The Baxter Building didn’t usually freeze over in July.

But ever since she showed up, all frost-kissed cheekbones and a voice like winter wind, the thermostat had gone to hell and the Human Torch was not okay with it.

Scratch that. He was very okay with it.

“I don’t think she likes me,” Johnny muttered, watching from across the lab as she methodically iced over the beaker Reed had warned her not to touch. “She looked at me like I was a cigarette in a maternity ward.”

Sue didn’t even glance up from her clipboard. “You are a walking fire hazard, Johnny.”

“And she’s basically a walking popsicle. We cancel each other out. It’s romantic.”

“It’s thermodynamics,” Reed corrected without looking up. “And highly impractical.”

“Oh, please,” Johnny scoffed. “Antarctica and the Sahara still exist on the same planet, don’t they? Opposites attract. It’s science.”

“Actually—”

“No one asked you, Stretch.”

The new girl—you—had arrived only two weeks ago, all hush-hush courtesy of a government program so secret even Ben Grimm had arched a brow. “Another science experiment?” he’d asked. “Or do ya just like collectin’ strays now?”

Turns out, you weren’t a stray. You were ice incarnate. Smooth. Unbothered. Unnaturally cool in every sense of the word. You looked like a starlet who’d wandered off a French noir and accidentally landed in a Marvel comic. Pale lashes, frostbitten elegance, and the kind of attitude that made Johnny want to throw himself into a snowbank and beg for hypothermia.

You weren’t mean. Not exactly. You were just…frigid. Emotionally, elementally. You said little. Did much. Saved a whole subway car full of people last week when a fire broke out—his fire, technically, though in his defense it had been a very experimental prototype jetpack.

And what did he get in return?

A glare. A gust of cold air. A muttered, “You would be the one who lit a gas line with your ego.”

She spoke! Johnny had nearly fainted from the sheer heat of the moment.

──

Today, she was in the lounge, skimming a 1961 issue of Vogue with legs crossed like she’d invented femininity itself. She wore gloves indoors (gloves!), and her sunglasses were perched in her hair like she hadn’t quite decided if she was James Dean or Brigitte Bardot.

“Hey, Snowflake.”

She didn’t look up. “I told you not to call me that.”

“You did,” Johnny said, easing onto the couch beside her, “but I like living dangerously.”

“You like living. Full stop. Keep pushing me and that could change.”

He grinned, basking in the threat like it was sunshine. “You know, I think about you a lot.”

You turned a page. “Must be exhausting. All that melting.”

“I dream about what our babies would be like,” he added casually, like this was a normal thing to say to someone who could kill him with a sneeze.

You blinked at him. “Little lukewarm puddles of disappointment?”

He gasped, clutching his chest. “You wound me.”

“Not yet.”

Johnny leaned in, propping his chin in his hand. “You’re not as cold as you pretend to be.”

“I am as cold as I pretend to be.”

“You saved my life last week.”

“Because you were on fire.”

“I am fire.”

“Exactly.”

Johnny smiled. “So you admit you care.”

“Only because you’re too flammable to be left unsupervised.”

“That sounds like love.”

You finally turned to face him, eyes crystalline and arctic. “Johnny. If I kissed you, you’d get frostbite.”

His grin only widened. “Willing to risk it.”

You paused. He could swear you were trying not to smile.

“Don’t tempt me.”

──

Later that night, Sue would ask why half the living room was covered in permafrost and why Johnny was walking funny like he’d sat in a snowdrift.

“Battle damage,” he said dreamily.

“From what?”

“Love, Susan. Love.”

Ben grunted from the kitchen. “He slipped on the ice and bruised his—”

“LOVE.”