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Reed Richards’ laboratory at Empire State University is one of his favourite places to spend the day; there is nothing he enjoys more than a good scientific environment and intellectually stimulating company, after all.
Said company comes in the form of Latverian exchange student Victor Von Doom – a man who, quite frankly, fascinates him.
Victor is the most intelligent person that Reed has ever met – smarter even than himself, something he would never admit to the man’s face because he knows just how insufferable he would be. Victor’s ego is already unmeasurable, he dreads to think what would happen to it if he ever admitted what he truly thought of the man’s intellect.
Most students in their year don’t bother with Victor. He’s from a country that most of them have never even heard of and is so arrogant and dismissive that everyone has learnt by now to avoid him. Everyone except Reed, of course.
The thing is, there’s more to Victor than meets the eye; Reed isn’t so easily swayed by the man’s aloof nature the way his classmates are, in fact, he would say that Victor’s whole lone-wolf act only serves to draw Reed in even more. Perhaps, he wonders, I am a glutton for punishment.
It doesn’t hurt – in Reed’s eyes – that Victor is as attractive as he is intelligent. The man is tall, dark and handsome with a low voice and a gorgeous accent that often leads to him completely zoning out when he listens to the man speak. Luckily, Victor is so confident that he couldn’t even imagine the idea of someone not hanging on to every word he says so he has yet to notice Reed’s frequent trips into cloud-cuckoo-land.
And there are many – trips to cloud-cuckoo-land, that is, because Reed and Victor share the same laboratory at Empire State, so they spend a significant amount of time in close proximity. They would be roommates, too, if Reed didn’t live off campus.
When Victor had asked him why he lived off campus because, and he quotes here, “wouldn’t it be simpler to live in the dormitories? Perhaps then you wouldn’t be late to every lecture, Richards” he had replied that he had to look after his younger brother, which is true. Victor had accepted that answer with a slightly surprised look on his face but had seemed to respect it and had not – as he was often prone to – let out a barrage of intrusive follow up questions. He had even stopped mentioning the fact that Reed was late to all his lectures and occasionally, if he was in a good mood, had a sheet of neatly written notes he was willing to give to him to help him with what he had missed.
So Reed is hoping that because of how lenient Victor was after finding out he had a younger brother to look after, the man won’t mind too much that his brother has to tag along with him today… right?
The chaos starts early in the morning. Well, more accurately, it starts the night before when Kristoff – Reed’s eight year old brother – comes into his room and tells him he doesn’t feel well. That alone had been enough to cause alarm bells to go off in his head because Kristoff isn’t really one for feeling ill; the boy has never had so much as a cold the entire time he’s known him. So because he’s never had to deal with his little brother being ill before, and also because the boy has Reed wrapped right around his little finger, he lets Kristoff crawl into his bed with him that night to keep an eye on him.
Needless to say, he will not be making such a mistake again.
Kristoff, he discovers, is a human worm and wriggled about in Reed’s bed all night which of course kept him up – not to mention the boy’s frequent complaining and sniffling. By the morning, Reed has had about an hour or so of sleep and ends up sleeping right through his alarm.
By the time he realises this, he’s definitely missed his first lecture. He considers just staying home but then all of the college work he’s been putting off for the last couple of weeks materialises in his mind and he grimaces; he really needs to go there and get on with it. So he’s halfway crawling out of his bed when he realises that Kristoff is still there because obviously sleeping through his alarm means he hadn’t woken up in time to take the boy to school.
Suddenly Reed feels like he understands every single montage in a film ever where mothers are rushing to get their kids in the car for school whilst trying to pack half a million things into their schoolbags because that’s exactly how he feels right now. He’s frantically stuffing all of his notes into his bag whilst trying to eat a slice of toast whilst attempting to convince Kristoff to get dressed for the day.
He’s decided in the approximately ten minutes he’s been awake that Kristoff can have the day off school though no doubt he’ll have to field a bunch of phone calls from the school later in the day. After that, he realises that he’ll have to bring the boy to college with him, an idea that has him grimacing because the idea of an eight year old running wild in his laboratory – particularly when said eight year old is Kristoff who is too curious for his own good – is something out of his nightmares.
About half an hour later and he is tugging his brother hurriedly across campus hoping no one will notice them – he’s not too savvy on the rules when it comes to letting your eight year old brother shadow you for the day because you both woke up late but he can’t imagine it’s something that’s encouraged by the college.
When they finally reach the building where his lab is, he sighs a breath of relief because no one had taken any notice of them and finally he can get some much needed work done. Of course, it’s only as he’s walking through the door of the lab – Kristoff in tow – that he remembers about Victor.
Victor, who can barely stand the young adults he’s surrounded by every day. Victor, who once ignored him for a whole week because he had corrected a wrong equation in one of his calculations. Victor – who, as far as he can tell – can barely stand Reed on most days.
He winces. He really didn’t think this through. Oh well, the part of him that is completely done with the day says, too late to back out now.
“Richards,” Victor says without looking up as Reed enters with Kristoff and closes the door behind him. “You missed the entire first lecture of the day – you needn’t fret, however, as it was only a guest speaker and an idiotic one at that.”
He hums, hanging up his and Kristoff’s coats by the door. “Oh? Who was it?”
“That charlatan Charles Xavier who calls himself a geneticist and–” Victor looks up at him to answer and cuts off, squinting at him suspiciously. “Richards are you aware that you have a small child following you?”
He bites his lip to stop himself from smiling at the phrasing – Victor never fails to amuse him with the odd way he has of speaking.
Kristoff huffs, crossing his arms. “I’m not small, I’m eight,” he says quite scathingly.
A small amused smile plays on Victor’s lips. “So you are,” he says, before turning his attention back to Reed. “I suppose this is your younger brother?”
For some reason, he feels inordinately pleased that Victor remembered such a detail he had only mentioned in passing once even though he knows that the man’s impeccable memory is more likely the reason he remembered – not because, as Reed hopes, Victor actually does like him.
He beams, placing a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Yeah – this is Kristoff, my little brother.” He ruffles the boy’s hair and Kristoff tries and fails to fend off the attack. “Kristoff, this is my friend Victor.”
Victor looks almost offended. “Friend?” he echoes, distastefully. “Friend is an infantile term; at best we are colleagues.”
Kristoff nods thoughtfully. “That makes sense,” he says, “Reed doesn’t have any friends.”
“Hey!” he protests, poking his brother playfully. “That’s not true! You’ve met Ben, haven’t you?”
Kristoff scowls. “Yes, unfortunately.” His brother is not very fond of Reed’s friend, Benjamin Grimm – probably because every time they see each other Ben ruffles Kristoff’s hair which his brother is decidedly not a fan of; it’s a privilege afforded to Reed only.
“Ah,” says Victor, pity in his voice, “you too have been forced to keep company with that oaf Grimm. Truly I do not know why you associate with him, Richards, he is so very far below your level that he may as well live underground.”
He rolls his eyes because this isn’t the first time Victor has insulted his friend in such a way. He’s moved past getting mad at him for it by now, though – it’s not as if Ben doesn’t give as good as he gets. And truthfully, he feels a sick sort of glee every time they argue because no matter how Victor frames it, they’re arguing over him. Ben can see that Reed is half in love with Victor and thinks that the man isn’t good enough for him, and Victor, as Ben puts it: “thinks he owns ya even though he spends all ‘a his time talking down to ya.”
“And who is on my level?” he asks Victor, raising his eyebrows, “you?”
Victor looks at him seriously. “Of course.”
The straight-forward answer has him slightly flustered and whatever reply he had ready sticks in his throat. Thankfully, his little brother is there to the rescue because he spots something on Victor’s side of the lab and wanders over to it.
“That’s my flag,” Kristoff says, surprised, and Reed moves to see what the boy is talking about. Reed and Victor’s lab is split in half and they have a side each – Reed’s side is a disorganised cluttered mess whereas Victor’s is sparse and tidy. On Victor’s wall is a miniature Latverian flag that blends in with all of his handwritten notes plastered to the paint – Reed’s never really taken much notice of it before but right now he feels a bit stupid; Kristoff is from the same country as Victor, somehow that small fact had slipped his mind.
The thing is Kristoff is actually Reed’s half-brother. They share a father in Nathaniel Richards – a man who spends eleven months a year travelling the world and doing a variety of work across the sciences. Put it simply, Nathaniel is willing to do everything except look after his children. The only part of Nathaniel that Reed is grateful for is his bank account – his father is very wealthy, leaving he and Kristoff able to live a comfortable life. Unfortunately the money doesn’t exactly make up for their father’s lack of presence in both of their lives which is why Reed has had to step up and look after Kristoff by himself.
Anyone who has seen Reed and his brother interact would never guess that they’ve only known each other for three years – before that, Reed never even knew the boy existed.
For the first five years of Kristoff’s life, he grew up in the Eastern European country of Latveria – which, Reed now realises, is the same country Victor is from. At some point during Reed’s childhood, Nathaniel had passed through Latveria and fathered a child with a local woman. Utilising his preferred method of parenting, Nathaniel had left the country shortly after Kristoff was born, leaving the boy to be raised by his mother. It was only when Kristoff’s mother passed away and the boy was sent abroad to live with his father that Reed found out he had a brother.
He had been seventeen when Nathaniel turned up out of the blue at their home in California one summer to spring Kristoff’s existence on him. The man had stayed only long enough to inform Reed that this young boy was his half-brother and that he would be living with them now his mother had tragically passed away. And whilst his dislike of his father had only grown with this incident, he had been filled with love for his little brother almost immediately. Reed’s own mother had died when he was young, so he knew how the boy was feeling – how lost and angry with the world he was – and whilst their father went straight back to ignoring both of their existence, he had focused on giving his brother the love and attention that had been denied to him as a child.
In the time that he has been reflecting on this, Kristoff and Victor have seemed to have an entire conversation in their country’s language that he wasn’t privy to.
“Your brother is an atrocious speaker,” Victor tells his brother confidentially as if Reed isn’t right there to hear him. His friend refers to the few times he had tried to speak Latverian to him curtesy of google translate – if he had been using even the smallest part of his brain then, he would have asked Kristoff for help but evidently Reed’s intelligence is limited purely to scientific endeavours. “I barely recognised my own language when it was coming out of his mouth.”
Kristoff sighs dramatically. “I know,” he says, resigned, “I have tried to teach him but he’s not very good with languages.”
Victor hums in agreement. “I’ve noticed.”
Reed rolls his eyes – he wonders if there’s something in the water back in Latveria that makes its citizens a particular brand of pretentious or if it’s just a quirk of Victor and Kristoff’s. “If we’ve had enough of gossiping about me whilst I’m right here, I’d like to get on with my work.”
Victor waves him off. “Go ahead, Richards – your brother is much more interesting than you anyhow.”
He gapes at him and almost stumbles over his own feet when Victor meets his eyes and winks at him.
God, he thinks, I am nowhere near awake for any of this today.
A few hours into his work and he’s dozing off. He decides that he might as well take a nap because hopefully when he wakes up he might feel a bit more refreshed and might be able to muster the energy required to finish this paper.
Victor has left the lab to go and fetch something and Kristoff is sitting at the man’s lab bench keenly. “Kristoff,” he says, sternly, “did Victor say you could sit there – I don’t want you bothering him if he’s busy.”
Kristoff grins at him. “He said I could be his assistant – he’s going to get something so we can do an experiment.”
Reed blinks in surprise because he can’t even imagine Victor being so accommodating to anyone. Maybe it’s because Kristoff is a child, he thinks, or because they’re from the same part of the world and seem to understand each other well.
Or maybe, a part of him whispers, maybe it’s because Kristoff is your brother and he wants to make a good impression.
“That sounds exciting,” he tells his brother with a small smile, “make sure you listen to everything Victor tells you though, okay? There are rules you have to follow in a lab that will keep you safe.” He’s not particularly worried though, because for all of Victor’s eccentricities, he would never knowingly endanger a child. “I’m going to rest my eyes for a bit, okay? Wake me if you need to.”
Reed dozes for about half an hour or so. When he wakes he just sits there hunched over his lab bench with his head pillowed on his arms the way he slept whilst he tries to collect his thoughts.
Across the lab, through his peripheral vision, he can see Victor at his lab bench with Kristoff by his side sitting on one of the high stools so he can reach the surface of the bench. They have a variety of plastic bottles dotted across the bench and Reed can see a few of them have been filled with liquid, vegetable oil and food colouring. Victor is focused on a bottle with green food colouring in and he is busy explaining something to Kristoff. Reed watches as he directs Kristoff to drop a circular tablet into the bottle. For a horrifying second he thinks that Victor has set up some variation of the Mentos and cola experiment that is going to cause coloured liquid to come spewing out the top of the bottle but when the tablet only causes bubbles to come up from the bottom of the bottle he realises that it is actually a simple recreation of the effect observed in a lava lamp. He should have known – there’s no way Victor would have created such a mess in his own lab.
Victor directs his brother to drop more tablets in the bottle until the whole thing is full of green bubbles flying up and down. It’s a basic experiment for children and Victor seems to have picked well because Kristoff is absolutely fascinated with it and wants to do it again with the other colours.
Neither of them seem to have realised he’s woken up because they speak in quiet tones. As Victor sets up another bottle, carefully pouring the liquids in, Kristoff asks him, “Do you have a brother, Victor?”
Reed half expects Victor to answer harshly as the man has a tendency of being aggressively evasive when asked about his family, but he simply says, “No. I’m an only child.”
Kristoff blinks. “But then who looks after you?”
Victor seems amused at the question. “No one,” he says, picking up the vegetable oil to pour in, “I look after myself.”
It’s not as if Reed didn’t know that Victor was alone in the country, but hearing the man say it aloud suddenly strikes him as sad. Kristoff seems to think so too because he looks up at Victor and says, sadly, “that seems lonely.”
Victor stills for a second. After a moment he says, “Yes. I suppose it is.”
Helpfully, Kristoff adds, “Reed could look after you – he’s good at looking after people.”
Victor hums. “I can imagine.”
Their conversation is cut short when Victor gestures for Kristoff to add blue food colouring to the bottle followed by the tablets. As his brother watches the blue bubbles intently, he whispers to Victor, “Can I tell you a secret?”
Victor furrows his brow but says, “if you wish.”
“Reed wants you to be his boyfriend,” Kristoff says to Victor confidently and Reed almost falls out of his seat. That little gremlin, he thinks to himself, just wait until we get home!
Victor, on the other hand, doesn’t seem particularly phased. “Oh?” he says, setting up another bottle, “and why do you think that?”
Kristoff shrugs. “I heard him and Ben talk about it.”
Victor looks at Kristoff disapprovingly. “You shouldn’t eavesdrop on your brother’s conversations.”
Kristoff doesn’t look very apologetic. “If I hadn’t,” he points out, “then you wouldn’t know that Reed wants to be your boyfriend.”
“I already knew that.”
Reed winces, clearly he hadn’t been as subtle as he’d thought.
“Oh,” Kristoff says, blinking, “then… why isn’t he your boyfriend? Unless you don’t like him, obviously.”
“Ah, well,” Victor says, with an underhand sort of smile, “Patience is a virtue, Kristoff – I’m sure your brother would agree… if he were awake, of course.”
The tone in Victor’s voice makes it perfectly clear that he knows Reed has been listening to their conversation the whole time.
Good lord, he thinks, I’m really not awake enough to deal with this today.