Johnny Storm has always had a thing for warmth.
He thinks that its' probably why he ended up as the Human Torch. Even when he was younger he'd want an extra blanket, or more hot chocolate, or loved hugging and wrapping his arms around people more than the average person. It was because he enjoyed warmth. It was comforting, even more so now with his body temperature being far higher than average.
His attraction to warmth is why he doesn't like this guy Reed and Sue hired to be their "assistant".
A first he thought the guy was too young and too inexperienced, but he grew on him, until one day their hands had briefly touched and Johnny felt something he hadn't felt in a long long time.
He understood the logic behind getting an assistant, helping to pay bills and control media frenzy that the others hated so much. He'd sometimes clean up the place, or help Reed by giving him the right tools when needed or Ben a pep talk when he wanted. The new assistant was a nice guy, smart, with the odd wild streak in him that Johnny would sometimes attempt to use so he'd have someone to go clubbing with. But something was off about him and that brief touch of hands had sewn the seeds of doubt in his mind.
The others don't notice anything weird, but Johnny does.
He's cold.
Coming from the Human Torch that maybe doesn't mean much, but he wasn't cold like Sue and Reed were, with normal body temperature. This guy was really cold. His skin temperature was constantly cool, even after standing by a heater, or nearly getting scorched, or drying laundry. His drinks are always frosty, even when the fridge was broken or the air conditioning went on the fritz. His food is always too hot, and so he'll wait for it to cool. He doesn't sleep with a thick blanket.
Johnny notices when he flies that sometimes, on winter evenings, the assistant would sit on the roof, no sweater or coat, for hours on end. He wouldn't shiver and his lips wouldn't turn blue, he'd wait and watch the trail of smoke his "employer" left behind.
Johnny had asked Reed if he'd noticed it, and of course he never did. He'd express his suspicions to Sue and Ben, but they'd laugh them off. The only support he'd gotten was when the assistant had handed Sue a book she needed and their hands had touched. She'd remarked how cold he felt, but she didn't mention it again.
It did mean though that Johnny wasn't imagining it.
Every once in a while, he'd try and get the assistant to open up a bit, so he could find some sort of clue. The clues he got weren't very helpful. The assistant was nineteen (too young to go clubbing like Johnny wanted), had graduated from some sort of private boarding school, he didn't speak to his parents or brother anymore, and he was going through a very hard time with his girlfriend. The school was being rebuilt and when it was finished, he was going to have a job waiting for him as a teacher there (at nineteen with no University? This was also quite strange) until then though, he needed some extra money.
Apparently Sue and Reed had met him at a book store and he'd started asking them about their views on "superhero" registration as Johnny liked to call it. The debate had been an interesting one and Sue and Reed had hired him then since he appeared to be smart and not someone who was likely to "sell photos of anyone bathing" to the media.
Fascinating stuff, really, but not what he'd been probing for, so he'd keep trying but not get much more.
The assistant slept in a room down the hall from Johnny's and across from Ben's. Some nights he'd try to sneak in to the younger man's room, but normally found it empty. Where he was sneaking off to, Johnny didn't know, but he'd wait by the elevator for him to come back through that way.
He never did, but was always in his room by morning.
He knew that his suspicions were annoying and bordering paranoia; after all, he was a kid, what kid didn't sneak out sometimes?
But this kid, didn't seem like the type, and when confronted about it, he never denied it, or gave an explanation. He'd just shrug, and go for breakfast, or a snack, or to help Reed, or to do some other mundane task around the Baxter Building, that Johnny didn't really think needed as much priority assigned to it as the kid did.
Some days Johnny would try to sit and watch the news, mainly to see if he was on it.
Lately he'd been seeing a lot of things on TV about a battle on Alcatraz Island that had simply been chaos, numerous deaths, but few details released to the public. It had taken place months before, but old footage was only just being released. Johnny wonders why the Fantastic Four had not been aware of it till after the fact.
Reed and Sue and Ben watch in fascination and horror and talk about the event, only then does the assistant edge closer to Johnny than the others.
"What's wrong?" He'd ask. He wasn't concerned, more; he hoped the answer would give him a clue as to what was off about the assistant.
He'd shrug. "I don't want to talk about it."
Another assistant was hired a year later.
It had been a frustrating year for Johnny, never feeling any closer to the assistant's secret, never understanding the source of his ice-like skin.
There were times when he'd go flying, searching, for this school the kid had talked about, just searching for answers to the mystery that was the assistant. The new one wasn't nearly as interesting, or cold. She was small, with long brown hair, and a warm smile.
Sometimes she'd talk with the other one, claiming to have gone to the same school as him. They'd act like old friends in.
When asked about the other's affinity for cold, the new assistant would laugh awkwardly and claim that the kids used to call him "Iceman" at school because of it.
He couldn't help but feel as though the Fantastic Four were being watched and kept in the dark. He couldn't help but feel they were missing something important…
But he couldn't figure it out and the others just called him paranoid so he kept his mouth shut, just watching for clues.
One day, he was going to figure whatever it was, out...
Then Robert Drake and Katherine Pryde were going to have some explaining to do.
I don't own F4 or X-Men. I don't know where this idea came from, I found it on my computer and decided to rewrite a bit of it and post it.
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