Opposites ➤ Johnny Storm

Chapter Nineteen

Sue and Reed were gonna leave. Johnny overheard them talking about leaving the team and leaving the Baxter Building. They were going to leave us behind and have a life that we wouldn't be a part of.

I'm not a hypocrite! I know I'm moving out by I'm going to stay in the building and I'm definitely going to stay on the team. They want to have a family, but they don't want us there.

And it's tearing us apart. Johnny and Ben are angry at them, all I feel is betrayal. Betrayed by the people I love because they want to forget about me. So the "team" isn't doing that well right now. The smothering tension in the helicopter was a reminder that we were falling to pieces.

Reed, of course, didn't pick up on the anger and distrust and continued like nothing was wrong. "When he surfaces, move the fight away from the crowd."

"He's too fast to contain." From what Johnny told us, he had a hard time keeping up with the surfer after the wedding. This is going to make our job a lot harder if we can't even catch him.

"When I see silver, I'm hitting him!"

"You can't do that. We stick to the plan and work as a team." My eyes closed as I waited for it to come. There is no way that comment will pass without response. Ben and Johnny are both too angry to let being called a team slide. And things are going to go from bad to even worse.

"Oh, we're a team now? News to me."

"Johnny." My soft voice made him turn to face my cautioning look. I gave him a little shake of my head to try and get him to back off and talk later, but I knew it was a losing battle. He wouldn't listen to me. Not on this.

"What are you talking about?"

"You know what."

You could see it in their eyes that they knew what he meant. It was clear now that we knew they were going to leave us. But it wasn't clear whether the looks of guilt were from abandoning their family or just because we overheard them.

"We were gonna tell you."

"When? When you moved our stuff out?" I put my hand over his arm to try and calm him down, but without being able to touch him it was useless. I was useless. Fist balled tightly I put it back in my lap and tried not think about how little I could do to help.

"Johnny, this isn't a good time." Reed sounded dismissive as we were in a full blown family meeting on our way to fight the surfer. If there's one thing you should never do to Johnny, it's treat like he's not important. He may be a handful at times, but he was not something to be handled. And Reed should know better than to treat him like he's not an equally important member of this team.

"Kid's got a point, Reed. You should have told us."

"That's enough! We'll talk about this later." My head turned from Reed at his unusually sharp tone and focused on my hands in my lap. What held my focus for the rest of the short trip wasn't my hands, but the other one resting right above them as close to holding them as physically possible without touching me. And it made me feel hopeful for the first time in days.

Okay I will admit that maybe I spoke a little too soon on that whole hopeful thing. Because the giant hole in the River Thames was definitely not helping my outlook on life. The fact that the London Eye was basically falling into it as well made things much worse.

Luckily, we had a plan.

Sue threw up a force field that slowed down the wheel which allowed Ben to grab the bottom and lift it up. With the wheel back in place, Reed stretched around it. He wove through the Ferris wheel many more times than seemed possible, but the people were able to get out so I wont linger on the weirdness of his powers.

Seeing as there wasn't much my powers could do it that moment, I started to help the bystanders. Although I didn't get far before Johnny turned to flames and started after him.

"No, Johnny!" I changed my course and started after him, but he was already off the ground and there would be no stopping him.

Except for Reed, who was in the way. When they touched their powers were switched and everything fell apart.

The plan, not the wheel. Now that Reed wasn't able to stretch around it, the eye fell. Johnny all but melted on the ground and Reed was a flame in the sky. The others were straining themselves now that it was just the two of them holding the weight. I shot out a barrier of water in between the people and the wheel, to protect in case anything fell towards them.

Through the water I was able to see Reed use Johnny's flames to weld the wheel back in place. As soon as the danger passed, I lowered my shield of water and surveyed the area. There were panicked people all over the place, a puddle of my best friend, and Sue was slowly falling to the ground.

As we ran to her, Reed touched Johnny to return their powers. I stopped at Johnny since the others were standing with Sue already. I crouched down on the ground next to him as I waited for him to let me know he was okay. We stood up together and I watched him start to his sister.

Reed moved in front of her with a cold expression that stilled us all instantly. He walked towards us and placed himself in the few feet of space between me and Johnny.

"Stay back, before you get somebody killed."

~~~~~~~~~~

Reed's lost it. Officially lost it.

He thought Johnny was a threat and didn't have any problem letting us know. As rode in the helicopter back to the base, he purposely sat between us to prevent...who knows what he thought he was preventing!

It took a while for me to get away from his "protective" watch, but I was able to sneak away to an empty conference room. Luckily, I wasn't alone for too long.

Johnny joined me minutes after he got my pleading text to meet me. Since Reed has completely lost his mind, any attempt I'd make to find out if Johnny's okay would be futile and we were left to sneak around. But if that's what it takes to find out what is going on in my best friend's mind then so be it.

"Hey Ror." I turned around, in the spinny chair that has been keeping me busy for the past few minutes, to face him as he walked in.

"Hey. Thanks for coming. I'm sorry that I'm acting like a crazy person by asking you to sneak around like we're stupid teenagers that are trying not to get caught by their parents. I just need to know that you're okay and then we can go back to normal and forget this ever happened. Although normal isn't really normal anymore. We lost normal and I don't know how to get it back. I don't know if we can-"

"Breathe." Despite the present circumstances, he put his hands on the sides of my face. There was a heat coursing through my veins in place of the cool feeling I'm used to. The unfamiliar sensation was surprisingly exhilarating and every bit as wonderful as he always said it was.

"What are you doing, Johnny? You shouldn't-"

"Forgot what I should or I shouldn't do. I don't care about doing the 'right' thing, I'm a selfish person so I'm not going to do what I should. But I'm not going to do what I want, I'm going to do what you want. So tell me what you want and I will do it. Anything you want and it's yours, you just need to tell me!"

There was a double meaning behind his words that made me pause. I don't wanna be the desperate girl, reading into fake signs, but I don't care anymore. Johnny's right, we can be selfish. So I leaned forward and did something I knew I shouldn't, something I told him off for just days ago.

I kissed him.