Rosetta Stone - Johnny Storm x Reader
You lay awake in your bed, rudely being kept from sleeping by one of Johnny's many late night work sessions. And by "one of many" you mean the sound of his rubber ball hitting the wall every night for the past two weeks.
"He'll be done soon..." you think as you squeeze your eyes shut. But, of course, he isn't done when you crack your eyes open and glance at the clock reading 3:33 AM.
You'd prefer to be dead asleep by now, given that the veil between this world and the next is considerably thinner at right about this time. You can commune with the dead, though sometimes they get through to you even when you don't want to hear what they have to say.
So, now in addition to Johnny's rubber ball hitting the wall about a foot above your head, you also have to try to ignore the distant pleas of the damned.
When you've finally had enough, you begrudgingly pull off your covers and grab a sweater to cover up against the late night chill. Within five steps you're at Johnny's door as you gather your strength to not yell at him to shut up. Tensions are high after all, and he doesn't need you barking orders at him like Reed does.
You stand in front of his door, sigh, and knock.
You knock again, louder this time. You can still hear the rubber ball hitting your shared wall.
You knock one last time, practically breaking down the door as you do. When there is still no answer, you go to open the door and pray you won't see anything unsavory.
"God, I hope it's just a toy banging against the wall." You say to yourself with a shiver. Just as your hand touches the door knob, the door rips open and there is a very startled Johnny standing in front of you.
"Oh my god! Y/N you scared the crap out of me!" Johnny whisper-yells as he scans your face for a moment, a hand over his heart.
Even though he doesn't say it, you know that your eyes weird out the others sometimes. After the accident , your pupils slowly lost all their color, leaving you with near white irises and frosted over, grey pupils. You can still see just as well as before but Reed doesn't know why it happened gradually when everyone else experienced instantaneous change.
You push past Johnny and into his room, trying to not care enough to acknowledge his previous statement.
Closing the door behind you you say "You know how thin these walls are, John?" He hates when you call him John.
He looks down at the rubber ball in his hand and then over at the wall across from his bed. The wall that your bed just so happens to be pushed against next door.
He hangs his head down, defeated "Shit..."
"Yeah," You reply "Shit is right." Rolling your eyes
You catch sight of some records and papers that litter the floor. You track the mess with your eyes from the floor to the record player, to the dozens of papers stuck to the window.
Walking towards the mess, you ask "Is this what's been keeping you up?"
As you examine one of the records, Johnny responds "Yeah, it's feeling pretty useless right about now though."
"Remember the shiny space lady from a while ago?"
You nod and he continues "Well, when she payed us that second visit, she told me what she said means. 'Mo-ha qupeiro ahmai' 'Die with yours'."
"Damn." you respond "That's bleak."
Johnny hurries over to the wall of papers "Yeah, it is bleak. But it doesn't have to be."
"I mean, if I have one sentence of the language, maybe I can translate the whole thing."
You nod slowly, thinking "It's possible. But why would you need to know the language?"
Suddenly, Johnny turns to you and rushes to put in a record and put the headphones on you. "Don't you recognize it?" he asks expectantly as holds down the headphones, his hands now framing your face.
It takes you a second, but your eyes widen as the realization hits you. "These records... It's the same as what she said to you."
His eyes fill with a wild excitement "Yes! She told me it's a prayer."
Your eyes scan the ground around your feet as you think "So, these recordings that we've been getting... It's all places she's been?" You look up at him for confirmation as you finish your thought.
"I'll do you one better." He responds as he pulls a tablet off of the table "It's all places that the Silver Surfer has been. And places that Galactus has destroyed." As he speaks he pulls up all the planets you'd been getting these messages from. Each of them completely wiped out and destroyed mere days after the messages were received.
"Oh god..." You marvel as Johnny hurries around you picking up and putting down papers that litter the floor.
"I'm so close, I can feel it." He says as he examines the papers in his hands. "I just know that if we figure out what these recordings mean, we can figure out how to stop this." He looks so concentrated and focused.
You straighten your back "I'll help."
"If you're right and this is the key to solving our Galactus problem, then I want to help." You continue when Johnny continues to look at you, confused. "You can't do this all on your own, John, We need it done and we need it done now."
He starts to protest "I... I don't know it's really complica-"
You cut him off "Johnny, look at me." He does "Sue is busy raising that god-baby or whatever he is. Reed is about to go bald from the stress of not knowing, and Ben is... well I'm sure Ben is off doing something important, probably crowd control."
He opens his mouth to start again but you shush him as you take a seat in front of the mess and start going through the papers "Just let me do this, please? If not for you then for me getting a good nights rest."
After a little more back and forth, Johnny walks you through what he's been working on and how the language works. You don't know how, but he even managed to piece together how their grammar works from just one sentence.
The sun is coming up when you both get stuck translating one of the records. You spent hours trying to get through a translation when everything stops dead in its tracks. It's the same language, you both agree on that. But there's something about their regional dialect that makes it near impossible to translate. Stack that on top of the very little sleep you've had and how taxing it is to listen to these planets last words over and over again, you're both ready to give up.
"This is pointless." Johnny says, falling onto his back on the floor in front of you.
You nudge him with your foot "Don't say that! Get up, we can figure this out."
He groans and covers his eyes with both his arms "I can't, I'm dead. This impossible task has killed me."
You try not to stare at the strip of his lower stomach that's been exposed when he lifted his arms.
"Get! Up! Johnathan! Storm!" You yell as you start brining your fists down on his legs.
"Ow! Quit it!" he responds, sitting back up and rubbing his shins, grimacing.
"No!" you respond "I will not quit it! We're going to do this, we just need to put our heads together."
After a few moments of thought-heavy silence, Johnny speaks up "Well, I have an idea. But you're not going to like it."
You already have a suspicion of what it might be "What is it?"
"Do you think you could try and summon some of the people form the records?"
You sigh "First of all, I don't summon people from the dead, I allow them to speak through me. Second of all, I don't even know if I could reach them."
"It doesn't hurt to try." He responds with a shrug of his shoulders.
"We can't understand them through the records, what makes you think that you'll understand it better when it's coming from me?"
He throws his hands up in the air "I don't know! You don't have the same accent!"
You groan and readjust yourself to be sitting crisscrossed on the carpet "Whatever! I'll try but you have to promise to be quiet."
Johnny makes a hush motion with his finger to his lips and nods, leaning back and watching you intently.
You feel a blush spreading up your neck and onto your cheeks under his gaze as you clear your throat and get into a comfortable position. You sit there, hands on resting on your knees palms up and eyes closed. You look as if you were meditating.
You call out to the souls from the record, searching for them, trying to gently coax them to you with soothing thoughts and an open mind. You feel the veil between worlds slipping ever so slightly before you are suddenly catapulted through space and time, following the whispers of these poor lost souls.
You gasp and throw your head back, your spine arching at the force with which your mind if being thrown towards these people from another world, another planet. You feel the hair on your arms stand on end. The hair that rests on the back of your neck floating, as if you're about to get the worst shock of your life.
Then, you reach them. You calm them, soothe them, assure them that you will protect their souls. You let them speak through you and tell you of their lives, their hopes, the loves they lost and the loves they never had, everything they dreamed of. It's overwhelming.
You can feel tears run down your face and your mouth move with words that aren't yours to speak, though you can't hear or see anything in Johnny's room. You are wholly devoted to these souls, to letting them speak through you, say their true final words.
It's beautiful. It's heartbreaking. It's ugly. It's the most wonderful thing you've ever seen. It will keep you up at night. It will lull you to sleep.
It is every emotion that ever was and ever will be for the citizens of this lonely planet.
Suddenly, you feel yourself start to fade. The voices, their faces, are fading from your view and you can feel your body start to sway as you are shoved back into it, just as violently as you were forced out of it.
"Y/N!" you hear in the distance. But it's so far, and you're so tired.
You're done trying to stay upright now and you let your body crumple as your eyes roll to the back of your head.
"Y/N? C'mon baby come back to me..."
There's pressure in your skull like you've never felt before. It's not a pounding head ache, it's as if your head is being squeezed while your brain itself expands.
You become aware that your head is elevated on something hard, it's shaking. Your face is wet and the lines from where tears might have been earlier are erased by the cold sweat that now envelopes your entire body.
There's an arm under your neck, its hand on your shoulder while another arm is over your stomach, gripping your ribs.
"Y/N?" It's much closer now.
You barely open your eyes to see Johnny above you, more worried than he's ever been. At least more worried than you've ever seen.
"Johnny..?" You croak. Your throat feels like sandpaper and you wince at your voices rough edge.
His grip on you tightens slightly as relief washes over him. "Oh, thank god!" He exclaims. He pulls you up from where your head was resting on his legs to a hug.
With one of his hands gripping the back of your neck, holding you to his shoulder and the other wrapped around your back, Johnny has you firmly pressed against his chest.
You're stunned and still dazed from the effort it took to send your mind so far that you wrap your arms around him as well, all be it, a lot looser than he is holding you.
"Oh my god," He says "I though you were dead. I though you died and it was my fault and-"
"Johnny, it's ok." You reassure him, resting your head in the crook of his neck "I didn't die, it's ok."
He doesn't say anything, he only continues to hold you, rocking gently. It seems that now, this is more a comfort for him than a comfort for you.
After a while, you speak up again. "Did it work? Did you get what you needed?"
He laughs and you swear you hear a sniffle and feel some moisture where his face is resting.
"Yes, I got everything recorded, you did great." He says "You're a regular Rosetta Stone, but lets worry about it later, ok? I think we could both use a break."
His grip on you tightens again and you rub small circles on his back, feeling like he might need a little extra comfort.
"Yeah, we can take a break Johnny." You say softly.
You let a few minuets pass though you could've stayed on his floor like this forever.
"I'm going to throw up on you in about 2 seconds."
He laughs and lets you go, not so discretely wiping the tears from him cheeks and sniffling, though he tries to hide it in a very manly cough.
He helps you up the floor and puts a blanket around your shoulders "Lets go see if H.E.R.B.I.E has any medicine for you, Rosie Stone." he says, putting one arm around your shoulder.
You groan and follow him to find H.E.R.B.I.E "That better not stick."
You hold onto the hand that's on your shoulder as the two of you walk, and do your best to suppress the smile that creeps up on you when he laughs and kisses the top of your head.
"Not a chance in the world, Rosie."
