d i f f e r e n t i a l . e q u a t i o n s

Differential Equations
[by victoria p.]

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Victor can't afford to be sentimental.

Notes: All Sarah T.'s Fault. Big thanks to her and to Devil Doll for the beta. Completely movieverse. No comics knowledge here. This won't make much sense if you haven't seen the movie, and obviously, it contains spoilers.

Date: July 12, 2005

Victor doesn't hate Reed for being smarter. Reed is like the Disney cartoon version of a brilliant, absent-minded scientist -- all big, wet eyes, soft lips, and floppy hair. Victor wouldn't be surprised if cartoon mice and birds dressed him in the morning, twittering merrily all the while.

No, Victor finds Reed useful. Their skills are complementary -- Reed is an idea man, his eyes fixed on the big picture, on making the impossible possible, but he never sees the practical applications of the science he loves so passionately. Victor is good at the science -- better than good, better than everyone else, except Reed -- but his true genius is with marketing, with money, with making the impossible function in the real world, the world Reed doesn't seem to live in. They are the perfect team. If Reed would only see it. But Reed rarely sees anything that isn't in the form of an equation, that can't be scribbled on a chalkboard in his looping, sloppy writing, and broken down into alphanumeric strings to solve for x.

Victor doesn't mind so much when they're in school, when it's the two of them together at night in the small dorm room that always smells vaguely of cheese, dirty socks and chalk dust. It is easy then to convince Reed that he needs to calm down, burn off some of his excess nervous energy so he can sleep for more than three hours a night.

Victor knows Reed is a virgin the first time he touches him. Reed is skittish, eyes opening even wider than usual, long, ink-stained fingers fluttering like exotic moths in the dim light of the ugly little desk lamp, so Victor brushes his hair off his forehead, hands gentle even when his words are slightly edged with mockery. He never lets Reed know he's never done this with another guy either.

"Why do it alone when we could do it together?" he asks reasonably. "More efficient and more pleasurable."

And it is.

There is something about seeing Reed loose and relaxed afterward, about knowing he was the cause of it, that satisfies Victor almost as much as the feel of Reed's slim, trembling fingers wrapped around his cock, stroking until the world explodes.

Victor understands supernovae better after sex with Reed, even though they never move beyond handjobs and the occasional night spent rubbing against each other frantically, making the old twin bed squeak and moan under the weight of their eager bodies. Reed goes down on him once, and it goes badly; they never do it again. Reed doesn't like to do things he's not good at, and Victor can't blame him for that.

He thinks he will never tire of Reed's delight and surprise at the pleasure they give to each other. It's all just another experiment to Reed -- apply pressure and friction and see what happens, and then attempt to reproduce the results time after time -- and Victor is fine with that.

Victor doesn't need Reed. He doesn't like to get attached -- he dates around, always the prettiest girls from the best families, because that's what's due him as a von Doom -- but there is something about Reed that invites it, that same veneer of vulnerability women mistake for sensitivity. Reed isn't sensitive, isn't vulnerable, not the way some of the girls who swoon and sigh over him think he is. Reed is sweetly naïve in that he wants to save the world, but only if he can do it without ever leaving the lab, without ever getting anything more than chalk or ink on his hands.

The way Victor sees it, that's all right. It means Reed will stay with him, because Reed is always acted upon, never acting.

So it comes as something of a shock the day Victor discovers Sue has asked Reed out, and Reed has said yes. Sue is an unbalanced force intersecting them at an unexpected vector, a variable neither of them factored into the equation, and Victor finds himself at a rare loss. He doesn't like losers, and he doesn't like to lose. But hating Sue, hating Reed, would indicate that he cares, and he chooses to believe that's not true.

He is simply upset that their routine has been disrupted, that their late night activities have come to a halt, and that their plans for the future now include a third person. Their dyad has become a triangle, and regardless of the math, Victor knows those never end well.

When they graduate, Reed goes into public service, still intent on his amorphous goal of making the world better through science. Victor unleashes his genius on the private sector and makes von Doom Industries into an international multi-billion-dollar force to be reckoned with. He has almost convinced Reed to come on board, that together they can do what neither can alone, that the time Reed wastes writing grant applications could be better spent doing more research, when Sue leaves him.

And she doesn't just leave Reed, she comes to Victor, asks for a job, and of course, Victor takes her in. She's brilliant in her own right, though not at Reed's level (no one is), and he likes that she's unpredictable, always the variable ready to upset the balance and send Reed into a tizzy.

Victor thinks she may lure Reed in when other, more material benefits, won't. He doesn't expect Reed to let feelings get in the way of research -- he certainly wouldn't -- but Reed does.

Victor waits months before he makes a move; he begins visiting her in the lab late in the evening, when no one else is around. She smells of citrus and hair gel, and when he kisses her, she knows exactly how to respond. Here, there is nothing surprising, nothing unpredictable, and if that's disappointing, Victor never lets it show. She's beautiful, brilliant and hard-working, perfect for the role in which he envisions her.

He hasn't spoken with Reed since a picture of him and Sue at a charity gala appeared on Page Six of the Post. Their paths cross infrequently now; they are on different trajectories, and Victor is not the one who will crash and burn. If he has been keeping tabs on Reed's progress, it's only because they are in the same business, and it pays to know what your competition is doing. It has nothing to do with Reed himself, nor any possible nostalgia Victor might feel about their nights together in a squeaky twin bed in Cambridge.

He feels a savage sense of triumph when Reed asks for his help, that he has everything Reed wants, and Reed finally has to come to him to get what he needs.

And then everything changes in those nine minutes, nine endless, too short minutes on the space station. He writes off Reed, Ben, and Johnny, but he thinks he can still save Sue. He thinks it's what Reed would want, and he allows himself a moment of sentimentality, a moment that costs him everything.

Reed has a way of making even the most brilliant people feel stupid, without even trying.

None of them thank him, though he has saved them all from Reed's catastrophic error. He doesn't expect it of Ben or Johnny, and Reed has never been one for social graces; Victor is sure he's still reeling from having been so very wrong, possibly for the first time in his life, and even as his world is coming apart around him, Victor takes no small measure of glee from that fact. But he's surprised at Sue. If she cannot see what he's risked for her, doesn't value what he's lost, she's no better than the rest of them, and he will slough them all off like so much dead skin.

He's slowly deteriorating, his body rebelling against him, and they are becoming celebrities, heroes. Except for Ben, who, like him, has been left out of their magic circle, become all too visibly a freak. He watches Reed's progress on the surveillance cameras, listens to him and Sue waffle about what's happened to them. Victor realizes he is acting like Reed, wavering when he needs to stand firm, save his company and everything he's worked so hard to build, and that is unacceptable. He's not dead yet, and if the radiation doesn't kill him, he's not going to let anything else stand in his way.

Not even Reed.

A moment of weakness brought him to this, but he can't afford to indulge himself anymore.

It is easy enough to play on Ben's insecurities, to let his own hurt show that while he is falling apart, Reed is romancing Sue, as if nothing else matters. Once Ben is changed back into himself, Victor concentrates on Reed -- without Reed, the others will be rudderless and unwilling to face him. Without Reed, none of this would have happened in the first place.

Victor is smarter, stronger, more resolute, and with the help of Reed's machine, he is even more powerful than he ever was before. He is going to make Reed hurt the way he is hurting, make him understand what it feels like to be a prisoner in his own body, unable to escape. He is going to break him slowly into pieces, until there's nothing of Reed left.

And he's going to enjoy it.

end

~*~

Back to Other Stories Index

Back to Main Stories Index

~*~

Disclaimer: All Fantastic Four characters belong to Marvel etc. This piece of fan-written fiction intends no infringement on any copyrights.