He's not sure what it means, making love to a woman who isn't there. He can feel the heat of her body and smell her skin and taste her mouth when he finds it where he expects it to be, but it's not the same. He thinks about it afterwards, lying in bed beside her as her hand becomes visible again, darkening to flesh on his chest. He stares at it like it's an experiment before easing from beneath it, his brain spinning as he tugs on a pair of boxers and his robe, heading down to the lab.

"What if she was on top," Ben asks gruffly a few days later after several drinks finally broke Reed down enough to get him to tell him what he was working on. "Would that count?"

"We're not discussing this." Ben pushes the pitcher toward Reed again and stares at him through his dark eyes until Reed refills both glasses and drinks half of his down. "Maybe it's like when you have sex with…"

"You're not going there, Reed."

"If we can discuss my sex life with Sue, I don't see why the cursories of your relationship with Alicia are off limits."

"First of all, because I'm made of rock, my friend." Ben lifts his mug carefully with both hands and pours a large portion of his beer down his throat. "So sex for me isn't quite the same as for you."

"Right."

"But I suppose you're right. She can't see me, but she can feel me, smell me, taste me." Reed fights to control his expression, though the elasticity of his face makes his easily read features even worse in that regard. Ben glares at him again and shakes his head. "You want to be Kinsey, do it on your own time."

Reed nods and sighs, finishing off the rest of his beer. "It's disconcerting."

"Yeah, buddy." Ben finishes off his beer and sets the mug back on the table. "For you and me both."

The second time it happens, he stops in the middle of everything and stares down at her. She makes a low noise and urges him on, invisible legs wrapping around him and pulling him deeper. He closes his eyes and tries to think of something, his body's powers reacting instinctively, replacing genuine arousal with elastic flesh until she pants her release in his ear and whispers how good it was.

He waits until she's asleep to leave the room, shivering all the way to the lab.

"You want to what?"

Reed feels the heat of a blush stain his cheeks and ducks his head away from Johnny's amused gaze. "Just…just answer the question."

"You want to know. About sex?" Johnny's smile widened, a sharp edge to it. "You realize I know you're screwing my sister, right?"

"Just…"

"I know." Johnny takes of his helmet and sets it on the table, following Reed into the makeshift library and sitting on the edge of the desk. "Just the facts."

"Have you ever…" Reed stops and shifts nervously, rubbing his face with his hands and then forcing it back into shape on instinct. "Had problems?"

"Problems?" Johnny laughs sharply, cutting himself off at the look on Reed's face. "You're having problems?"

"This is a bad idea." Reed shakes his head. "It's nothing."

"Are you and Sue having problems, Reed?" There's something desperate in Johnny's face, and for a moment Reed feels the satisfaction of knowing they're a group now, a team. A family. It lasts for the few seconds it takes for Johnny to start laughing. "Let me guess, you can't get it up. You get it up and up and up and up."

"Definitely a mistake."

"Oh, come on, Reed. You can tie yourself to the bed. No need for any accessories."

Johnny's voice echoes after him as Reed descends the stairs into the lab, his mind offering up visions of himself tied to the bed and no one above him.

The third time it happens, Sue is above him and gloriously naked. Her skin is honey gold and her eyes are shining and perspiration makes her skin slick beneath his hands, her breasts warm and heavy against his palms. He feels it as he sees it - there's something different about her touch when she's not there - and he's glad she's above him, controlling things, doing all the work as it takes everything he has just to stay still.

He feels the walls of her body contract and feels the rush of her orgasm and he feels the fall of her hair as she slumps down next to him on the bed.

But he doesn't feel anything else.

Alicia gazes at him as if she can see him, her dark eyes bright with laughter. "Have you talked to Sue about this?"

He stares at her, as if she can see him, his brow furrowed. "Talk to Sue?"

"Yeah."

"But…"

"You want to know what you should do, right?" He nods even though he knows she can't see him and isn't surprised at all when her answer comes on the heels of his movement. "You're a scientist, Reed. Shouldn't you want to know why?"

"How can I…"

"Maybe she doesn't know she's doing it? Maybe she's so wrapped up in what you're doing, she's not aware of how her body's reacting. Maybe you should talk to her instead of everyone else you know."

"But if I do that…"

Alicia's sigh cuts him short. "You might find an answer to your question."

He nods again and finishes off his drink, wishing he'd ordered something stronger. "Right."

The fourth time it happens, he's between her thighs and nearly chokes when she disappears from view. He pulls back and she asks him what's wrong and he can't answer, his tongue nearly literally tied in knots in his haste to free it from inside her. He braces himself over her instead, laughing off when his hand lands on her arm as fumbled need and pushes himself inside her.

When he fucks her, he can close his eyes.

The bar is nearly deserted when he walks in and sits down, ordering two different drinks with the thought to see which would make him drunker faster. It's not logical and he knows it, but he's given up on logic for tonight. His head is swimming with data and theorems, mathematical formulae and pragmatic complications, but all he can think about is the fact that when he's inside her, Sue isn't there.

At least before joining forces with Viktor, when Sue wasn't there, he knew why, knew it was just his fantasy and his hand and memories clouding his head, obscuring his vision. Now it's something else entirely and he knows that, if he puts his mind to it, if he concentrates hard enough, he can find the answer.

He's just not sure he wants to hear it.

He's sure Sue loves him. He hears it in her voice, and sees it in her eyes behind the mask of exasperation. He feels it when he touches her, when she returns his touch. He knows it on levels that defy even science. But none of it adds up, and the thought of asking her why makes him, for the first time in his life, crave ignorance.

He lets himself believe it won't happen the fifth time. He lies there, half-asleep, algorithms running in slow loops through his thoughts, the mathematics of three new inventions crowding for space. Sue crawls up from the end of the bed and takes him in her mouth, her fingers grazing his thighs as the warm wet surrounds him. He moans low in his throat and his hips react of their own accord, thrusting upward.

She sucks him hard like he likes it and then slows just as he nears the precipice, easing away from him. He opens his eyes then and watches her straddle him, slowly fading as she sinks down onto him. He stares as she disappears to nothing, his last image of her that of her eyes closing, her head falling back. He lies there, as unwitting a participant as when she'd taken him in her mouth, watching the depression and compression of his flesh as she rode him, hard and fast, her breath the only sound in the room until she came, gasping his name.

Viktor.

The answer, Reed realizes, is always there, if you know where and how to look for it. Even what you can't see will give itself away in time. Logic and mathematics and common sense dictate the way of things, the way of the world. Even emotion can be broken down if you know the right codes and genetic switches.

Reed glances down at Sue's sleeping form for a moment before pressing the syringe to the back of his neck. The faints pressure and then it's pierced the skin. She rumbles softly in her sleep. He depresses the plunger and can almost hear the rush of it in his blood.

Science owes something to morality, he knows, otherwise he's no better than Viktor was at the end. But Viktor wanted power.

Reed just wants his wife.

The sixth time it happens, Reed doesn't notice.

And even if he did, he wouldn't care.