“Y’sure ‘bout this?”
“Yeah, dude,” Johnny answered for what must have been the tenth time that hour. “You’ve been cooped up for too long. You need to stretch your legs. Get some air. Enjoy the freedom.”
Benjamin Grimm grumbled in response. His massive frame was hidden beneath what would have been an oversized trenchcoat on anyone else but managed to fit perfectly on him. He moved in slow, ambling shuffles, careful not to apply too much force with each step.
It had been weeks since their quarantine had ended, and while Johnny, Sue, and Reed had been carrying-on their lives, Ben had hit a pause on his, choosing instead to live in self-imposed exile within his quarters. It had taken a long time for Johnny to coax the man into leaving the Baxter Building. A task that had primarily been accomplished through constant badgering and a not-so-subtle threat to leave a flaming bag of feces outside Ben’s door every morning until he gave in.
Resulting in their midnight stroll around Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Johnny continued, “Seriously, stop worrying. My dad said we’re all clear to go out whenever we want. No one is going to stop us.”
That was true. Franklin Storm, head of the Future Foundation, had seen no reason to restrict the four of them and make their lives more complex than they had already become. After Johnny had outed himself to the tabloids the other week, the Foundation’s public relations team had been fielding answers from the media, anyway. While the details behind the incident were kept under wraps, and the public hadn’t been exposed to the abilities of the others yet, the information about four young adults developing extraordinary abilities through a science experiment, and their names, was out there.
Besides, the world has become much more strange lately. Four more fantastic individuals walking around New York City weren’t going to tip the scales wildly one way or the other.
“I s’pose.” Ben’s voice was like low, rumbling thunder now, but despite that, Johnny could still hear the sorrow in his limited words clear as day.
The pair hadn’t known each other all that well before the incident. Truthfully, Johnny didn’t know Ben much better afterward. They had first met several years back, not long after Johnny's sister had started dating Reed Richards. Reed and Benjamin had been best friends since childhood, and the former had invited the latter to the Baxter Building on occasion. Johnny was only seventeen then and didn’t see much point in getting to know the friend of the guy dating his sister. Then, two years later, Johnny volunteered for Reed’s little project, and Ben, having just finished his contract with the Air Force as a test pilot, agreed to help with his buddy’s science experiment. They had spent much of the last year leading up to the incident working side-by-side, essentially as human crash dummies, during all of Reed’s practical tests. While the two weren’t best of friends during that time, their relationship very much surface level for the most part, they still had grown used to each other’s company.
Johnny thought of those days and the jubilant energy Ben brought to any given moment—the fun-loving, confident guy who could dish out a wisecrack as well as he took it. That man was gone, buried underneath a ton of orange stone, the confidence and spirit crushed beneath its weight. It was an ugly sight, but not for any of the reasons Ben saw when he looked in the mirror.
“Alright, listen, big guy. I get you got dealt a rough hand; I’m not denying that. But you can’t keep punishing yourself for it, dude.
“I mean, look at me; I can light myself on fire and take to the skies with a snap of my finger. Just ‘flame on’ and bam!” He highlighted that last word by stomping his foot and miming an explosion with his hands.
“And you? You’re a freaking goliath. You could go toe-to-toe, pound-for-pound, with a tank and come out on top. That guy dressed in blue they’ve talked about in the news, the one lifting trucks or whatever, that guy
wishes he was you.”
Ben grunted dismissively, continuing to shuffle forward. “Why do y'do that?”
Johnny hesitated, unsure of the question. “Why do I do what?”
“Say that thing. That ‘flame on’ crap,” Ben clarified.
“Oh." Johnny considered the question, needling responses instinctively forming at his lips, then reconsidered.
"It’s something from when I was a kid. When I was young, before my dad started the whole Future Foundation thing, he read me these pulp fiction stories from the forties and fifties. Our favorite was this series:
Marvel Mysteries. The main character, Jim Hammond, was a human-looking robot built by a super scientist. He had all these cool abilities, and he’d go on these wild, science-based adventures and fight against other robots and monsters made by other, eviler scientists. There were only, like, a dozen books, and it was pure schlock, but, man, I loved it as a little kid," he said, a flicker of a smile dancing across his features.
Those moments of his childhood stuck with him. Back then, it had been the thing that he and his father could share in common. It was what they could relate on. At that point, Sue was already a science whiz; barely in middle school yet could hold conversations with their father about advanced biology concepts. It was easy for the two of them to relate. But for Johnny, it had been those pulp science mysteries that connected the two.
“Anyway, the robot’s main power was that he could generate fire, and every time it would be this big, cool moment where he’d face down the bad guy and say his catchphrase: ‘flame on!’ And the bad guys never knew he was a robot, so they called him The Human Torch, and that’s how he kept his identity a secret. He was basically, like, the first superhero.”
“Huh,” mused Benjamin. “What’re the odds? Y’grow up readin’ ‘bout a guy who can control fire then, years later, can do it y’rself. Someone up there must be real big on the jokes.”
Johnny took a moment to respond. He had been thinking about that topic for days, and a notion had seeded itself in his mind. That notion had sprouted and grown quickly since his run-in with the tabloids.
“We could do it, you know,” he told Ben after a few minutes.
“What’s that?” Ben questioned.
“You know, the superhero thing.”
When he was met with silence, Johnny quickly added, “hear me out. I’ve got powers. You’ve got powers. The media already knows about us, so we don’t have to run around in masks like that dude swinging around the city. And we totally…”
Johnny trailed off as a repetitive booming broke out across the Manhattan night. When he realized what the noise was, he did a double-take. It was Benjamin Grimm. His roaring laughter came out in thunderous, distinct bursts.
“Y’ve said a lot of dumb things ‘fore, kid,” Ben said through the laughter, “but this takes the cake.”
“Hey!” Johnny jabbed a finger at the orange giant. “This is a great idea! Do you have any idea how much we could make off of merchandizing?”
“Oh, yeah,” more rumbling guffaws punctuated the words. “Can see it now. Rocky and Matchstick. What a pair.”
Johnny was torn. On the one hand, this was the first time he’d seen a hint of Ben returning to any semblance of his old, fun-loving self. On the other hand, his idea had been genuine, and it pissed him off to be told it was dumb. Ultimately, he chose to bite his tongue altruistically as the pair continued their walk through The Big Apple, accompanied by the ongoing echoes of laughter.
If anyone asked, it was entirely coincidental that the bottom edge of Ben’s trenchcoat sparked and smoked from the baby embers beginning to consume the fabric.
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