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It may not be a date-date, but that does not mean that Johnny Storm was not going to do his damnedest to treat a lady to a very deserved, highly overdue evening out. And if there is one bit of reputation that Johnny actually deserves, it's his fondness for showing a girl a good time.
He'd shown up in his italian-cut black suit right on time, complete with flowers for his date. The restaurant of choice was a nice one — suits and gowns were not out of place there, but the food was actually pronouncable, so it wasn't the kind of fancy that would even make him feel uncomfortable. Light music, easy conversation, excellent food.
So far, so good.
As the pair walk arm-in-arm towards their next stop, Johnny glances over at Heather and offers her a lopsided smile. "…this cannot possibly be the first time you've had somebody spoil you like this. Be honest."
*
"Well…" Heather thinks about it, then laughs. "I'm afraid Mac wasn't much for the spoiling but he did his best. He was older than I was and past that, and besides, we spent a lot of time in the northern parts of Canada. There wasn't even a coffee shop. We went to dinners, of course, and went out for our anniversary."
Heather looks quite nice herself — it's hard to go wrong with a little black dress and a good pair of heels. She's still young enough to look good in anything that shows off her figure and her red hair. She's even gone so far as to wear makeup and jewelry, which is more rare than the dress.
"I married on my seventeenth birthday, so it wasn't as though anyone had time to take me anywhere," she admits. "I'm not terribly good at being spoiled, to be honest. This whole evening has been a trial." She's teasing. Mostly.
*
Johnny cannot stop himself from whistling lowly at this information. "I didn't know you were married that early. That's just not fair, Mac," he says, shaking a fist towards the sky. "Greedy. Man. Well, I'll just have to help make up for lost time," he says cheerfully, waggling his eyebrows at her. "We'll skip the unfun stuff that you missed out on, though. Only the good things."
He guides her to round a corner and continue on, the edge of Central Park visible a short block away. "Which… I guess I should ask, then. Do you want to go dancing?" Johnny asks, laughing at himself. "It's fun when you know how, but if you don't, it can be pretty miserable."
*
"I've had to learn. Sometimes work means, well, dancing. I've had to play a part more than once." Heather gives Johnny a smile and a knowing wink. "That's gallant of you to offer, though. I'm sure we'll manage to have fun somehow." She squeezes his arm a little.
"Of course," she continues, as the year dawns on her, not for the first time. "I could be horribly out of date. It's been a couple years. You'll forgive me if I embarrass you, yes?"
*
"Oh, probably. I mean, I might laugh at you," Johnny replies thoughtfully, reaching over to rest his free hand over hers. "Maybe even tease you a little. But it comes from a place of love, I promise."
Which reminds him. Suddenly, a broad grin comes to his face. "Oh, man. I have to tell you about what happened yesterday," Johnny says with a laugh that may or may not be bordering on 'delighted cackle' status. "I think Reed may have broken Sue. It was magical."
*
"Oh, well, those two are going to need a vat of glue if they keep doing this to each other," Heather says with a roll of her eyes. "Magical, you say? You know, I don't read those awful romances that are so popular with the office girls but, you know…I could use a fix." She grins at Johnny. "Tell me. I'd like to hear about someone else's catastrophes for once."
*
"It actually wasn't a catastrophe! That's… I mean, it feels weird to be saying that," Johnny admits, his smile going a touch odd. "But Reed referred to himself as her boyfriend and Sue's brain just -" He cuts a pair of fingers through the air in front of his face and makes a 'bzzt' noise. "- total short circuit. Her face, Heather."
*
"You'd think she'd have been expecting it." Heather laughs at the idea of the scene. "After all, wasn't she pursuing him? That's usually what happens these days, when a woman pursues a man successfully."
There's an odd flicker of the streetlamps that gives her pause. "Did you see that? I'm not so old my eyes are going."
*
Johnny just laughs. "That's what I said. She kissed him, I don't know what else she could have been expecting…"
He trails off when she pauses, his eyes going up to peer at the nearest streetlamp. Hm. "Wasn't just you," Johnny says slowly, casting a somewhat wary look towards the park in the distance. Right. "I am not normally a paranoid guy, but… c'mon."
*
"And me in heels." Heather lets go of Johnny's arm but it's only to rearrange her things, pulling the chain out of her handbag so she can sling it across her chest, then she takes Johnny's arm again. The lights flicker and a noise like flies follows with static and the lights return — unsteady but labouring against the dark. "This is not good," she says very calmly. "But you mustn't expose yourself if possible. At least that's how we used to do it."
*
The first note about it not being good — that, Johnny hums a quiet agreement with, and the air around him becomes subtly warmer. It's her second note that causes him to give her a surprised, almost confused look. "Why would — no, no, I don't — it's not a secret," he says with an odd smile, already scanning the area around them as he continues walking. "Everybody knows who I am and what I can do. If you want me to fly you out of this, you just say the word and we're gone."
*
"And leave the people here to deal with it?" Heather sounds deeply offended. "No, we're going nowhere." The lights go out completely but something pale and ugly catches her eye scaling the front of a building.
"There's one." She opens her bag and removes the gun David gave her, takes the safety off. "We're not leaving until this is over." Another pale, wet, spidery thing that looks almost like a man. "Two." The wind blows something that looks like leaves but sounds like roaches down the street. "Keep track. You should do well here, unless they're fireproof. In which case I hope you can fight."
*
Johnny's eyes briefly go a bit wide when the gun comes out of Heather's purse, but even he isn't sure why he's surprised. He shakes it off and takes two steps away from Heather to give her some space. "Don't worry. I'm not a one-trick pony," he assures her, turning in place to check for more. "Close your eyes, Heather." The last thing he wants to do is blind her.
He waits prescisely long enough for her to shield or at least close her eyes before he muttering a quiet "flame on" and, just like that, Johnny Storm bursts into flame. One light source, coming up. Let's hope they don't regret it.
*
This isn't Heather's first run in with magic, or Hell. "Watch the shadows." She doesn't mean the places the light doesn't fall, but the tangible, chittering shadows swirling up from the gutters, sucking up every gleam and every source of light remaining as though it were water. "We don't know yet what they'll do."
One of the pale things shimmies down a tree mere yards away and Heather takes advantage of Johnny's light to shoot it through what she assumes is the back of its head. Shadows spill out of it with a high-pitched chatter. "Hit that, will you?" Better to do it twice. Even as she speaks, the shadows are rising up from the ground to meet the shadows the thing bleeds. She's afraid it'll heal if they don't get to it in time.
*
He doesn't need to be told twice — a highly-focused lance of fire streaks from Johnny's outstretched hand, chasing the gunshot with perhaps surprising accuracy. "I think it's safe to assume 'nothing good,'" he notes dryly, keeping an eye on the pale thing. He wants to search out a new target, but he's not willing to do it until he's sure this one isn't going to get back up.
"This is still a fun date, right?"
*
"Well, it does remind me of some of the dates I had when I was young," Heather admits. "That's one."
The ashes of the thing sizzle and seethe, tiny black things skitter off to join the rest of the dust, a little white ooze bubbles around the edges. As though the darkness has realized that they're an actual threat, the shadows and the pale men close in and something shrieks angrily in the distance. A pale arm snakes out of the sewers, another of the pale men crawling out to join the others.
*
Oh good, they aren't fireproof.
"Sewer grate," Johnny calls lightly, his eyes seeking out the pale shape they'd glimpsed earlier as it scaled the building nearby. He knows better than to throw fire towards a potential build-up of gasses. The shriek in the distance gets a somewhat tense look from Johnny, which — luckily — calls the more readily-visible monsters to his attention. Oh, good. Those look safe enough to start hurtling fire towards.
"At least you can't say I didn't take you anywhere fun," Johnny says brightly, sticking close. Just… not so close that he risks catching her on fire.
*
The shadows curl around Heather's ankles, cold and numbing and painful all at once. Heather knows better than to shoot at her own feet, she fires at one of the pale men instead. This one, she hits center mass as it's moving. A black, wet hole opens in its chest but it doesn't stop moving. Still, the shadows around Heather's feet loosen enough for her to skip free.
Two of the pale men rush Johnny, trailing black ribbons of shadow. A few dark tendrils reach out ahead of them; the screaming rises as they vaporize against Johnny's flame.
*
It's good that Johnny is observant. It means he can prioritize. As soon as he hears another gunshot, he's twisting around to send a ball of fire chasing after the bullet to crash into the pale man's fresh wound. He's not too concerned about the pair that are rushing him — he's literally made of fire, and not really solid enough to grasp onto, besides.
It also lets Johnny focus on putting himself between the creatures and Heather, who is not so fortunate, and concentrate on following up her shots. "You okay?" he asks quickly. "We could get some backup."
*
"We're fine." Heather says, just before a massive clot of shadow hanging from a lamp post bursts open and drops a wet, dripping pale man on her. Flailing and newly-born, it does little than send her flying as it flounders to find its feet.
Heather says something vile in French, she drips white slime and black shadow as she rolls to her feet, trying to shake off the shadows. Her first shot grazes the new thing, her second hits it in the arm and mostly severs the spindly limb. The other two pale men struggle to grasp Johnny, their flesh bubbles in his flame and their shadows flame into smoke, but they persist.
*
"Heather!"
Okay. This is no longer a good date. Johnny whips around and extends a hand towards the newborn creature, flames gathering in his palm — and then he's beset upon by a pair of much larger monsters, his arm yanked back and completely ruining his aim.
It's probably good that it's difficult to look directly into an open flame on a dark night, or someone might be able to see the genuine fear that crosses Johnny's face as the reality of his situation sinks in. Sue him. This is unsettling.
"I'm bulletproof!" Johnny calls out, struggling to try and get a clear shot at the wounded one before it can heal itself too much.
*
Heather is more irritated than panicked. She gets out of Johnny's way with surprising agility, rolling to come up at an angle to fire on one of the pale men hanging off Johnny. "One at a time," she says calmly. Dripping hellslime and slightly bloodied is a little more normal than putting on a suit and going to work every day. "They're running out of steam."
She's right. The shadows are pouring all their strength into healing the creatures she and Johnny keep weakening and then destroying in turn. The remainders seem too weak or too frightened to recover, pouring off into the gutters with that same bone-chilling, nerve-wracking chatter.
*
The fact that Heather sounds calm does a lot to settle Johnny down. He still has a pair of big ugly bits of nightmare fuel clinging to him, but if she's calm, she's not hurt. Good. As soon as she's fired on one of the beasts trying to latch onto him, he twists around to slam his palm down over the wound and just pours on the heat.
"This is completely my fault," Johnny calls distractedly, his tone somewhere between amused and genuinely apologetic. "I started walking on auto-pilot, I should have remembered this was a… a thing."
*
The second-last of the pale men sublimates into a choking cloud of whining clots of ash, leaving Johnny with a hand full of rapidly vaporizing white slime. The shadows lash around Heather's legs again, slithering up around her arms. They seem to identified her as the weak link, but too late. The creeping numbness and sinking weakness make her hands shake, it's hard to breathe. Still, she's had worse.
Heather misses with her first shot, summarily executing an unfortunate tree. The second shot strikes the pale man in the shoulder and it shrieks at her in outrage. It takes a third shot to stagger it, which barely gives her any relief from the shadows.
*
That's alright. The sudden torrent of all-encompassing flames that follow the shots should do that.
Once the final beastie is dealt with, the street becomes darker as Johnny abandons his flames. He needs it to be safe for him to rush up to Heather's side, immediately reaching for her with worry etched all over his face. "Shit! I'm sorry! Are you okay?" he asks quickly, looking her over with a pained twist of his face.
He's so consumed with worry for her that Johnny hasn't even noticed his suit and shoes are completely gone. All that's left are a pair of tight blue shorts. At least those were made of unstable molecules.
*
Heather laughs at Johnny but she does sit down on the curb very suddenly. "Well done, you. I was going to run out of bullets, missing like that." The shadows still trickle and chitter around her feet but the worst seems to have passed.
Finally, the level of his concern registers and Heather focuses on Johnny's face. "I've had worse, Johnny. Really. Frankly…" In spite of the fact that she can't feel her limbs and her heart is racing a mile a minute. "…I had a great time. Sometimes a girl just needs to shoot something. But I think that might be enough dancing for tonight."
*
Johnny insistantly kicks the shadows aside, with a short, very precise little burst of flame to punctuate each kick. Scat, scat! He clears space for himself to drop down into a crouch in front of her, brow still creased in worry. "You're sure you're okay..?" he asks, reaching out to lay a hand on her shoulder.
He draws in a deep breath that puffs up his cheeks, then releases it in a quiet, highly mature raspberry. "Well. As long as you had a good time," Johnny allows, cracking a downright roguish grin that gets his eyes twinkling. "We can go dancing another time. For now…"
Johnny straightens back up and offers her both of his hands. "…we should probably get home before I get arrested."
*
Heather looks him over, then laughs again. "Good lord, I think it's me they'll arrest. Running around with a half-naked man nearly ten years younger." Mostly naked, but who's keeping track of all that exposed flesh? "If I had a jacket I'd give it to you to cover up. Oh, no," she says, looking around as some sirens sound in the distance and more practical thoughts take over. "If anyone remotely resembling the press gets the wrong end of the stick on this, we'll both be in it. We look like we've been through the devil's bathhouse. You said you could fly me home?"
*
"Please. You /look/ like you're my age, and my name's the famous one. You'd be fine," Johnny teases, beaming at her as he helps draw her up to her feet. As for flying her home… he nods once, briefly chewing on his lip as he considers the safest way to do this. "I can do that. It's a short trip. Just, ah…"
Well. With sirens approaching, he doesn't wait around — he just scoops Heather up in both arms. "Just, uh. Let me know if it gets too hot," Johnny says sheepishly, before most of him bursts back into flame. Flame that is very carefully controlled to be kept away from her. Everything from his arms up, however, remain simple flesh and blood, leaving her with a neck and shoulders that are safe to hang on to if she needs to.
*
"Good thing a widow has to worry less about her reputation than most," Heather says, arms around Johnny's neck. Her gun is in her bag, she's got her shoes, still, it's not been a bad night. "You should try this on a date with a girl your age. Or a young man," she adds, considering the conversation in her kitchen. "I'm pretty sure they'd be smitten in a moment."
*
Johnny just barks a laugh as he launches them both into the night sky. "I'm not really looking for a girlfriend," he admits. And, after a pause, he adds "Or a boyfriend. That's… mostly teasing Sue, I think." He thinks. He's never really thought about it. And right now is probably a bad time to start.
At least the Baxter Building is easy to find. Johnny casts a quick look around and, once he spots the tall building with the big blue 4 on the side, he starts flying for home, leaving a trail of fire in their wake.
*
"Well, either way, you do what makes you happy. But I don't recommend going my route — you're young, you should get to be young for as long as it lasts. You can drop me off on the balcony," Heather offers, as though this is all a very normal evening for her. "That'll save me going down the elevator and it'll save you facing David." And she's pretty sure she can break into her own apartment if David isn't home. She's clever.
*
"If you're sure you don't want to come up for coffee," Johnny muses in a lightly teasing voice, keeping his eyes on their destination. More seriously, he adds, "Or to let Sue check you out. You know. Make sure you're okay." Because he is going to fuss. His date, his responsibility to make sure she really is okay.
*
"Oh, goodness, Johnny. You are sweet." Heather gives him a kiss on the cheek. "I haven't been digested or anything foul. When I said I've had worse, I meant it. Nothing broken, no slugs in the ears or down my dress, no demonic possession, and you haven't even set my hair on fire. It's a very quiet night. I just need to get my contact lenses out — I still don't have the hang of these things — and wash up. I'll probably have time to do laundry before it catches up to me."
*
Johnny makes a quiet, skeptical noise at this, but he can't bring himself to argue too much in light of the kiss on the cheek. Too bad he provides enough light for the blush to be easy enough for her to notice. "Just because you've had worse doesn't… mmh. Okay." He sighs lightly and, somewhat grudgingly, angles his path to take him towards her balcony rather than the roof.
When they reach it, Johnny touches down, once again allowing his flames to die out. He carefully adjusts his hold on her so that he can set her lightly on her feet, leaving an arm around her shoulders until he's sure she's steady enough to stand on her own. "…okay," he repeats. "There. Home sweet home."
*
"It certainly is getting there." Heather, gingerly, puts her hands on Johnny's face when she turns to look at him. "Don't worry about me. It was more fun than I should admit to. Go home and get dressed before your sister thinks I've taken advantage of you and stops being my friend. There are limits."
*
Johnny can't help but laugh. "I don't know. Seo thinks highly enough of you that she might approve," he notes with a teasing smile, reaching up to cover one of her hands. At least they hide the blush, he… hopes. "I still owe you a dance. Another time?"
*
"You only need to ask. You know where I live." Heather gives him a wink. "I better go before this dress fuses to my skin and whoever ends up stuck with me in the long run also ends up stuck with the dress."
*
"Yeah. I'll come check on you tomorrow." Because of course he will. Before she can object, Johnny leans over to press a (literally) warm kiss to Heather's cheek, then backs up a few paces. Safe distance, one more time. "Next time, no monsters," he promises, winking at her before he vaults over the balcony fence.
After a three-count, there's a flash of light, and the Human Torch goes sailing up along the side of the building towards the roof.
*
Well. That's certainly the most interesting first date Heather's been on — no, wait, it's the only first date she's been on. Still. That was an adventure. Heather certainly aches head to toe as thought it's been a proper adventure. She pries her shoes off with a sucking noise and pads stickily toward the balcony doors. Time to either face David or stage a small break-in. She takes a breath, then knocks.