For his company, he already knew what the next project was going to be.
He wanted to create Baymax, a friendly personal healthcare robot.
The concept had been sitting in the back of his head for weeks, a full-scale healthcare companion system that could transform medical access across every income level, every geography, every circumstance.
Aeon Biotech had not produced anything landmark in some time and Baymax would change that in a way that would register across the entire industry.
He thought darkly that many medical companies would go out of business once he mass-produced Baymax, but he did not care.
Helen Cho was the right person to lead the development. She had built the Regeneration Cradle on principles that were different from what Baymax would require but demonstrated exactly the kind of thinking the project needed. The two of them working together could pull it off. He was certain enough of that to treat it as settled.
Then comes Mars. His own planet. The thought had arrived with the quiet inevitability of something that had always been going to happen and had simply needed the right moment to become obvious.
He would leave after tomorrow. Go to Mars first, establish the atmospheric conditions, begin the terraforming work that would make sustained life possible.
Then the architecture. A palace built to his own specifications, designed for a life that now involved considerably more people and considerably more complexity than he had started with. A proper home on a planet that answered to no government, no council and no authority but his own.
Later comes the Genesis chambers and Kryptonians. An army of his own, not borrowed or allied but genuinely his, built from the ground up on a foundation he controlled entirely.
That project alone would take time and precision but the payoff was the kind of strategic security that no other approach could provide.
The management of everything else while he was moving on all of this. Diana would handle Aeon Biotech. He had not said it out loud yet but he had already arrived at the same conclusion Jean had reached at the party. Diana was the answer. She had the authority, the discipline, and the organizational intelligence to run something at that scale without needing to be told how. It would be fine.
Then there was the warning.
The One Above All had told Didi that someone was coming for her. He did not know who. He did not know when or from which direction or with what capacity.
A warning from that level of entity was not something to analyze for probability and then file away. It was something to build a response to before the situation arrived rather than after. Whoever was coming for her would reach him first. He intended to make that the last decision they ever made, whoever they were, whatever they brought with them.
Then there was the matter of Reed going missing. Ethan knew that no matter what experiment Reed conducted, it usually caused more harm than good, and Reed being missing for this long was a serious matter.
Especially since Ethan could not sense him anywhere across the galaxy.
He needed to use his Chronokinesis to learn what had happened and how Reed disappeared so he could avoid any unwanted surprises in the future.
His eyes drifted closed for a moment. His chest rose and fell slowly.
'Too many things,' he thought. 'Not enough hours in the day. Good thing the day is something I can adjust.'
The door opened softly and Ethan turned his head toward the sound.
Susan stood in the doorway wearing a white nightgown that swayed lightly around her legs. Her blonde hair rested loose over her shoulders, slightly messy from sleep, while the dim hallway light behind her wrapped the edges of the fabric in a soft glow. The quiet atmosphere of the room shifted the moment she appeared.
She was not rushing and she was not uncertain.
Susan looked at him with that same calm, direct clarity she always had whenever she had already made up her mind. There was no embarrassment on her face and no hesitation in her movements. She had decided to come here, and that was the end of it.
Ethan watched her silently for a few seconds before speaking.
"Couldn't sleep?" he asked.
The corner of her lips curved upward slightly. "I could," she replied softly. "But I chose not to."
Ethan let out a quiet breath through his nose.
'Well, there goes every productive thought I had tonight.'
A faint smirk tugged at his mouth as he shifted across the bed, the sheets rustling quietly beneath him.
"Careful, Sue," he said casually. "You keep looking at me like that and I might start believing you want me to fuck you senseless."
Susan rolled her eyes, though the warmth in them only deepened. "Your ego really is impossible."
"And yet you still walked into my room at this hour," Ethan replied.
'Checkmate.'
Susan shook her head with an amused smile and stepped inside before quietly closing the door behind her. The soft click echoed gently through the room.
She crossed the distance between them without another word and practically fell onto him, causing the mattress to dip beneath their combined weight. Ethan instinctively wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer against his chest as they settled together on the bed.
The warmth of her body against his immediately eased the tension that had been sitting on his shoulders for hours.
Susan tilted her head slightly to look at him properly. Even in the low light, she could see the faint exhaustion hidden behind his relaxed expression.
"It seems you're thinking about too many things again," she murmured.
Ethan smiled softly, raised a hand and carefully tucked a loose strand of blonde hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering briefly against her skin.
"My mind is built to run hundreds of thousands of thoughts at the same time," he said quietly. "But all of them disappeared the moment you walked in here."
Susan's cheeks warmed faintly, though her grin only widened.
"Wow," she whispered. "That was dangerously smooth."
Ethan looked genuinely thoughtful for a second.
"I've had centuries worth of mental evolution," he said. "I would hope I learned at least one thing."
Susan laughed quietly under her breath before moving closer until their foreheads almost touched. Ethan could feel her warm breath against his face.
"Yeah?" she whispered teasingly. "And what's going through your mind right now?"
Ethan stared into her blue eyes for a long moment.
The world outside the room felt impossibly distant. Reed's disappearance, political tensions, guture timelines and the endless calculations constantly running through his mind.
All of it faded into background noise.
'Honestly, brain, if you interrupt me right now with another multiversal crisis, I am personally shutting you off.'
A small amused smile appeared on Ethan's face before he slipped his hand slightly higher along her waist and pulled her even closer until only inches remained between their lips.
"Let's not waste words," he said softly.
Then he kissed her. Susan melted against him almost instantly.
The kiss was warm and slow at first, filled with the kind of intimacy that only existed between two people who trusted each other completely.
All the thoughts weighing on Ethan disappeared.
How could he thought about other things, when Susan Storm was straddling his hips, her mouth devouring his like she'd been starved for the taste of him?
Her white nightgown so sheer it might as well have been smoke clinging to her curves. The fabric whispered against his bare chest every time she shifted her weight.
Beneath it, the shadow of her areolas pressed dark and inviting against the translucent material. Her panties—simple white cotton, damp already—were the only other stitch of clothing between her skin and his.
Ethan's hands found the hem of that useless excuse for a nightgown. His fingers traced the edge where silk met the flare of her hip.
"You're overdressed," he murmured against her lips.
Susan pulled back just enough for him to see the glint in her blue eyes. Her blonde hair cascaded over one shoulder, the ends brushing his collarbone. "And you're impatient."
"I've been patient all day."
"All day?" A smirk curved her mouth.
His hands slid higher, bunching the nightgown around her waist.
She kissed him again, and this time there was no teasing in it.
Her lips parted. His tongue slid against hers—warm, wet, the taste of the wine she'd had with dinner still lingering. A faint sweetness. She tilted her head, deepening the angle, and a sound escaped her throat that vibrated against his mouth.
Ethan cataloged every detail. The way her breath hitched when he sucked gently on her lower lip. The tiny gasp she tried to swallow when his teeth grazed the sensitive flesh. The way her hips rolled forward without thought, grinding the heat of her cunt against the rigid line of his cock through his underwear.
Saliva pooled, exchanged, shared between them until neither could tell whose mouth was whose. Her tongue traced the ridge of his teeth. His followed the curve of her soft palate. She moaned, and the sound poured directly down his throat.
Sloppy . That was the word. They kissed sloppy and hungry and without any pretense of restraint. Drool slicked her chin. He licked it clean.
"Ethan." His name came out frayed at the edges.
His right hand abandoned its grip on her nightgown. Fingertips skimmed down the plane of her stomach—she shivered at the touch—and found the waistband of her panties. He didn't bother pulling them off. Just pushed the cotton aside and slid two fingers through the slick folds beneath.
"God." Her head dropped back, exposing the long column of her throat.
"There is no God here. I'm the only one here, Susan."
She laughed, but the laugh fractured into a broken cry when his middle finger circled her clit. First slow circles and then light pressure. Then harder, pressing the swollen nub against the pubic bone beneath. Her inner walls clenched around nothing, and he could feel the flutter of muscle against his knuckles.
"You're soaked," he said, voice low.
"Your fault."
"I haven't done anything yet."
Her hips bucked into his hand. "You kissed me and exist this close to me, that's enough."
Fuck , he loves this woman.
His left hand came down on her ass with a crack that echoed off the bedroom walls. The nightgown muffled the impact, but the sound was unmistakable—flesh against flesh, sharp and stinging.
Susan yelped. Her eyes flew open wide, but she didn't seem oppose to it.
"Again," she demanded.
He obliged. Three more spanks in rapid succession, each one landing on a slightly different spot, painting her right cheek pink beneath the sheer fabric.
Her pussy clenched around his fingers with every strike. Wetness dripped down his palm, soaking the sheet beneath them.
She reached between their bodies. Her fingers, slender and sure, hooked into the waistband of his Calvin Klein boxer briefs and tugged them down far enough to free his cock. It sprang up against his stomach, thick and flushed dark at the tip, the veins along the shaft standing out in relief.
Susan's fingers wrapped around him. Her thumb smeared the bead of pre-cum that had gathered at the slit, using it as lubricant as she stroked from base to tip in one long, slow pull.
"You're huge," she breathed.
"You say that every time."
"Because it's true every time."
He added a third finger inside her. Stretched her. Her grip on his cock tightened in response—a feedback loop of pleasure that arced between them like electricity. His thumb stayed on her clit, rubbing tight figure-eights while his fingers curled to find that spongy patch of tissue on her anterior wall.
Her strokes became erratic. Jerky. She couldn't focus on pleasuring him when he was finger-fucking her toward an orgasm.
"Don't stop," she whispered.
"I'm not stopping."
"Don't— oh —don't stop touching me."
Her pussy clamped down on his fingers. The telltale flutter began—the rhythmic squeezing that signaled she was close. Her breath came in panting gasps. Her nipples, visible through the nightgown, had tightened into hard peaks that pressed desperately against the silk.
Ethan pulled his fingers out.
She made a sound of pure outrage.
"Not yet," he said, answering the accusation in her eyes. "I want to taste you first."
"You're a cruel man."
"Maybe, but I promise you'll love it."
The nightgown had to go. He sat up, forcing her to shift backward onto his thighs, and gathered the fabric in both hands. She raised her arms, letting him peel it off over her head like unwrapping a gift he'd been waiting his whole life to open.
Her breasts fell free.
They are round, heavy and perfect. The kind of tits that made a man forget his own name. Pale skin, bluish veins faintly visible beneath the surface, with areolas the color of rose petals and nipples that stood erect and begging for attention. They swayed gently with her breathing, and Ethan's mouth literally watered.
"You're staring too long like it's your first time seeing them," she chuckled.
"I'm worshipping the art of your beautiful body, Sue. There's a difference. No matter how many times I see this masterpiece, I can't help but be mesmerized by the view."
He cupped both breasts in his hands, marveling at the weight of them. His thumbs brushed across her nipples, and she arched into the touch. The flesh overflowed between his fingers—she was more than a handful, and that was exactly how he liked it. He pushed them together, creating a valley of cleavage that he pressed his face into, inhaling the scent of her skin.
"You're ridiculous," she laughed.
"And you're magnificent."
His mouth latched onto her left nipple. Tongue first—flat and broad, lapping at the pebbled flesh. Then lips, sealing around the areola and sucking with steady, rhythmic pressure. Her hands flew to his hair, fingers threading through blonde strands and gripping tight.
He released her nipple with a wet pop and immediately gave the same treatment to the right one. Suckling and laving. Gentle scrapes of teeth that made her hiss and pull his hair harder.
"So sensitive," he murmured against her skin.
"You're going to make me come just from this."
"Would that be so terrible?"
"I want to come on your cock."