Johnny Storm is bae. And not just because Chris Evans. Although he certainly helps.
When she'd first signed onto the team, she'd been given the title "Research Assistant", because that honestly was all she did. She wasn't special, not like them anyway, and the only thing she was good at was crunching numbers and typing up Reed's research notes. And, according to Johnny and Ben, she was also good at "showing Reed who's boss" on game night.
Sue had been thrilled that there would be another girl in the lab and on the team, telling Reed that even though she really did love him, it was nice to have some girl-time too. Her brother had been of the same mind, though he did a slightly better job of wording it and didn't say a thing to Reed about liking or disliking his company. Ben had shrugged, said it was always nice to have another set of hands around the place, and had promptly started treating her like a little sister. And Reed, grudgingly to everyone but herself, had admitted it was nice to have more help around the place.
She loved it, though, the late nights spent in front of a screen, fingers flying over the keys, and waiting up into the early hours of the morning just so she could make them coffee just the way they liked it and listen to them moan about how the mission had gone. It had continued on like that for a while, with her doing her job and enjoying every minute of it, and then there'd been the accident.
Reed still blamed himself, on some level, even though it hadn't been his fault. All of them told him so, even Eira, but he refused to agree. He had been the one to set up the experiment, to ask her to watch over it while they went out on a mission, to say nothing could possibly go wrong with his calculations. He felt that he'd been the one who got it all wrong. That he'd been the one to do this to her.
She'd been typing up Reed's notes, the way she always did every Thursday night, when the machine off to her left had started beeping frantically. Eira had instantly moved over to look at the message flashing across the screen and see what could be done about it. Reed had started experimenting with cryogenics, curious how they could use it to further certain research projects they were currently working on, and his current experiment, the one she was babysitting, was a special one. The capsule had multiple locks on it; all designed to keep curious minds at bay, and could only be opened through the computer. The message on the screen informed her that there was an irregularity inside the capsule, something that certainly shouldn't be happening.
Normally, Eira would have called Reed into the lab and told him what was going on. Normally, he would have been there to check on it himself. Normally, a crisis wouldn't have arisen out of the blue like the current one had, and she wouldn't be here to look after their little ice block all on her own. But tonight, unfortunately for her, she had no Reed to tell her what to do. The logical course of action, naturally, was to check inside the container to be sure everything was working properly.
In hindsight, Eira would agree that cracking open Pandora's Box on a whim was not the brightest idea she had ever had. But, as Ben later commented, it was her guts that made her such a great gal. But in the heat of the moment, with warnings beeping and her brain at least a little frazzled by paperwork and not enough sleep, it seemed like a good idea to pop the lid on an experimental project and take a peek inside.
It had been going smoothly then, nothing seemed out of order inside the machine, and as far as Eira could tell, the computer had simply malfunctioned and seen something that wasn't really there. Happy with that conclusion, she'd been ready to snap the lid back in place and leave it at that, until she caught a glimpse of something embedded into the side of the container. Assuming it was something someone, probably Johnny, had tried to shatter with the cold, she reached in with a pair of tongs and pulled it out.
It wasn't until after she'd pulled it out, following protocol up to that point and handling it with the necessary precautions; that she began to worry. Once it was out in the open, laid out nearly on a tray she'd found lying around the lab, she had to wonder where it had come from. It was about the length of her thumb, roughly textured, and colored the same blue as an iceberg. Upon further inspection, she found two glassy spots on its surface and a set of six legs on its belly. It was at that point that Eira decided she should put the mysterious thing right back where she found it, and wait until Reed got back to do anything about it.
Except, that wasn't how it happened.
Getting back to the base and finding a lockdown in process was not the best feeling; Johnny decided as he swooped onto the balcony and extinguished. Eira tended not to overreact when something went wrong, preferring to deal with it quietly instead, so whatever had happened was probably serious. Sue was the first one through the lab doors, followed by Reed, and all three of them stared at the sealed doors presented to them at the back of the lab. Frost was creeping its way higher across the glass, and Eira was breathing heavily against the far wall.
"Eira?" Reed moved quickly over to the main console, turning the alarm off, but leaving the other area sealed off. "What happened?"
"I don't know." Her voice was muffled by the blast glass, but still audible. "Your new project was throwing out warnings about irregularities, and when I opened it up…"
"You opened it?" Johnny interrupted. "How come she gets to open it but I can't?"
"Johnny!" Sue and Reed both glared at him before returning their attention to the redhead in the room, the younger boy pulling on a frown.
"Yes," Eira humored the Human Torch, "I opened it. There was something inside." She turned her back to them, pulling her hair to one side and exposing the back of her neck. The thing she'd pulled from the container was latched to her spine, just above her shoulders. "Reed, it bit me."
The doctor was standing as close as he could without touching the frosted glass within seconds. "You took it out of the capsule?"
She nodded. "When I saw it I thought it was just something… someone had tried to freeze." She could practically hear Sue glare at her brother. "So I took it out. It wasn't until after I brought it in here that I realized it was an organism of some kind. And before I could put it back in, it… woke up." She turned back around to face them, and Reed realized her eyes had changed from brown to ice blue, and there was a streak of silver in her hair that hadn't been there before. "After it bit me, it got suddenly cold, and I…" She shrugged. "I panicked."
Johnny could see Reed's face reflected in the glass, and he watched as the brunette's expression softened. "It's okay, Eira," Reed smiled the way he always did when he made a promise he intended to keep, "we'll work all this out. I promise."
The console's scanners were beeping in regular intervals as Reed looked over the information they were feeding him, gaze flicking between the screens and the girl on the other side of the glass.
"This is probably a dumb question," Ben offered from his perch by the lab doors, "but have you tried to take it off?"
The redhead in the sealed room laughed softly. "Yes, I tried, but it just held on tighter."
"To a girl like you? I'm not surprised." Johnny offered up with a grin, earning another glare from his sister. "What? I can't even lighten the mood a little?"
Reed rolled his eyes before stepping out from behind the console and moving towards the doors. "I've done as many scans as I can, and I think it'll be fine for you to come out now."
Her ice blue eyes widened. "Are you sure? I don't want to ruin your lab because I was careless."
"I'm positive," he keyed in the proper code to open the blast doors and smiled, "if something goes wrong, I'd rather have it happen where we can reach you."
Johnny grinned suddenly, but didn't get the chance to comment before Eira moved down into the rest of the lab and sat down on the chair Reed directed her to. "So long as you're sure…" She muttered, tucking her hair back out of the way again.
Reed gave her another reassuring smile and grabbed one of the tools he'd left on the desk, lifting it up to the same level of the creature on Eira's neck. As he got closer to it, it clamped down harder on her spine, and she gasped as her skin turned a very faint shade of blue. All four of them stared, wide-eyed, and waited.
"Eira?" Sue spoke first, ready to put her in a force field if she had to, just to keep them all safe.
"I…" Her breath appeared in the air before her in wispy clouds, and even Johnny felt a little cooler than before as she continued. "I'm fine, just… Reed, leave it alone."
"But…" He began, but she cut him off.
"No, leave it. Reed, if you try to remove it I could end up icing all of you." She paused, managing a faint smile. "Literally."
"The hell is that thing, Reed?" Ben asked; eyes still glued to the girl in the chair.
"I found it embedded in a meteor fragment that was sent to me from a contact in Greenland," he replied quickly, "I thought the cold would keep it dormant, but…" He trailed off, realizing how wrong he'd really been about it.
"Want me to try and get rid of it, then?" Johnny suggested, tilting his head to one side as he tried to get a better look at it.
"No!" Eira interjected before Reed could respond. "You'll just make it mad if you do that…" She reached a hand tentatively up to run past the little leech, and shivered slightly. "It needs a host to survive for any length of time." She spoke softly, almost more to herself than the rest of them. "But it's a mutualistic relationship. It gets a host, and I get its powers…"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Johnny's eyebrows were high on his forehead, "powers? What powers?"
"How do you know all of this, Eira?" Reed asked; his voice with overlapping Johnny's at the same time.
"I can hear it," she answered quietly, "a little voice in the back of my mind."
Johnny blinked twice in quick succession. "Okay, now I know something's not right. Reed, let me try to torch it."
Eira was out of her chair and hallway across the lab before Reed could answer. "I said no!" The window off to her right started to frost over as her voice rose. "It's not going to hurt me, Johnny, but it will try to defend itself if threatened." She took a few steadying breaths and switched her glacial gaze onto Reed. "Besides, I haven't seen our good doctor this excited since the incident with the freak thunderstorm."
The other team members all turned to give him judgmental looks, and he frowned. "What? When is it wrong to be curious about a new phenomenon?"
"Since the phenomenon is munching on the back of our friend's neck like she's Sunday lunch!" Johnny replied, clearly annoyed. "Reed, if this were anyone else, would you even think twice about letting it stay on their neck?"
"Of course not," he replied uncomfortably, "but Eira isn't being hurt, as far as any of us can tell, so…" He trailed off lamely, his suddenly brilliant brain not able to think of a better way to phrase his argument. "I don't think there's any harm in observing the relationship for a few days, at least."
Johnny stared at him like he'd just suggested they all use him to roast marshmallows over, which Reed knew was an invitation-only event. "Do you even hear yourself?"
"Johnny," Eira's voice was soft as it sounded through the lab, "it's fine. I don't mind being a guinea pig for a little while." She smiled at Reed. "Just don't touch the back of my neck."
"Wouldn't dream of it." Reed replied with a smile of his own. "Now, if you'd like to take a seat, we can get started."
She returned to the chair she'd been previously occupying with a faint smile. "Whenever you're ready, Doctor."
Eira's powers culminated overnight, as far as any of them could conclude successfully, and the next day when Reed knocked on her door, the wood was frigid to the touch. It took a good half hour of prying and gradually applying more heat to open the door, and when they finally did, they found the redhead collapsed in a chair giggling. Fortunately, her amusement was contagious, and by the time they made it back to the lab with her, they were all grinning at least a little.
Her skin had returned to a more healthy shade, but remained paler than normal, and her eyes were still an eerie blue. She acted the same, except for her new found aversion to liquids and sudden decrease in proximity between herself and Johnny. Not that the Human Torch was about to complain over being closer to a cute girl, but it did make him curious over what exactly had changed.
He got his answer an hour later, when Reed left a glass of water on the worktable next to her, and she froze it solid by simply running her finger around the rim of the glass. When Reed came back and picked it up to take a drink, he looked shocked and she looked sheepish.
"Sorry," she mumbled, "I was just curious."
Reed shook his head, setting the glass back down. "Don't. Apologize, that is, I don't mind if you get curious." He smiled. "Anything else you're curious about?"
She shrugged modestly. "How high the heat in my room can go up? It's a bit uncomfortable to sleep on frosty sheets."
He laughed. "I'll see what I can do." He glanced over at the monitors to his right. "In the meantime, why don't we try to see how cold you can make it?"
She shook her head. "C'mon, we both know what happens to rubber when it's super cooled…"
"How about me, then?" Johnny offered from his seat across the lab. "Reed can keep a safe distance, and I can just get hotter when you get colder." He grinned. "Besides, that way there's someone right there if you need us."
Reed glanced at the younger man before returning his gaze to the girl before him. "So long as hot-head over there doesn't supernova, we should be fine."
Eira smirked slightly. "Alright." She stood and moved with Johnny after Reed to the room at the back of the lab that could be sealed. "Although," she muttered to her test buddy as they moved up the steps, "I don't think you're capable of getting much hotter than you already are." She winked at him. "Special abilities or otherwise."
He winked back, grinning. "Challenge accepted."
Eira's suit, which Reed had apparently made in record time the night before, fit her like a second skin, and made Johnny feel oddly uncomfortable if he looked at it for too long.
She fiddled with the zipper on the front and the cuffs of the sleeves uncomfortably, evidently wishing she could be elsewhere entirely.
"Ready when you two are." Reed's voice sounded over the speakers to them, filling the room.
"Ladies first." Johnny offered with a grin.
She grinned right back and let out a long, slow breath, the floor under her feet frosting over and her breath misting out into the air before her. Johnny instinctively raised his own core temperature, knowing without even really having to look that the air around him had begun to shimmer with the heat.
They went on like that for several minutes, each increasing the amount of temperature they put out until Johnny started to catch fire, and Eira started to crystalize in places, the changes mirrored perfectly from one to the other. Johnny's whole body became encased in flame at the same moment that the crystals slid fully over Eira's face, turning her into a jagged-edged ice sculpture.
"Alright, that's enough, you two." Reed's tone was calm, but there was no missing the note his smile added to the simple sentence.
As quickly as they'd sprung up, the flames and crystals vanished again, and both parties were left breathing a little heavily as they got themselves back under control. "See?" Johnny grinned across the room to her. "I can get hotter."
"No, not really." Eira winked, moving over to his side of the room and heading for the door that lay just behind him. "Still just as hot as always."
He watched her leave, smirking slightly. "Funny," he muttered under his breath as she rejoined Reed in the lab, "I can't say the same for you…"
Johnny shivered as a draft found its way under the covers of his bed, and frigid hands slipped across his bare chest, waking him fully. He jerked awake, turning to look at the intruder, settling back against his pillows when he saw who it was. "Eira?"
"Sorry." She mumbled, shivering as she scooted closer to him. "Reed bumped up the heat in my room, but it's not enough. I still can't get warm." She cracked an eye open and looked up at him, eyebrows knitted together in concern. "Is it a problem?"
He shook his head, rearranging himself around her and raising his core temperature instinctively. "Of course not, don't worry about it." He smiled, careful not to hold her too close and keep his hands on her upper back and arm. "I'd rather have you sneaking in here then freezing all by yourself, anyway."
She laughed at that, shaking her head and sighing. "Yeah, I guessed you'd say that. Besides, nothing beats having cute girls slip into your room in the dead of night, right?"
He grinned. "Nothing at all." He gave an awkward little shrug, not looking her in the eye as he spoke. "Look, I know this is gonna seem weird and all, but I'll do whatever it takes to make this easier on you. I don't want you freezing yourself in your room again, or sleeping on frosty sheets… This is just the tip of the iceberg, and whatever else follows is fine with me. Okay?"
She raised her eyebrows at him, a smile tugging on her lips. "What's the tip of the iceberg?"
He grinned and leaned in close enough to kiss her nose, heat spreading through her from the contact. "This is."
Oh my gosh, so much fluff. UGH.
I love it.
Eira belongs to: Silver Flame Alchemist (aka Me)
The Fantastic Four and its related characters belong to: Marvel
Titles taken from songs by: Owl City