more like their home though: half a wall dedicated itself loudly to Fantastic Four mementoes; newspaper clippings, photographs, all stuck to the wall. Some of it was just Johnny, or his alter ego the Human Torch, but most of it was about the team, spanning the years since their fateful trip to Von Doom's space-station. The other half was for Zura; her flyer, with her cell phone number, was in pride of place in the centre, surrounded by more flyers from so many other events she'd enjoyed doing, photos of her gigs, promotional work from Adidas. In between were photos of the two of them, taken by family and friends, or ones they actually liked and didn't mind from fans. Throughout the apartment were more framed photos of the two of them, or photos of their families. Sue's moving in gift was a framed collection of photos of them as kids, which Zura had cooed over and insisted on hanging up, to Johnny's annoyance. Even more to his annoyance, Reed had designed the frame so it wouldn't melt if Johnny tried to get rid of it. No matter how hard he tried before Zura told him to stop it.
Day by day, soon the change will come...
Life continued still. Zura introduced Johnny to laundry and washing up liquid, ending a long argument that he was a lazy ass who never helped out around the house. He melted marshmallows with his fingers to make s'mores when they stayed in. He even picked up after Boulder when he took him for walks in Central Park. She made a mix tape of his favourite rock bands, blending the tracks together to get rid of the pauses between each one. He went out and saved the world. She launched her career as a music producer from their apartment, releasing her first album of original work, Black Tempest, leading to a tour across Europe, where it was most successful, no doubt thanks to its Ibiza influences. Every gig, provided the world wasn't about to end, Johnny went to with her, or joined her as soon as he could, even if he had to fly himself.
Then, after nine months of being the Fantastic Three, Johnny became an uncle.
On what had started out as an ordinary day, Johnny found himself in a hospital waiting room for several hours, Zura holding his hand to keep him patient. It was the end of a long couple of years. Due to their unique condition, trying to figure out exactly what to expect if they were going to have children - whether they'd have superpowers too, or whether their DNA was so cooked it wasn't capable of producing even a healthy, normal baby - Sue and Reed's attempts to conceive had dragged both Ben and Johnny into the mix. Johnny had told Zura it felt even more weird than having his invisible sister strip off her clothes on the Brooklyn Bridge, given that he'd had to do exactly what he'd have to do if he visited an actual fertility clinic, except this was so his sister could have kids. She'd laughed, but nonetheless had been curious. What kind of kids was he capable of producing?
Answer: Reed had no idea. No amount of tests gave him definitive answers. All he ended up gleaning was that it had taken a tiny fraction of a chance for them to survive the cloud in the first place.
When Sue actually got pregnant, Reed's hair started to get grayer at the edges. Sue was almost constantly worried about using her powers, worried that turning invisible would affect the baby. No amount of whale music, or Mozart for the baby bump, put their minds at rest. But the baby's heartbeat remained steady and healthy, nothing out of the ordinary, at every stage. If they had been normal parents, it would have been one of the easiest pregnancies. But of course they weren't normal. They were still superheroes, but now Sue got to watch from the sidelines too, both Alicia and Zura holding her hands to stop her from joining the fight. Given that it was all over the news, one would think that the bad guys would show some manners and cool it during her 'fragile state', as the headlines put it to explain her absence from the team. But no such luck.
In a way it wasn't just the women waiting at the sidelines. Both Ben and Johnny had a lot of hope riding on this, though neither voiced as much to Reed, knowing that the man was under enough stress as it was. Reed knew anyway, knew what it meant to everyone. Ben was hoping that this could mean that he and Alicia could one day have kids who weren't boulders like him. For Johnny, it was about having that option at least. Or at least the reassurance that if he ever got Zura pregnant, happy accident or otherwise, it wouldn't incinerate her from the inside. Morbid thought aside, he was still young and boyish, and too happy with his lifestyle to throw having children into the mix. He was grown up enough to know that the kids would win over partying. He knew that Zura wanted to see what would happen with her music, see if she could avoid being a fad and have a career that would last as long as she wanted it to, that having kids wasn't what she foresaw on the horizon yet. But he did know it was a question of 'yet', not 'never'. He also knew that for him, it wasn't a question of 'never' for him any more either.
It was worth it in the end. Reed finally came out to the waiting room, exhausted too from the longest day of his life, and asked Johnny if he wanted to meet his nephew, Franklin.
Franklin didn't know it, might never really appreciate it, but he changed everything for the Fantastic Four. Reed started living up to his superhero name, becoming as flexible as he humanly could be to defeat all conventions of stay-at-home-moms and go-to-work-dads. Sue, having gone through the lengthy process of hoping that she'd have kids, desperately tried not to now be overprotective, to not put forcefields around every little thing that could harm her little boy. And then when the world was threatened yet again, Zura and Alicia, on the sidelines, became child-minders too, distracting the baby whilst Mommy and Daddy fought the baddies just out the window. Ben, now that he had evidence that it was possible to start a family, started seriously thinking about having one. And Johnny, who used to say "babies, yuck", absolutely adored his nephew, loved spoiling him rotten. He made him his own super-baby costume. Franklin's first laugh was at Johnny accidentally burning his teddy bear. The only thing that cooled his adoration slightly was when Franklin threw up over his Hugo Boss t-shirt, but he got over that, having made him sick in the first place by bouncing him up and down. Zura produced some lullabies for him - or, more accurately, for his parents - to put him to sleep. She told Johnny it was the hardest project she'd ever done, figuring out how to make music that dulled the senses rather than hyped them up. But Johnny made a good test subject, as hyperactive as he was. If it worked on him, it would work on the baby of superheroes.
And that was all long before any of them found out he had powers far more extraordinary than his parents, uncle or godfather.
Once, as Reed tried to get his infant son to stop crying, at a loss for what Franklin wanted, he turned to Johnny and asked him whether he ever missed his single days. Johnny looked at him surprisingly shrewdly, as though to ask who was really being asked that, and looked over his shoulder to Zura, helping Sue make dinner in the kitchen. "Bro, that's my girlfriend. I get to go home with her every night. No, I don't miss it."
We took a big step forward...
Then, on another normal day, a long way since they'd met, Johnny found himself approaching his thirtieth birthday, and realised that it was about time to grow up, having gotten too old to be a giant kid still. He and Zura were walking down the block, discussing a movie they'd just been to, what to have for dinner, hand in hand. Gone were the days when they would have been mobbed by adoring fans clamouring for autographs or to just touch the Human Torch. A few people stopped and stared, mostly tourists, but the Fantastic Four had become part of New York City. Not exactly a fad that was over, but the initial excitement had died down. Besides, Johnny wasn't quite the exhibitionist he used to be.
They walked past City Hall, and the sight of the building in the corner of his eye stopped Johnny in his tracks. Zura stopped too, a few steps ahead of him, frowned worryingly at him. He looked up at the building, then back down at her.
She'd changed over the years. Not by much, not so much that she wasn't the same young woman that he'd met years ago, but she had. At first sight the blue in her hair had almost grown out, and had returned to its natural, so dark it was almost black shade, and grown it out as Johnny got a little more control and stopped burning everything he touched. These days she just had blue tips that she spiked up when she was performing. The constant dying had started ruining her hair, so she'd stopped, and now it looked and felt healthy again, save for the ends that she was reluctant to get rid of completely. She was starting to get smile lines around her eyes, coming earlier than they ought from the late nights she still did.
But there was more than what appeared to the eye. He still remembered how distrusting she'd been when they met, how she'd cut him off with their drinks-switch, how unnerved she'd felt trying to compete against women who were, by modern standards, extremely attractive; size zero by eating nothing when she didn't calorie count, wearing make-up so thick one could no longer guess the actual colour of their skin whilst she just quickly put on some concealer and eyeliner to conceal the odd zit and the shadows under her eyes from the late nights. Back then her lack of concealment for who she was had been a defiance, almost like a dare for people to like her as she was. Now she was wearing nothing but some lip balm because her lips were dry, and she greeted everyone new with ease. Happiness had made her more confident. Happiness made her just be.
Knowing that made him prouder of himself than anything he'd ever done in his life, including everything he did for the Fantastic Four. He made her happy. He couldn't really say he'd ever made anyone happy like that.
He smiled, happily, and tugged her closer, so no one passing could hear what he was about to say.
"I can't imagine my life without you any more."
She grinned slowly, touched. "Love you too."
He wanted to grin back, but he was actually being very serious for once. "I know we haven't really talked about it, but... if we were to get married, what kind of wedding do you want?"
She stared at him, stunned. "I... Jesus, Johnny, I... I don't know..." She took a deep breath, thought as calmly as she could. "I guess... when I was younger, when I was a kid I... dressed up my Barbies with white dresses, used Mom's white handkerchiefs for veils and had them walk down the aisle with Ken like a rehearsal. But..." She moved a little closer, to reveal a secret. "I really don't like wearing big dresses. I'd get hay-fever from the flowers. I hate heels. They're uncomfortable, why would I want to spend a day unable to walk properly?" They both grinned. She hadn't told him anything new by this point. "I guess I just want to go to City... Hall..." She looked up at the building they were standing in front of, and stared back at him. "Did you plan this?" She asked, curiously.
He shook his head, honestly. "No. I've been thinking about it a bit, so I figured I'd bring it up, as we're here." He squeezed her hand. "Just... when I think about it, I imagine all the things I know neither of us want. I don't want to do what Sue and Reed did, which was failed to get married four times. I kinda figured that you don't want it to be a media circus, so low-key, top-secret. The only way I can think of making that happen is spur-of-the-moment, no appointments, nothing to set the hounds on our scent. But... It's a wedding. We're only meant to do it once, it's meant to be special. A lot of girls want that fairy-tale wedding. So if that's what you want, then I'd do everything I could to make sure you get to have that the way you want it to be."
She wrapped her arms round him, touched. "You really have been thinking about this, haven't you?" He smiled happily down at her, nodded. "I have thought about it, about us getting married. About weddings. When I went with Alicia for dress fittings... there were some nice ones there. But..." She sighed, her resolve building. "I kinda mean it actually. I don't care about the fairy-tale wedding. I just want to be married." She suddenly grinned teasingly. "And plan a really, really great honeymoon."
He grinned too, liking her idea. "Want to do it today, or come back another time?"
Ever practical, Zura looked at her watch. "What are the others doing today?"
"Nothing much, I think. Nothing important anyway."
"We can try to do it today. We might want to walk round the block and come back though, we've been standing here for a bit, people will notice."
He nodded, leant down and kissed her softly. "Shall I make it official? Get down on one knee?" He teased.
She softly batted his arm. "I think that would defeat the object of keeping it quiet, it would be trending online within a minute."
"Still." He didn't get down on one knee, but he did lean in so absolutely no one but her heard him. "Azura Braith, will you marry me?"
Zura's eyes teared up. "Yes..." She kissed him back, and gasped. "Oh my God, we're actually doing this!" But her smile didn't falter. The tears were joy, nothing more, nothing less.
He took her hand, grinning, and led her round the block for a minute, and then doubled back and snuck in quickly. A few phone calls later, and they had everyone they needed; Reed, Sue, Franklin and Boulder picked up Ceará Braith from Queens in a family car, rather than the attention-drawing Fantasticar or Johnny's Porsche, and Ben and Alicia made their way separately on the subway. All of them did as they were told, and came in jeans and sweatshirts, casual things, comfortable things. Zura forbade her Mom from wearing a hat. Zura wore a jacket she'd had since she was in her late teens - something old, her Adidas sneakers - something new. Sue lent her a hair clip - something borrowed - to tidy up her hair quickly in the ladies' - something blue. Then an official read out that which he was vested in by the state of New York, and Johnny and Zura switched their commitment rings from their right hands to their left, as Franklin started crying because no one was paying him any attention, and Ben hiccoughed all the way through.
By the time the press got wind of it, they had already booked their flights - first class, Johnny still didn't fly coach - and were packing to get out of the city. They read all about it from their villa in Bali. Jonathan 'Johnny' Storm, aka the Human Torch, a founding member of the Fantastic Four, and one of the city's most popular bachelors, is rumoured to have married his long-term girlfriend Azura Braith, aka DJ Magpie, music producer and face of Adidas' latest street collection, at New York City's city hall...
And so the boy who fried his sister's bouquet at her final wedding to escape getting remotely tied down finally grew up. Sort of.
"Johnny, I know you've always wanted to do this, but I'm really not sure this is a very good idea..."
"I know, but... how bad could it be?"
"This might actually kill you."
"It might not...?"
"Johnny, we're on our honeymoon. Please get down from there."
"But Maggie, seriously, how cool would it be?"
"It's molten rock. Even if you survive diving into the volcano, it's probably gonna feel gross. Really gross."
"You're putting me off this now..."
"That was kind of the point... Please, it's not worth it. Let's go back to our room, I promise I'll make that worth it."
And, now to be ever a good husband, he obeyed.
We've come a long way since that day
And we would never look back at the faded silhouette
"... fast forward..."
Johnny took a swig from the vodka bottle they were sharing, taking a break from the last song he'd bounced up and down to, his arm round her shoulders, hers round her back. "Hey, it's your tune!"
Zura grinned, not refuting his claim. "... we have a beaten path before us..."
Johnny laughed and cheered as she carried on singing, tipsily, and lined up his shot. He started as Zura wrapped her arms round his middle from behind him. "Come on people, we have all seen the signs..." she whispered, almost huskily, into his ear as he grinned, relaxed back against her until her chin slid over his shoulder blade. He took a hand off his club to hold her entwined hands over his abs, and shot with his free hand. The ball just - just - made it into the windmill and made it out on the other side, verging away from the hole so close to her own ball.
Zura grinned against his back and patted his shoulder commiseratively and stepped forward to take her own shot. Her ball was only a couple of inches away. "... And we may never get back to -"
"Oh no you don't!" Johnny grabbed her round her own middle and lifted her right off her feet, making her shriek with laughter, both whacking his arm and gripping it to not fall, and screamed more as he spun them both round, round and round until she was so dizzy and laughing so much her head lolled back, bending over his shoulder, exposing her neck to him. He stopped turning, and pressed his face into that stretch of skin, feeling her pulse against his closed eyes, smelt her perfume. Her breath hitched, but she didn't make him let her go, or stop breathing - just breathing - against the sensitives nerves in her neck. He slowly set her back on the ground, but didn't let her go.
Her iPod kept playing Avicii.
"Can I take my shot now?" She asked, her voice trembling a little, turning her head slightly towards his. She was breathing heavily, making her chest rise and fall more than it ought. He smiled, nodded ever so slightly, and, without letting her go in the slightest, walked her over to her shot. Helped her line up, like a cliche, and chuckled as it went wide.
"Cheat," she teased. He just grinned into her skin. She lifted her golf club and lightly tapped the other side of his head with its handle. "Told you my Mom's rule stands."
"What other rules does your Mom have?" Johnny asked, still nuzzling her skin, his hands starting to clench at her sides.
She tried not to moan, let a wobbly arm reach up so she could tread her fingers through his hair to keep him exactly where he was. "That if you're going to go home with a stranger..." She trailed her fingers out of his hair, down his cheek, gently pulling his head to face her. "... Do it sober."
He started to smirk, thinking she meant one thing, one good thing, and then he frowned as sense caught up with him. She'd been leaning on him for the past minute, not just because he was warm and it felt undeniably good, but because she wouldn't be able to stand straight. Her face was turning pale, and she was still breathing heavily, but like she was controlling it, trying to rein in rebelling innards. He shouldn't have spun her around so much; it had spiralled the cider and vodka straight up to her head, and crashed down to swirl uncomfortably in her stomach.
It was sobering. He let her go slowly, kept his hand on her shoulder as she swayed uncomfortably. "You okay?"
She nodded slowly, and then sat down on the course, lay back on the cool green, closed her eyes and breathed calmly. Johnny watched her for an awkward moment, and then shrugged and jumped down next to her, facing the other way, leaning up on his elbow. She opened her eyes, looked down at him. "Ugh," she moaned pitifully, and let her head fall back, making him grin. He smiled sympathetically, reached out to stroke her shin through her jeans. He saw a smile flitter over her face. "I concede; you win," she told him, and pushed her golf ball away from them. "Even though you cheated."
He laughed out loud, glad to see her chest rumble with laughter too. "We'll have to have a rematch sometime."
She looked across at him again. She wasn't so drunk that she didn't know he was asking her out, just too sick to sit up properly. She lay back again, stared at the stars, and smiled to herself. "As long as you play fair and square."
He chuckled again. They fell to silence; Johnny just watched as Zura breathed in and out, trying to stop her head and stomach spinning. He just knew that he would remember this moment for the rest of his life, if only for her softly singing, all inhibition gone, all shame and embarrassment forgotten. He would remember her pink cheeks, her breath misting on the air, her hair messily pillowing around her head, the rise and fall of her chest. He would remember it, even if the lyrics turned out to be false.
Johnny Storm began to fall in love for the first time, for the only time, for the best time, as Azura Braith sang: "... We are the future and we are here to stay..."
And now I'm done :-) For recognition of copyrights, see Part I: they all apply here too.
Well, folks, it's been my pleasure to write this; I hope it has been your pleasure to read it. If it has been so, I also hope that you'll let me know, and even better than that, that you'll let me know why it was. It would be my pleasure to write back and thank you for it; it gives me another chance to ramble about my fanfiction.
Otherwise, I wish you all very well x