Archive of Our Own ^beta

“We should hang out,” Johnny said. Peter stared at him.

“What do you think we’re doing now?” he asked as he finished webbing the villains together. They were two bit guys, the kind of jerks real villains didn’t even want for henchmen. Honestly, the jewelry store clerk could have handled them on her own, but Peter was in the neighborhood. The Daily Bugle’s offices were just across the street.

He didn’t know why Johnny was here, though. He was pretty sure the Fantastic Four had better things to do than fight extremely dumb would-be robbers. There was probably something in space, or another dimension. But no. Johnny was here, arms crossed, leaning on a smashed counter, not even on fire. He looked really cool.

Peter bet he would never be able to pull off maskless heroing. He’d always look like a dork in the photographs.

“We should hang without masks,” Johnny elaborated. “Well, without you in mask. I wouldn’t be wearing a mask, obviously. I mean, I could, if it would make you feel more comfortable. Are you just really into masks?”

“You’ve seen him without a mask?” the salesgirl asked, a little breathlessly. She was still holding the tray full of watches she’d used to club her attacker.

“Okay,” Peter said, throwing his hands up. “You, call the police. You, Storm, you come with me.”

He caught Johnny by the arm and dragged him out of the store.

“C’mon,” Johnny was saying. “It’ll be fun. There’ll be pizza.”

“Oh, well, that changes everything,” Peter said. He had a headache and he was sick of dealing with guys who should really have just stuck to whatever menial day job someone had felt sorry enough to give them and now Johnny was on his case about hanging out. Johnny “The Guy Peter Had a Giant Hopeless Crush On” Storm. Nothing was fair.

“Really?” Johnny asked. He flashed Peter a movie star grin.

“No,” Peter said flatly. He just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep, why didn’t anyone understand that?

Johnny’s face fell.

“Oh,” he said. He scuffed at the sidewalk with the heel of his unstable molecule’d shoes. Peter sighed and scratched at his hair through the mask.

“Why do you want to hang out so bad, anyway?” he said, because honestly, it wasn’t like he didn’t want to hang out with Johnny. He just wanted to hang out with Johnny in a world where he wouldn’t have to be chasing supervillains all over the city. Granted, in a world like that, a guy like Johnny wouldn’t even want to hang out with a guy like him, so. Moot point all around, really.

Johnny shrugged, suddenly moody, his arms crossed over his chest.

“No real reason,” he said. “I mean. It’s my birthday next week. But hey, you got stuff, I understand.”

Peter sighed. He was going to regret this. He always regretted things.

“What day?” he said. “Or should I just go to your official fanpage? Is it up there with a countdown? Is there a link to your amazon wishlist, or should I just go ahead and order that Ferrari?”

Johnny grinned and clapped a hand to Peter’s shoulder.

“Saturday,” he said. “Just bring yourself. And maybe some chips. Sue’s on kind of a health food kick, so don’t let her see them.”

--

Going to see the Fantastic Four was intimidating enough in costume. Out of it, Peter felt like a fish out of water – he felt like a fish in space. His jeans were old and his shirt was old and, c’mon, his aunt bought all his clothes at Target, he wasn’t meant to be seen with anyone in a building like this.

He almost, almost turned right around, got back in the elevator and left. But he had told Johnny he would be there and, so help him, he wanted to make Johnny Storm happy.

“Hey,” Johnny said, opening the door. “You came! Awesome.”

“Yeah, well,” Peter said. “How could I refuse? You said there would be pizza. Happy birthday, by the way.”

Johnny grinned and moved aside so Peter could step inside.

“Thanks,” he said. “And yeah, there’s pizza. I smuggled a box into my room so Ben wouldn’t eat it all.”

“Johnny?” Sue said, coming into the hallway. “Was that the – oh, hey, Peter.”

She looked surprised, but not unhappy, to see him. He shifted nervously, hefting his backpack a little higher on his shoulder. There were chips in there, like Johnny had asked, a box of cookies and about half his candy stash, because it wasn’t like he could get Johnny anything better for his birthday. What if she suddenly developed x-ray vision? That was kind of like invisibility. Would she throw him out for smuggling junk food into her home? To be honest, she sort of scared him. She had that Take No Prisoners kind of air about her.

“We’re going to head to my room, okay?” Johnny said, wrapping an arm around Peter’s shoulders. He was hot through the shirt, and Peter wondered if that was a side effect of his powers – it was nice, in any case.

“I thought we were going to watch a movie,” Sue said, frowning. Johnny rolled his eyes.

“We can watch a movie anytime,” he said. “Providing aliens don’t invade.”

“Or the Mole Man,” Peter said. Johnny scoffed.

“I’m pretty sure we can watch a movie and then go defeat the Mole Man,” he said. “It’s not like he moves very fast. He’s got like, arthritis or something. He’s ancient.”

“He’s fifty,” Sue said.

“Ancient,” Johnny repeated.

“Whatever,” Sue said, tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder. “Have fun, little brother.”

“Will do,” Johnny said with a mock salute before pulling Peter into his bedroom. He locked the door behind him.

Johnny’s room wasn’t quite what Peter was expecting, but then, Peter didn’t quite know what he had expected. Not this, a room with beige carpets and an unmade bed and a shelf full of model cars. There was a TV with a bluray and an X-Box, shiny and new, but aside from that and the cars it looked not unlike Peter’s room. He squinted.

“Is that a Spider-Man figure?” he asked and Johnny swooped down to pick it up from the floor.

“Ben got it for me,” he grumbled, shoving it on a shelf on top of some particularly dusty-looking textbooks. “As a gag gift, y’know.”

“Right,” Peter said.

“So you can just sit anywhere,” Johnny said, gesturing towards the bed. Peter did as he was told, feeling kind of awkward. He’d never done this much, going to other people’s houses, their rooms. He wasn’t totally sure of the etiquette involved. Aunt May probably had a book somewhere. He’d have to raid the attic.

Johnny’s mattress was soft underneath him, like the kind of bed in a hotel, and he only had sheets, not blankets. Peter figured he didn’t get cold much.

“So, uh,” he said while Johnny pulled a pizza box off the dresser. He jumped on the bed next to Peter and put it down between them.

“It’s pepperoni,” he said. “You don’t mind, right?”

“What? No, that’s fine,” Peter said. “My favorite.”

“I was just checking,” Johnny said. “You never know who’s a vegetarian these days. Reed had a phase.”

“What, really?” Peter said. Johnny held a hand over his chest.

“Swear,” he said. “And then Sue got involved. It was a nightmare. Ben and I were sneaking around in the middle of the night with chicken wings under our jackets.”

“So, uh, when is everyone else coming?” Peter asked. Johnny looked at him funny, a piece of pizza halfway to his mouth.

“What do you mean?” he said. “It’s just us, dude.”

“Just us,” Peter repeated, and Johnny nodded. “Today. It’s just us. Alone. In your room.”

“Yep,” Johnny said. “That an issue?”

“No,” Peter said, frowning. He shifted, pulling himself into a crosslegged position so he could look at Johnny. “I just figured… guy like you, you’d have lots of friends. I figured I’d spend all day standing in a corner, trying to become one with the wall.”

Johnny snorted. He took a bite of pizza that was nothing short of vicious.

“Yeah, well,” he said. “I used to. Not anymore. Kind of hard to keep up my sparkling social life. Besides, they weren’t really my friends. Real friends stick around whether you can light yourself on fire or not, right?”

“Right,” Peter said. “Sure. I guess. I wouldn’t really know, not being able to turn on fire and all.”

“I mean, if you revealed yourself tomorrow, how many friends do you think you’d have on Monday?” Johnny asked.

Peter shrugged.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Probably more than I have right now. Granted, I think I’d probably be, you know, in a government cell somewhere, so. No big demaskings currently in my dayplanner.”

“Yeah, well,” Johnny said. He was frowning now; the friend thing was probably not the best conversation topic. Peter really was going to have to dig up that etiquette book. “You going to make me eat this whole pizza by myself?”

Peter snorted and took a slice. He eyed Johnny over it.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories. I guess I’m just not good at small talk when I’m not wearing a mask.”

“You want to break that out, go right ahead,” Johnny said. “But I think it’s going to make eating difficult.”

“Did you know I can eat upside down?” Peter said, grinning. Johnny arched an eyebrow.

“Dude,” he said. “I’d ask you to prove it, but I don’t want you to hurl on my bed.” He hesitated, looking at his knees. “And it’s cool. It was an honest question. It’s not like you were trying to make me depressed or anything.”

“You’ve uncovered my cunning plan,” Peter said solemnly. Johnny grabbed a pillow and threw it at his face. “I just kind of figured. Johnny Storm. Girls. Et cetera.”

Johnny made a face.

“I mean,” he said. “I could. Go out, go to a club, find some girl. But I don’t really want to.”

“Oh my God,” Peter said. “You’ve been replaced by pod people, haven’t you? Is there an invasion? Should I be getting changed? I brought my tights.”

“You did not seriously,” Johnny said. Peter had, actually, at the bottom of his backpack, because he was a believer in basic hero math: when two heroes got together, a supervillain attack was infinitely more likely to go down. He decided not to mention that.

“I just want to know,” Peter said, “are you planning on killing me, Pod Johnny? Or are you going to like, lay eggs in me?”

Johnny choked. Peter clapped him on the back a couple of times.

“Not really in my plans for today,” Johnny said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Peter rolled his eyes. Slowly, he removed his hand from Johnny’s back. He didn’t really want to, but prolonged touching tended to bring on the suspicions like that.

“So what is in your plans?” he asked. “Because no other friends, no girls, the locked door – if I didn’t know better, Jonathan Storm, I’d say –”

Which was when Johnny kissed him. Which, honestly, Peter had not been expecting. His brain shut down. His mouth fell open, which was maybe something of a mistake, seeing as Johnny took that as an opportunity to stick his tongue down Peter’s throat.

It wasn’t, all things together, a bad kiss. Sure, Peter was just sitting there, not doing anything, but Johnny was warm and his lips were sort of soft and that thing he was doing with his tongue and his teeth wasn’t as weird as Peter would have thought. And, okay, he tasted like pizza. Nobody was perfect.

And then Johnny stopped kissing him. He pulled back, and stared at him, and had his eyes always been that blue? Peter swallowed hard.

“So I wasn’t actually planning on doing that,” Johnny said.

“Really,” Peter said. “Because the pizza, the Spider-Man figure, your bed – if that wasn’t seduction, I don’t know what is.”

Johnny groaned, dropping his head in his hands.

“You don’t have to joke,” he said. “I’m not an idiot, I don’t just – but you were saying things about girls and then it looked like it was maybe going in that direction and I don’t even know why I like you.”

“You really know how to make a girl feel special,” Peter deadpanned. Johnny looked at him from between his fingers.

“You can run screaming now,” he said. Peter snorted. He grabbed Johnny’s hands by the wrists and dragged them away from his face.

“Do I look like I’m going to run screaming?” he asked.

“Sort of,” Johnny said. Peter huffed.

“Well, I’m not,” he said. “Though a little warning next time would be appreciated and – oh, screw it.”

He dropped Johnny’s wrists and grabbed his shoulders instead. A spark of recognition lit up Johnny’s face just as Peter leaned in and crushed their lips together. Johnny’s eyes fell closed and after a minute Peter closed his too. Johnny’s arms came up, one hand between Peter’s shoulderblades and one cradling the back of his head. His fingers twisted in Peter’s hair.

“What do you mean,” Peter asked against Johnny’s lips when they broke apart, “you don’t even know why you like me?”

“Shut up,” Johnny said. “You taste like pizza.”

“That’s you,” Peter pointed out. Johnny shrugged and then Peter found himself pushed backwards, flat on his back on Johnny Storm’s bed. Not quite the afternoon he was expecting, but he found himself without too many complaints.

“I like it,” Johnny said, and closed the distance between them again.