Alexander had been radioactive for fifteen years. 

Fifteen years of blistering heat, of ash-filled lungs, of watching everything he brushed against wither and blacken. Fifteen years of isolation—not by choice, but by necessity. He was a walking Chernobyl, a man who could not  touch or be touched.

The mutation had been Rupert Thorne’s parting gift—an agonizing transformation into a living nuclear reaction. But the radiation wasn’t the worst of it. No, the worst part was the memory that refused to burn away: his wife and son's body laying there lifeless, bloodied and...—he was a permanent monument to his failure. 

He had embraced the destruction after that. If he was a monster, he would be a thorough one. Criminals who crossed him didn’t just die—they melted. He took pleasure in their pain, in the way their flesh sloughed off at his touch. It was the closest thing to intimacy he’d known in over a decade. 

The containment cell hissed open, releasing a plume of frozen air into the hallway. 

Phosphorus barely glanced up from his game with Wessle. Another asset, another weapon. Waller had a habit of collecting broken things and sharpening them. 

Then he saw you. 

A woman wrapped in a straitjacket, your bare feet leaving faint trails of frost on the steel floor. your hair was white, not from age but from cold, and your eyes— 

Christ, your eyes. 

Sharp. Calculating. Like you were already measuring the distance between his ribs. 

"Subject Zero," Waller announced over the intercom. "Cryogenic meta. Skin temperature permanently at -30°C. Play nice." 

Then it happened during extraction. 

A botched op in Kazakhstan, enemy forces closing in. Phosphorus had been covering their retreat when a grenade sent him crashing into you. 

For one heart-stopping second, his bare skeletal hand pressed against your arm. 

He braced—for the scream, for the smell of burning flesh— 

But it never came. 

Instead, your skin steamed under his touch, frost boiling away in tiny, furious bursts. you didn’t pull back. Didn’t even flinch. Just stared at the contact like it was a math problem you were solving. 

Phosphorus jerked away first. 

His fingers twitched. 

That was the first time in fifteen years anything had survived his touch. 

He dreamt of it that night. 

Not of fire, not of Thorne’s laughter—but of cold. Of a hand that didn’t blister under his.

When he saw you in the mess hall the next morning, you were sitting alone, picking at food you clearly had no intention of eating. 

Phosphorus hesitated. Then slid into the seat across from you. 

"You didn’t burn"