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There was an unspoken rule once the Baxter Building became home to the Future Foundation. No one, under any circumstance, was allowed into Johnny’s bedroom.
It felt wrong to just block it off to keep someone from wandering inside. Pretend like the room never existed, but it’s also a bright, blinding sore to what was now missing.
Sue walked down the hall - a distant look that seemed to accompany her eyes these days as her body moved on autopilot. Fingers trailing along the wall, following each subtle dip and groove.
She pauses at Johnny’s door. Her eyes looked down at the handle and to the side. Catching sight of how the door was open a fraction.
Anger swept through her - roaring like a wildfire. Who on earth broke the one sacred rule?
Light from the hallway floods the room as the door slams open. Its hinges squeak loudly as Sue does her best not to rip it from its hinges.
“What are you!” Sue yells, but when her eyes land on the body curled up on Johnny’s bed. Whatever anger that was boiling within her died as quickly as it came. The striking white and black suit against the bedsheets.
The messy mop of brown hair. A face buried into the pillow - clutching it like a lifeline.
“Peter?” Her voice softens, feet planted on the threshold of the bedroom.
The sight in front of her is eerily familiar to how she had been a few months ago.
Sue originally avoided Johnny’s bedroom as if it were the plague. Haunted by the hope that maybe, in some freak miracle if she poked her head inside. Her brother would still be there, complaining about getting woken up at some “ungodly hour” of 10 in the morning.
One day, when it had been too much for her to handle. Sue had climbed into his bed and sobbed as hard as she could. She didn’t think she had any more tears left in her. Yet she cried and cried until a headache pounded against her skull and her throat was scraped raw. And Reed had to all but tear her out of Johnny’s room as she kicked and screamed and cried again into his shoulder.
“Sue, I-” Peter shoots upwards, rubbing furiously at his eyes. His chin tucked into his shoulder to avoid her gaze. “I can explain.”
Sue takes a deep breath and takes the first step into Johnny’s room for the first time in not so very long. Her movements were careful as she crossed the room, and the mattress dips under her weight as she comes to sit next to Peter.
A hand reaches out, hovering hesitant before it settles on Peter’s shoulder. Peter stiffens under her hand and it makes Sue’s heart twist.
“It’s okay, Peter,” she reassures him. “You don’t need to tell me.” At that, Peter lifts his head again. Turning to face her fully. The red rim of his eyes stared back at her.
“It still smells like him.” Peter chokes out. His bottom lip quivering, and he bows his head onto her shoulder. Sue’s arms came to wrap around him in a protective hug. A hand rubs up and down his arm in some means of comfort.
“I don’t know what to do,” Peter whispers. Sue could hear it in his voice. The desperation, the heartache. How much of it had mimicked her own grief. “I can’t keep acting like it doesn’t hurt.”
“I know.” Her voice cracked at the end, tears blurring the corner of her vision. She knows better than anyone.
“I’m sorry.” Peter sniffles as he tries to pull himself together, “I just- I’m sorry.” Sue shushes him, squeezing his shoulders, and pulling him closer.
“It’s alright, Peter.” Sue tells him.
Silence stretches between them long enough until Peter is no longer trembling in her arms. When his breathing had evened out with the occasional hiccup.
The world mourned Johnny Storm. Magazines and newspapers plastered his name and photo across their front pages following his death. But most people never had the chance to see the real Johnny. The kind that the tabloids never showed.
Sue had lost her brother.
And Peter?
Sue always had her suspicions about the extent of Peter and Johnny’s relationship. Yet, as much it was her duty as a big sister to pry and tease into getting information. Something about them felt like it wasn’t her place to push.
“Were you?” She isn’t sure where to begin with this. The worry that this subject might be too much of a raw nerve. But curiosity took over before Sue had the chance to stop the words from leaving her mouth.
“I was going to tell him.” Peter replies bitterly, wiping his palm against his eyes again. “Parker luck strikes again.” The brittle laugh that left his mouth was enough confirmation.
She remembers now, seeing the way they would curl up on the couch together. How Johnny’s eyes lit up whenever Peter was around. Or how their natural state when standing next to one another was to have an arm thrown over the other’s shoulder.
It was all so obvious.
“He loves you,” Sue tells him after a beat. She cannot bring herself to say the word in the past tense. In the same way, she can’t say she loved him, either. Because that love doesn’t go away after someone’s death. It stays with you long, long afterward and maybe never leaves. “And I like to think he knew that you loved him, too.”
“But I never got to say it.” The sentence is punctuated with a shuttering inhale. “Now I never will.”
Unspoken words hung heavy in the thick silence between them. Peter was the one to break it, his voice small, barely above a whisper. “What do I do now?”
It was a question Sue had asked herself every day since Johnny’s death. It’s difficult to think about doing anything. Not when a piece of your heart was ripped away from you. Leaving a cold and empty spot where they once occupied.
Not when the world continues spinning, despite the tragedy.
“We do what we can.”