Archive of Our Own

This fanfiction is hosted on Archive of Our Own, where you can read it for free. If you’re reading this on a different website, it was posted there without the author’s consent.

It took a month for Reed to figure out how to get Johnny’s flame to go out. In that time, the Fantastic Four stopped five global scale threats, three attacks to Yancy Street, and nine alien invasions. And all Johnny had had to do was float around the atmosphere in his containment suit, shooting fire from miles up in the air whenever there was enough space for him to do so without potentially melting anyone with his eternal flame.

That wouldn’t have been all bad, had it not been for the fact that that was all he could do. He watched from up in the sky, like a distant dying star, as the rest of his family gathered together and checked over themselves, as they hugged each other with the relief that didn’t dim even with all the battles and successes they had under their individual belts, and dove headfirst into clean up with whoever else was on scene, be it the Avengers or the X-Men or whatever new team the superhero community had decided to spit out.

There’d been a time, Johnny had reflected, when he would’ve crowed in delight at not having to deal with the aftermath of a fight. It was tedious work, though helped by Sue, Reed, and Ben’s powers. His own were mostly just welding things into place as Reed directed, if he were honest.

And now, ever since he’d been out of commission, he felt more distant than ever from the rest of them.

The thing was, Johnny mused as he licked his paw grumpily, he had barely had a chance to come to terms with the fact that they’d returned. After two years of wishing, hoping, praying, begging, and his family was back, and Johnny… felt farther away from them than ever.

It might’ve been the way Val and Franklin were teenagers now, had it not been for the fact that Franklin glowered at anyone else who tried to sit in the seat beside him at the dinner table, the seat that had always been Johnny’s, and Val… well, he’d try harder to connect with her. Maybe Johnny would take her and Franklin out to a race on some distant planet. He’d bet any car from his garage that Reed and Sue hadn’t stopped on their adventures to see a race.

But that was going to be a while away now, because now Johnny was a cat. An orange cat, possibly a tabby. According to Bentley, he was a British short-hair, and he was a little round for his size (which was also apparently rather lacking for a cat of his supposed age). Johnny had hissed at him when he’d said that, which had resulted in Sue hastily grabbing him by the nape of his neck and plopping him onto the other end of Reed’s work bench.

“Miaow,” Johnny said, for once trying to sound like a cat. “Miaow.”

The two kittens – who were much larger than kittens had any right to be – didn’t pay much attention to him. They’d ran through the door at some point and upon seeing Johnny, had now pinned their ears back and starting growling at him.

“Yikes,” Johnny said. “You fellas really gotta take care of your dental hygiene. Your breath stinks.”

He wasn’t entirely sure what language he spoke in, because he couldn’t understand cats and they couldn’t understand him, but the rest of the family (of the non-feline variety) found Johnny just as incomprehensible.

It was probably time for Johnny to try something more defensive than merely trying to say hello. He cleared his throat, which sounded to him like he was trying to hack up a furball, and then he tried to hiss.

Johnny didn’t expect it to work, because at this point, half the cat-ish things he’d tried to do, rather than letting his body’s muscle memory take control, had gone horribly wrong. His attempt to leap down the stairs, just like how Ben and Alicia’s kittens did, had resulted in his legs and tail all getting tangled together and Johnny’s furry, malleable body rolling down the stairs before landing on all fours in a defensive crouch.

Ben had displayed the video on the projector for the rest of the day, and then it’d somehow gone viral on TikTok. Johnny didn’t exactly mind – he was a cute cat, after all. He used Ben as a scratching post the following morning just in case he got any ideas about following Johnny around with a camera, though.

To Johnny’s delight now, a remarkably cat-like territorial hiss came out of his mouth, and he found himself crouching forward, ears flat against his skull. When the kittens didn’t seem too bothered, he took what he hoped was a menacing step forward, hissing lower in his throat.

And then he was airborne, and he let out a pitiful meow as he was yanked upwards and into someone’s fleshy, furless arms. “Uncle Johnny, you’re scaring them!” Franklin admonished him. “They’re just babies!”

“Babies, my ass,” Johnny yowled back.

And then Franklin scratched the top of his head and all the fight went out of him. Against his will, he found himself purring, melting like putty in Franklin’s confident hands.

And that was probably the real problem, because, in this cat form, he couldn’t stop purring.

Sue wanted to do something together as a family. We’ve barely had a chance to catch a breath, she explained. Even Ben’s wedding got crashed. Reed, who’d been sneaking one long leg towards his lab, slowly slithered it back until it resembled a normal human limb again.

Johnny sometimes wondered if Reed ever felt like he couldn’t remember what his normal dimensions were. Like how Johnny couldn’t really remember how it’d felt to be cold, or too warm, not in a normal human way. Going nova wasn’t like sweating on a hot summer’s day.

He didn’t quite join the rest of them as they gathered around the living room space. A room that felt so huge to his cat body, so full of places to climb up and hide in, was rapidly taken up now. Ben occupied most of the love seat, and Alicia placed a pillow against his leg and sat in the remaining quarter of space. The kids piled on the floor with beanbags and blankets and all sorts of various soft things, and Johnny was tempted to join them.

But in the end, he forwent his normal seat – which everyone had left empty either from habit or because they thought he was going to sit in it – and climbed up the back of Ben and Alicia’s seat. He lay there and pretended to fall asleep, occasionally bringing his tail around Ben’s face and draping it over his eyes or poking it around his nostrils.

After the third sneeze, Ben turned around and glared at Johnny. Johnny opened one eye and observed this, and then shut it again. And then he found himself being flicked off the back of the couch. With a yowl, he gripped onto the fabric as hard as he could, back legs flailing as he was knocked off balance.

“Ben!” Alicia was saying. “What did you do?”

“Can you guys shush—” said one of the kids.

Johnny kept wailing his head off. And then his legs somehow found something to stand on, and he quieted, only to realise that Reed had stretched his arm over and grabbed him in what looked something like a fleshy salad bowl.

“Thank you, Reed. Johnny, quit bothering Ben. Either sit here with or with the kids or on your armchair.” In a louder voice, Sue said, “Should we rewind a little bit?”

“Yes,” Franklin responded, just as Val said, “It’s okay, we all know how this movie’s going to go anyway.”

Sue obligingly rewound a little bit.

Johnny had been planning on settling next to the kids – the Moloids were excellent at scratching under his chin – but Reed had started to stroke his fur absentmindedly, and he found that he was quite unable to move now.

The thing about not remembering how it felt to be cold wasn’t… strictly the most truthful. Temperature had stopped being a factor for him, but he could still feel shivers down his spine, the cold trickle of dread settling in his stomach, the stone hand of fear clenching around his lungs.

This last month had dangled everything he’d ever wanted right before his eyes, so tantalisingly close, and yet couldn’t be farther away. He’d been burning nonstop, and for a while, he’d thought about just not eating – if his body didn’t have the fuel it required to keep him aflame, then surely that’d just kill the fire.

Reed hadn’t liked that. He’d personally come down to Johnny’s little isolated floor and told him that himself. Something about the drug keeping his flames going above all else, including bodily processes and body fat. Johnny had just told him he was put out at having to keep eating that liquid sludge Reed had created.

He knew when he started purring because there was suddenly stillness. Reed’s hand stopped stroking his fur, pausing for one moment, and Johnny’s eyes opened wide. He tried to stop himself from purring and vibrating – maybe it was annoying Reed to have his elongated arm vibrated; surely that couldn’t feel pleasant – but to no avail. He had no control over the purrs his body made, just like he had no control over the way he startled at certain things or got the urge to start scratching certain areas of the house.

And then, just as he was about to leap out of the little hammock, Reed moved his arm – including Johnny – to the centre of the couch. “Better visual,” he said in explanation, and resumed stroking his fur.

The purrs began anew, embarrassingly loud. Johnny tucked his front paws over his eyes and curled his head around, his whole body probably resembling a shell now, just to try and quieten down the horrifically loud noise emitting from him.

“Geez, the motor’s really going,” Ben commented. “Figures he’d come with an extra loud unit. None of our cats are that loud.”

“That’s because you suck at petting,” Johnny couldn’t help saying, though it came out in a series of mews.

Ben looked at him with suspicious eyes, but said nothing. On the floor, Val was looking at Johnny thoughtfully, “You know,” she said, waving a hand when someone shushed her, “Dr Shapiro’s collar could probably work on Uncle Johnny, with some modifications.”

“For the love of Aunt Petunia, can we not have some peace and quiet till the curse wears off?” Ben bemoaned, but Johnny’s ears perked up right away and he turned to Val with a questioning sound.

“We can think about that after,” Sue said. “For now, if it’s not a life or death problem, we table it till after family time.”

Her hand joined Reed’s, cautiously sticking a finger under Johnny’s chin to scritch it. Every younger sibling instinct that Johnny possessed told him to bite it, but his cat body immediately melted and craned his head upwards at the touch, and this time when his purrs made them turn up the TV volume, he didn’t mind as much. Knowing Val, he’d be able to complain about his situation soon enough anyway.