rumncokebaby

[rumncokebaby]

safety net

pairing: johnny storm x female reader

synopsis: the fire burned out, and she wonders if she’s just what’s left.

The box shows up because Sue is on a cleaning tear.

She texts the group chat a photo of a mountain of labeled cardboard stacked in a Baxter Building corridor—REED’S LAB JUNK, BEN’S WORKOUT TAPES, JOHNNY’S “DO NOT OPEN.” Ten minutes later, a courier knocks at your apartment door with one of those boxes and a note in Sue’s tidy handwriting: You live with him, therefore you own half this hazard. Love, your sister-in-law.

Johnny is in the shower singing off-key to a playlist you made him months ago. The kitchen smells like the coffee he forgot on the counter and the cinnamon candle you lit to bully the place into feeling like morning. You tell yourself you’re just going to move the box out of the hallway before he slips on it and breaks something you cannot pronounce. You tell yourself you’re not nosy; you’re helpful.

The tape peels back with a papery sigh. Inside, there’s the comfortable chaos of his twenties: charred racing gloves, a pair of novelty sunglasses with flames cut across the lenses, a wrinkled congratulatory letter from the New York Fire Department (“Please stop dropping by unannounced; we have procedures”), a Monaco Grand Prix badge on a lanyard stiff with salt. Beneath—because of course—there’s a shoebox that rattles like seashells.

You hesitate. The shower turns off. If you set this down and walk away, today can be ordinary.

You don’t set it down. The lid slides off. Polaroids look up in overexposed summers.

He’s younger in them by edges, not years—shoulders golden, jaw rough with sleep deprivation and bravado, grin loose, eyes that color you know better than your own hands lit like a dare. And her. The ex you’ve never met but have met everywhere: in half stories Ben starts and stops with a laugh, in the way Reed says “back when we were all idiots,” in Sue’s soft warnings that carry the lightest weather alert.

In one photo she’s half on his lap at a rooftop party, hair lifted by a July wind, a plastic cup sweating against his thigh. In another she’s on his shoulders in a crowd, his hands cuffed at her calves, his mouth open in a yell you can hear. In the last one in that handful, he isn’t looking at the camera but at her, and the look is reckless devotion, unedited.

Your stomach drops an elevator floor and does not stop at the next one.

He loved her, you think, and the word arrives like a splinter under the nail.

Water stops. You slide the Polaroids back with the careful fingers of someone repacking an injury, fold the tape over the seams, push the shoebox deeper into the shipping box until it is swallowed by cardboard. When Johnny pads out of the bathroom with a towel low on his hips and the steam still clinging to his hair, he smells like your shampoo because he ran out of his and you buy yours in bulk anyway.

“You open the Sue Bomb?” he asks. His smile is damp and ridiculous. He kisses your cheek from behind and fog breathes over your ear. “I swear if there’s another pair of those flame shades, I’m starting a museum.”

“Didn’t touch it,” you say, and your voice sounds like it has gone through customs.

He doesn’t notice. He’s counting a new cluster of freckles on your shoulder, fingertip pressed to each tiny sun, murmuring the numbers like a spell. He asks about pasta night, about that volcano documentary you added to the queue because he once said the word lava like it was a love letter. He holds up the colander like a trophy, and when he turns the stove on he does it carefully—the way he learned to after the first time you flinched from a pilot flame.

Every good love story is about fire and what it learned to do with its hands.

You have pasta. You fall asleep with your face tucked into his T-shirt while a narrator explains magma and time. You wake in the shadow hour with a knot in your chest that feels like a fist learning to close.

In the morning, Sue apologizes for the box while you stir cream into your coffee at the lab kitchen island. She’s in athleisure and stern competence. “I should’ve filtered,” she says, one elbow braced, watching you with a sister’s tenderness and a scientist’s precision. “He was a whirlwind. We all were. If anything in there makes you uncomfortable—”

“It’s fine,” you say quickly. “I’m an adult.”

She hums. “Adults have feelings too.”

The question escapes before you mean it to. “Did he love her more?”

Sue’s expression softens in that way of hers that is both honesty and mercy. “He loved her loudly,” she answers. “He was twenty-two and allergic to silence. Loud can look like more.” She pauses. “Sometimes it’s just louder.”

You nod like she has handed you something before you figured out where to put it.

Franklin, five and solemn in a cape and one sock, barrels in with a drawing that is eighty percent orange scribbles. “Auntie, this is Uncle Johnny doing big fire,” he declares. Then he leans his head against your leg. “Are you sad?”

“I’m okay,” you say, because that is an answer children understand. “I’m just thinking.”

He considers, then removes his cape and ties it around your waist with a ritual air. “Now you have powers,” he says, satisfied, and runs out again, hollering about cereal.

You carry that line—loud can look like more—around all day, a coal in your hand you forget is there until it glows through the skin.

At night you doomscroll. You know better. You do it anyway. A fan account has stitched together a timeline of Johnny’s great romances like an unsolicited press kit. Monaco, Miami, a kiss in the rain outside a club that burned down a year later. The comments are miniature dioramas of certainty: They were endgame. Look at the way he touched her face. He’ll never love like that again. He used to be a myth.

You stare at the photo of his hand on her face, and it is a hand you know at the molecule. The gentle, practiced way he unclasps your necklace when you’ve fallen asleep in it. The steady pressure between your shoulders when you can’t quiet your breath. The way he threads your fingers with his when cameras blur your edges and you need the truth of skin. You set the phone down as if it might bruise the table and go brush your teeth until the gumline flares.

When you slide into bed, he’s sprawled on his stomach, hair a riot, mouth open on a sleep-breath. People think chaos is who he is because they see the flare; you know the warm, ridiculous center. He says your name in his sleep like he’s counting himself home.

It doesn’t matter, that sensible voice says. It doesn’t matter that he sleeps like you are a prayer if daylight once taught him other liturgies.

Days rearrange themselves around the doubt. You begin moving in careful arcs, like there are bruises in the room you don’t want to bump. Johnny notices in the way of someone who has learned to watch for smoke. He asks what’s wrong without saying those exact words, because the last time he tried you cried over a burnt garlic bread and laughed for ten minutes because grief sometimes picks the silliest costume.

“What if we get out of the city this weekend?” he offers. “The Cape? We can steal Ben’s convertible and pretend we’re eighty.”

“Maybe,” you say.

“I miss you,” he says, plain, unperformative, and the honesty throws your blood off-balance.

“I’m right here,” you answer, and you are—physically there in the kitchen, sleeve pulled over your hand, a pale dusting of flour across your wrist from rolling out pie dough for Sue because she claims baking is your love language and she is greedy—but part of you is still bent over a shoebox inside your chest, counting ghosts.

Ben finds you in the gym trying to outrun feelings. He hands you water and says, “Everybody talks about Johnny like he’s a bonfire. Newsflash, bonfires go out if you feed ’em only wind.”

You blink sweat into your hairline. “Was that…for me?”

He sighs. “He used to be all flash. Didn’t know what to do with stillness. Then he met you and now he goes home. Saves fuel. It ain’t less. It’s more on purpose.”

Something inside you twists. “Ben,” you say, quiet, “have you seen the photos?”

“Kid,” he says, and his voice drops the gravel for a second, goes soft. “I was there for a lot of ‘em. You know what those nights had that yours don’t?” He gestures vaguely. “Police lights. The next morning we did damage control. Johnny thinks you like your mornings unmarred.”

He walks away, leaving you with an ache and a bouquet of new questions.

On Tuesday, there’s a mission that isn’t a mission so much as a tantruming energy grid near the river. Routine until it isn’t. Johnny misjudges a leap in a chemical gust and drops, not far, not deadly, just enough to make your heart punch your ribs like a fist. He pops up grinning, easy, sheepish. “I’m okay,” he says, and Reed hums calculations while Sue’s forcefield flickers like a held breath.

You want to yell. You want to hold his face and say, Do you know the cliff edge I live near? Instead, you dust soot from his cheek and say, “Careful,” and your voice breaks on the hinge of the word.

Later in the car, he’s quiet. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t,” you lie.

He stares out the window. “I used to scare people for sport,” he says, odd and rueful. “Made me feel immortal. It’s stupid. It’s not who I want to be anymore.”

“Who do you want to be?” you ask, and it is a sincerity and a plea.

“The guy you don’t have to worry about,” he says immediately, then winces. “I mean—not ever, I know who I am—but the guy who comes home.” He glances over. “The guy who deserves you.”

Your hands, ordinary and startling, rest useless in your lap. They look like they could hold a box and not open it.

You don’t fight that night. You don’t speak. That’s the problem.

On Friday, the team hosts a small donor gala, which is to say Reed practices smiling at a mirror, Sue weaponizes a pair of heels, and Ben threatens to install a dress code for “tech billionaires with ugly shoes.” You wear black and quiet confidence and a lipstick shade that short-circuits Johnny’s brain.

“Marry me,” he says absently, the way he always does when you get out of the car. Then he grins to take the edge off because it’s a joke and a plan and the future and the present, and you smile like you always do while something raw and private rubs thin beneath the humor.

Inside, someone you don’t know asks if you met Johnny before or after the Monaco phase. The question is a chandelier—pretty, brittle, likely to fall. You excuse yourself for water and find a hallway where the building hums like a seashell. There’s a framed photo from five years ago catching the light: Johnny laughing on a balcony, a champagne flute tilting in his hand, his ex in white that’s not a wedding dress but reads like a promise anyway. The past looks lit. You want to pull the frame down. You want to be reasonable. You want to stop wanting anything.

“Hey.” His voice, behind you, careful.

You jump. Johnny leans in the doorway, tie askew, a bruise like a thumbprint along his jaw from the grid tantrum. He reads weather, always has. “Walk with me?”

You climb to the roof, where the city lies open like a living map. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, the thing he does when he doesn’t trust them. He looks at the sky like he is asking it to keep a secret.

“You’ve been gone,” he says, not accusing, only aching. “And you haven’t gone anywhere.”

“We’ve been busy,” you deflect.

“Try again,” he says gently, and unfairly, the gentleness is what makes you tremble.

You fold your arms. The wind tugs a strand across your mouth. “I found the photos,” you say, because to bleed is sometimes the only way not to drown. “In the box. And the internet helps if you want to hurt yourself for free.”

He blinks. “Photos?”

“I saw the way you looked at her,” you continue, and the words scrape like gravel. “Reckless. Loud. Like the world was ending and good, let it. And I—” breath catches, “—I feel like I get what’s left. The after. I get the quiet because someone else got the fire.”

He flinches like your hand slipped and cut him under the ribs. “That’s not—”

“I know you’re not cheating. I’m not accusing you of wanting her. It’s not that. It’s that I looked at those pictures and thought, if I hadn’t met you—if I’d chosen someone else—I wouldn’t know what it’s like to measure myself against a ghost. I think I’d be happier.”

The wind takes the words and smears them over the skyline. He goes very still. For a beat something in his face totally empties, like a building’s lights flickering out in a grid collapse.

“Someone else,” he repeats, not like a question but like he is testing the edge of a blade. “You could’ve loved anyone else.”

You weren’t trying to hurt him. You did anyway. “Johnny—”

“No, wait.” He laughs, but it breaks in the middle. He’s always been the flame who thought he could control the air. Right now he looks like what happens when you realize the air can leave. “I have lived so sure it was me. That it was…inevitable. You and me. Like gravity. But it wasn’t. It was a choice. Your choice.”

“It was,” you whisper, because you won’t lie to make this easier.

“And I…God.” He drags a hand through his hair; the wind frays it and he doesn’t care. His voice dulls into honesty. “I’ve been arrogant. I moved through us like love was a thing I deserved because I wanted it enough—because I’d already paid for it in stupid, public currency. I forgot you had options that didn’t include me. That you could have taken your mornings and your laugh and your patience and handed them to anyone who hadn’t already burned himself out.”

It is a strange, devastating relief to see your pain reflected back at you from his face. He looks knocked out of orbit. “I don’t love you less,” he says, each word deliberately placed. “I love you quieter because I finally learned how not to set everything on fire. I save my fuel for you. For years. For boring afternoons. For you. And I was so sure you could feel it that I didn’t say it. That’s on me.”

You swallow hard. “It looked different.”

“It does,” he admits. “With her, it was theater. With you, it’s home. With her, I wanted an audience. With you, I want to live a very long time and forget to look up at the balcony because I’m busy fixing the leaky sink with you.” He takes a breath that shakes. “I know the photos look like more. They’re louder. Loud isn’t more.”

“I don’t want to be the safe option,” you say, and the words are smaller than what you mean.

“You’re not safe,” he says fiercely, stepping closer. “You’re the risk I wake up and take every day. You’re the choice that scares me because losing you would be…absolute. It could’ve been anyone else, and it wasn’t, and I am so terrified you’ll wake up and decide to fix that mistake.”

“Johnny.”

“Tell me what to do,” he says. There’s no bravado left, just a man with his hands open. “If you need public, I’ll be public. If you need story, I’ll tell it. If you need me to drag that hallway photo down with my teeth, I will. If you need me to say I was a fool, I’ll write it across the sky until Reed complains about light pollution.”

You want to laugh, and it hurts too much, and you laugh anyway, one sound that is mostly a sob. “I don’t want theater.”

“What do you want?”

“To stop feeling like I arrived after the party and everyone already ate.”

He exhales on something like a prayer. “The party ended because I got tired of never going home. Then I met you and the best room in the world was a kitchen with a light left on for me. Stay,” he says, and he very rarely begs. He begs now. “Stay and let me prove it in ways that never go viral.”

You move first, because staying still hurts. You step into him and he meets you without a check to make sure the air permits it. His hands come around you, not caging, holding. He puts his mouth to your hairline and says, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” like he is learning your language and wants to be fluent.

Belief feels like standing barefoot on ice that doesn’t crack. It hurts. You stand anyway.

He walks you down with his hand hooked in your back pocket. In the hall he stops at the framed photo and looks at it as if it were an artifact from a country he doesn’t visit. He doesn’t touch it until you nod. “Take it down,” you say, not vindictive, just necessary.

He lifts it off its nail. Reed appears with a step stool like a helpful ghost. “I’ll put this in storage,” he says in a tone one reserves for radioactive isotopes and sentimental objects. You love him fiercely for the unremarkable verb.

The gala continues. Johnny isn’t louder but he is deliberate. He introduces you three times as “my person.” Each time, something in your chest unclenches a millimeter. He doesn’t tell old stories. He tells new ones that are stupid and specific: how you once convinced him to try a farmer’s market tomato and he wrote a sonnet about it in the Notes app; how you read every plaque at museums and he has learned patience in small type; how you always get sad in the last ten minutes of a movie because endings feel like practice grief.

On the way home he drives, and at a red light he brings your hand to his mouth. “I’m going to mess up,” he says into your knuckles, honest like the wind. “Hopefully less. Quieter.”

“Do you still have that folder?” you ask, surprising yourself. “The one with the pictures of me sleeping.”

He blushes. It’s absurd that a man who can become a star still burns under your gaze. He hands you his phone. There you are, asleep at thirty angles. In one your mouth pouts like it’s dreaming of sugar. In another your hand fists in the sheet as if bracing against a fall. The dates skip seasons. He didn’t start loving you last week. He didn’t fall by accident.

At home he sets Sue’s box on the table and opens it up. He doesn’t hide the shoebox. He lays the Polaroids out like a curator providing context, then one by one he puts them back in and writes across the lid, in thick marker: ARCHIVE. His handwriting is ridiculous and careful.

Then he opens a second box. This one is new, glossy, too much for cardboard. Inside are your artifacts. Ticket stubs. A napkin from a diner where the waitress called you “honey” and he pretended to be jealous for an hour. The place card with your name from Sue and Reed’s anniversary dinner with the micro-jokes he penciled on the back. A printout of the first email you sent when you stayed over, subject line Here’s my Wi-Fi password because he forgot to ask before leaving, followed by your silly password that includes a fruit and a curse word. A grocery list in your hand with strawberries underlined twice and in his below: don’t forget the good kind.

“This one’s ongoing,” he says, as if you couldn’t see that.

“Why didn’t you show me?”

“I was saving it for some perfect day,” he admits, sheepish, a boy who has learned the dangerous chemistry of keeping. “Didn’t realize the days in between were starving.”

You put your palm over the box. You have an impulse to apologize to the girl in the Polaroids for taking the rest of the story. It’s stupid. You don’t.

He cleans the kitchen when he’s anxious, so when you come back from the shower your counters are gleaming, three mugs lined in a row like little soldiers. He wraps you from behind and sways you in silence, no music, just the percussion of the building. He murmurs “marry me” into the back of your neck like the joke it started as and the plan it wants to be, and you don’t answer. You turn and kiss him long and steady, not a cinematic thing but a kitchen thing that tastes like toothpaste and mercy.

In bed he offers his hand and the soft, stubborn fact of himself. Before he switches off the lamp, he glances at the wall to look at the shadow your bodies throw. He shifts almost imperceptibly, adjusting you like you’re art.

“What are you doing?” you ask, despite yourself.

“Improving composition,” he says, serious. “Want us to look like a knot.”

You roll your eyes and feel a laugh that wants to be a cry and let it be neither. You sleep with your ear over his heart. When you dream, it isn’t in Polaroid colors. It’s the warm square of a kitchen light left on. It’s a child’s cape tied around your waist like a secret superpower. It’s a roof wind and a man who learned winter’s discipline for his summer.

In the morning Franklin stands on the mattress wearing both socks and the cape again. “Uncle Johnny says pancakes,” he announces, then peers at you. “You’re not sad now.”

“I’m not sad now,” you say, and it feels earned and fragile, like a glass you will have to learn how to carry.

Breakfast is a circus. Ben pretends to complain about sticky counters while letting Franklin captain his shoulder like a pirate. Reed appears to fix a thing that doesn’t need fixing because peace makes him itchy. Sue moves through the room like gravity. Johnny flips pancakes with wrist flourishes and only sets one on fire, which everyone agrees is progress.

At some middle of it, you catch Johnny watching you—not the sitcom of happiness, not the performative ease, just you, with that shoreline look. He mouths I love you and you mouth it back, and it costs nothing and everything and is, for the first time in days, simple.

Later, he nudges you into the hallway. The blank space where the old frame hung is filled with a new photo: your apartment window at dusk, your silhouette in profile laughing at something off camera, the little plant you forgot to water doing fine anyway. He took it without telling you. You would’ve protested then. Now you press your palm to the glass. You don’t ask when he took it. You can tell by looking.

“It’s not a movie moment,” he says carefully. “It’s just…us.”

“Good,” you say. “I’m tired.”

He kisses your temple like a yes.

Time doesn’t turn into a montage. Some days you still catch your eyes on a shiny past like a magpie. Some days his fear shows at the edges, a man who learned that choice cuts both ways. But there’s a new thing in the house, a shared, steady declarative. He starts saying the quiet parts out loud. You start believing him before the quiet has to yell.

On a Tuesday, the energy grid behaves and the afternoon is yours. You take the terrible convertible to the Cape and he keeps both hands on the wheel like a man protecting cargo. On a Wednesday, Reed asks an intrusive question about long-term plans and Johnny says, cheerfully, “Kids, plural,” then blushes and recovers and squeezes your knee under the table until it becomes a promise shaped like pressure. On a Thursday, a gossip site posts a throwback of him and the ex and the comments light up with mythology, and you watch them for too long before you put your phone face down. He sees. He doesn’t lecture. He brings you tea exactly the way you like it and sits beside you and watches nothing with you until your nervous system comes back.

When it rains, he is tender with the pilot light. When you’re sick, he is precise with your tea. He keeps a folder marked Insurances and one marked Us and updates both with the same reverence. He texts you a picture of a ring he hates and then a ring he hates less and then a ring he likes and then, “Ignore me; I want to get it right,” and you reply with a photo of a tomato because you are mean and he writes a poem about it in his Notes app like punishment.

It comes back around to a roof because that’s where you break each other and where you fix. There’s nothing formal about the evening, just a quiet sky, Ben and Sue arguing gently about where to put a planter, Reed checking the weather for fun, Franklin marching in circles with a cardboard sign that says SAVE THE BEES because he has a new passion every week.

Johnny leans into you and steals some of your body heat like a thief caught red-handed. He looks different than the man in the Polaroids without looking less. He looks like somebody who learned how to keep the flame and a family simultaneously.

“I keep thinking about it,” he says softly. “What you said. That it could’ve been anyone else.”

You tilt your head. “Why?”

“Because it has to stay true for me to love you right,” he says, and that startles you with its wisdom. “If I forget you chose me, I start treating your love like weather instead of a gift. I start thinking I can go quiet, and you’ll just know. I don’t ever want to go quiet again.”

“I’ll get insecure sometimes,” you say, because honesty has to be two-way or it curdles. “There will always be photos I haven’t seen yet and stories Ben forgot to tell me and fan edits that make pain look like cinema.”

“I’ll get scared sometimes,” he answers, matching you. “Of losing you to someone who never had to unlearn what I had to unlearn. We’ll say it when it happens. Out loud. Deal?”

“Deal.”

He rests his forehead against yours until the rest of the roof fades. “I love you like the slow part of a song,” he says, a little embarrassed. “Like the part that’s not on the radio. The part you only hear if you stay.”

“I’m staying,” you say. It doesn’t feel like surrender or an audition. It feels like a decision you can live inside. It feels like the difference between louder and more.

He breathes out and it sounds like relief and a prayer and the end of a long run. “It could’ve been anyone else,” he whispers, as if saying it wrong might make it true. “But it wasn’t.”

“No,” you say, and it is the cleanest word you’ve used in months. “It was you.”

Somewhere behind you Franklin yells about bees and Ben yells about honey and Sue shouts “Do not encourage him,” at both of them, which, given the evidence, is not effective. Reed announces rain in thirty-two minutes. You believe him. You believe yourself. You believe Johnny.

When it finally comes, the rain is the good kind, a rinsing. You and Johnny stand there as it beads on his eyelashes and dots the shoulders of your jacket and makes the city smell like a promise kept late. You put your hand out and the drops pool in your palm, this small, quiet proof that the world is not a past tense.

He takes your hand and kisses the water from it like an oath. “I’m glad you didn’t pick anyone else,” he says, not theatrical, not for the record, just for you.

You smile the kind of smile that belongs to nobody’s camera. “Me too.”

taglist:@starsanarchy@iliketoeatpaint@cpnsteverogers@spideywebss@inkedeye2345

[rumncokebaby]

ur writing for johnny reminds me of that scene from hotel Transylvania. the one with “that’s my gf suckers!” “im your wife johnny” “my wife! even better!”

LMAOOO!! tysm 🩷! i have not seen hotel transylvania in a hot minute, i might have to rewatch it!

[rumncokebaby]

my type?

pairing: johnny storm x female reader

synopsis: when johnny storm barges into your bakery during a pr “cooling-off period,” the last thing you expect is for him to keep coming back.

requested by: @tsunchani

The bell above your bakery door chimed so sweetly that you didn’t look up at first. It was a weekday lull—post–morning rush, pre–office crowd—and the whole place smelled like butter and patience. The mixer hummed. The ovens whispered. A sheet pan of cinnamon rolls cooled on a rack like a chorus line, glossy with glaze that caught the light. You were alone, sleeves shoved to your elbows, a pale dusting of flour on your cheek that you’d forgotten about ten times already.

“Tell me you do witness protection,” a voice said, low and fast, like he’d just slid into a booth at a speakeasy.

You glanced up with a practiced smile for anyone who came in flustered. The smile faltered when you recognized him. Johnny Storm stood just inside the door in a baseball cap that fooled exactly no one, sunglasses dangling by one arm from the collar of a bomber jacket. He wasn’t out of breath so much as vibrating, the kind of kinetic too-bright energy you felt in your teeth.

“I usually just do pastries,” you said, even as your eyes flicked past him to the window. Two long-lens cameras hovered across the street by the bodega, their owners pretending to be fascinated by a rack of gum.

Johnny followed your look, winced, and offered a grin that had probably negotiated world peace more than once. “I swear I’m not here for drama. I’m here to not be drama. For once.”

“You?” Your eyebrows climbed.

“Shocking, right? Sue gave me a lecture this morning. Our PR team called it a ‘cooling-off period.’ Apparently, if I get photographed doing anything except reading to puppies for forty-eight hours, civilization collapses.” He took a step closer to the counter, lowered his voice. “So, if a journalist asks, I’m a model of restraint and baked goods.”

“So… hiding.” You made it a statement. He didn’t flinch.

“Strategically… off the grid.” He nodded toward the case. “With a cinnamon roll for cover, if you’re feeling merciful.”

You slid open the glass, lifted a still-warm roll to a plate, and set it on the counter. He didn’t reach for it yet; his attention landed on you, a yes-or-no he never said out loud. Your bakery. Your call.

“Take a seat,” you said after a beat, nodding toward the two stools near the register. “I don’t do witness protection. But I do have napkins.”

He smiled like you’d offered him a favor he could feel in his bones and sat. He pushed his sunglasses up into his hair with no ceremony, blue eyes flicking over the room like he was memorizing where you kept everything. His shoulders unspooled one notch at a time.

“This is great,” he said around his first bite, eyebrows shooting up with genuine surprise that made you want to laugh. “I’m not just saying that because I need a safe house. That frosting—wow. I didn’t know sugar could do that.”

“Sugar can do anything if you treat it right,” you said, then regretted the softness in your tone. You pivoted. “Coffee?”

“Yes, please, whatever you recommend. Unless it’s decaf. I have a personality to maintain.”

You poured two cups before you’d decided to. You didn’t ask yourself why.

He didn’t pretend not to be recognized, didn’t sign the napkin some customers tried to give him like a contract. He just ate slowly, glanced toward the window less and less, and asked you questions that weren’t small talk. Did you always know you wanted to bake? What do you listen to when the bakery’s empty? What’s the worst order you ever got. He listened. That was the part you didn’t expect. Not from Johnny Storm, human highlight reel.

You were halfway through telling him about a three-tier cake that collapsed like a bad secret when the bell chimed again. “Don’t set anything on fire,” Ben Grimm grunted as he shouldered in, then spotted Johnny and stopped short. “Aw, for cryin’ out loud.”

“Nice to see you too, Benji,” Johnny sang without turning. “Don’t blow my cover. I’m living a quiet, simple life as a pastry monk.”

Ben gave you a look that said he was sorry on the world’s behalf and then nodded at the coffee urn. “The usual.” He slid a few bills across the counter, big fingers careful not to wrinkle them. “If he gets in your way, kid, you tell me.”

“He’s paying,” you said dryly. “So for now, he can stay.”

Johnny clutched his chest. “At last. Validation.”

Ben snorted, grabbed his coffee, and lumbered out, muttering something that sounded like, “He’s gonna break your mixer.”

“I’m not going to break your mixer,” Johnny promised immediately. “I might serenade it.”

“You’re not going near my mixer at all.”

“We’ll see.”

He came back the next day. And the one after that. And the one after that.

At first, you thought it was coincidence. But no man who looked like Johnny Storm came into a hole-in-the-wall bakery five mornings in a row by accident. By the second week, you had started saving a cinnamon roll for him behind the counter. By the third, you caught him lingering long after his plate was empty, elbows on the counter, teasing you about how your apron never stayed tied properly or asking which cake flavor was your personal favorite.

One afternoon, the bell jingled and in came Sue, balancing a reusable grocery bag on one hip and wrangling a squirmy Franklin. “Franklin refuses to sleep without his dinosaur pajamas,” she explained, lifting the bag a little. She clocked Johnny leaning against your counter and smirked. “Oh. I see we’re… cooling off.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Johnny said. “I’m rebrand—ing.” The hyphen was the panic.

“Hmm,” she said, the way only a sister could. She glanced at your case, brightened. “Are those lemon bars? Reed will propose to anyone for a decent lemon bar.”

“Tell him to hold off,” Johnny said. “We have a brand to protect.”

“If you want to protect the brand,” she murmured, eyes twinkling, “stop staring at her like that in public.”

You pretended to be deeply invested in evenly spacing brownie squares while your ears burned.

“Hi!” a small voice chirped from knee-height. Franklin peered around his mom’s legs, face smeared with something that looked like chocolate. “Uncle Johnny, can I have the sprinkle donut?”

“Buddy, that’s not a—well, no, actually, we do have one in the back that is technically a sprinkle donut,” Johnny said, and you weren’t sure what was funnier: his need to be correct about pastry taxonomy or the way he lit up for a five-year-old like the paparazzi didn’t exist.

You brought out a baked not-fried “donut,” really a cake ring with icing and every rainbow sprinkle you owned. Franklin’s eyes got huge. “This looks like a birthday,” he breathed.

“It’s everyone’s birthday somewhere,” Johnny said solemnly, and you had to turn away so you didn’t laugh into your own apron.

Franklin stuck his hand straight into the sprinkles before you could stop him, came away with a sticky constellation across his cheeks, and sighed like he’d discovered divinity. “Uncle Johnny talks about this place,” he informed you gravely. “He says it smells like happiness.”

“Does he.” You didn’t look at Johnny. You didn’t need to; you could feel him—how his smile went wry at one corner, how he pretended to inspect a tip jar that already had too many of his twenties in it.

“He also says,” Franklin continued, “that you—”

“Okay!” Sue scooped him up like a vengeful crane and kissed his sugary temple. “Time to go tell Dad we found lemon bars. Say ‘thank you.’ And ‘sorry for my uncle.’”

“Thank you,” Franklin said clearly. “Sorry for my—Uncle Johnny is good.”

Johnny pressed a hand to his chest. “Finally, someone says it.”

When the door closed, you realized you were smiling at nothing. When you glanced up, Johnny was watching you watch the door, and the look he gave you was unguarded enough that you had to look away.

He asked you out the following Tuesday. It wasn’t a production. He didn’t make fireworks spell your name over the East River, didn’t arrive on a flaming motorcycle, didn’t grandstand in a way that would have made you flinch. He finished restocking napkins, rinsed his hands, wiped them on a towel, and leaned his elbows on the counter.

“Go out with me,” he said, simple as a request to pass the salt. “Somewhere with real chairs and no timer beeping every twelve minutes.”

“You’re very confident,” you said, not because it needed saying but because he was waiting for you to say something.

“I’m very… sure.” He tilted his head like he was searching for a better word. “Of this one thing.”

You arranged your face into something neutral so your traitor heart didn’t volunteer you before your brain caught up. You could say no and nothing would break. You could say no and he’d keep coming in for coffee, would keep carrying flour, would keep being the one person who laughed at your terrible playlist ironically and then unironically, and you could watch him find someone else to set on fire.

“Friday,” you said, and the way relief washed through him would have embarrassed a less shameless man. He didn’t hide it. He grinned like you’d handed him a dare.

He took the cooling-off memo seriously. No paparazzi bait, no restaurant where the point was to be seen. He showed up at your apartment door in a suit the color of midnight and a tie that had been tied three times, if the askew knot told the truth. He held flowers like he’d rehearsed not making a joke about them. He didn’t make you feel like a bit. He made you feel like something he could ruin and would rather not.

The restaurant was just nice enough to make you sit a little straighter. He pulled your chair out and didn’t make eye contact with the hostess for longer than he needed to. The first ten minutes felt like you’d known each other six weeks—exactly the number you had—and also like you’d fallen into a pocket of air outside the world’s timing, where banter synced with breath.

“Is there anything you’re actually bad at?” you asked at one point, more curious than teasing.

“Geography,” he said immediately. “And waiting.”

“Waiting?”

“For anything good.” He sipped his water like that hadn’t been naked.

You decided to ask him things you could only ask away from the clang of sheet pans. If he ever wanted to stop. If he ever got tired. He asked you if there was anything about baking you hated but did anyway because the end justified the mess.

“Inventory,” you said. “And fondant.”

“You hate fondant?” He looked genuinely betrayed. “It’s so shiny.”

“It tastes like sweet rubber.”

“Okay,” he said, “rude but fair.”

It was easy. It was dangerous, how easy. Maybe that’s why you tested the seam of it, the way you sometimes pressed your thumb into the bottom of a cake to see if it sprung back.

“What’s your type?” he asked, casual, somewhere between appetizers and pasta. He didn’t say it like a trap. He said it like a kid trailing a sound with his finger.

You considered. You could have said something diplomatic. You could have said “funny” or “kind” and meant him. Instead, you smiled—small, mean, a little curious about what happened next—and drew a line down the center of the tablecloth he’d set so carefully.

“Black curly hair,” you said. “Brown dreamy eyes. Bulky. Veiny arms.” You tilted your head. “You know. A little broody.”

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t need to. His mouth made a shape that wasn’t a smile, his eyes flicked to your mouth then back to your water glass, and he sat back like the chair had scooted a millimeter further away. The laugh he gave you was bright enough to be a weapon.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, scoffing, rolling his shoulders like he was shaking something off. “I get the picture.”

“You asked.”

“I did.” He found the corner of his napkin with his thumb and smoothed it as if the linen had personally offended him. “Broody’s a classic. Everyone loves a storm cloud. So—good for you.”

You watched him the way you watched the edge of caramel before it tipped into bitter. He wasn’t angry. Johnny rarely burned that way. He was… skewed. A little to the left of himself. He rolled his sleeves to his forearms like he’d just remembered he had them. He sat straighter, and when the server came to refill water, he straightened more, and when you reached for your wine, he handed it to you before you’d decided to ask.

He overcorrected. That was the thing he did. He overcorrected with style, but still.

He walked you home without saying anything sharp. He waited while you found your keys. He didn’t ask to come up; he didn’t try to erase what you’d said with his mouth. He said, “Thank you. For letting me pretend for a night that I’m extremely good at being a person,” and you said, “You’re better than you think,” and he stared at your door for a beat like you’d put something on the other side that he wanted.

He still showed up at the bakery the next morning at six. He did fifty push-ups on your forty-inch square of office floor while you did inventory on a clipboard because of course he did. He carried three sacks of flour into the back one-handed and didn’t look at you when he set them down like he hadn’t planned it at all. He wore a T-shirt with sleeves short enough to flash the rope of his forearms every time he reached for a dish towel. He flexed, for the first time, for real. Not because he was vain. Because he was trying to be a language he thought you spoke.

“Careful,” you said when he snapped the elastic hairnet at his hairline, which he insisted on wearing like a crown. “You’ll break something trying that hard.”

“Not possible,” he said, smiling like he’d swallowed a dare. He tossed the dish towel over his shoulder. “I’m excellent at everything.”

“You’re objectively bad at tempering chocolate.”

“That was one time.”

“It was yesterday.”

He grinned and burned the second batch, too. You pretended you didn’t notice him reset the thermometer to try again, jaw tight, determined to get this right for reasons he was not going to name.

It would have been cute if it hadn’t also tugged something in your chest in a way you didn’t like. You hadn’t meant to pin him to a chalk outline. You hadn’t meant for a sentence to lodge in a person that way. Your own words ricocheted off the copper bowls and back into your face: You know. The opposite of you.

You told yourself your type had always been a good joke. You told yourself you’d meant eyes that saw you when you were behind a counter and your hands wouldn’t stop moving. You told yourself you hadn’t meant to make him small.

When your oven broke during a massive order, you nearly burst into tears. You stared at it like sheer will might bring it back to life, then yanked out your phone. Ben had given you Reed’s number months ago for a bulk order, swearing, “He’s the only one who can talk you through measurements if I screw it up.”

You typed fast: Oven dead. Wedding order today. Please tell me you do miracles.

“On my way,” Reed replied almost instantly. Then: Also, please do not let Johnny fix anything.

You glanced toward the front. Johnny was gloving up to carry trays from the proofing cabinet, blissfully unaware. “Noted,” you muttered.

He noticed, of course, when the first tray of meringues went into an oven that didn’t heat. He noticed the way your face didn’t move and then moved too much all at once. He glanced at the thermostat, at your hands, at the clock. “What do we need?”

“Time,” you said, which was the same as saying Nothing realistic.

He pulled his phone out without asking. “Hey, Reed,” he said when the line picked up. “Are you already—great. We have a… situation.” He listened, hung up, and then leaned both palms on the stainless counter and met your eyes. “Okay, game plan. I’m going to call Ben for muscle. Reed’s bringing gizmos. Sue has… Sue has something in the car that will keep us invisible if we need it, but let’s pretend that’s Plan Z. You—tell me how many things can be salvaged and how many I need to call in favors for.”

“You don’t—”

“You’re not alone,” he said, so simply you didn’t know what to do with the sentence. Then he softened it with a smile. “Also, I really want to see Reed sweet-talk an oven.”

Ben arrived first with a rolling tool chest that should have been in a garage, not a bakery. He took one look at the oven, whistled low, and said, “She’s seen things.”

“She’s going to see Reed fix her,” Johnny said, pinching the bridge of his nose like he was channeling patience from another dimension. “And then she’s going to bake like she’s trying to win prom queen.”

Reed arrived like a man who had made peace with the weird. He crouched in front of the oven, murmuring to it with the same reverence he reserved for quantum anomalies, then extracted a series of warped parts like a magician pulling scarves. Sue backed through the door balancing a box and a sleepy Franklin, who immediately lit up at the sight of you like you were Saturday.

“Is it an emergency?” Franklin asked solemnly as Sue settled him with crayons at a corner table.

“It’s a little one,” you said. “But your uncle is being very useful.”

“Useful,” Johnny repeated, glaring at you like you were the moon and he’d just learned you’d been orbiting him the whole time.

“Useful is high praise,” Sue said under her breath, and then while Reed coaxed life back into the pilot light with a screwdriver and a speech about longevity, she rolled up her sleeves and started cutting butter into flour like she’d done it a hundred times. “Tell me quantities,” she said, and when you did, she didn’t blink. She just said, “Johnny, stop staring and start whisking those egg whites like they offended your honor.”

“I love it when you talk to me like I’m a stand mixer,” he said, already whisking.

By eight, the oven had a heartbeat again. By nine, meringues piped in perfect spirals lined every flat surface you owned. You and Sue fell into a wordless rhythm people only get when they’ve watched each other be brilliant in other rooms for a very long time. Ben iced lemon bars with the meticulousness of a bomb technician. Reed improvised a stabilizing bracket for your oven door out of parts you didn’t know you had and wrote you a note with maintenance tips that read like love poetry to thermal consistency.

Johnny did everything. He carried sheet pans without scorching them. He ran interference with a delivery driver who arrived an hour early and immediately needed to pee. He answered the phone and soothed a bride, promised an on-time delivery with a calm he did not feel, then biked the first tray over himself because he could sew through traffic faster than your old van. When paparazzi began to gather because the Fantastic Four were very obviously inside a small business, he stepped outside with a box of sample cookies, charmed them into staying across the street, and then did something you didn’t learn until later: he told them that if any photo of you inside doing your job ran, he’d personally blacklist the outlet from every charity event he did this year. He said it like a promise he knew how to keep.

He came back with hair mashed flat from a helmet and cheeks flushed and dove back into the kitchen as if the floor were lava and everything depended on it. He burned the heel of his hand catching a falling tray because by the time he remembered he couldn’t be burned, he’d already moved. When you reached for the burn cream, he made a big production of how he was absolutely fine, look at me, fireproof, nothing to see, do not cry about it.

You cried about it later, for thirty seconds in the bathroom, silently, with your palms pressed to your eyes.

By noon, you were ahead. You were sweaty and sugar-sticky and weirdly giddy. Reed kissed Sue’s hair and left a note taped to the oven that said, in his precise hand, “Please, for the love of god, schedule quarterly checks. —R.” Ben pretended he wasn’t proud of his perfect lemon bar grid. Franklin fell asleep in the corner with a sprinkle stuck to his eyebrow and the dinosaur pajamas slumped over his lap like a captive flag.

Johnny stood in the doorway to the kitchen, watching you pipe the last ring of meringue like it was a wedding vow, and you felt his gaze like sunshine between your shoulder blades.

“Hey,” he said when you set the piping bag down. He didn’t have a joke ready. That was how you knew he meant it. “You were… you were art.”

“So were you,” you said, which made him blink, taken apart by one sentence.

Ben made an exit with a grumbled, “I ain’t third-wheeling in a bakery,” which was nonsense because he had third-wheeled you for two hours already. Sue carried a sleeping Franklin out like contraband and blew a kiss over her shoulder that made Johnny groan. Reed, bless him, sent you an invoice for exactly zero dollars and a text that said, “Satisfied client?” with a photo of the oven’s happy flame like it was a baby’s first steps.

The bakery exhaled. The street noise lowered. You turned and found Johnny with his back to the counter, arms braced behind him, head tilted like he could hear a frequency you couldn’t. His hair was a mess. There was a streak of flour on his cheekbone he hadn’t noticed and you hadn’t told him about because you liked seeing him marked by your world.

“You should sit,” he said, nodding to a stool. “Before gravity remembers you.”

“You should stop trying to be someone else.” It slipped out as if your mouth had decided to stop letting you be a coward.

He went very still, only his eyes moving. “I’m not—”

“The sleeves,” you said, and flicked your fingers at his forearms. “The push-ups in my office. The… just the whole thing. I said something stupid. I wanted to see if I could make you flinch. And then you—”

“You wanted to see if I’d go away,” he said softly, like he’d known for days and hadn’t wanted to say it out loud. “Because if I did, it would be neat. There’d be a place for it on a shelf. ‘That was the time Johnny Storm flirted with me for a few weeks and then realized I’m not a sports car or a camera.’ You wouldn’t have to—”

“I didn’t want you to go away,” you said, which felt like such a risky thing to admit that you had to look at the floor. “I wanted to know what you’re like when you don’t win.”

He laughed once, hoarse. “Horrible. Petty. In denial.”

“Determined,” you corrected. You took a step closer. “Useful.”

He made a face like you’d said he’d been elected treasurer. “Stop. That word is going to haunt me.”

“Good.” You reached up and used your thumb to swipe the flour off his cheekbone. He went cross-eyed trying to watch your hand and then gave up and watched your mouth. You left your hand where it was because you were tired of pretending you didn’t want to. “Listen to me.”

He did. God, he did.

“I said something on that date that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because I was filleting a fear in public and calling it taste. I don’t know what my type is. I know what my person is.” You held his eyes, didn’t let him joke his way out of it, didn’t let him dodge. “You are not my type, Johnny. You’re my person.”

His expression—there wasn’t a word for it you’d used before. It was not triumph, exactly; there was too much relief in it, too much unguarded ache. It was something like a man who’d spotted land he’d almost convinced himself he’d imagined.

“You sure?” he asked, voice rough like a fire that had burned down to coals.

“Positive,” you said, and that was the whole truth.

He didn’t lunge. He didn’t do anything dramatic. He stepped into your space like you were warm and he’d been cold for ten years and wrapped his hands loosely around your waist like he was asking you a question you already knew the answer to. When he kissed you, he did it as if he only had one kiss and he intended to spend it very wisely. You kissed him back like you were done pretending that your life hadn’t been bending toward this, very gradually, the way a plant will tilt toward a window without anyone telling it where the sun is.

He pulled back with his forehead resting against yours and laughed into your mouth, breathy and astonished. “You have no idea how badly I wanted that.”

“I have some idea,” you said.

“I’ll still do the push-ups,” he said quickly, and you laughed and shoved at his shoulder and his laugh unspooled into something that sounded like relief and the first day of vacation and a kid told he can go back and ride the roller coaster again.

He stayed. He stayed through the afternoon rush, as he always did, now shamelessly stealing a kiss when he ducked into the back with a tray because you’d both decided the bakery was Switzerland and also yours. He stayed through cleanup, where he proved magnificent at mopping if he could dance with the handle and narrate as if he were on a cooking show. He stayed when you locked the door and the lights glowed low and the mixer went quiet and you climbed up on the counter and ate the ugly lemon bars that didn’t make the cut, squeezing the wedge of time between closing and night like it owed you.

He didn’t ask for your type again. He didn’t try to be less himself. He didn’t stop rolling his sleeves because you liked his forearms; he just rolled them because he liked his sleeves rolled and you liked his forearms and everybody won.

Paparazzi came back. Of course they did. He didn’t hide from them unless there was a reason, and he never used you as one. When they lingered outside, he stepped onto the sidewalk and flashed a grin and answered three questions and gave them a picture that kept them happy enough to move on. He never let anyone take a photo from inside; that was the only rule he asked for and the only one you would have agreed to before he said it.

He took you out again, and again. Once to a rooftop garden with twinkle lights and a chef who wept over your tart crust. Once to a Knicks game where he behaved himself so hard you half expected him to explode. He got better at waiting. You didn’t ask him to be one thing or another. You let him be a man who loved cameras and also loved slipping into your bakery on a Tuesday morning because the song on the radio was one you’d told him about and he wanted to listen to it in the place where you liked it.

Ben kept coming, and pretended not to like you and then liked you because it was impossible not to. Sue brought Franklin by on purpose now, to bribe him into putting on pajamas but really because Franklin’s joy at a sprinkle donut was the exact medicine for days that felt like too much. Reed installed a thermometer that looked like it could be used to measure a star and wrote you a note on letterhead that said, “Remember: you can ask for help,” and you taped it to the inside of your cabinet where you could see it when you needed to.

One night in late summer, you closed early because you could. He came by at dusk with hair damp from a shower and a T-shirt that had obviously lost a fight with a dryer. You sat on the floor behind the counter with your backs against the cabinets and shared the last cinnamon roll, torn in your hands, eaten with the lazy greed of people who didn’t have to leave yet.

“You know,” he said, licking sugar from his thumb, “I can probably stop pretending to be good for PR now. They got busy yelling at someone else this week.”

“You were pretending?” you asked, scandalized.

He laughed. “Okay, fair. I was… shifting the ratio.” He tilted his head so he could see your profile in the warm light. “I’ll still do it when I need to. Be… photogenic in public. I like it. It’s fun. But this—” He gestured with his chin at the room. “It is not lost on me that I started sleeping through the night the week I started hiding in here.”

“Strategically off the grid,” you said.

“Exactly.”

You set your head on his shoulder. He didn’t move, didn’t jostle, didn’t make a joke to cut the quiet. He reached for your hand and threaded your fingers together, and you felt the way his palm mapped yours like he’d known it longer than he had.

If anyone asked you later, you would say that your type was a man who stayed when the oven quit and the meringues fell. A man whose jealousy was soft-edged because it came from wanting to be close, not from wanting to control. A man who believed that sugar could do anything if you treated it right, and applied that rule to people.

He would say that his type was you.

He’d grin when he said it, because he couldn’t help himself. He’d say it to a camera if someone asked, just once, in a way that made twelve PR managers faint and three more resign. He’d say it to Franklin at bedtime when he needed a story. He’d say it to Ben and roll his eyes when Ben pretended not to hear. He’d say it to Sue in a text accompanied by seventeen heart emojis until she threatened to block him. He’d say it to you in the doorway of your bakery in the morning when the sun hadn’t quite happened yet, like a prayer that sounded suspiciously like a joke.

And when you teased him about his sleeves or his push-ups or his silly attempts to be broody, he’d laugh and kiss your flour-dusted cheek and whisper, “Useful,” in your ear, like a promise that the best things didn’t have to be loud to light up a room.

taglist: @starsanarchy @iliketoeatpaint @cpnsteverogers @spideywebss @inkedeye2345

[rumncokebaby]

Hii love, can i please send a request pls? Jealous johnny maybe the reader is an owner of a bakery. Johnny asked her on a date, when he asks her what is her man type. She says the opposite from him like “you know, black curly hair, brown dreamy eyes, bulky, beins arms.” Johnny went “yeah yeah, i get the picture.” He is sscoffing.

hi babe!! i just finished your request!! i had so much fun writing it as well LMAOOO!! i will probably write more jealous n sulky johnny storm fics in the future. i should be able to post it tonight, i hope you like it 🩷🙈

[rumncokebaby]

whipped

pairing: johnny storm x female reader

synopsis: after a girls’ night out, johnny picks up a very drunk you who can’t stop calling him her “shiny husband.”

Johnny never really slept when you were out on girls’ nights. He’d tell you he would—“Go, have fun, I’ll see you in the morning”—but the truth was, he couldn’t relax until you were home. Not because he didn’t trust you—he trusted you more than anyone—but because he didn’t like the space in the bed when you weren’t in it. So he’d pace around, scroll through his phone, half-watch something on TV, until the hours crept later and later.

So when his phone buzzed that night and it wasn’t you but one of your friends asking if he could come get you, Johnny was already shrugging into his jacket before she finished explaining.

The bar was crowded, neon lights buzzing, music thumping. But he spotted you instantly—you were slouched in a booth, cheeks flushed, your laugh a little too loud. The second you caught sight of him, you lit up, scrambling to your feet with all the grace of a baby deer.

“Johnny!” you squealed, stumbling into him. He caught you easily, strong arms steadying your weight as you immediately started peppering his face with kisses—sloppy little smacks to his jaw, his nose, his cheeks. He couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled out of him.

“You came,” you said, kissing the corner of his mouth before grabbing his face in both hands. “You’re the best boyfriend ever. My husband. My shiny husband.”

And Johnny—Johnny Storm, cocky, arrogant, smug Johnny Storm—giggled. A giddy, boyish sound that he tried to hide by tucking his face into your neck, grinning like a fool. God, he loved when you said that. He couldn’t wait for the day it’d be true.

“Alright, baby,” he murmured, kissing your temple. “Let’s get you home.”

You clung to him as he scooped you up bridal-style, ignoring your squeal of protest that you could totally walk. Your friends cheered you on as Johnny carried you straight out of the bar, shaking his head but smiling like you hung the stars.

What none of you realized was that paparazzi had been lurking outside, waiting for the perfect shot. And well—Johnny Storm carrying his very drunk, very giggly girlfriend in his arms? Yeah, they got plenty.

The car ride home was a blur of your rambling.

“Johnny, I love your nose.”

“My nose?” he asked, amused.

“Mmhm. And your eyeballs. They’re like a swimming pool. Can I swim in them? You’d get me floaties, right?”

He bit back laughter, squeezing your hand. “Of course, babe. I’ll get you the best floaties.”

You sighed dramatically, turning toward him with glassy eyes. “You’re sweeter than pancakes. And puppies. And fries. And you know how much I love fries.”

Johnny’s heart squeezed. He lifted your hand and kissed your knuckles, smiling softly. “That’s serious love.”

Back at the apartment, he eased you out of your shoes, coaxed a glass of water and Advil into your hands, and tucked you into bed. You tugged at his shirt until he slid in beside you, and then you were right back to peppering his face with kisses, giggling as you went.

“I love you the most,” you whispered, your words heavier now, sleep tugging at them. “You’re gonna be the best husband.”

Johnny laughed again, helpless and lovesick, pressing a kiss to your hair. “You’re gonna kill me, you know that?”

You were already asleep before he got the answer. And he lay awake a while longer, smiling like an idiot, your words replaying in his head.

The next morning, you woke with a pounding head and the sun stabbing through the curtains. Johnny was already up, leaned against the headboard with his phone in hand, a glass of water and Advil waiting on the nightstand.

“Morning, Mrs. Storm,” he teased, setting his phone aside.

You groaned, flopping onto your back. “…Did I say that?”

“Oh, yeah. About twenty times. Called me your shiny husband.”

You buried your face in your hands. “Kill me.”

He chuckled, prying your hands away to kiss your knuckles. “Don’t worry, I liked it. Loved it, actually.”

You peeked up at him through your fingers. “…Really?”

“Really,” he said softly, brushing hair from your face. “You have no idea how much I loved it.”

You tried to smile, but he was already grinning, mischief sparking in his eyes. “Oh, and by the way? You told me you wanted to swim in my eyeballs.”

You smacked his chest. “No, I did not.”

“Exact words,” he said smugly. “Asked me if I’d get you floaties.”

You groaned, hiding in his chest. “I hate myself.”

He laughed, kissing your hair. “Don’t. It was adorable. Also—you told me I was sweeter than pancakes and puppies. And that you love me more than fries.”

You gasped softly. “Okay, wow. That’s… that’s big.”

“Biggest compliment of my life,” Johnny said, smirking. “I might frame it.”

You swatted him again, but your lips were tugging into a smile. “Thanks for taking care of me.”

“Always,” he murmured, tilting your chin to kiss you gently.

Later that afternoon, when you finally braved your phone, you realized why Johnny had been smirking at it all morning. Paparazzi shots of him carrying you out of the bar had exploded online—him holding you bridal-style, your arms looped around his neck, your face buried against his chest.

The internet had thoughts.

“find you someone who looks at you the way johnny storm looks at y/n 😭” “he’s literally HUSBAND material???” "heLLLOOOO???" “the way he carried her out like she was made of glass STOPP” “y/n calling him her husband drunk and then THIS happening… universe is trying to tell us something 👀” “JOHNNY STORM GIGGLING WHILE SHE KISSED HIS FACE this is why i believe in love”

#JohnnyStormHusbandMaterial trended within hours. Fans made edits of the paparazzi photos set to sappy songs, spliced with interview clips of Johnny talking about you. Someone even made a meme comparing him carrying you to a Disney prince, complete with sparkles.

You groaned, tossing your phone onto the couch. “We’re a meme.”

Johnny slid an arm around you, pulling you close with a smug grin. “Correction: we’re relationship goals.”

“You love this, don’t you?”

“Baby,” he said, kissing your temple. “I haven’t stopped giggling about it since last night.”

By the evening, it wasn’t just fans blowing up your phone. It was family.

Sue had texted first: “Johnny, explain why my morning coffee is being interrupted by you trending worldwide with the hashtag #HusbandMaterial.”

Then Reed, ever the scientist, had followed up with a dry: “Statistically, it appears you and Y/N are the internet’s favorite couple. Congratulations.”

But the real trouble came when Ben barged into the living room at the Baxter Building later that day, holding his tablet like it was evidence in court.

“Well, well, Mr. Husband Material,” Ben said, his gravelly voice booming with laughter. “Care to explain why I just saw you carrying Y/N outta a bar like you were straight outta The Notebook?”

Johnny groaned, dragging a hand over his face. “Ben—”

“Oh no, don’t you ‘Ben’ me,” the Thing barked, practically wheezing with amusement. “Look at this one! Look at your face, you’re smilin’ like a lovesick teenager. And her callin’ you husband? Ohhh, I’m never lettin’ this one go.”

Sue leaned against the doorframe, smirking. “To be fair, you do look very prince charming in those pictures.”

“Shut up, Sue,” Johnny muttered, cheeks burning.

Reed peeked up from his work, ever the calm observer. “I believe the term is ‘whipped,’ Johnny.”

That earned a round of laughter from the entire room, and you, sitting on the couch, only made it worse by chiming in sweetly, “He is whipped. My shiny husband.”

Johnny’s head snapped toward you, eyes wide. “Babe—!”

But it was too late—Ben nearly doubled over with laughter, pounding the wall with his massive hand. “Shiny husband! Ohhh, this is rich. Kid, I’m gonna be callin’ you that for years.”

Johnny groaned again, hiding his face in his hands while you leaned against him, grinning like the devil.

Later that night, after the teasing had died down and the Baxter Building had gone quiet, you and Johnny curled up together in your shared room. He was unusually quiet, running his fingers up and down your arm as you lay against his chest.

“You know…” he murmured finally, voice soft, “I really wouldn’t mind if you kept calling me that.”

You tilted your head up at him. “What, shiny husband?”

He chuckled, that boyish giggle slipping out again. “Yeah. Just… husband.” His eyes flicked down to yours, suddenly earnest. “Because one day, I really want to be.”

Your heart squeezed, and you pressed your lips to his jaw, smiling against his skin. “Good. Because one day, I really want you to be.”

He exhaled, a little laugh of relief in his chest, before kissing you slow and sweet, like he was sealing a promise neither of you had to say out loud anymore.

And somewhere, still trending online, was #JohnnyStormHusbandMaterial—proof that maybe the world already knew what you both did.

[rumncokebaby]

little sister general

pairing: johnny storm x reader

synopsis: johnny’s greatest mission? earning y/n’s little sister’s approval.

requested by: @ceylon-morphe

You arrive at the Baxter Building balancing a backpack with a unicorn keychain, a lunchbox that says you are a delight in glitter font, and the determined hand of your six-year-old sister. Determined because she is already pulling you toward the lobby desk like you’re late for a mission and not just signing into a place where people invent satellites for fun.

“Can I press a button?” your sister asks, eyes already locked on the elevator panel.

“Only one,” you tell her, and then reconsider, knowing this building. “Actually, I’ll press it.”

She tilts her head up at you, conspiratorially. “Is it because sometimes Uncle Johnny breaks elevators?”

You blink. “Where did you hear that?”

“The internet.”

“You’re six.”

“I read.”

“You read… the internet?”

“Uh-huh.”

You’re two seconds into composing a speech about reputable sources when the elevator dings and the doors slide open like it’s welcoming you into a sitcom. And there he is—Johnny—already jogging toward you from the hallway, hoodie sleeves shoved to his forearms, grin slanting up like it’s showing you the best part of the day.

“G’morning,” he says, and his voice does something warm that lands low in your chest. Before you can protest, he’s already eased the backpack off your shoulder with a practiced, gentle tug, hooked the lunchbox into his other hand, and ducked his head to the kid’s level in a single smooth motion. “Whoa. Inspector on deck.”

Your sister regards him like a bouncer checking an ID. “We’re here for a field trip.”

“I heard,” Johnny says solemnly. “I also heard the supervisor gets first dibs on the elevator buttons. But only if she can reach.” He straightens just enough to hook an arm under her and lift—quick, a check-in glance to you for permission, then up—so she can poke the glowing panel. “Which button, boss?”

She squints, thinking hard. “The one that goes to science.”

“Excellent choice,” he says, guiding her finger to the right floor number, then lowering her gently. “Not to brag, but my lap-carry-to-button-press ratio is elite.”

“You don’t have to try so hard,” you say, aware that you are lying. He absolutely does, because he wants to, and because you love watching him.

He tips the unicorn backpack higher on his shoulder like it belongs there. “I like trying hard for you.”

Your sister’s ponytail flicks as she peeks around your legs at him. “You should try medium.”

“I’ll calibrate,” he says gravely, and when the elevator stops and the doors open to that cool, ozone-scented hallway, he slides the lunchbox into the crook of his elbow so his hands are free, then automatically reaches to take your hand as if he needs one more thing to carry and the only thing left is this—your fingers, your day, your heart.

Sue meets you halfway down the corridor, wiping her hands on a lab towel and wearing a smile that warms the sterile white to something friendly. “There you are,” she says, and then crouches to your sister’s height. “Good morning, superstar.”

“Good morning, Dr. Storm,” your sister replies.

“Just Sue.” She glances up at Johnny, who is now sporting a glittery lunchbox and a unicorn backpack like the world’s most enthusiastic sherpa. “Nice look.”

“It’s a lifestyle,” he says, unruffled. “Where do bags go?”

“I’ll take them,” Sue begins, because she is Sue and helpfulness is her default.

“I got it,” Johnny says, light. He tips his head toward you. “Hands free for you.”

“Chivalry is not extinct,” Sue murmurs to you, amused. “It’s just wearing a unicorn.”

Before you can answer, a side door bangs open, a harmless puff of smoke rolls out, and Ben’s voice follows it. “It’s fine, I got it, I got it—”

“Hi, Ben!” your sister calls, entirely unfazed.

Ben thuds closer, Mets cap low, granite grin appearing like a cliff easing out of fog. He takes in the tableau—Johnny loaded down, you hand-in-hand with him, your sister already braced for chaos—and rumbles, “Lookit you, Matchstick. Real pack mule.”

Johnny leans like it’s a compliment. “It’s good for my posture.”

“Posture, my keister,” Ben mutters, but he reaches out with two careful fingers and straightens the unicorn keychain like it’s a medal.

“Present!” pipes a small voice, and Franklin skids around the corner, sneakers lighting up, hair already tilting toward mischief. “I’m five. I know how to build a volcano.”

“I’m six,” your sister answers. “I know how to do cartwheels.”

They nod: mutual respect established—and then swivel in unison to point at Johnny.

Franklin’s eyes narrow with theatrical gravity. “We’re going to test you.”

“You have to pass,” your sister adds, clipboard appearing from somewhere mysterious, because children are just tiny magicians with pockets.

Johnny—who fights villains and the sky—tightens his grip on the lunchbox like it’s a shield. “I love tests,” he lies cheerfully.

Sue’s hand lands on your shoulder. “Should we place bets?”

“Never bet against a man in a unicorn backpack,” you whisper back.

Test one: Basic Decency. The panel convenes in the kitchen. While Reed fiddles with a coffee machine like it’s an interdimensional gate, Johnny uses his hip to nudge a stool close to the island and then, without even thinking, scoops your sister under her arms and sets her onto the seat. He steadies her with a hand at her back until she’s secure, then reaches across you to pull a napkin and tucks it into the collar of her shirt like a bib, the motion automatic and startlingly tender.

“Thank you,” she says, trying to sound cool and failing.

“Anytime,” he says, soft. He does the same for Franklin—napkin tuck, gentle pat on the shoulder—then sets the lunchbox down, unzips it, and slides the fruit slices to the kids before he even thinks about pizza. Ben grunts something approving about prioritizing fiber. Reed, noticing a loose stool, reaches and tightens a screw with the end of a fork; Johnny covers the stool legs with his foot, one broad palm hovering over your sister’s shoulder like a guardrail.

“Number one,” your sister declares, chewing. “Do you eat vegetables?”

“Roasted broccoli,” Johnny says instantly. “Green beans. Carrots if they’re cooked right. Peas only if Franklin doesn’t throw them at me.”

“They’re round,” Franklin says, very logically.

“Number two,” your sister continues. “Do you call my sister every day?”

“I bother her constantly,” Johnny says. He tilts his head at you, as if to say: true?

“He does,” you confirm. “It’s very brave of him.”

“Number three: If she has a bad dream, what do you do?”

His answer is immediate and detailed and makes the room go gentle around the edges. You listen and try not to fall in love again in front of the kids. Johnny ends by handing your sister her water cup, lifting it so she doesn’t have to reach.

“Number four,” she says, as if the room didn’t just collectively decide to root for this man forever. “Do you share?”

“I brought a whole pizza and cut the slices too big on purpose so I’d have to share,” he admits. “It’s called planning.”

“Number five: If she cries, do you cry?”

“On the inside,” he says. “On the outside, sometimes. I don’t make it her problem. I make it my mission.”

Your sister considers him, then ticks a box on the clipboard. “You pass Basic Decency.”

He exhales and grins, still standing, still palming the edge of her stool like he intends to catch her if gravity gets rude.

“Okay,” Franklin says, “magic tricks. But you can’t use fire.”

“Deal,” Johnny says, moving the lunchbox to the counter and sliding your sister into his side to free up the island surface for his theatrics. He looks at his empty hands, then up at you, busted, because his only parlor trick burns. “I’m gonna need a coin and some pure charisma.”

“You have exactly one of those,” Ben says.

Johnny flicks you a look. You drop a quarter into his palm. He lifts your sister down from the stool so she can get closer, sets her carefully in front of him, and makes a big show of checking both sleeves. He runs the coin across his knuckles. Her eyes track it, suspicious. He wiggles his fingers, the coin disappears, and he taps lightly behind her ear to show it reappeared.

“How—” she starts, then narrows her eyes. “Your sleeve.”

“It’s called a thumb break,” Johnny says, wounded. He does it again, and again, and once he deliberately lets it clatter to the floor. Your sister bends to grab it; he uses the sound to palm a second coin and “finds” it in the air. Franklin gasps. You find yourself pressed against Johnny’s side because he’s gathered the kids and somehow gathered you, too, without making a big deal out of it.

“Next,” Franklin says, bouncing. “Obstacle course. No flying. No fire.”

“And no crying,” your sister adds, trying out a tiny smirk.

“Absolutely no crying,” Johnny repeats dutifully. On your way to the fabrication bay, your sister’s shoelace comes undone; Johnny crouches, sets the lunchbox down, and ties it with precise, gentle fingers. “Loop, swoop, pull. See?” He does the same for Franklin, who wasn’t untied but demands equality. Then he scoops both kids up—Franklin under one arm, your sister under the other—for approximately three triumphant steps while they squeal, then sets them down with a bow. “I can carry two. I am unstoppable.”

Ben watches this and shakes his head. “The day you have twins I’m moving,” he mutters. “Into the basement. Forever.”

The obstacle course is a masterpiece of painter’s tape and foam blocks and absolutely not OSHA-compliant limbo bars. The kids explain the rules. Johnny looks like a man who has decided excellence is possible if he commits to the bit. He shrugs the backpack higher up, then—wait, he’s still wearing it.

“Give me that,” you say, reaching for the unicorn.

“Nope,” he says cheerfully. “I’m training under load.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Objectively.”

He does the course like a gymnast in a sitcom: high knees through ladder squares, tiptoes through paper cups, a limbo that frankly should be illegal. Halfway through, your sister claps too hard and tips off the stool she’s standing on; Johnny stops mid-stride, reaches one arm out without looking, and catches her by the armpits with ridiculous, reflexive ease, setting her back on her feet with a pat. Then he scrambles the foam “mountain” and plants himself at the top with the unicorn backpack perched like an alpine flag.

“DING,” he declares.

“Again,” your sister says, reveling.

He does it again. And again. On the last run, he swoops your sister up onto his shoulders to “ring” the imaginary bell with him. She dissolves into delighted shrieks, clutching his hair. Sue, eyes bright, films exactly five seconds and then tucks her phone away like she’s storing happiness for hard days.

After the obstacle course comes the lounge tea party. Johnny gets demoted from mountain conqueror to butler, which he takes with grace and an apron made out of a dish towel. He carries the entire plastic tea tray with the gravity of a headwaiter, then crouches to hold it steady while your sister “pours.” He passes out imaginary biscuits, balances his pinkie in the air like a menace, and when you sit, too, he slides a cushion under your knee without comment because he noticed you kneeling on tile.

“Would you like a biscuit?” your sister asks him.

“I would love a biscuit,” he says, and when she asks if he’s going to steal you away to space sometimes, he puts the tray down, lifts her gently into his lap so she doesn’t have to crane her neck to see his face, and says, “Sometimes I have to fly. I always come back.”

She watches him, small hands fisted in his hoodie strings. “Promise?”

He doesn’t do vows lightly. “Promise.”

When the not-scary building alarm hums later, he has her tucked behind his knee before the PA finishes its sentence, one palm out to feel the air—no heat, no smoke—another resting on her hair, anchoring without pinning. “I got you,” he says, and it’s not dramatic at all. When Sue’s calm “all clear” comes through, he doesn’t stand up immediately. He lets the seconds finish being scary in her body first, then lifts her—easy, reliable—onto his hip to regain the ground kids sometimes feel like they lose, and only sets her down when she taps his shoulder twice, a new little signal he apparently already understands.

Lunch comes on a delivery bot that Reed swears is more reliable than Johnny and a kitchen timer combined. Johnny immediately slides the pizza boxes aside to make room for carrot stars and cucumber moons; he hands out plates by walking a little circle around the kids so neither has to reach. He is ridiculous about the crusts, trying to win your sister’s trove with a single mournful look. It works, because she softens around him in ways she pretends she doesn’t.

Halfway through Ben’s story about the time Johnny got stuck half-in, half-out of a wetsuit, the service lift chirps its complaint on Fourteen. Johnny deposits your sister’s water on the table, taps Franklin’s elbow to keep it away from the edge, ghost-kisses your temple, and jogs out with a “No fire, just hands.” He’s back in five with dust on his knees and a smudge on his cheekbone that your sister wipes away with her palm, very serious. He lets her. He smiles like he’s been given a medal.

“Hero,” Franklin pronounces.

“Lunch fetcher,” Johnny counters, and swings the pizza closer again. Your sister scoots the carrot stars toward him like a test. He eats one and exaggeratedly enjoys it so much she snorts and steals it back.

Afternoon: greenhouse. Sue’s plants are shockingly normal for a building with an interdimensional closet. Your sister wants to smell every single herb and pronounce judgment. Basil: yes. Mint: yes. Rosemary: suspicious. Johnny carries the watering can because it’s heavy when it’s full and she wants to be the one to pour. He lifts her up under the arms so she can see the tiny seedlings in the back of the shelf; her sneakers knock against his thighs, her little hands grip his hoodie collar, and you feel the entire axis of your life tilt a degree toward something steadier.

“Higher,” she commands, and he laughs and does it.

“Do not drop my daughter,” Sue deadpans.

“Wouldn’t dare,” he says. He turns so your sister can wave at Sue over his shoulder. She does, upside down, giggling.

In the corridor back to the rec room, your sister slows. The universal six-year-old slump hits—less oxygen in the humor, more in the eyelids. Johnny notices before anyone else. He slides the unicorn backpack around to the front with one hand and kneels with the other. “Piggyback?” he offers, soft, as if he’s asking to hold a bird.

She hesitates, measuring pride against gravity. Then she nods and clambers up. His hands hook behind her knees, her cheek lands on his shoulder, and the universe behaves for a minute. He walks that way, carrying her and the bag and still somehow managing to graze your knuckles with his free fingers.

“Show-off,” Ben mutters, but he sounds like he’s smiling.

In the reading nook, your sister is awake enough to read to a stuffed rabbit and orchestrate voices. You and Johnny sit on the floor with your backs to the same shelf, shoulders pressed. He rubs a thumb absently over the back of your hand, cataloging the little lines like they’re notes to study later. When your sister stops mid-sentence, squints at him, and asks, “Do you love my sister?” he doesn’t flinch. “Yes,” he says, and it’s not a speech, it’s oxygen. He tells her about blue whale songs and how far they travel. He hands you—the words, the future—with care. And when your sister produces the plastic daisy ring from who knows where and gives it to him for you, he doesn’t joke. He slides it onto his pinkie and carries that weight like it’s made of more than plastic.

“Okay,” she says, because she runs a tight ship. “One more test.”

“Of course there is,” he groans. “Hit me.”

“Dance party.”

“I should’ve trained,” he whispers to you, half delighted, half doomed.

He dances anyway—terribly, wonderfully. He keeps a hand hovering an inch from your sister’s back every time she spins. He lifts her by the armpits for mid-air kicks. He pretends to pass out dramatically and she shrieks and jumps on him and he catches her like he planned it. When Franklin slides across the floor on socks and crashes into Johnny’s shins, Johnny scoops him up, too, one kid on each arm, and does three triumphant stomps before depositing them back on their feet as if they weigh less than his grin.

He carries the tray back to the kitchen after tea without being asked. He carries the recycling out because the bin is full and Sue will get there eventually but he’s here now. He carries reed’s forgotten mug from one lab to another because Reed’s brain is sometimes a train with too many stations. When you lean your head on his shoulder in the elevator down to the lobby, he doesn’t say anything, just shifts the backpack so it doesn’t dig into you and kisses the top of your hair.

By the time your sister climbs onto the couch cushion like it’s a podium and declares, “You can marry my sister,” everybody cheers. You, unhelpfully, tear up. Johnny puts a hand over his heart and bows, then turns and offers his knuckles to your sister for a fist bump—gentle, careful. She bumps and then points a tiny, stern finger. “If you make her cry, I will tell Aunt Sue.”

“Scariest threat I’ve ever received,” he says, glancing at Sue, who lifts one elegant eyebrow like she knows.

The verdict delivered, small bodies go heavy in the sudden way kids do when their day decides it’s done. Franklin nods off against Sue. Your sister yawns so hard she squeaks. Johnny is already shifting, already gathering. He tucks the lunchbox into the unicorn bag, zips it, slings it over his shoulder. He bends, presses a kiss to your temple, and then slides his arms under your sister with a smoothness you’ve only ever seen when he’s catching you. She folds into him like a habit. He takes her weight and adds it to the day like that’s what he’s for.

In the lobby, the security guard salutes you with a wink. “Court adjourned?”

“Verdict returned,” you say. “It’s looking good for the defendant.”

Johnny shifts your sleeping sister higher against his shoulder, one arm tucked securely under her legs while his free hand hooks the glittery lunchbox and catches the sliding backpack strap without breaking rhythm. She drools into his hoodie, unicorn keychain bouncing with each step. He looks at you as the doors slide open to the street. “You got room for me in your future now that I’ve been approved?”

You smirk. “Guess I’ll keep you around. You’re good for manual labor.”

“Good for more than that,” he says, smiling. He adjusts her quietly, everything careful. “She’s lighter than she looks.”

“Careful,” you murmur. “She’ll hear you and demand piggyback rides every day.”

“Fine by me,” he says. “I like carrying my girls.”

Outside, the city stretches, the sky soft with late afternoon. Johnny walks with his shoulder brushing yours, balancing your sister on his hip like he’s done it a thousand times, lunchbox hooked on two fingers, unicorn backpack slung over his other shoulder. He’s the picture of someone who doesn’t mind being loaded down if it means you don’t have to be. A breeze lifts the edge of your shirt; he shifts the unicorn strap to free his hand and smooths your hem down without thought, then catches your hand again.

At the curb, he stops and shifts her carefully so her head won’t loll. The pink plastic daisy ring still sits on his pinkie, catching the light. “I was thinking,” he says casually. “Someday, in a minute or a decade, when we’re ready—I want to do this with something that doesn’t come out of a vending machine.”

“You’re saying you want to marry me,” you say.

He looks at you like you’ve just named the melody he’s been humming. “Yes.”

“You’re lucky,” you say, leaning in to kiss him quickly so you don’t wake the little bundle between you. “Because I want to marry you, too.”

He exhales like he’s been holding the answer in his lungs for hours. “Okay.”

“Okay,” you echo.

Your sister stirs, lashes fluttering. “Are we home?”

“Almost,” Johnny says, adjusting his grip on her and the bag in a way that keeps you free to tuck a stray hair behind her ear.

“Good,” she sighs, voice drifting toward a command she’s already given. “Remember what I said.”

Johnny grins down at her. “Yes, ma’am. I have to marry your sister.”

“And eat vegetables,” she adds, half-asleep.

“And eat vegetables,” he says solemnly.

“And not set elevators on fire.”

“I’m writing that one down,” he murmurs, juggling her, the lunchbox, and the backpack like it’s nothing. He reaches for your hand with his free one, lacing your fingers gently. “Come on,” he says, voice low and happy. “Let’s take our girl home.”

He carries her up your steps with the kind of ease that only comes from wanting to. In your doorway, he pauses, turns so you can unlock without wrangling, and dips his head to press a kiss to your shoulder—quick, reverent, grateful. Inside, he lays your sister on the couch like she’s made of something rare, sets the lunchbox on the counter, hangs the unicorn backpack on the chair back like he’s been doing it for years. He tows a throw blanket over, shakes it out one-handed, and tucks it around her with a gentleness that makes your throat ache.

“Water?” he asks, already pouring. He hands you a glass like it’s a ring. You take a sip and press your lips together, suddenly overwhelmed by how soft and good the ordinary can be.

“She told me I could marry you,” he says, glancing at the daisy on his pinkie. “That’s legally binding, right?”

“In this jurisdiction?” you murmur. “Absolutely.”

He laughs—quiet, delighted—then sobers, blue eyes steady and bright. “I’m going to do this right,” he says. “All of it. The days where we’re just carrying groceries and backpacks and sleepy kids. The nights where your feet are cold and I remember the blanket lives at the end of the bed. The heavy things and the light things. I’ll carry what I can. I’ll carry you when you let me.”

You put the glass down because your hands are suddenly full of love, and pull him into you. He goes without resistance, arms winding around your waist, ringed pinkie pressing into your back. “I know,” you say against his mouth. “That’s why I said yes.”

Across the room, your sister sighs in her sleep and rolls onto her side, one hand still clutching the edge of the blanket he tucked. Johnny looks over your shoulder at her and smiles like he’s seeing the future—some goofy sliver of it where he’s tying tiny skate laces at a park and kissing you on a bench while a unicorn backpack sheds glitter onto his hoodie.

“Tomorrow,” he says, voice soft and certain, eyes back on you, “I’m bringing balloons.”

“She’ll hold you to that,” you warn.

“I hope so,” he says, and kisses you again—gentle, sure—before turning back to the couch, lifting the blanket edge to tuck under your sister’s chin like he’s done it a hundred times in a hundred different homes you haven’t lived in yet but will.

Later, when the city gets quiet enough that you can hear the hum of your old refrigerator and the hush of your street, he scoops her up again without you asking—careful not to wake her, lunchbox looped over his wrist, unicorn backpack over his shoulder—and carries her down the hall to her bed. He lays her down, smooths the hair from her forehead, and sets the plastic daisy ring on your nightstand beside your jewelry dish, like a promise, like a plan. When he comes back to you in the kitchen, his hands are finally empty—and the first thing he reaches for is yours.

[rumncokebaby]

between the stars

pairing: johnny storm x female reader

synopsis: in the wake of loss, johnny clings to y/n with everything he has, proving that even through heartbreak, love stays.

requested by anon

You wake to music and burnt sugar. Johnny sings under his breath in the kitchen, the cheap radio tuned to the oldies station he swears “makes the batter rise better.” The smoke alarm tuts and you hear him jump and fan it with a dish towel, laughing at himself.

“False alarm,” he calls. “I have it completely under control.”

You pad in, wrapped in his hoodie. He’s barefoot, hair a mess, a ridiculous apron that says KISS THE COOK (he bought it for himself) tied over sweatpants. There’s flour on his cheekbone and a heart-shaped pancake somehow shaped like the state of Nebraska.

You slide your arms around his waist from behind. He catches your hands at his stomach and kisses your knuckles. “Good morning, Mrs. Storm.”

“Depends on the pancakes.”

“I’ll have you know, I perfected my technique,” he says, and the second pancake flips perfectly, a neat, golden crescent. “See? Nailed it.”

“You flipped it like a coin. You’re a menace.”

He turns, quick kiss, a grin that lights his whole face. “I’m your menace.”

You eat at the counter, feet tangling under his stool. He tells you a story about Ben getting mobbed by a second-grade field trip yesterday and solemnly swearing in front of twenty-seven children never to lift a city bus again because “the union won’t let me.” He laughs before he finishes the punchline, the way he always does when he’s happy. You tuck it away—proof of an ordinary morning.

The Baxter Building alert pings your phone. Reed’s text: Anomaly signatures on Midtown grid. Private lab. Assemble. Sue’s after: No panic. Bring coffee.

Johnny’s smile fades, but doesn’t die. He squeezes your knee. “We’ll be quick.”

You know the script. You both shower in record time, throw on gear. He’s careful with you in these ten-minute windows, hands gentle when he zips your suit, thumbs fitting under your jaw like he can check your pulse through skin. At the elevator, he leans down to kiss you once more, longer than necessity, shorter than fear.

On the jet, Ben straps in with exaggerated care and points two big rocky thumbs up at you. “Pre-flight checklist: you buckled, kid?”

“I’m not a kid.”

“To me you are,” he says cheerfully, then lowers his voice to you alone. “You good?”

You nod. Johnny watches your profile and doesn’t say anything, but his knee knocks yours, a steady, nervous metronome. The city hurries by beneath. The lab’s roof opens like a bad idea.

Inside, the air smells metallic and too bright. A humming light throbs at the end of a corridor like the world is holding its breath. Reed is already ten steps ahead, muttering about resonance curves, and Sue’s field shimmers faintly around your group, an invisible bubble doming the bad light.

“Talk to me,” Reed says to a tech in a lab coat who looks both relieved and terrified you’re here. The guy launches into a babble about a prototype core, power draw, adaptive feedback. Cosmic radiation is somewhere in the sentence like a dog whistle—you can’t hear it, but your bones do. The hairs on your arms lift.

Johnny stands a little behind you, close enough that his body heat is its own boundary. He doesn’t flame on. His hand finds the small of your back like a reflex. When the core chamber doors open, you feel him inhale.

The room on the other side hums wrong. The core sits in a cage of latticework, pulsing a hard white that hurts to look at. Reed goes graveyard-quiet. “It’s mapping every countermeasure.”

“So it’s learning,” Sue says.

“It’s stealing,” Johnny mutters. “Rude.”

A cable on the far wall arcs and spits. Ben plants himself under a groaning ceiling beam like a pillar grown for exactly this. Sue’s field thickens and sings. The core spikes.

Everything happens at once. The floor shivers, light flares, a conduit snaps like a whip. You move on instinct, shoving Johnny out of the path of the lashing cable. The impact knocks wind from your chest. Electricity kisses you with teeth.

You hit the floor. Sound drops out for a second.

Then the room returns in pieces: Reed barking coordinates, a lab tech crying, the breathy thrum of Sue’s field, Ben’s grunt as he shoulders weight, Johnny’s voice in a register you’ve only ever heard when he dreams about losing you.

He’s on his knees beside you, flaming completely out, hands—those careful hands—checking, touching, failing to fix what he can’t see. “Hey. Hey, baby, look at me. You with me?”

You gag on the metallic taste in your mouth and manage a nod. His face breaks and reassembles around relief.

“Med,” Sue says, already opening a corridor of blue. “Now.”

Johnny lifts you like you don’t weigh anything. The hallway is a blur, his heartbeat a drum under your ear. In the med bay, they cut away your suit, place pads, press gauze. Reed’s voice becomes a steady coastline. “You’re going to be okay,” he says, and because Reed doesn’t lie, you let yourself believe it.

Johnny stays out of the way and refuses to be out of the room. He’s all pressed edges and swallowed noise, one hand on your calf, rubbing circles like he can convince the world to follow a gentler pattern. “I’ve got you,” he says in your ear, quieter now that there’s nothing to fight. “You hear me? I’ve got you.”

You go home that night with strict instructions, a neat line of stitches across your shoulder, bruise blossoms coming up along your ribs. Johnny carries you from the elevator to the couch as if the floor is lava and he refuses to imagine losing you to it.

He is everything you’ve ever known him to be when you need him. He cooks badly, cleans obsessively, sets his alarm at night to wake and check your temperature. He tries to hide it, but he startles at every sound.

You wake the second morning to a bright smear of blood. For an absurd second, you think: must’ve picked at the scab in my sleep. You shower, deliberate, say nothing. At lunch there’s more, and your throat goes tight.

You are... late. You’ve been late since before the mission and you chalked it up to stress and sleep and Johnny’s habit of making weeks blur together into one long hot summer of kisses. Late enough that you made a note in your phone and then forgot to do anything about it, because forgetting is easier than a thought you can’t quite name.

You sit on the closed toilet lid and breathe. Your phone screen becomes water.

Johnny knocks on the door. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” you say, and your voice sounds like you left it somewhere else and are trying to find it again.

You’re not fine.

You are still bleeding when the cramping starts. You double over in the doorway to the living room and Johnny is straight out of his chair, catching your elbows. You’ve kept secrets before; you’re terrible at it with him. He reads your face like a map he has memorized.

“What’s wrong?” he whispers. Then: “Tell me.”

You open your mouth and what comes out is crying. Embarrassing, ugly crying with hiccups that hurt. He pulls you into his lap on the couch, not caring that you’re shaking too hard to make it easy. He rocks you, one hand on the back of your head, the other searingly gentle at your lower back.

“Hospital,” Sue says from the doorway like she’s been waiting in the hall listening for the exact moment. Of course she has. Reed is behind her with his serious eyes. Ben crowds in the hall, enormous and helpless and trying not to be in the way.

“I’ll take her,” Johnny says, standing with you in his arms because walking takes too long. His cheek presses to your hair. “Breathe with me.”

At the ER, everything is fluorescent and slow. They say your name like an intake form, say words like ultrasound and bloodwork and pregnancy test. You stare at Johnny’s shoulder because his shoulder is a place you’ve rested before and it has never moved.

The ultrasound room is dark. The tech is kind, the gel is cold, the screen is too far away. The tech’s face does something careful. She says she’ll be right back with the doctor.

Your hand is small on Johnny’s. He turns his palm up to lace fingers with you like there’s an oath in the gesture.

The doctor arrives with a voice that is both gentle and unyielding. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “It looks like you’re having a miscarriage.”

You hear it—first a sentence, then a fact that rearranges the furniture in the room.

You didn’t know you were pregnant. You knew your body had been—off. You didn’t know you were carrying a flicker of a future you wanted more than you let yourself admit out loud.

“I didn’t know,” you say. It’s barely sound.

The doctor nods like she has heard the sentence too often. She explains what happens next. She says it might complete on its own. She says words about follow-up, about watching your temperature, about coming back if you fill more than a pad an hour. She says it’s common. She says the thing people say when they’re trying to make heartbreak sound survivable: It happens a lot. It doesn’t make it easier.

Johnny doesn’t make a sound. He doesn’t move while she talks, as if stillness is the only control he can exercise in a room where nothing obeys.

Later, when you’re dressed and someone has handed you paperwork and a tiny pamphlet with soft colors titled Understanding Early Pregnancy Loss, when you’re back in the hallway that makes a habit of goodbyes, he guides you to a quiet corner near the vending machines and pulls you into him. He puts his mouth to your hair. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” you say automatically, and he flinches at the mirror.

“I know,” he says, and then his voice breaks. “I know it’s not yours either.”

He takes you home. He takes care of you like it is a good job he loves. He draws a bath and sits on the floor beside the tub with his chin on his arms and tells you dumb stories about the time he tried to dye his hair black in high school and came out green. He puts your phone on Do Not Disturb and answers every text with: we’re okay, will call later. He thanks Reed and Sue without saying what for and Ben drops off lasagna the size of a suitcase with a note that says: HEY KID, WE’RE OUTSIDE IF YOU WANT US, WE’RE OUTSIDE IF YOU DON’T.

You bleed and you wait and you cry and then you’re too tired to cry. Your body becomes a room that is learning absence. You hate it for a day, and then you forgive it because it’s yours.

The first night, you wake to Johnny crying quietly into the pillow so he won’t jar you. He muffles it, his shoulders shaking, a sound you have only heard once, the night you told him you’d marry him and he asked if you were sure he was someone you could trust with forever. You turn, press your face to his chest, and he holds you like the verb is keeping him from floating away.

“Say it,” you whisper into his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and this time he doesn’t mean it as a confession. He means: I wish I could build a wall around you. He means: I wish I could go back to the lab and put my body between you and every cable on earth. He means: I hate that I didn’t know.

He kisses your hairline, your swollen eyes, the salt of your skin. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he says. “Your body didn’t fail me. You didn’t fail me. You are not a failure.”

You believe him and you don’t. Both can be true in the same hour.

The next day Sue shows up with bone broth and her sleepiest sweater, the one you once said felt like a hug from a cloud. She doesn’t say I’m sorry or everything happens for a reason. She sits on the couch with you, knits, and hands you tissues as if she’s passing wrenches in a workshop. Reed hovers in the doorway and looks like a blueprint personified. He asks what you need and for once you tell him: nothing to fix, just your face in my house. He nods and stays, reading a journal article upside down for an hour without turning the page.

In the afternoon, a small knock rattles the door. Franklin peeks around Ben’s kneecap. “Hi,” he says, solemn.

You sit up. “Hey, buddy.”

He holds up a piece of paper with crayon smears and speaks like he practiced. “I made this for you. Because when I am sad, Mom says pictures help.” The drawing is the two of you—Johnny a bright orange scribble, you gentler—and a small star between your hands. Above it, in blocky letters, he wrote: LOVE STAYS.

Johnny makes a sound like a breath catching on a fence post. You press your hand to your mouth. Sue’s knitting goes very still in her lap. Ben sniffles like an industrial vacuum.

You tape the drawing to the fridge with two magnets and when the tape doesn’t hold, Johnny fixes it with a careful level of blue painter’s tape along the top as if it’s a painting in a museum.

After dinner, you and Johnny sit on the floor against the couch. The TV is on low. An episode of a show you’ve seen a thousand times murmurs in the background. You pick at a loose thread on your sleeve until he notices and captures your hand in both of his, thumbs smoothing your knuckles.

“I’m angry at my body,” you say into the space where the thread was. The admission feels both dirty and clean. “I wasn’t even that far along. That’s what they keep saying. That it was early. A chemical pregnancy. Like—like if it didn’t become a heartbeat, I don’t get to be this sad.” Your voice warps. “But I am. I am so sad. And I feel stupid for it. I feel like I failed you. Failed us. I should’ve—I should’ve told you I was late. I should’ve stayed home. I should’ve—”

He squeezes your hand and you stop because he’s looking at you like he can move the pain from your chest into his.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Look at me.”

You do.

“I am so sorry you are hurting,” he says, and it lands like a soft blanket. “I am so, so sorry. But I need you to hear me: you didn’t fail me. You didn’t fail anyone. You are allowed to be shattered by this even if it was early. You’re allowed to grieve the maybe. You’re allowed to be angry at the universe without proof that the universe deserves it. I will be angry with you. I will be sad with you. I will sit here as long as it takes while you hate everything and then while you don’t, and then while you hate it again.”

He swallows, eyes wet. “And I’m sorry I didn’t know,” he adds, voice breaking around the uselessness of that apology. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there the second your body decided something without asking you. I’m sorry I didn’t carry you out of that room faster. I’m sorry I couldn’t stand between you and this. I know none of that makes sense. I know I couldn’t have. But I feel it anyway, and I’m sorry.”

You lean into him until your foreheads touch. “You always try to stand between me and everything.”

“Yeah,” he whispers, shame and pride both in it. “I’m working on aiming that at the dishwasher and not electricity.”

“You carried me,” you say, and he blinks, eyes glass bright. “You didn’t let go.”

“Never,” he says, immediate. “Not once.”

You breathe. He does what he learned to do in the first months you were together—he matches your breath, counts it quietly with you like the most ordinary of miracles. Four in. Six out.

You sit like that for a long time. He doesn’t crowd you. He doesn’t say we’ll have another or everything will be fine. He doesn’t use the future to paper over the present. He lets the grief be as big as it needs to be and he holds you while it is.

That night, he lights a small candle on the windowsill. He doesn’t say why. You don’t ask. You sit on the couch with your legs over his lap and watch the flame bow and stand back up again, stubborn. Johnny’s thumb moves in idle circles at your ankle, a nervous habit that has become a ritual. After a while he whispers, “I want them to know they were wanted.”

“They were,” you say. The words shake but they don’t break.

Days pass and acquire shape. You go for short walks in the park at dusk when the city is almost kind. Johnny is careful in the way that would drive you crazy if it didn’t come threaded with his specific brand of joy. He is still him—too many groceries, the wrong kind of broth but six of them, a new plant you didn’t ask for called “a resilient little guy” as if it is a roommate. He tells you jokes at bad times and then apologizes, and then you laugh anyway. He sleeps with one hand on you like he’s worried you’ll glitch out of the universe if he doesn’t pin you to it.

On the first morning you wake without tears, you feel almost guilty. The guilt floats away when Johnny wanders out in boxers and socks and immediately trips over nothing. He catches himself, looks up, sees you watching him, and blushes. He is a man who can fly and a man who will always stub his toe on the same kitchen chair. You stand, go to him, wrap your arms around his waist, and he hugs you back like relief has bones.

A week later, you find him on the roof at sunset, elbows on the railing, looking at the place where the sky goes from orange to bruise. He hears you and turns, his smile small and real.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

He opens his arms. You step in, fit under his chin. The city breathes below; the sky pretends it’s on fire and Johnny pretends he isn’t jealous.

“I keep thinking I’m doing it wrong,” you say after a while. “Grief.”

“There isn’t a right way.”

“You’re supposed to say that.”

He huffs. “Okay, I’ll say this instead. You’re doing it exactly how you are. Which is how it’s done.”

You nudge his ribs. “Philosopher king.”

“I read a pamphlet.”

“I know.” You look up. “I saw the dog-ear.”

He groans. “Busted.”

“You, reading, voluntarily.” You pinch his shirt. “That’s love.”

He sobers. “It is,” he says quietly. “Hey, can I say something and you promise not to take it as pressure?”

“Say it.”

He kisses your hair. “I want whatever you want. Now, later, never. If later is someday, we can try again. When you’re ready. Not because this replaces anything—it doesn’t. Because… I don’t want fear to get the last word.” He swallows. “But if you never want to, I will spend the rest of my life being annoying about you and only you. You and me is the whole story. Everything else is a chapter we write if you want to write it.”

You press your mouth to his throat. His pulse is steady. “Someday,” you say, surprising yourself with how right it feels to let the word exist in your mouth. It’s not a date. It’s a door. “Not now. But… someday.”

He nods against your hair, maybe crying, maybe not. “Okay.” He exhales a long, shaky breath that sounds like a man setting down a suitcase he didn’t realize he was carrying. “Okay.”

“Can I say something?”

“Anything.”

“I’m scared.”

“I am too,” he says, immediate, honest. “All the time. Sometimes I’m scared in the grocery store because you’re in a different aisle and I think: what if the universe forgot to put her in the next one. I’m learning to be scared and not let it make me small. Does that make sense?”

You nod. “Yeah.”

“Also, I’m going to make Reed build a crib that can withstand a meteor strike,” he says, deadpan, and you laugh into his shirt, the first clean laugh in days.

In the living room that night, you clear the coffee table and lay out the little things you didn’t know you were saving—two baby names you joked about in a Notes app a month ago, a grocery receipt where Johnny circled BABY CARROTS and wrote foreshadowing, the pamphlet Sue slipped in your bag that says support group dates in a neat line. Johnny listens while you talk about all the ways you imagined a life without saying it out loud. He tells you his, some outrageous (a tiny fireproof leather jacket), some simple (bedtime dance parties to the radio; Sunday pancakes that actually look like hearts). Neither of you look away.

Reed swings by later with a stack of medical articles he will never ask you to read and a tiny plant with glossy leaves. “It’s a philodendron,” he says, a little awkward. “Hard to kill.”

“It better be,” Johnny says, mock-threatening. “Because I kill succulents.”

“You kill cacti,” Ben calls from the door. “Who kills cacti?”

“Johnny does,” Sue says, and kisses your hair, because this, too, is a way of saying I love you.

Franklin sleepily leans his head on your knee and asks if he can draw on your arm. You offer him a wrist. He doodles a little star, then another. “There,” he says, satisfied. “You can keep it.”

You keep it until the ink fades and then you ask him for another.

You and Johnny go back to work slowly. Light duty becomes real duty. The first time you walk into a room that hums with the wrong kind of light, your body locks. Johnny’s hand finds yours, firm and steady. Sue glances over and lifts the field without being asked, blue a gentle wall. Reed changes the algorithm that kept you in the room too long last time. Ben plants himself between you and anything with sharp edges and dares it to try.

You get through it. You get through the next one too.

On a quiet Sunday, you’re at the farmers market, bickering about peaches. Johnny wants the ones that smell like summer; you want the ones that will last more than twelve hours. He’s carrying all the bags because he likes to pretend they weigh something. When you stop at the flower tent, your hand pauses over a bundle of small white blooms.

“Baby’s breath?” he asks, soft.

“Too on the nose?”

“Just on it,” he says, and he buys them before you can decide, wraps them in brown paper like a secret he’s good at keeping.

At home, you put them in a glass by the framed drawing on the wall—LOVE STAYS. He stands behind you and slips his arms around your middle and breathes you in, the way he does on mornings and nights and Tuesdays when a better song comes on the radio. Neither of you says anything for a long time.

That night, you lie in bed with the window cracked, the city distant and river-sounding. Johnny writes his initials with his fingertip on your shoulder and then yours and then a tiny star. He kisses the ghost of the shape.

“Hey,” he says into your skin, voice a whisper like church. “We’re going to be okay.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t,” he says. “But I plan to be deeply annoying about you until we are.”

“Good,” you say, smiling in spite of yourself.

He’s quiet for a beat. “Someday,” he says, the word careful, offered, not demanded.

“Someday,” you echo.

He exhales, and the relief is not joy yet, but it is a place joy could live. He tucks his face into your neck and you fit your feet against his calves, and his hand slides to rest low on your belly with a reverence that isn’t a spell and isn’t a superstition; it’s a promise that doesn’t pretend to be a cure.

You close your eyes. The grief is still here. The love is louder. The tiny candle on the windowsill burns down to a pool and goes out, but the room stays warm, because he is a furnace when you are cold and you are a weather system he learned to read. In the morning, the radio will play a song you both know by heart and he’ll mangle the words until you laugh. You’ll eat pancakes that look like hearts and once like Nebraska. He’ll kiss you at the door and be careful and brave. You’ll be careful and brave too.

Someday is not a date on a calendar yet. It’s the small lift at the end of his voice when he says your name. It’s your hand reaching for his in a crowd and his already being there. It’s the way the drawing catches the light above the flowers, a crayon star between two messy stick people, Franklin’s printed letters reminding you of the only fact you trust.

Love stays. And when you’re ready, you’ll try again. Not to fix what broke—some things don’t need fixing to be honored—but to make room for a new light next to the candle that burned for the one you lost. And if the trying takes time, you have that. He’ll give you all of his.

You fall asleep, and when you wake at three a.m., the first thing you feel is Johnny’s hand splayed warm over your stomach and the second is the certainty that he will keep it there as long as you need him to. He murmurs your name in his sleep, not like a question, but like a vow he keeps making because it keeps being true.

You press your palm over his, fingers threading, and whisper into the dark, the word that fits inside both the ache and the hope: “Always.”

[rumncokebaby]

in sync

pairing: johnny storm x female reader

synopsis: in the field and out of it, you and johnny prove that being in love makes you the strongest team of all.

requested by anon

The mission briefing should have felt more serious. But Johnny was leaning back in his chair, smirking at you from across the Baxter Building’s conference room table, and that always made it hard to focus.

Reed’s voice droned on about “localized dimensional instability” and “possible hostile breaches,” but Johnny? He was mouthing you look hot while Sue tried to keep Franklin from playing with the hologram controls.

You fought back a smile, brushing your hair over your shoulder. “Eyes on the big scary science words, Storm.”

“I am,” he whispered back with that signature grin. “You’re the only big scary thing in here.”

You flicked your pen at him. He caught it easily, twirling it between his fingers like he’d won something.

Sue sighed like a mother who’d seen this movie too many times. “Are you two ever going to take a mission seriously from start to finish?”

“We take it seriously on the mission,” you defended, lips curling in a grin. “That’s why we’re the best team.”

Johnny leaned forward, elbows on the table, unbothered by Sue’s exasperation. “Best couple and best team,” he corrected. “Don’t forget the headline.”

Ben chuckled lowly. “Gimme a break.”

Reed, without looking up from his holograms, muttered, “If you two can channel half that energy into fieldwork, the city will be fine.”

By the time you hit the field — a downtown street rattling from the unstable rip in the sky — the joking stopped. Wind whipped through your hair, shards of glass rained from above, and the air shimmered with the sickly glow Reed had warned you about.

“Y/N, Johnny, you take point,” Sue’s voice crackled in your earpiece.

“Copy that,” you answered, your hands already glowing crimson. Power thrummed through your veins, humming like static against your skin.

Johnny landed beside you, already wreathed in flame, his smirk still intact even as chaos unfolded. “Ready, witchy?”

“Always, matchstick.”

The first breach spat out something vaguely humanoid, all jagged limbs and smoke. It roared, charging toward the civilians Sue was shielding with her forcefield.

You flicked your wrist, a scarlet lash of energy wrapping around its throat mid-charge. The creature thrashed, suspended in the air as you clenched your fist, the magic tightening. Johnny darted in, a fireball blooming from his palm and punching clean through its chest in a burst of heat.

It dissolved into nothing.

“God, I love it when we do that,” Johnny breathed, grinning like you’d just kissed him.

“Eyes up,” you teased, already sensing another one ripping through reality behind him. “Two o’clock.”

He didn’t turn — just ducked when you yanked him down telekinetically and sent a crimson wave ripping overhead, catching the second creature and slamming it into a wall. Johnny spun on your cue, finishing it with a scorching spiral of flame.

From across the street, Ben’s voice boomed through comms. “You two done flirting, or should we just let you handle the whole invasion yourselves?”

“Jealousy doesn’t look good on you, big guy,” Johnny called back, eyes still locked on you.

The breaches multiplied fast. You threw your hands wide, scarlet energy rippling in the air like molten threads, suspending debris and hurling back any creature that got too close. Johnny weaved in and out of the chaos like fire incarnate, scorching through enemies you pinned in place, his flames a bright counterpoint to your crimson glow.

At one point, three creatures cornered you against a half-collapsed storefront. One lunged high, one low, the third circling behind. You didn’t flinch — raising both hands, you blasted the first two back with telekinetic force, catching the third in a scarlet chokehold just as Johnny dropped in front of you, incinerating the whole trio in a whirling inferno.

He shot you a cocky grin over his shoulder. “Saved you.”

You arched a brow, flicking a wrist to stop a fourth from ambushing him. “Try again, Storm.”

By the time the last breach sealed, the street was eerily quiet — save for the hiss of steam rising off scorched pavement.

Johnny touched down beside you, chest heaving, flames dying down to embers licking at his skin. He reached up to tuck a stray strand of hair back, smudged with soot himself. “You’re insane, you know that?”

“You’re one to talk,” you murmured, smiling despite the exhaustion in your bones.

Reporters were already gathering, cameras flashing. His hand lingered on your jaw, the perfect “superhero couple” shot, but for once Johnny didn’t play it up. He just looked at you like no one else was there.

Sue’s voice cut through your earpiece. “Mission accomplished. And by the way… you two are ridiculous.”

Johnny smirked. “She’s just mad we stole the spotlight.”

You rolled your eyes, but when he kissed you — right there, ash-stained and aching, with the whole city watching — you couldn’t help but melt into it.

Because yeah. You weren’t just the best couple. You were the best damn team in the world.

Back at the Baxter Building, you changed into sweats, your body grateful to breathe again. Johnny was still riding the high, telling and retelling his favorite moments while you sipped tea on the couch.

Reed and Sue appeared — him with his tablet, her balancing two mugs. “You two really cleaned up the west side,” Reed said without glancing up.

“That’s because they’re disgustingly good together,” Sue muttered, setting mugs down. “And I mean both definitions of that word.”

Johnny grinned. “Aw, thanks, sis—”

“She’s not complimenting you,” Reed said, eyes glued to data.

Franklin bounded in, spaceship toy in hand. “You guys were so cool! Aunt Y/N made the thing fly and then Uncle Johnny went boom! You’re like the ultimate combo move!”

Johnny pointed at him like he’d just been sworn in as his lawyer. “See? The kid gets it. Teamwork.”

Sue just shook her head, a faint smile on her lips. “Eat before you collapse, both of you.”

You tugged Johnny down by the collar, silencing him with a soft kiss. “Best couple and best team,” you whispered.

“Always,” he breathed, forehead pressed to yours.

From the kitchen, Sue sighed. “If they get any cuter, I’m banning them from missions.”

Later that night, Johnny tugged you to the rooftop. The city stretched out, glittering under the night sky. He leaned against the railing, hands stuffed in his hoodie, watching you like you were more dazzling than the skyline.

“You know,” he said softly, “we were really good today.”

You slipped closer, arms winding around his waist. “We’re always good.”

“Yeah, but—” his grin softened — “watching you out there, I couldn’t tell if I wanted to fight beside you or just… stop and stare.”

Warmth rose to your cheeks. “Careful, Storm. That almost sounded romantic.”

“Oh, I’m way past almost.” He kissed you slow, deep, sweeter than the chaos earlier, and when he pulled back, his voice dropped. “We’re the best team in the field, and the best team out of it. That’s never changing.”

You smiled against his lips. “Good. Because you’re stuck with me.”

“Forever?” he teased, mock-serious.

“Forever.”

And for once, Johnny Storm had no witty comeback — just a quiet, content smile, like he finally knew exactly how lucky he was.

[rumncokebaby]

✨ good morning loves! ✨

just a little update — requests are open 🤍 and i’ll also be starting a taglist for future fics! so if you’d like to be added, let me know 🫶🏼

for now, i’m only writing for joseph quinn & johnny storm (fantastic four) 💌

can’t wait to share more with you all <3

[rumncokebaby]

our little cloud

pairing: johnny storm x reader

synopsis: johnny’s never been good at keeping secrets—especially the ones he can’t wait to give you.

Johnny starts noticing it in winter, when the city’s breath turns white and yours does too every single time a dog goes past. You live together now—two toothbrushes, one laundry basket, your mug hogging the corner of his favorite shelf—and there’s no missing the way your body leans toward anything with a wag. It’s the way you stop mid-sentence at the crosswalk because a bichon in a neon raincoat prances by; the way you freeze in front of the pet shop on 8th like the glass is a force field and whisper, “Hi, babies,” to a window full of wet noses; the way your hand finds Johnny’s sleeve and tugs twice.

“Two minutes,” you promise, already drifting toward the glass. “Just to look.”

He looks. At them, sure. Mostly at you—reflected in the window in a fog of warm breath and twinkle lights, eyes bright, smile getting that soft, tentative shape like you’re showing him a secret you keep pretending isn’t a secret.

By January, your late-night routine is a guiltless crime spree of tiny dog videos. You prop your chin on his shoulder in bed and press your phone to his cheek so he has to watch: a woman teaching a toy poodle to “touch,” a man whispering “watch me” as two button eyes blink up in devotion, a white puff named Marshmallow asleep like a dandelion on a couch. You text him links from five feet away with captions like “her little walk???” and “I am strong but I am not that strong” and “tell me this isn’t us.”

He texts back, even though your knee is knocking his. “Us, but with a tax deduction.”

“You can’t claim a poodle,” you say, scandalized.

“We can try,” he says, which is his way of saying yes to the universe before the universe asks.

You bring it up in ways you pretend are casual. “I grew up with cats,” you say, watching a white fluff ball bunny-hop over slush. “We never figured out dogs, my family. Maybe that’s why I want one so bad. Like a language I’ve been listening to my whole life and I want to finally speak.”

“Your accent would be cute,” he says without thinking, then bonks his head softly against the doorframe because sincerity always sneaks up on him. You laugh into his T-shirt and he can feel the shape of the laugh through cotton and ribs.

By February, the wanting isn’t even disguised. You stop at every pet shop, whether there’s a pup in the window or not. You air-tap the glass twice and say, “Manifesting new friends,” and he says, “Are you trying to adopt the concept of dog?” and you say, “Yes, obviously,” like he’s the silly one. You ask strangers if you can pet their dog with the politest softness, praising each creature like it invented paws. You send Johnny an unhinged stream of white poodle photos and begin referring to an imaginary dog as “our cloud.”

He plays the part of Resisting Boyfriend—rolls his eyes, mutters about schedules, calls himself an uncle not a dad—but he’s keeping score with his whole heart. He counts how many times your voice goes down into that feather-soft register to ask a golden, “hi there,” how often you glance back at the pet shop door with an awful attempt at nonchalance, how your thumb rubs circles on his wrist when a toy poodle bounces by like a snowball with legs. He recognizes the shape of a wish you’ve tried to shrink to fit your life.

And because you live together, because your toothpaste sits next to his and he knows exactly where you drop your keys on the counter without looking, he also sees the part you don’t say: you want a soft thing to shepherd through the loud days. Not a replacement for anything. An addition. A small, relentless yes.

He tucks it in his pocket with the other valuables — along with the mental note that he’s been carrying around a ring-shaped secret for months, just waiting for the right moment.

Then he starts plotting. Quietly. Which—given you live together—is a nightmare.

Sue is the first call, because Sue knows everything and loves him even when he is a hurricane of good intentions. He FaceTimes from the laundry room at the Baxter, because you can’t catch him there unless you physically come upstairs and he’s put Ben on “distract” duty just in case.

“Before you do anything,” Sue starts, eyes soft. “Make sure this is about giving Y/N what she wants and not filling a hole you’re afraid to look at.”

He nods, jaw working. “It’s both,” he admits, surprising himself. “But mostly? It’s her. I want to build the soft for her.”

Reed passes behind Sue with a tablet. Without looking up, he says, “I can design a collar that dynamically adjusts for comfort and visibility.” Which is Reed for I love you too.

Ben shows up that afternoon at your apartment with a tape measure and a martyred expression. “If the little lady’s gonna be little,” he grunts, eyeing your bed like it’s Everest, “you’re gonna need stairs and a ramp. Unless you want me to lecture you about knees for the rest of your life.”

“You’re here to fix the kitchen light,” you say from the couch, because Johnny told you that, because Johnny lies badly.

“I am also here to fix the light,” Ben says. He does fix the light. He also measures the couch while you’re in the bathroom, squinting at the carpet like he can see stair blueprints in the grain.

Franklin finds out because he’s five and you cannot keep a comet from streaking across the sky. He overhears Johnny whispering into his phone about rescue meet-and-greets and then sprints the length of the Baxter hallway, tiny sneakers squeaking, to fling himself at Johnny’s shins. “Secret?” he gasps. “Is it a world-saving secret?”

“Heart-saving,” Johnny whispers back, and Franklin makes the world’s smallest, loudest squeal into his own hands.

The problem with living together is your uncanny radar for his nonsense. He can’t take a call without you appearing in the doorway like a friendly warden. He can’t leave for “errands” without you squinting and saying, “Since when do you leave the house before eleven? Blink twice if you’re in danger.” He can’t stash a single thing without it getting caught in the undertow of your domestic enthusiasm.

“Let’s do a closet clean,” you announce on a Saturday. “Full purge. Marie Kondo would tremble.”

Johnny nearly drops the bag in his hand. It contains: an adjustable harness sized for a rabbit (it’s small, okay), a plush lamb toy he bought “just to see the texture,” and a bag of training treats labeled HUMAN GRADE in huge letters, which he foolishly thought would save him if you found them.

“Absolutely not,” he blurts, then twitches a smile. “I mean, yes, but we should start with… the fridge.”

“The fridge?” You peer at him, amused. “Because of all the emotional clutter?”

“It’s… condiments,” he says, panicked. “Very toxic condiments.”

You let him get away with it, but not without making a mental note and a kiss pressed to the corner of his mouth. “We’re coming back to that closet, Hydration Boy.”

He reroutes all the deliveries to the Baxter. He learns that you can, in fact, walk a crate through three blocks of Manhattan covered in a coat so it looks like a very rectangular ghost if you hold your breath and refuse eye contact. He hides the tiny bed under the bathroom sink behind a bulk pack of toilet paper and prays you won’t decide to get domestic on a Tuesday and inventory supplies. He borrows Sue’s guest room closet for the ramp and the steps. He starts using phrases like “supply chain” and “back order” to explain why he’s leaving after breakfast and returning before lunch, smelling faintly like… something.

“Why do you smell like a cupcake?” you ask one afternoon, suspicious, nose tipped toward his hoodie.

“New… uh… hand soap,” he tries.

“You are a terrible liar,” you tell him, fond and feral.

(What you don’t know: the cupcake smell is puppy shampoo. And the small velvet box tucked into the lining of his jacket has been there for two weeks.)

He goes to the rescue alone using a fake name that barely qualifies as disguise. (“Jon Hawke,” he tells Ben, and Ben says, “That’s a bassist for a midwestern metal cover band and you know it.”) The rescue is quiet and gentle, a small universe where people talk to animals like they’re fluent and don’t mind if they’re not. A volunteer with a daisy tattoo on her forearm asks him, “You here visiting or looking for new gravity?” and he thinks, wow, that’s exactly it.

“New gravity,” he says. “White toy poodle, if the stars are aligned. Hypoallergenic. Brave but not loud about it.”

“Toy poodles are the valedictorians of tiny,” she assures him. “We don’t get many. But surrenders happen. We’ll put you on the list.”

He hates lists. He learns to love this one.

He goes back two more times. Shakes hands, listens hard, donates in your name because that feels like a prayer you would actually approve. He brings a little fleece that smells like him and your citrus shampoo and leaves it behind. He keeps wanting out loud, like you taught him.

And then—on a Wednesday afternoon when you’re at home with a face mask on, plotting an assault on the coat closet and texting him memes about poodles in sneakers—his phone rings. He’s at the Baxter, thank God. The daisy volunteer says, “We have a little girl. Eight months. White as a sugar cube. Surrendered by a couple who realized their schedule was not compatible with living things. She’s sweet and cautious. She’ll need a home that’s patient and silly. Her intake name is Marshmallow.”

Johnny sits down on the lab floor and laughs like an idiot. “Of course it is,” he breathes. “Of course you are.”

He meets her privately first, because this is the system and also because he needs to make sure his heart isn’t about to outrun the facts. She’s even smaller than he expects and somehow larger because her attention makes weather of the room. She approaches with careful dignity, taps his knee with a cool nose, and when he scoops her, his heart trips over a crack and keeps going, different now. She smells like warm cotton and something new. Her ears are two commas bracketing a sentence he wants to spend years finishing.

The volunteer watches him watching her and smiles. “Looks like gravity found you.”

He fills out the forms with his real name because accountability matters here. Schedules the home check for the following day. Which is when the problem of living together becomes a full-blown caper.

He has to get you out of the apartment. He can’t say why. He can’t ask you to leave your own house without making you suspicious. He texts Sue in all caps: I NEED A FIELD TRIP FOR Y/N TOMORROW AT TWO. EMERGENCY MARSHMALLOW.

Sue calls you five minutes later. “Spa afternoon?” she sings. “I booked you with my girl. Reed will watch Franklin. You and me, nails, gossip, quiet. Please say yes so I don’t have to fashion eyebrows with tweezers like a monk.”

You say yes because you love Sue and also because, if you’re honest, you need a reset after three days of being feral about the closet. “Back by four?” you ask.

“Back by four,” she promises, and texts Johnny: You owe me a candle collection and possibly an organ.

At 2:05, you leave with Sue. At 2:13, the home check volunteer arrives; at 2:14, Johnny is sweating through a shirt that says COOL INFERNO and wishing he’d worn something that didn’t feel like a karmic joke. The volunteer is kind and thorough. She runs a hand along the ramp Ben delivered and nods. She checks the crate beside the bed with the fleece inside and nods. She asks about schedules and noise and neighbors. Johnny talks about consistency like he invented it yesterday. Reed breezes in to demonstrate the collar prototype—soft as a whisper, reflective as a secret, tiny tracker humming gently—and the volunteer’s eyebrows go up in impressed surrender.

“I’ve never seen that before,” she says.

“We make things,” Reed says mildly, which is his way of being coy about saving the world.

Ben shows the volunteer the steps. “For knees,” he intones, as if delivering a sermon.

“Stairs for a girlboss,” the volunteer agrees solemnly, and Ben pretends not to melt.

Your texts pop up during the visit: I can smell the acetone from here. Feels like rebirth. Also get ready to be obsessed with my nails.

He stares at the screen like it’s a live grenade. Types back: I’m permanently obsessed with your nails.

At 3:26, the home check clears with smiles and handshakes. “You’ll be a good family,” the volunteer says, and then—because she’s a pro—adds, “For her. Not for you. For her.”

“For her,” Johnny echoes.

At 3:31, he’s in a car to the rescue; at 3:52, he’s signing adoption papers with hands that won’t stop shaking; at 4:06, he’s setting a little carrier on your living room rug and opening the door and kneeling low. “Hi,” he breathes. “Welcome to the rest of your life.”

At 4:09, the apartment door opens and you say, “Hydration Boy, I got us tea tree—”

You see her.

You stop mid-syllable like the word itself turned holy.

“Oh,” you say, and then, softer, “oh.”

The little dog pauses with one paw in the air, considers you the way careful animals do, and then makes a decision you can feel in your bones: okay. Okay, that’s mine. She steps out of the carrier with the gravity of a queen boarding her ship and walks to you in five tiny steps. You drop to your knees so fast your keys skitter under the console table and you don’t even notice.

“Hi,” you whisper, hands hovering, waiting. She touches her nose to the inside of your wrist and licks once, as if to say this is edible in the way the best things are, and you make a sound Johnny is going to remember forever.

“The rescue called her Marshmallow,” he says, voice raw and shining. “I thought—”

“Mallows,” you say immediately, like your mouth has been saving the syllables for this exact second. The dog’s head tips at the sound like you plucked a string inside the air.

“Mallows,” he repeats, reverent.

You look up at him with eyes that undo him. “You did this?”

“You’ve been wanting out loud for months,” he says, crawling on his hands and knees until your knees bump. “I wanted to be the person who puts a leash on the want and hands it to you.”

Something in your face breaks and mends at the same time. You kiss him once, quick, then kiss the top of Mallows’ head, then kiss him again because there’s too much yes in your body to aim it in one direction.

The front door knocks. It opens. “I gave you a thirty-minute head start,” Sue announces, and then sees you and Mallows kneeling on the rug and flattens a hand to her heart. Reed is behind her with the collar. Ben is behind Reed with a bag of homemade treats labeled HUMAN GRADE because he knows you. Franklin shoots past all of them like joy on wheels. “PUPPY!” he yells, then stops dead, recalibrates, and approaches with two fingers extended and a whisper. “Hi, Mallows. I’m Franklin. I’m five. I will read to you with my quiet voice.”

Mallows accepts his offering of fingers like a queen receiving tribute. Franklin beams so hard his ears move.

Reed kneels to show you the collar. “It adjusts automatically,” he says. “There’s a soft glow for night without harsh glare. The charm is a tracker that pings our phones. And I built a proximity alert—it vibrates if she slips the perimeter of the block.”

“Reed,” you breathe, stunned, “you made her a collar like she’s a starship.”

Reed preens, subtle and pleased. “She is.”

Ben sets the ramp by the couch and the steps by the bed. “Stairs for small knees,” he declares, then squats and pats the bottom step. “C’mon, kid. Climb your first mountain.”

Mallows climbs one step. Sits. Considers. Climbs the second. Sits. Considers. Johnny is next to you, hands shaking and trying not to show it, and you slide your fingers into his without looking.

“She can do hard things,” Franklin coaches solemnly. “I read about it.”

“She can,” you agree, your voice the soft bell that rings inside the room when comfort is true.

By dinner, the apartment has reorganized itself around a nucleus of four pounds. There’s a water bowl in a sun square. There’s a crate beside the bed with a blanket that smells like you and him. There’s a toy lamb on the rug and a rope under the coffee table and a plastic bag of treats on the counter labeled in Ben’s blocky print: FOR MALLOWS (NOT BEN).

Johnny does not flame on once. He radiates warm without burning, the way he learned to for Franklin when he was a baby and now can do on command. Mallows bookmarks his lap as premium seating within an hour. You bookmark the way he breathes slower on purpose when the room gets loud, to lend calm to her like a sweater.

The first night, she whimpers at 12:08 and you sit straight up, hair in your face, and he’s already halfway out of bed. “I got midnight,” he whispers. “You get two. We co-parent.”

“You’re insufferably hot,” you whisper back.

He picks her up like she’s the crown jewel, carries her to the pee pad like it’s a throne, narrates her triumphant two drops in a sports whisper that makes you shake with quiet laughter. When he slides back under the sheet he finds your hand like he always does and laces fingers. You feel him grin in the dark.

Morning is a victory loop around the block as a family. Mallows prances like a pastry with opinions. The city tries to be too loud; you and Johnny practice being louder with your steadiness. “Watch me,” you say, and she does—looks up like that’s where the weather comes from now. Johnny breathes like a drumbeat to match her steps. A skateboard rattles too close and she freezes; he drops low, calls her name like the world just got smaller and easier to read. She crosses the distance like a comet correcting course.

Training class is humbling and hilarious. You sit in a circle with other families and a trainer named Jay who has forearms like a climber and a voice like honey. Mallows refuses “down” on philosophical grounds but obliterates “touch” and “watch me.” She learns “sit” like she invented it and uses it to extract tribute from your treat pouch with scandalous success. Johnny cries at the first perfect “sit,” blaming dust, blaming the air, blaming anything but the fact that his body has nowhere to put all this softness and is leaking it through his eyes.

Franklin institutes weekly story hour. He arrives with tiny cheese in a cup and picture books under his arm. He sits cross-legged by the crate and reads about plucky machines and brave mole rats and then looks Mallows in the face and says, “You can do that too,” because to him belief is practically medical. Mallows boops his palm like she’s signing a contract.

Reed prints a feeding schedule that accounts for metabolic rates and “zoom bursts.” Sue buys you three sweaters you absolutely do not need and then keeps them because Mallows looks like a bakery item and Sue is weak for pastries. Ben becomes a gravity well for tiny dogs in the park—kneels on the grass like a boulder warmed by sun and all the littles flock to him as if a mountain sang their names.

Public life notices because public life always does. The first afternoon you and Johnny walk down your block with Mallows asleep in a sling like a croissant, camera shutters pop from across the street. Johnny doesn’t flinch because his arm is around your shoulders and your hand is on Mallows and that’s a triangle nothing can puncture. Someone calls, “What’s her name?” and Johnny, calm and clear, says, “Mallows,” and then adds, “We’d love to give her a quiet afternoon,” and the universe—surprisingly, kindly—listens enough.

There is a scare—a skateboard again, because of course. The kid shoots past too fast; Mallows spooks and does a wriggle that would make Houdini proud. She’s two inches from slipping when Johnny’s voice threads the noise. “Mallows,” he calls, low and sure. She pivots, dives into his hands like he’s a harbor. He’s steady until you’re on a bench and then he shakes, face in your shoulder, and you put your mouth in his hair. “She came back,” you murmur. “She’s little and brave. And we breathe steady, remember? She follows us.”

He remembers. He practices. He keeps that breath in his pocket the way he kept your want, pulls it out when elevators ding, when lobby voices bounce, when the city is a drumline.

Home develops a new geography. There’s the pre-breakfast paw tap. The afternoon sun square that rotates across the rug like a clock and belongs to Mallows by law. The evening perimeter patrol—under the couch, behind the shoe rack, under the bed steps—during which she recovers the rope you pretended not to hide. There’s the sound of tiny nails on hardwood and the rhythm your brain learns without trying, an extra heartbeat in the house.

Bath day is an odyssey. Mallows becomes a wobbly Q-tip with eyes. Johnny narrates the entire thing like the Olympics. “And she sticks the landing, folks! Ten out of ten, tiny legs, judges weeping—ow,” as she shakes water directly into his open mouth and he laughs like a fool.

She barks for the first time at Johnny’s own reflection when he forgets hair gel; he claps a hand to his chest, outraged. “Rude.” She does it again, ferocious and small, and you fold in half laughing.

On Saturday mornings, Ben drops by with coffee and the “fitness program,” which is really just elaborately disguised fetch. He sets out cones he definitely stole from the Baxter lab and coaches Mallows through a wobbling slalom while muttering, “Form, kid, watch your form,” like she’s draft pick for a team only he sees. Sue arrives with a new sweater “she absolutely hated, so I’m returning it” and then doesn’t return it because fifteen minutes later Mallows is asleep wearing it and Sue is a goner. Reed 3D-prints a collapsible travel bowl and a treat pouch that clips to your belt and vibrates when you forget to reward on a schedule he deems “behaviorally optimal.” Franklin brings a crayon portrait: you, Johnny, and a white circle with four sticks labeled MALLOWS in letters that lean like wind.

The rescue asks families to send updates; you go back as a field trip. The daisy volunteer squeezes Johnny’s hand so hard his knuckles pop. “She landed in a good one,” she says, then cocks her head. “You did, too.”

He looks at you like he still can’t believe he gets to keep you. “I did,” he says softly, and the volunteer pretends to examine a bulletin board because she is not in the business of crying at work.

Even the tiny arguments are different now. The debate over whether the squeaky blue hedgehog belongs in the bedroom (it doesn’t; Mallows disagrees) ends with you hiding the hedgehog in the closet and Johnny playing defense for ten minutes while Mallows attempts to lawyer herself into the restricted zone. You lose; the hedgehog shows up under your pillow at 3 a.m. and you wake to a squeak that nearly ends your life. You vow revenge. Mallows accepts your apology for ever doubting her diplomacy.

The only thing you don’t understand is why Johnny keeps being weird about your ring size in the dumbest ways. He tries your stacking rings on “as a joke” and squints, like his eyeballs are calipers. He borrows one—claims he needs it for a photo bit—and it’s “mysteriously” back in your dish by morning. You catch him and he flails, blaming Ben, blaming Reed, blaming a physics experiment that “requires circles.”

“Uh-huh,” you say, knowing and kind.

Franklin busts into the living room one evening with a construction paper crown for Mallows and a drawing of three circles he insists are “pretend bagels.”

“Rings?” you tease, eyebrows up.

“Bagels,” Johnny says way too fast. Franklin nods solemnly, then whispers to Mallows, “Rings,” and pats her head like she is in on everything.

You find tiny evidence trails everywhere. A tab left open on your laptop at the jewelry site where you were last week, except now the filters are set to “sparkle like a supernova” and “durable for everyday heroics.” A note in Johnny’s pocket you accidentally wash that bleeds ink into your jeans but leaves behind a ghost of words: rooftop / lights / Franklin sign?? Reed, who has never been stealthy a day in his life, asks your “finger circumference” over dinner and Sue kicks his ankle under the table so hard the salt shaker rattles.

You don’t press. You don’t open the velvet box you notice tucked behind the stack of spare passports in the desk one afternoon while looking for a pen. You only smile to yourself, tuck it carefully back where it was, and go find your boys.

A few weeks later the city finally pretends it’s spring. You, Johnny, and Mallows drift through Saturday like you invented it: coffee with too much vanilla, a cautious first trip to the park, a nap in a square of sun that Mallows claims first and you beg to borrow. The headlines try to intrude on your sidewalk but you feel like a little boat with the right ballast; your triangle holds.

In the evening, Johnny’s on the floor, Mallows starfished across his chest, both of them breathing in that loose, surrendered rhythm that makes you ache. You snap a picture you know you’ll look at in ten years and feel the same punch. You were greedy in February, you think, and you were right to be.

On a Tuesday you come home to find Ben sitting cross-legged on your kitchen floor while Mallows tries to climb his forearm like a rock wall. “She’s getting her gains,” he says, very serious. “Core work. This is a core exercise.”

“Is this why my measuring cups are on the counter?” you ask.

“Measuring,” he says, offended. “I’m building her a travel step for the car.”

“You are all insane,” you inform him, which is your way of saying thank you.

You and Johnny still do your dumb bickering dance—over who left the light on, who stole the blanket, who taught Mallows to beg with those eyes (it was both of you)—but it keeps landing in laughter. He is still loud when he’s delighted, still fast when he’s sure. And yet: you can see the new muscle he’s grown for this small life. He listens. He practices the slow thing, the steady thing, the breath he can lend to you and to the white comet asleep against your calf.

And then—weeks later—you’re digging for a pen in the desk, because of course the pen you actually like migrates, and you find a folded paper in Johnny’s determined scrawl:

Give her the dog she keeps seeing in the window.

Under that, smaller:

Make the world gentle for both of them.

In parentheses:

Learn how to be a hill, not a fire.

There’s something else tucked behind it—a small velvet box. You freeze, heartbeat catching. You don’t open it, because you already know. You just smile to yourself, tucking both the note and the box exactly back where you found them.

You carry Mallows to the kitchen because she has somehow convinced you that walking is beneath her station. Johnny’s at the stove, flipping pancakes with a flourish, curls messy from sleep, Mallows’ fleece blanket slung over his shoulder like it belongs there. He hums under his breath, some nonsense melody that sounds like morning. The apartment smells like butter and vanilla and the faintest trace of puppy shampoo because you are all lost to the bit.

You watch him for a moment, taking in the way his whole body tips toward you without him even realizing it.

“Johnny?” you say.

He glances up with that boyish grin, “Yeah, babe?”

“Marry me.”

He freezes for a half-second, then smirks, shaking his head as the spatula droops in his hand. “I’m supposed to ask you that.”

“You can still ask me,” you shrug, smiling, “but I’m serious. Marry me.”

For a beat, something shifts in his expression—a flicker of realization that you might have stumbled onto his secret, a softness that looks like relief. Then he laughs quietly, almost like he’s been waiting for you to say it, and crosses the space to kiss you quick, batter still sizzling behind him. His hand finds your cheek, thumb brushing your skin in that way that makes your chest ache.

“Soon, babe,” he says, and you hear all the weight behind it. Not hesitation. Not stalling. Just a promise he’s already been planning to keep.

Mallows barks once, as if to seal the deal.

[rumncokebaby]

hey :) would you be able to use the readmore function on your fics please? they’re very long and it can make navigating the tag really hard on mobile, thank you and hope this is ok

hii omg i feel like a grandma using this LMAO! i fixed it so it should be easier navigation 😝☺️

[rumncokebaby]

one stress away

pairing: johnny storm x female reader

warning: smut

synopsis: six months of patience, self-control, and longing…

requested by: @fire-joestar

You’d joked about it before. One bad week, three deadlines, a leaky faucet, and a cold cup of coffee later — you’d slumped onto the couch beside Johnny and muttered, “I’m one stress away from a nipple piercing.”

He’d laughed so hard he nearly dropped his phone. “Babe, I support you in all your endeavors… but if you’re gonna say things like that, I need at least twenty-four hours’ notice.” You’d rolled your eyes and thrown a pillow at him.

That was months ago.

Today wasn’t stressful. Just… impulsive. You’d walked past a piercing shop on your way back from lunch, remembered your own threat, and next thing you knew, you were signing a waiver and sitting in the chair, heart thumping.

By the time you got home, Johnny was sprawled on the couch in joggers and a white tee, one arm behind his head, the other lazily scrolling his phone. He looked up when you walked in. “Hey, sweetheart. You’re back early—” His brows pulled together. “What’s with the smile?”

“No smile,” you said, slipping off your jacket. “That is a smile,” he countered, sitting up a little. “What’d you do?”

You ignored the question, walking into the bedroom to toss your bag down. He followed a second later, leaning in the doorway. “I’m getting concerned. You have ‘I did something and I’m gonna make you guess’ face.”

You turned toward him, tilting your head. “Remember when I said I was one stress away from getting a nipple piercing?” His eyes narrowed. “Yeah…?” You bit back your grin. “Well, I wasn’t stressed today.”

It took about two seconds for it to click, and then his jaw dropped. “You didn’t—” You hooked your thumb under the hem of your tank top, slowly lifting it just enough to show him the small, silver barbell gleaming against your skin.

Johnny just stared. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink. “Holy shit.”

You let the fabric fall back down. “You like it?” “Like it?” He took a step forward, his voice going low, almost wrecked. “Babe, I think you might’ve just ended me.”

You laughed, moving past him toward the living room, but he caught your wrist, spinning you back into his chest. His hand hovered, not quite touching the spot you’d just revealed, as if he was physically restraining himself. “I can’t believe you did it without telling me,” he murmured, shaking his head. “That’s… I mean—” He stopped, eyes flicking down again. “I don’t even know what to say right now.”

“You always have something to say,” you teased. “Yeah, but you’ve permanently upgraded my life and I’m short-circuiting.”

That night, when you curled into bed, you reached for him. He kissed you, deep and slow, but then pulled back. “We’re not… y’know. Not yet.”

You frowned. “You don’t have to be that careful—” “I do.” His tone was soft but sure. “I’d rather wait until it’s healed than risk hurting you.”

The first two weeks? He was too scared to even think about sex. You’d tease him and he’d groan, saying, “Don’t tempt me, sweetheart, I’m fragile right now.”

After a month, he relaxed. You still had sex — plenty of it — but his hands stayed firmly in safe zones. No touching your boobs, no brushing against them, not even an accidental graze. He’d rest a palm on your sternum like there was an invisible fence below it.

You caught him looking, though. In the shower, his eyes would drift lower before he shook himself and started scrubbing his hair like it was urgent. In bed, his gaze would linger on your chest while you were on top, but he’d grip your hips like a lifeline instead.

One night, you teased, “You’re acting like they’re cursed.” He just smiled, kissed your shoulder, and said, “They’re not cursed. They’re sacred. And I’m not messing with them until it’s safe.”

It became a running joke — you’d lean against the counter in just a tank top, and he’d mutter “This is cruel” under his breath. But sometimes, late at night, when he thought you were asleep, you’d feel him sigh against your back and whisper, “God, I miss you there.”

You didn’t plan it. You didn’t even build it up. You just told him over breakfast.

“It’s healed,” you said casually, sipping orange juice.

The spatula hit the skillet with a clack. “What?”

“The piercing. Fully healed.”

He froze. “You mean—” His voice dropped to a reverent hush. “Green light?”

You smirked. “Green light.”

The pancakes were forgotten. He was already crossing the kitchen, cupping your jaw to kiss you like you’d just given him oxygen. “Bedroom. Now.”

The bedroom door barely shut before Johnny had your shirt in his hands. He didn’t yank, didn’t rush — no, he lifted it slow, almost reverent, until the fabric pooled in his fingers and you were bare to him. His gaze was molten.

“Six months,” he murmured. “Do you have any idea what that’s done to me?”

You smiled faintly. “Probably the same thing it’s done to me.”

He stepped closer, his chest brushing yours without quite pressing. His palms came up to cup your breasts, thumbs tracing the jewelry like he was afraid to blink and miss it. “God, I missed you here,” he said, voice rough, and then finally — finally — he bent his head and took one into his mouth.

The first pull of his lips around you had your knees going loose. He groaned into your skin, deep and hungry, and the vibration made your stomach clench. His tongue circled the barbell carefully, flicking over the hard peak just enough to make you gasp. He switched to the other, lavishing it with equal greed, his free hand squeezing the first in slow, rhythmic presses that sent a pulse straight between your thighs.

You tangled your fingers in his hair, letting him set the pace — slow and unrelenting, his mouth moving like he had all the time in the world. He pulled back just long enough to glance up at you, lips slick, a faint smile tugging his mouth. “Perfect. Better than I remembered.”

Your laugh was shaky. “You really— ah— missed them that much?”

“Sweetheart, I had dreams about this.” He kissed the center of your chest, then dragged his mouth down your stomach, kneeling as he reached the waistband of your shorts. “And now I’m making up for lost time.”

He peeled the shorts down, pausing to kiss the inside of your thigh as you stepped out of them. His shoulders slid between your knees, thumbs stroking the crease where hip met pelvis, and then his mouth was on you.

Six months of careful restraint had left him starving. He licked you in slow, deliberate strokes, groaning softly like he was tasting something he’d been denied for years. His tongue worked in lazy patterns over your clit before dipping lower, teasing your entrance with a broad, wet pass.

You shivered. “Johnny—”

“I’ve got you,” he murmured, and slid a finger inside — just one at first, slow and curling until you gasped. He found your sweet spot with infuriating precision, his mouth never leaving your clit. When you tugged at his hair, he looked up at you, eyes dark and intent, then sealed his lips around you and sucked gently.

It was too much in the best way — the pressure, the rhythm, the warm stretch of his fingers curling inside you. The orgasm hit hard, stealing your breath as you clutched at his hair and thigh. He worked you through it, licking softly until your legs trembled.

He was moving up to kiss you when you pressed a hand to his chest.

“My turn.”

His brows arched. “Sweetheart—”

“You waited six months. Let me thank you.”

He didn’t argue. Just lay back, propped on his elbows, watching as you slid his joggers down. His cock was already hard, flushed, and leaking. You wrapped your hand around him and his head tipped back instantly.

“Oh fuck.”

You started slow, stroking from base to tip, letting your thumb smear the bead of precum before you leaned in and licked the underside in one long, teasing pass. His hips twitched, a groan rumbling from deep in his chest.

“Hands in my hair,” you told him. “Don’t push.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” His fingers threaded into your hair anyway, careful, grounding.

You took him into your mouth, the heat of him stretching your lips. His breath hitched. You set a slow pace, letting your tongue curl along the underside on every pull back, hollowing your cheeks when you slid down again.

“Feels so good,” he muttered, voice almost hoarse. “You’re… god, you’re perfect.”

You pulled back just enough to smirk at him. “Gonna come already?”

He let out a strained laugh. “Don’t tempt me—” but his words broke into a hiss as you swallowed him deeper, relaxing your throat to take more of him.

When you finally popped off to breathe, you kept stroking him with one hand, the other cupping his balls, gentle but deliberate. His hips shifted, like he was fighting instinct.

“I’m close,” he warned, voice ragged.

“Let go.”

The words shattered him. His groan was low and raw as he spilled into your mouth, your name breaking on his tongue. You swallowed every drop, pressing a kiss to the soft skin just above his hip before crawling up to straddle him.

He was still catching his breath when you sank down on him, both of you groaning at the stretch. His hands gripped your hips, holding you there for a moment. “Jesus… missed you everywhere,” he breathed.

You started to move, slow and rolling, letting him feel every inch. He looked up at you like you were the only thing in the room, eyes flicking to your chest every time you arched.

“Touch yourself,” he said, voice low.

You obeyed, circling your clit as you rode him. His jaw clenched at the sight. “You’re gonna make me come again, sweetheart.”

“Good.”

You came first, clenching around him so tight his eyes nearly rolled back. He flipped you onto your back then, pressing in deep, thrusts turning sharp until he groaned into your neck and followed you over the edge.

After, he cleaned you up, checked the piercing with gentle eyes, and lay down beside you, pulling you into his chest.

“I’d wait forever if you asked,” he murmured into your hair.

“I won’t,” you said, smiling against his skin.

“Green light,” he whispered, and kissed you like it was the first time all over again.

[rumncokebaby]

gold digger

pairing: johnny storm x female reader

synopsis: when people assume you’re with johnny storm for fame and money, you both keep quiet—until your old-money family makes a grand entrance at the baxter gala.

You hear them before you see them—the press line sharpening its teeth, microphones poised like spears, the little electronic whine of cameras focusing and refocusing because they want your face from every angle. You’re used to all of it by now, the choreography of a red carpet and the particular rhythm of people asking questions they’ve already decided the answers to. Tonight, though, has a special kind of static in the air, a crackle that says someone’s hoping for mess.

Johnny’s palm settles at your waist like a claim and a comfort all at once. He looks like trouble in a tux, blue eyes already dancing because he can smell a challenge. He squeezes your side, low and secret. “You ready, sweetheart?”

“Always.”

The first reporter leans over the velvet rope with a smile that hits her face too hard. “Y/N, what’s the best part of dating Johnny Storm? The fame? The lifestyle?”

You match her smile, gentler. “The free pizza. He orders like he’s feeding a football team.”

A scatter of laughs. Johnny dips his head so the cameras catch the curve of his mouth against your cheekbone. “She’s lying. It’s me. I’m the best part.”

“You’re alright,” you say, and his hand tightens as if to say that he loves you like this, dry and unbothered, unruffled in a storm with his last name.

Another microphone pushes forward. “Johnny, you’re a superhero, a celebrity, a… well, a handful. Were you ever worried about her intentions?”

He turns toward the voice so slowly that the guy who asked it flinches. Johnny’s smile is bright and pleasant; the heat beneath it is not. “Nope. Not once. If you’re worried about someone’s intentions, you don’t introduce them to your family, do you?” He looks back at you, all easy affection. “I’m the one who lucked out.”

“Is that why you’ve been footing the bills?” someone else calls, uglier.

Johnny’s tone stays light. “Buddy, I can’t even get her to let me pay for coffee half the time.” He angles the line for the cameras. “And if you think I’m letting anyone reduce her to a bill, you don’t know me.”

The knot of people murmurs. There are more questions, glossy ones about charity initiatives and what you’re wearing, and a few barbed ones dressed as compliments. You and Johnny play it like you rehearsed: you take the polite ones, Johnny swats the rude ones out of the air with that lazy charisma that says he grew up in this city and knows every doorway that leads to warmth. He keeps you tucked close as you move, arm heavy and possessive at your waist, his breath a secret against your ear whenever he wants to make you laugh.

Inside, the light turns honeyed. The Baxter Foundation gala always glows—warmth pulled from the ceiling, gold caught in glass stems, strings sauntering through something old and grand. Reed and Sue are hosts tonight, elegant in that particular way that says they’ve been here a thousand times and still care. Ben has already charmed a bartender into pretending the tiny crystal tumblers are not, in fact, tiny.

“Aunt Y/N!” Franklin’s voice carries like a bell through velvet. He barrels at you with five-year-old ferocity, all limbs and joy. You crouch to catch him, because the only right answer to Franklin is arms open.

“Hey, starlight,” you say, kissing his hair. “Who said you could look so handsome?”

“Mom,” he answers solemnly, then beams. “Can I sit next to you? I want to show you the spaceship I made on my tablet.”

“Of course you can.” You take his hand, and it anchors you in the sweetest way.

Johnny leans in, mouth brushing your temple. “I’m jealous you’re stealing my date.”

“You’ll survive,” you murmur, and he makes a face like he won’t, not if you stop looking at him like that.

You’re being shepherded toward your table when the air shifts. It’s a subtle ripple at first, that thing a room does when something important arrives. Heads pivot. Conversations dip. The string quartet doesn’t miss a note, but the song seems suddenly like a soundtrack.

You follow the line of turned shoulders to the entrance and feel the smile bloom before you can help it.

Your parents have never believed in entrances so much as inevitabilities. They move through doorways like they belong on the other side and always have. Your mother’s gown is quiet wealth, the kind of silk that looks like water when she walks. Your father’s suit has ruinous tailoring; his expression is all ease. The doorman stops them to speak, first-name friendly. The event planner turns to greet them with that controlled relief of someone whose VIPs actually showed.

They do not turn toward Reed and Sue, as any proper guest who doesn’t know the hosts might. They turn toward you, as if there is no place else they were ever going to go.

“Sweetheart,” your mom says, and every syllable is warmth. She kisses your cheek, then your forehead for good measure. Your father clasps Johnny’s shoulder like a man who knows that this is the person who will jump out of a plane if you ask him to. He kisses your cheek, too, then hugs Franklin so naturally the room collectively forgets to breathe.

“Mom. Dad.” You say it like you’re greeting them in your kitchen, which is exactly how you feel.

The people within earshot tilt like a school of fish, confusion moving through them. The jewelry. The way your mother smiles at the staff. The comfortable way your father signs the auction clipboard without looking at the numbers. The way you look like theirs and they look like yours.

Johnny’s mouth finds your ear again, the smile audible in his voice. “They have no idea.”

You let your hand rest over his. “Not a clue.”

Your parents know exactly what they’re doing. They do it kindly, without hurry. Your mom compliments Sue’s speech drafts when you introduce them because of course she saw them earlier; Sue dropped them by your place last night to ask which story should go first. Your dad teases Ben about a charity poker night gone wrong six years ago, and Ben groans like family. Reed shakes your father’s hand and forgets to let go for a second because Reed’s brain is a beautiful thing but sometimes two seconds behind his heart; your dad just laughs softly and pats his shoulder, unoffended. Franklin climbs onto your father’s knee and immediately begins showing him spaceship schematics with the gravity of a NASA briefing; your father treats every pixel with the gravitas it deserves.

You watch the room watch you. The math is a live thing, buzzing at tables. Who are they to her? Why do the hosts know them? Why does Johnny look this pleased?

A donor, flushed with champagne and curiosity, tries to slide a question into dessert. He aims for casual and lands on clumsy. “So, Y/N, did you ever imagine you’d end up in a room like this?”

You hold his gaze and let it be gentle. There’s no cruelty in you tonight; there’s nothing to win. “I grew up in rooms like this.”

He blinks. “Oh?”

“My family’s been attending this gala since before I was born. My grandfather was on the board in the eighties.” You reach for your water like you haven’t just tilted the world.

Sue smiles in the way that always looks like a secret. “And we’re very lucky they still are. The Y/L/N foundation underwrote the new science education wing, didn’t they?” She glances toward your mother in invitation rather than performance.

Your father answers mildly, the way men do when they’ve been in boardrooms long enough to measure a room’s pulse at a glance. “We were happy to help. The city’s been good to us.”

Ben leans back with a grin. “For the record, I always knew she was outta Johnny’s league in at least three categories.” He winks at you. “This only confirms it.”

Reed clears his throat into the mic at the front of the room. The lights don’t change much, but all attention moves to the stage as if the brightness has agreed to point itself there. It’s speech time; you knew it would be. Reed’s not a natural showman, but he’s earnest and brilliant, which is sometimes better. Sue is both brilliant and a natural showman. Together, they’re an orchestra.

Reed starts with numbers and stories that make numbers feel like people. Sue follows, her voice warm as a hearth. She thanks the donors, the staff, the volunteers, the city. She thanks the foundation, the community partners, the people whose lives are shaped by what rooms like this make possible.

“And,” she says, and that single syllable turns a corner for the whole room, “we’re honored to have with us tonight a family whose generosity has spanned decades in this city, whose name is woven into our schools, our museums, our neighborhoods. Please join me in thanking the Y/L/N family for everything they have done and continue to do… and whose daughter, we’re lucky to also call part of our family.”

There is a beat of silence, the kind that makes the golden chandeliers seem suddenly like they are listening. Then applause rolls in like a tide, warm and surprised. The cameras find you because cameras are trained that way. You’re suddenly very aware of Johnny’s hand as it slides from your waist to your ribcage and back again, protective and proud, and the way he’s looking at you like he wants to memorize this, not because it changes anything between you but because he likes being here when the world catches up.

He doesn’t wink at the cameras. He does the other thing—the small, devastating smile that says this is exactly how he pictured the night going. He presses his mouth to your hair, his breath a smile. “That’s my girl,” he murmurs, low enough that it threads under the applause and sits inside your bones.

Later, when the speeches have smoothed into music again and the business of eating dessert has resumed, the donor who asked you that clumsy question tries another. He goes careful now. “So your family is… the Y/L/Ns.”

“My parents are,” you say, because you’ve never liked the way capital letters can swallow a person. “I’m just me.”

Your mother touches your wrist, proud and amused. “You’re everything,” she says quietly, and somehow that little private thing is louder than the applause ever was.

Johnny squeezes your knee beneath the table, and there’s a spark of pure, unbothered joy in his eyes. “Promise I won’t let it go to my head,” he stage-whispers, and Ben snorts loud enough to set three forks clinking.

“Too late,” Ben says. “We passed ‘head’ about five miles back.”

Franklin, who has been transferring fruit from his plate to yours with an earnestness that suggests you haven’t been eating enough, looks up at Johnny with frank interest. “Uncle Johnny, are you going to marry Aunt Y/N?”

Johnny chokes on a laugh, a shade too delighted by the collective intake of breath around the table. “Frankie, buddy, you can’t just—”

“Yes,” your father says mildly, as if adding a line item to a meeting agenda. “Are you?”

“Dad,” you say, half-scandalized and half in love with how your parents like to kick the legs out from under a room without raising their voices.

Johnny’s fingers find your hand under the table and weave through. He doesn’t look rattled. He looks like a man who survived a spaceship accident and came home to find the thing he didn’t know he’d been missing. “One day,” he tells Franklin sincerely. “If she keeps letting me win her over.”

“You don’t win me,” you murmur. “You wake up and try again.”

He glows at that. He really does. And the cameras, because of course there are cameras, catch the echo of it across his face.

The rest of the night moves like silk. People recalibrate in real time. The ones who came to sneer decide they’ve always been fans. The ones who came to give see themselves reflected in your parents’ gentle way of belonging to a place. Sue introduces your mother to a young scientist whose mentorship program your mom immediately agrees to fund without making a big deal of it. Reed and your father fall into a surprisingly animated conversation about materials science as it relates to city infrastructure; you watch Reed’s eyebrows do math you’ve never seen before. Ben tells Franklin a bedtime story about the time he lifted a bus while eating a pretzel, and Franklin’s eyes go huge in the good way.

At some point, between the third person who stops to tell you a story about your grandparents and the fifth person who pretends they didn’t ask a rude question about you on a morning show last month, Johnny tucks a loose piece of your hair behind your ear and says, soft and private, “You okay?”

You take in the room that finally, finally sees you the way the people who matter see you: beloved, rooted, already home. “I’m good,” you say, and it’s true.

He bends, kisses the corner of your mouth because he can’t help it. “Let ’em look,” he says, very quietly. “They still won’t get it.”

They try, though. Oh, they try. By the time you and Johnny have made it to your car, the internet is a living thing with sixteen heads. Clips of Sue’s shoutout proliferate like pollen. A screenshot of your father with Franklin on his knee trends with the caption didn’t realize the heir to half the city also babysits at galas. Someone posts a side-by-side: your mother and your grandmother at the same event, separated by fifty years and united by a tilt of the chin that could fund a library. There are think pieces drafted in Notes app screenshots about public women and privacy and class and charity; there are more chaotic things, too—memes of Johnny clutching you like a dragon with treasure, captions insisting that the treasure is actually him.

You don’t go looking for the nastier stuff because your heart is not a trash can, but you can’t help catching the chorus that swells: oh. Well then. Oops.

By the time you’ve kicked off your shoes in your living room and collapsed backward on the couch, your phone is a skylight full of stars. Your name is threaded through headlines that somehow manage to sound both breathless and apologetic. You scroll because you’re human and because some of it is funny, and because you grew up understanding that the public is a creature to be studied, not obeyed.

Johnny reads over your shoulder, shameless. “Read me the best one.”

You clear your throat dramatically. “Quote: ‘so you’re telling me she wasn’t dating him for clout and money but actually for… love? and also because they’re a mutually obsessed menace? i hate it here. i love it here.’”

He laughs like a bark and then like relief. “Mutually obsessed menace,” he repeats. “Put that on our mailbox.”

You keep scrolling. There are blurry photos of you kissing your mother’s cheek that some stranger captioned as if they were witness to a royal reunion. There’s a thousand-word thread explaining the difference between old money and new money with a photo of Johnny captioned Exhibit A: new money who brings flowers to his girlfriend’s grandmother’s grave every month, because someone somehow knew that tiny ritual and the world decided it made sense of everything else. There is a video of Franklin waving his little napkin like a flag and shouting “Aunt Y/N!” across a ballroom; the internet has already set it to orchestral music and declared it the only wholesome thing left online.

Johnny takes your phone and tosses it gently on the coffee table like he’s tossing a pebble into a lake. It buzzes once and then thinks better of it. He pulls you into his lap with obscene ease and tucks your knees on either side of his hips, hands already finding the map of you he can play blindfolded. If he could glue you to him, you think he might try.

“You were perfect,” he says. There’s nothing for the cameras in his face now; every watt is for you. “You didn’t say anything cruel, and you didn’t apologize for existing.”

“I said I grew up in rooms like that,” you remind him.

“You said it like a weather report,” he says, grinning. “Like gravity. I love you.” He kisses the corner of your mouth. “I love you.” He kisses your jaw. “I love you.” He kisses your throat because he can, because it’s just the two of you and he is a man who has never been good at rationing himself. “I love you.”

“You’re very smug,” you inform him, hands sliding up his shoulders. He’s already undone his bow tie; it’s draped over the cushion like a dead thing.

“I’m honest,” he counters. “And I told you they’d make themselves look stupid if we let them talk long enough.”

“You did say that.” You trail a finger along his collar. “How does it feel to be right?”

He tips his head as if considering, then smiles with all his teeth. “Like this.” His arms tighten. “Warm.”

You sit there and let the quiet arrive. Outside, the city hums its endless song. Inside, you listen to Johnny’s breathing and the very faint sound of Franklin’s spaceship video still paused in your head, and the echo of Sue’s voice saying family like it is a present tense verb. Your parents text to say they love you and to send a crooked photo of your father and Franklin making serious faces at a tablet schematic, as if either of them has ever known how to be unserious about something a child is proud of.

It’s late when the group chat lights up. Ben leads with a selfie of his giant rock hand giving a thumbs up. Reed sends a paragraph about gratitude that could double as a grant proposal and ends with a line that reads, We are so lucky you are ours. Sue sends a heart and a photo of you and your mother laughing with your heads thrown back, and then another message: You handled yourself beautifully. Also, Reed cried during my shoutout. Do not let him tell you he didn’t.

Johnny reads all of it and then drops his forehead onto your shoulder, laughing into your skin. “I am surrounded by saps.”

“You are the chief sap,” you murmur.

“Fine,” he says, muffled. “Let the minutes reflect that.”

You wake the next morning to sunlight cutting a warm stripe across the bed and to a world that has decided it knows you a little better. It’s all silly, really. Nothing has changed and everything has shifted two centimeters toward your side. You make coffee while Johnny makes pancakes the way he does when he wants to earn a smile you were going to give him anyway. He flips one too high on purpose so Franklin, who comes over with Sue because breakfast is best when it’s a tiny party, can clap like it’s a magic trick. Your parents swing by later with a bundt cake because your mother believes in bundt cakes as a solution to any emotional hangover; your father finds an excuse to fix a cabinet door you’ve been ignoring.

Johnny watches you with them from across the kitchen and you watch him watching you. He leans against the counter like he’s staking claim to the air. His eyes are the quiet blue of a sky that has decided not to storm today. He looks smug, yes, because he is, and soft, yes, because he can’t help it, and a little undone, because that’s what love does to people who never thought they’d be this lucky.

When he catches you looking, he opens his arms like a destination. You go. He kisses your hair and then your forehead and then your mouth, not caring that there’s a smear of powdered sugar from the cake at the corner of it. Sue makes a face at you like a sister who is happy for you and resigned to secondhand PDA. Franklin sighs theatrically and says, “They’re doing it again,” and then asks for more syrup.

By afternoon, the internet has calmed down to a low, fascinated simmer. The narrative has shifted from accusation to acceptance to adoration in under twelve hours, the way it always does when the truth is boring and beautiful at the same time. You do not post anything. Johnny posts one photo—the back of your hand in his, your rings not diamonds but something old and strange you found at a flea market together, your skin lit like honey—and writes: her.

He shows it to you before he hits share like a teenager. “Is this too much?”

“It’s exactly you,” you say.

“And you?”

“It’s us.”

He posts it. The comments go feral and sweet. Someone writes, i owe her an apology, i was rooting for her downfall because i am weak and i wanted drama, but she is an heiress who minds her business and loves her man and we should all learn from that. Someone else writes, the way he’s holding her hand like it’s the last match at the end of the world. A third person simply writes, i get it now.

That night, when the day has folded itself into something small and manageable, Johnny tangles you up on the couch again like he can’t believe he gets to. “You know,” he says, eyes half-lidded, “we could’ve just said something.”

“We did,” you remind him. “We said nothing.”

He grins, delighted. “Exactly.”

“Let them talk,” you say into his shoulder, into the place where he keeps his most defenseless warmth. “They’ll catch up.”

“They can try,” he murmurs. “But they’re always gonna be a step behind.”

“What makes you say that?”

He tips your chin up with a knuckle and looks at you like the whole city could be on fire and he would still be convinced that the best course of action is to memorize the lines of your mouth. “Because I loved you first,” he says. “And loudest. And I’m never shutting up.”

He doesn’t. He kisses you like a promise, not because anyone is watching but because no one is. You hold onto him the way people hold onto railings when trains lurch and onto each other when the lights go out and onto laughter when nothing seems funny, which is to say: with both hands and a little bit of stubbornness. The rest can be noise. The rest can be a headline that changes and a clip that trends and a room that needs its memory updated.

What stays is this—your parents’ easy kiss on your cheek in a room full of witnesses, Franklin’s sticky hand sliding fruit onto your plate wordlessly like a love letter translated into blueberries, Sue’s voice turning family into the present tense, Reed’s hand not letting go of your father’s for a second too long because he was thinking about bridges and also about gratitude, Ben’s laugh crashing through awkward questions like they were never there, and Johnny’s palm anchored to your side as if the gravity inside his chest has decided on you and never plans to change its mind.

They can say what they want. They did. They will again. But when the sound falls away, you’re still here, and he’s still looking at you like he’s the lucky one, and maybe that’s the only reveal that ever mattered.

[rumncokebaby]

I love it! You’ve written exactly what was In my mind! OMG come here let me smooch your wrinkly brain 💋

(Tempted to send more prompts to you? Perhaps Johnny trying to convince a little girl he’s the perfect boyfriend material for her big sister?)

AHHHHH i like the way you think 🤭🤭 but yes send them through 🩷🩷

[rumncokebaby]

*screams* OMG ITS HERE!!! MY STORY IS HERE!!!! AHHHHHHHHH

YESS!! I hope you like it 🩷

[rumncokebaby]

do u have a taglist?

not at the moment, should i make one?? 👀

[rumncokebaby]

loudest kind of love

pairing: johnny storm x plus size <3 reader

synopsis: she hid the hurt so well, johnny thought she was fine—until he realized she wasn’t.

You learn the rhythm of Johnny’s public life the way you learn a favorite song—first the bright hook, then the steady backbeat you can’t unhear. New Yorkers pretend you’re invisible until the exact second they decide you aren’t. Phones tilt. Whispers braid. The lobby of the midtown hotel is a wind tunnel of perfume and ambition and lilies, and the charity gala upstairs is already vibrating like a beehive.

“C’mon, superstar,” Johnny murmurs, fingers lacing through yours as the elevator doors part. He’s all warm palm and infuriating dimples and a suit that fits like it owes him money. Ben wedges a massive hand between the doors so Reed and Sue can shepherd Franklin in before he wanders after a reflective sconce.

“Do you think dessert is going to be on fire?” Franklin asks the elevator ceiling, solemn as a judge.

“It will if your uncle can’t behave,” Sue says, smoothing her son’s bowtie without looking. She gives you a once-over that feels like a hug. “That jumpsuit is a personal attack. Marry me instead.”

“Get in line,” Ben says, holding the door with a knuckle that could stop traffic. “I’ve been trying to woo her with baked goods for months.”

“Your brownies do complicate matters,” you say, and the elevator breathes you all upward.

Your reflection rides with you in the mirrored walls—soft black fabric that moves when you move, lipstick you actually like on your own mouth, shoulders you’ve learned look best when you don’t apologize for them. You love your body. You mean it most days. You mean it right now.

Then the ballroom opens in a flood of light and lenses, and meaning anything at all starts to feel like an aerobic exercise.

Check-in is a flurry of tags and badges and a woman whose smile says she can smell insecurity like smoke. A photographer asks for “just the team” and then gestures vaguely to “girlfriends after,” glancing at you like he’s checking a box on a form. You tilt your head and step out of his frame before he can reposition you, and when he stumbles over an apology, you show him your easiest smile and say, “No worries,” because you refuse to let your grace be a favor someone owes you.

He blinks, sheepish, and you move on with your head level. It’s a dance floor learned over years—let the small cuts skim, keep the arteries safe.

“Love your confidence,” a woman in a dress that looks like sentient sequins says, eyes doing a quick, efficient loop down and up. “You really own… everything.”

“I do,” you say, sugar without being sticky. “Thanks for noticing.”

She’s not sure where to put that. Her smile glitches. She slides away, recalibrating, and Johnny’s hand finds the small of your back, heat steady through your fabric like a private pocket of summer.

“Your brand is undefeated,” he croons in your ear.

“My brand is minding my business,” you say, bumping your hip into his.

“You mind it very attractively.” He kisses your temple, casual, and the click of someone else’s camera catches it. He doesn’t look. You do, briefly. You aren’t rattled. You catalog the angle and decide you like your jawline from that side. A small win.

Reed, already courting a table of scientists into a conversation about microscopes, waves at you with a napkin. “They’re auctioning a calibrated stage micrometer,” he says without preamble. “Try and stop me.”

“No one is trying to stop you,” Sue says, linking her arm through yours. She tugs you toward the dessert table under the pretense of checking frosting. “We are enabling you responsibly.”

Near the chocolate something in the shape of a sculpture, two women hover with the peculiar malice of people who think they invented taste. They don’t lower their voices. They don’t look at you directly. It’s a talent, the way they perform their comments like you aren’t a person with ears.

“I mean, good for him,” says Sequins, now joined by Gold. “He’s like the Human Torch. I just didn’t expect…”

Gold makes a soft noise that implies compassion and superiority at the same time. “Maybe it’s a phase. Everyone’s doing… inclusivity.”

You and Sue both reach for the same crème brûlée spoon at the same time. Your fingers touch. Her eyes flick to yours, sharp and kind. She doesn’t say are you okay. She says, “Wanna make it sing?” and you crack the sugar, tap tap tap, the crystalline sound shivering in the air between you. You murmur to Franklin, who has materialized like a benevolent ghost, “Best sound in the world.”

“It is crispy,” he agrees, reverent.

Across the room, a woman stops you to say “brave” in a tone you associate with hospital waiting rooms. A man at the bar asks Johnny if he’s “slumming it”—as a joke, as a test—and Johnny’s smile doesn’t flicker but his eyes go winter. You pivot, change the subject, make a joke about the shrimp. You are good at this. You shouldn’t have to be. You are anyway.

You collect armfuls of tiny paper cuts and pretend they’re confetti.

Johnny is incandescent, as always, equal parts golden retriever and matchstrike. He takes a dozen photos with strangers and still manages to fill your palm with a glass of water you didn’t realize you needed, still manages to curl a hand at your hip during speeches, still manages to ask you if your feet hurt in the kind of whisper that makes you feel like a secret anyone would be lucky to keep. He doesn’t hear the paper cuts the way you do. He hears fireworks. You don’t begrudge him that. You adore it about him.

At the dessert table, Sequins returns for a second pass at tactlessness. “You really own the room,” she says, faux airy, as her eyes snag on your waist and then on Johnny’s hand there like she just discovered gravity. “It must take so much… confidence. Good for you.”

“Good for me,” you echo pleasantly, letting the words float in front of your face like balloons. You pop them before they can touch you. “And Johnny.”

“Especially Johnny,” she says, and her friend laughs too quickly.

Franklin, who is five and therefore still fluent in sincerity, tugs your hand. “You’re the most beautiful,” he announces. “On the inside and the outside.”

Sequins’ mouth pinches like she bit a lemon. Sue smiles with her teeth. Johnny looks at Franklin like he just won an award. Ben, looming, appears behind the women and clears his throat like thunder. The pair melts into the crowd, suddenly eager for shrimp.

You breathe. You are fine. You are fine because you have learned how to be fine, because you do not shrink for anyone, because your body is not an apology—it’s a story you tell with your chin up. You are fine. You put your palm flat over Johnny’s heart for one long beat and let the hum of him steady your ribs.

You make it through speeches and bidding wars and a dance where Ben unexpectedly waltzes like a dream. You exit into the blue-black city air and the knives retract, like the night respects you for having stayed upright. Johnny squeezes your hand. “Burgers?” he asks, voice immediate softness.

“Please,” you say, and your voice doesn’t wobble. You are proud of that.

At the diner that loves firefighters and superheroes equally, you slide into a booth with Franklin’s milkshake sweating between you. Two girls across the aisle angle their phones. You could perform not-seeing them in your sleep. You perform not-seeing them anyway. Johnny talks a big game about the “heroic” onion ring. Ben orders pie for the table and guards it like treasure. Reed invents a way to stabilize a wobbly sugar holder with a paperclip and a salt packet because he cannot help himself.

You laugh so hard at something Franklin says about crème brûlée rescue missions that you wheeze. In the girls’ video, you can see yourself mid-laugh, joy taking up your whole face, and the text someone later adds: he could do better fr, with a fire emoji like they’re kidding.

You don’t watch it yet. You know the flavor of it by the way your chest tightens.

You go home. You peel off your jumpsuit and brace your hands on the sink and look at yourself in the mirror. You look good. You know you do. You feel tired anyway, like you’ve been walking in a current with a smile stapled on. You don’t mind being strong. You mind that people think strength means you never sit down.

From the bedroom, Johnny’s voice: “Babe? Alarm at eight? I’ll make pancakes.”

“Okay,” you call, steady. “I’ll be out in a sec.”

You open your phone. You do it like a person opening a cabinet for a glass. Muscle memory. The video is there already, tagged, thirsting. The overlay text burns white on your laugh: he could do better fr. You scroll. You shouldn’t. You do. The comments wield words like “type” and “taste” and “phase,” like love is a trend report, like you’re a bullet point on a deck. You bite down on sound until it dissolves.

He knocks. “You good?”

“I’m fine,” you lie with impressive cheer, and you almost believe yourself by the time you open the door. He offers water like a ceremony. He doesn’t press. He leans against the hallway wall and waits with you in the quiet long enough that the quiet turns into a place to rest.

You are fine. You are fine. You will be fine.

The next week, you say no to a ribbon cutting. Then to an expo. You promise you’ll meet them for dinner. You do. You’re still you—on the couch with your feet in his lap; in the kitchen where he treats pancakes like a sacrament; at the bodega arguing about mangoes with a stranger like you’ve been neighbors for a decade. When it’s the two of you, you are not acting. When it’s the world, you’re tired of auditioning.

“Come with me to the expo?” Johnny asks, chin hooked over your shoulder while you brush your teeth. “I’ll be boring. Reed said if I light one pamphlet he’s exiling me to Hoboken.”

You want to say yes. You pick an outfit in your head that would make you feel like a person who says yes. In the morning, your phone is already buzzing with mentions from accounts you don’t follow but that find you anyway, like a smell in an old coat. You text: bad cramps. i’m gonna sit this one out. He replies with skull emojis and righteous promises to sue Advil. You put the phone face down, and still your day tilts toward the door.

“Where’s Y/N?” Sue asks a week later, handing Johnny a coffee with the gentle precision of a sister who knows the exact weight of her brother’s heart. “Haven’t seen her in a minute.”

“Home,” he says, too lightly. “She’ll meet us after.”

Sue’s look is not scolding. It is surgical. “Maybe check in beyond the ‘you good?’ ‘good’ loop,” she says softly. “Sometimes people don’t go places because the cost of going gets too heavy.”

He wants to say Of course I check. He wants to say She’d tell me. He wants to say I know her. Instead, he nods, chastened by love.

Ben trudges in with Franklin on his shoulder like a tiny, delighted king. “Is this where we overthrow the comments section?” he rumbles. “Because I brought brownies.”

“Where is Y/N?” Franklin asks, thumb shoved in his pocket like he’s about to write a bill. “She said she would show me how to make the pancake that’s a dinosaur but also a dog.”

“Home,” Johnny says again, softer. “We’ll go see her later.”

At dinner that night, you are your usual noisy joy. The waiter doesn’t look at you like your body is a scheduling conflict for the booth. The host doesn’t ask if the seat “works.” It is a small, perfect reprieve. Johnny flips his phone face down when it buzzes with a mention from an account drawn to his heat. He lets his knee lean into yours. He decides he is going to bring the public to you more carefully, deliberately. Not because you’re fragile. Because you shouldn’t have to bleed for it.

“There’s a little bookshop reading tomorrow,” he says later, sprawled on your couch, scrolling. “They want me to say smart things about a novella that made me cry. Want to go make out in poetry?”

“Let’s read the poems,” you say, smiling.

“Multitasking,” he counters.

You want to go. You even put on a sweater you love, the one that makes you feel like a quiet riot. Your phone lights up at the door with a preview from an uninvited thread. of course, it says, nothing else, a sigh weaponized. The yes in your chest turns sideways. You say your stomach’s weird. He says, “Say less, I’ll make pasta.” You let him. You taste surrender and pretend it’s basil.

He stops asking for a few days. He does the public machine with the same bright hum without you—gallery opening with Ben, late-night taping with a wink at the cameras. Outside the studio, a reporter asks, sugar-venom, “Where’s your girl?”

“Home,” he says, flashing all his teeth. “She’s smarter than me. She doesn’t stand around in the cold answering questions that aren’t actually questions.”

The reporter blinks. He glides inside and texts you a photo of the green room fruit plate arranged like a smiley face. You send back a fork. He tucks the phone under his palm and thinks about Sue’s ask: be nosy. He decides to stop thinking and do it.

Two days later, in your kitchen, he slides you a mug and says, too mild, “Want to go somewhere nobody will see us? Staten Island Costco? I’ll buy twelve pounds of Parmesan and you can tell me the truth.”

You almost laugh. “The romance.”

“The frozen aisle will be our confessional,” he says. He doesn’t reach for your phone when it buzzes on the counter. He asks, “Can I?”

You stare at it long enough for the glass to go glossy with your breath. “I don’t want you to,” you say. “I think I need you to.”

He turns it over gently, like a baby turtle he’s returning to the ocean. He doesn’t go digging. A notification blooms on cue: a DM with a screenshot of you mid-laugh at the bodega, straw in your mouth, joy unposed. everybody’s doing the “be local, date chubby” thing now, huh? storm’s so philanthropic.

Something in his face clicks into place. Not rage. Not yet. The opposite. He becomes very, very still. He sets your phone down like he’s putting a match on a table and choosing not to strike it. “How long?” he asks.

“Since the diner,” you say. “Before that. Since always. It just got… creative.”

“Cruel,” he corrects, and his voice is steady in a way that scares you more than if he’d shouted.

“Bored,” you say, because diminished things feel safer. “People need content. We’re a buffet.”

“No,” he says, and now the fire lives in his eyes. “You are not content. You are my life. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t want to hand you a fight you couldn’t extinguish,” you say, throat tight. “Because ignoring it felt like power. Because most days I am fine and if I admit I’m not, then it becomes a thing, and I didn’t want to be a problem you had to manage.”

His hands are on your face before you realize you’ve started to fold. “You are not a problem,” he says, fierce. “You are the point.”

You lean in. You let yourself be held like the ground is vibrating and he is the only steady thing. When you pull back, he is already collecting himself into purpose.

“I’m going to be very annoying now,” he warns, blue eyes lit from the inside. “Loud. Aggressively loud. I’m going to make so much noise about loving you that anybody who wanted silence gets a migraine.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I do,” he says, and there is such ridiculous certainty in him you almost laugh. “Not because a post fixes everything. Because I’ve been quiet long enough for idiots to assume quiet means consent.”

The family piles in later with groceries and gadgets and brownies and a blowtorch “for culinary purposes.” There’s sugar on the counter and Franklin on your lap and Reed turning off your notifications like he’s disarming a bomb. Johnny props his phone against the sugar canister so you can see the screen and, deliberately, writes his post in front of you and the team—no secrets, no PR spin, just the truth typed by his thumbs.

He posts a carousel: you on the couch, feet in his lap, both of you yelling at an action movie about physics; you at the bodega holding two mangoes like trophies, eyes alive; you in your jumpsuit in the gala mirror, his hand visible at your waist. Then he looks at you, steady, and reads the caption out loud so the words belong to the room first:

I’ve done a lot of loud things in my life. Here’s another one: I love my girlfriend. Not for a brand. Not for a phase. For forever. If you’re writing think pieces about whether she “fits” next to me, you probably haven’t met her. She’s the category. If you’re worried about me, don’t be—this is me, happy. If you’re worried about her, don’t be—worry about why you think love is a charity and not the smartest decision a person can make. If you see us in the wild, say hi or say nothing. Those are the options.

“Post?” he asks you, eyes soft but certain.

“Post,” you say, and watch him hit share. The moment lands like a bell—clear, ringing, impossible to unhear. He sets the phone face down. He doesn’t hover. He cracks sugar on crème brûlée for Franklin like a tiny symphony, and the kitchen smells like vanilla and resolve and the belonging you choose.

Much later, when the apartment is quiet and you’re both in bed and your makeup is long gone and your spine has finally unclenched, he clears his throat. Not the nervous one. The honest one.

“Hey,” he says into the dark, his breath warm at your ear. “I owe you an apology.”

You shift to face him. “For what?”

“For believing you were fine because I liked the part where you were fine,” he says, voice low and steady. “You’re so good at brushing it off that I took the brush from you and pretended it was the whole painting. You said you were okay and I wanted that to be the truth so badly that I didn’t look at the edges. That’s on me. You shouldn’t have had to tell me twice. You shouldn’t have had to tell me at all—I should’ve noticed that my girl who loves bookstores and bad action physics was suddenly allergic to rooms with cameras.”

Your throat gets tight in the good way. “Johnny—”

“I don’t get to outsource my seeing-you to the parts that are easy,” he goes on, fierce with gentleness. “So I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t clock it faster. I’m sorry I left you to carry something heavy in your pockets while I did pushups in a green room. I can’t fix the world, but I can do better in our house.”

You swallow. You let the apology land where it needs to. “Thank you,” you whisper. “It wasn’t your job to read my mind.”

“It’s my privilege to read your patterns,” he says, forehead to yours. “How do you want me to show up, beyond the loud stuff?”

You think. “Keep being annoying,” you say, smiling. “But also ask me twice when I say I’m fine. And when I say no to an event, don’t stop asking me altogether—just… offer me a smaller door. And keep turning off my notifications when I forget. And kiss me in the dairy aisle.”

“Done,” he says immediately. “Especially the dairy aisle. We’re banned, by the way.”

“We are gently discouraged,” Reed’s muffled voice says through the vent, because of course he’s working late.

You both snort into the pillows, and Johnny kisses the sound off your mouth like a promise sealed.

The next day, the talk-show host smiles like a blade. “You posted something very passionate,” she says. “Some might say you’re courting controversy.”

“Some might need a hobby,” Johnny says brightly, to laughter. She presses, couching it in “concern” and “the discourse.”

Johnny’s smile thins. “If your question is about my girlfriend’s body and not the arson-prevention program we launched or the science education grant we announced, I think you might be boring your audience,” he says evenly. Then, with a pleasant blink that lands like a jab: “But if you really need a hot take, here’s one—women aren’t trends, and loving someone isn’t philanthropic. It’s just smart. Next question, preferably one with research behind it.”

There’s a gasp and a cheer and the sound of a thousand phones screen-recording. He moves on, respectful, annoying, perfect. He says your name like it’s normal on TV and not like bait. He doesn’t over-explain your right to exist. He states it and pivots to what matters, which, somehow, makes the clip hit harder.

Your DMs flood with the good kind. It doesn’t erase the bad. It evens the scale.

You start saying yes again in small ways. A gallery opening where the artist paints light like a body. A street fair where Franklin eats a snow cone the size of his head and talks to a dog like it’s an old friend. A tiny bookstore reading where the owner says, “No phones,” and you could cry from relief. At a coffee cart, a woman calls you “brave” and you smile slow and say, “I’m not brave. I’m busy,” and Johnny hands you your cortado like a toast to that.

You still have bathroom nights. On those nights, he sits on the floor with his back to the tub and ties himself to you with his hands on your knees and his voice in the soft register he only uses for you. He doesn’t fix it. He doesn’t light anything on fire. He reminds you out loud and on purpose: you are not a brand. You are a person. You make his life make sense. Your body is not an argument; it’s the home address of his joy.

He keeps being loud on purpose. He posts you in a dress that made you whistle at yourself in the mirror and you in sweats with a pimple patch because his pride isn’t conditional. He doesn’t do it to prove a point, though the point gets proven like a drumbeat. He does it because this is his life and this life is you, and he wants an archive of how good it is.

On the Baxter roof in early spring, he brings a thermos and a blanket and sets himself up like a human chair. The city throws sparks at the dark. You taste chocolate and wind and a little relief.

“What was your favorite way I defended you?” he asks, casual as a prank.

“The post was hot,” you say, “the interview was sexy, but it’s the small stuff. Turning off my notifications. Making pancakes without asking if I earned them. Kissing me in the dairy aisle because someone stared too long and you wanted to give them something better to watch.”

He presses his smile into your hair. “Reed says we’re ‘gently discouraged’ from that grocery store.”

“He’s lying,” Reed’s voice wafts through a vent, dry as paper. “You are banned.”

You both dissolve into laughter so pure it feels like getting your name right after a long day of being called something else.

Later, you pass a bulletin board covered in Sue’s lists, Reed’s equations, Franklin’s crayon explosions. There’s a Polaroid tacked up—Johnny snapped it last week when you were cross-legged on the lab floor with Franklin, both of you serious over a puzzle piece shaped like a cloud. In the picture, your mouth is open mid-instruction, your hands soft. Franklin is looking at you like you invented the sun.

“That,” Johnny says, tapping the corner of the photo, voice low like reverence. “That’s the brand, if anybody asks.”

You slide the photo into your hoodie pocket. “No more brands,” you say, fond. “Just us.”

“Just us,” he echoes, and it lands like an oath he’s been making every day without saying it out loud.

People still talk. They always will. The noise doesn’t disappear. It changes pitch. Some days it’s rain on the roof. Some days it’s pots and pans. On the loud days, you show him the papercuts. He kisses them like you’re five and like you’re eighty and like this is the only medicine that works. On the quiet days, you eat pancakes and argue about mangoes and post nothing for a week because happiness is sometimes best un-captioned.

Weeks later, the city opens its first summer street and you wander it hand in hand, tasting things you can’t pronounce and dancing a little to a jazz trio with a crooked sax. Someone snaps a photo. Of course they do. It ends up online. Of course it does. The caption says: the kind of love that makes you believe in people again.

You screenshot it and drop it into a folder on your phone labeled Proof. Not because you need strangers to validate your life. Because some days you like to stack the light with the dark. The folder fills slow. It’s enough.

That night, after you brush your teeth, you come out to find Johnny leaning on the counter, thumb moving like a goalie’s. He looks up without guilt. “I blocked four,” he says. “Reported two. Followed a dog.”

“The important work,” you say, smiling.

He pockets his phone and opens his arms. “You okay?”

You check the ribs of your day without poking them. “Not all the way,” you say, unafraid of the truth in your mouth. “But close.”

“Okay,” he says, climbing into bed and hauling you into his chest like he’s dragging you out of a rip current and into warm shallows. “Then I’ll get us the rest of the way.”

He is very annoying. He is very earnest. He is very right. And when the morning comes and the light fills the room and the world limbers itself up to talk again, you go make pancakes in his shirt and he leans against the counter and watches you like he’s witnessing a miracle he has no interest in explaining to anyone else.

You are not a brand. You are a person. You are his person. He is yours. The rest is just noise. And some days the noise gets loud; some days you dance to it out of pure spite. On all the days, he is there, ridiculously bright, stubbornly soft, posting you and praising you and promising you things you already know but like hearing out loud.

“Eat,” he says, sliding a plate toward you like a benediction. “Hydrate. Then marry me in June.”

“In June?” you repeat, amused, because he is relentless.

He grins, open and easy and on fire where it counts. “Baby, I’ve been ready since the first mango.”