#cutie-bug

“I’m sure it’s just someone having a scientific failure melt down,” Darcy said, sounding not very sure at all. “They just need their comfort blankie and a mild sedative.”

“If it’s eyes are bloodshot-“

“It’s not a zombie, Johnny,” Darcy snapped. She pulled away and stomped to the door, and leaned her head out.

There was a figure shuffling in her direction; hair wild, backlit by a brightly lit lab farther down the hall.

“Heyyyy,” Darcy said, trying not to squeak and mostly failing at it. “You doin’…okay? You need me to get your…”

The figure groaned and lifted it’s hanging head, one arm in a rumpled sleeve stretching out to her, fingers curled. Darcy whimpered and jumped as Johnny wrapped his arms around her waist.

“Oh shit,” Johnny whispered in her ear as the slow moving man winced, passing under a light, and they could both see the red eyes and the gaping maw of a snarled mouth.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” Darcy whined, and Johnny pulled her backwards, their feet tripping over each other, and slammed the door shut.

“Lock it!” he shouted.

“We shouldn’t box ourselves in, isn’t that a rule?” Darcy asked, voice high. But she locked the door anyway. “Oh my god, this isn’t fair! We haven’t even had sex yet!”

She turned back to Johnny and found him paused, a bench lifted in his arms, presumably to barricade the door. His head cocked to the side as he asked in a hopeful tone, “Were we going to?”

“Not tonight!” she said frantically. “But like…I dunno, in a week or so?”

“I was gonna ask you out,” Johnny said, grinning.

“I know you were, you doofus,” Darcy said, shouting over the sound of the groaning in the hall. “You lack subtlety. Except you won’t get to now, because one of us is gonna be a zombie and then the other one will have a tragic backstory for the apocalypse and then get to sex other tragic people up.”

He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t like that plan. Let me put this in front of the- Ahhh! Shit!”

The doorknob began to rattle and Johnny dropped the bench to the floor with a heavy clatter, reaching out to pull Darcy behind him. She had to stand on her tiptoes to see over his shoulder. A face appeared in the window next to the door, pressing itself against the glass so that it’s breath fogged over the lines of the goatee around it’s mouth.

“Oh nooo,” Johnny breathed.

“It’s Tony,” Darcy said. “Oh shiiiit, the first zombie is Iron Man. Society is so dead.”

“But…but this doesn’t fit any of the tropes,” Johnny whined.

“So before we die,” Darcy said as the doorknob rattled with more urgency and Tony’s brainless face vanished from the window. “Just for the record, I want to say that I was totally imagining you’d be really good in bed.” There was beeping coming from the door, a slow purposeful countdown as Zombie Tony punched in the override code. Darcy drove towards full and embarrassing honesty by adding, “Like best ever, ruins me for everybody else sex.”

“I would have been that good,” Johnny said, half delighted, half defensive. “Oh wait! I have an idea! Darcy, I am going to ruin you for everybody else with my sex, just stand back.”

Darcy jumped back, partly because Johnny told her to, but partly because Zombie Tony had gotten the door open finally and she needed to hide or find a bludgeoning tool or something. But Johnny lit up into hot flames all at once and Zombie Tony screeched indignantly and reared back.

“I will set you on fire,” Johnny yelled, advancing. “Don’t think I won’t! You were always a dick to me!”

“Oh wow, why didn’t I think of this?” Darcy said aloud. “Johnny, why are you scared of zombies? You are literally the human answer to that problem.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said, shrugging and glancing back at Darcy as he walked forward, urging Zombie Tony out of the room. “But like, what if one just snuck up and bit me, like when we were having sex or from behind a corner or something?”

She shrugged and nodded. She’d allow it. She’d considered it as a possibility earlier, after all.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

Beyond the bright burn of Johnny’s flames, Pepper Potts stood in the hallway, holding a smoothie.

“Pepper no!” Darcy screamed. “He’s a zombie!!”

Pepper blinked and Tony shuffled close to her, hiding behind her shoulder and shrinking down to protect himself from Johnny.

“Well seventy-eight hours straight of science does that to him,” Pepper said. “Cool down, Johnny.”

Johnny’s flames went out immediately at Pepper’s tone, leaving him shirtless and in his fire resistant pants.

Tony grumbled incoherently from behind Pepper and she sighed, turning and popping the straw of the smoothie directly into his mouth.

“Oh,” Darcy said, nodding, and putting down the pressurized steel pipe she’d grabbed earlier. “Oh. Okay. Yeah. That makes…more sense.”

“Darcy, I think it’s time for you to take a break yourself,” Pepper said, looking Darcy up and down skeptically. “I’ll send someone up to watch the data.”

“Yeah. That’s…that sounds good,” Darcy agreed. She grabbed Johnny’s arm and pulled him out of the lab after her. “Sorry, Tony,” she said, leaning around Pepper to wave at her boss. He shrunk back and hissed through his teeth at her, green smoothie bubbling up through the cracks. Darcy shuddered and hurried away to the elevators.

Her skin was buzzing and her heart was still pounding and Johnny was leaning into her, nuzzling at the top of her head and she was pretty sure they were headed to her floor anyway.

“How do you feel about moving our sex time table up a week?” Darcy asked.

“Extremely pro,” Johnny said, before crowding her into the corner of the elevator.

“Wait for my apartment, dude,” Darcy said as Johnny started petting her over her shirt and the crotch of her leggings.

“Right, right, sorry,” Johnny said, putting his hands on her ass to squeeze instead. “For the record, since we aren’t dying, I figured you’d ruin me for everyone else too.”

“Oh I absolutely will, Storm. I will destroy you.”