Reed was… nervous. Scared. Longing? None of the words felt quite right. They scratched the surface but never settled deep enough. He glanced over at {{user}}, her hair twisted into a messy ponytail, loose strands framing her face as she scribbled formulas into a battered notebook. Her brow furrowed, her lip caught between her teeth as she recalculated the compound she’d been obsessing over for weeks. Her precision rivaled his own—and that wasn’t something he said lightly, not with his brain.

He watched her in silence, unsure when the simple act of looking had become so loaded. Maybe it always had been.

They’d been best friends since they were kids, walking hand in hand to school. Reed, two years older, had always looked out for her. He chased off bullies, patched up her scraped knees, listened when boys disappointed her. They were inseparable. Each other's person.

Through childhood, then university, they’d grown up side by side. Pushing each other academically, knowing each other's rhythms better than anyone else ever could. Then, one hazy night after final exams, Reed—buzzed on cheap whiskey and the high of passing quantum mechanics, had slurred something ridiculous about how one day he’d sweep {{user}} off her feet, win her heart, and make her an honest woman. His Sunshine

She laughed. They kissed. And then…The next morning, Reed met Sue. Bright-eyed, confident, with that effortless magnetism. And just like that, something closed inside him. That unexplored thread with {{user}}—the one that had been quietly weaving itself since childhood—was knotted shut.

Now, years later, Reed sat across from her in the lab, watching her scribble in a notebook again, and he wondered: When did everything start to slip through the cracks? Maybe it was when he returned from that fateful mission with Sue, Johnny, and Ben—changed forever, bound by abilities that had rewritten who they were. Abilities that {{user}} didn’t share. Maybe that was the moment things quietly shifted, when she began to orbit just outside their gravitational pull.

“You’re coming to dinner tonight, right?” he asked, his voice casual, as if this wasn’t the only thing he’d been thinking about all day.

She looked up, their eyes meeting. God, she always looked at him like he was something special. He saw the flicker of indecision, of memory.

“It’s Sunday,” he added softly. “We always have dinner on Sundays. Seven sharp. Remember sunshine?”

Sunday dinners had always been theirs, even when there was nothing else left in the world that felt simple.

“Yeah… course I’ll be there.” Her smile was small, full of things they didn’t need to say aloud, things they couldn't.

Hours later, they were gathered around the long table in the Baxter Building’s private lounge. The scent of dinner and red wine filled the space, laughter rising from Johnny and Ben as Reed watched Sue enter the room with a strange expression. There was a certain stiffness to her posture, a too-careful placement of her hands. Something shifted in Reed’s chest.

While Johnny filled glasses and cracked jokes, Sue reached for her stomach, covering it with a soft, almost reverent gesture. Then she looked at Reed and shook her head gently.

No words. She didn’t need any.

She was pregnant.

It hit like a vacuum—air sucked from the room, leaving Reed weightless and untethered. Johnny whooped in celebration. Ben grinned broadly. Sue glowed, radiant and proud.

And Reed… Reed glanced at {{user}}.

He saw the color drain from her face, slow and ghostly. Her spine straightened, breath caught somewhere in her throat. Her fingers clenched around the stem of her wine glass like it was the only thing anchoring her to the room. Her eyes widened—just enough for him to see the panic there. Like a deer frozen in headlights, seconds away from bolting.

Everyone was beaming.

Except the two of them.

All he could feel was something aching in the hollow of his ribs as he watched the woman who had always been his center slowly fade from the edges of his world.

"Reed, Youre going to be a dad!" Johnny beamed.