Archive of Our Own ^beta

There was a neon sign above Frederico’s that flickered and buzzed and attracted a small colony of moths to it.

It was a safe place. Peter could fit himself behind it and sit for a while, watching the moths. Their motion was hypnotic, if a bit frenetic. They shuddered and spun around the white sign and burst into flecks of fluttering light before vanishing out of sight as the light gave or they pulled themselves away from the glass bulb to gasp for breath.

He felt like a moth sometimes. Slamming his head against the flickering, hypnotic city below.

It didn’t care about him.

It didn’t answer his calls for help like he flung himself out to answer its own.

And that was okay. Peter was learning to be okay with it.

This whole thing—this mask—wasn’t about the city loving him the way he loved it; it was about responsibility. It was about doing what needed to be done.

It was about being that moth to the flame and chasing that burning, yawning desire to do something, anything just to get an inch closer to the light. To keep those lights down below from flickering out the way Ben’s had.

The moths were selfish. Peter was, too.

Spiderman was selfish.

And because they were both selfish, the neon lights about Frederico’s were a haven for them, spider and moth alike. They could hold themselves there, thinking inwards. And Peter could rest for a second. He could rest his eyes. Just for a second.

He woke up by the lights over Frederico’s more often now. They didn’t buzz in the morning. There were no moths then.

It was a sign that Peter’s time for inward thoughts was up. Outward thoughts only now. The game was back on.

He went home and slipped in through the window, careful not to knock any of the notebooks off the top of his bookshelf. He took off the suit, pulled on some jeans, a sweatshirt, his sneakers. On the table was a box with a curling post-it note on top.

May’s handwriting was loopy and blended together. She told him to eat at school today. It wasn’t a suggestion.

She’d found about the other boxes.

Guilt bubbled up into the back of his throat when he rounded the corner from school and had nothing to give the lady with her little kids on the corner. He couldn’t make eye contact with them.

Leaving them to sit out in the cold as he stepped up the stairs into the warmth of the school felt like what he imagined sin was supposed to feel like. He got two steps inside and caught himself making calculations.

His brain was putting numbers to the banana in the box in his bag. It was trying to make them into a percentage of the recommended child’s caloric intake he’d looked up a few weeks back.

He had to swallow it all back.

May’s voice in his head reminded him that things were hard all over and that you couldn’t pour from an empty cup.

Spiderman needed to eat to work. He was allowed to eat to work.

He stole an apple at lunch from a tray sitting beside the trashcan at the far end of the table. When school let out, he found it still sitting in the palm of his hand, nearly as heavy as his heart.

The family had moved on.

That night was a bad one. Not the Goblin. Not the Jackal. Not the Vulture or Lizard or anyone or anything like that.

A car door was the nemesis of the evening. It had thrown itself open just as Peter had gotten his head off the ground. The person who’d opened it gasped. They swore out an apology. They said that they hadn’t seen him there. It was just a mistake.

Rhino laughed.

The people at The Bugle would too.

May wouldn’t, though.

The moths wouldn’t.

Peter went and found them. He could sit with them until the bleeding stopped. May wouldn’t be as scared if he came back with the bleeding stopped.

He overslept. His phone had six missed called on it. May was angry, but she said that she wasn’t. She told him to come home immediately.

He had to be careful; the moths were gone. It was light out. His backpack had been shaken out in his absence, all the notebooks left behind. One shoe had wandered a couple feet away, but nothing was taken. Peter didn’t keep anything of value in there.

May made him stay home from school. It wasn’t until Peter looked in the mirror that he saw why she’d gone so tight and quiet, her eyes glossy and rimmed with red.

He could see blue veins through the purple and greys splotched over his face.

May didn’t think he needed to do what he did. She’d tried to talk him out of it a thousand times, so often that the conversation was as worn and peeling as the kitchen table. But Peter had Ben on his side here, his words if not his voice anymore.

They won every argument.

Peter slept on the couch because May thought he’d climb out the window in his room if left there for too long on his own. She came home on her lunch and Peter woke up to her dry fingers stroking his face. He blinked blearily at her hand and then up into her face.

She looked like she’d been crying.

She asked him if he’d eaten.

They ate together at the table. She made him lay back down on the couch. He fell asleep again and didn’t remember her leaving until she was coming back in for the night.

This time, she sat down on the couch heavily; the movement made him draw up his feet. She didn’t look at him. She looked at her knees. Her scrubs seemed as tired as she was.

“’M sorry,” Peter said quietly.

May said nothing. She sighed. Her shoulders drooped with it.

“I don’t know how to keep you safe anymore,” she said.

Maybe it was silly and immature, but Peter didn’t know what else to do. He squirmed out from under the blanket and carefully crawled himself around to the other side of the couch. He laid his head on May’s thigh.

She sighed again and patted at his arm until he sat up and wriggled himself into her lap. Her right hand latched onto her left wrist, and he tucked his own hand behind her back, between it and the couch. He dozed against her collarbone.

Safe.

This was safe.

She rocked back and forth a little.

“Did you eat since lunch?” she asked him.

He tucked his nose into her neck. He was too big for that and to be not answering her questions with words, but if he had to say anything, he was sure his voice would crack and he’d fall apart, like a dish thrown on the floor.

So he shook his head, and one of May’s hands came up to drag its fingers through the back of his hair.

“Then let’s eat,” she said.

He liked the pigeons. They gathered in flocks along the edges of rooftops and he could go out there and shout and run and they’d all flap up and around and then settle back down around him like nothing had happened.

It made him laugh.

He wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t a funny laugh. It felt different. Like a release. Like making clouds with hot breath on a cold winter’s morning.

May told him to spend more time with the pigeons and less time down at street-level until the blue veins on the side of his head disappeared.

She said that she wasn’t going to stop him from doing what he did, but they had to come to an understanding from then on. Peter could protect her. He could uphold Ben’s words. But she had the final say in when he came home and under what conditions until he was eighteen.

That was the deal.

There was a list now. A chart of sorts with numbers on it. Categories of situations labeled one through ten. With one being a minor incident involving a nonviolent conflict—a mugging, a stolen bike, a lost child—and ten being a catastrophic event—aliens (don’t laugh at me, Peter), terrorism, any injury that covered both his hands in blood and made him sleepy or forgetful.

It was a fair chart. She’d laminated a notecard with it laid out for him and stuck it in his suit pocket. It wasn’t to leave the suit. That was its home, she said.

He didn’t tell her about the moths.

That was between him and them.

It took only one and half days before the bruises were gone and May cleared him for school and duty. She told him to be careful. Home by 3—am, that was. And no later. She wanted him sleeping at least five hours before school.

He practiced.

And it worked.

Five hours were way better than three, than two, than one.

There was a reason that May was his legal guardian, he figured. She was smart enough for all the dead ones to be able to rest more or less comfortably.

She found out about the moths eventually, though, and that lead to a scolding. She told him that bleeding up over Frederico’s was the kind of thing that older vigilantes were allowed to do. People like Daredevil. The Punisher. Jessica Jones. Older folks only, she emphasized. Everyone else had to come home and have their wounds licked and their headwounds treated by their aunts.

God had said so.

That was unfair, Peter told her.

He didn’t tell her that he knew that because he wasn’t the only young person to sit with the moths; instead, he just said that Frederico’s was closer than home from Midtown.

The moths’ other visitor’s feet were bigger than Peter’s, but not by too much, maybe half an inch all the way around. He set his own feet on top of the melted marks in the frost in the alcove and checked to be sure.

He turned around and looked at the top of the concrete block that sheltered the alcove from the worst of the wind; he puzzled over the handprints there.

It was cold out. He could feel it on the apples of his cheeks and at the tops of his ears. Whoever had been there, had been there recently—had probably stayed the night like Peter wasn’t supposed to anymore. But their hands had been warm when they’d left. Peter hovered his gloved ones over the prints that had been left when his fellow moth-watcher had turned around to face the dawn.

His friend’s fingers were just barely longer than his own. A little knobbly, maybe.

A pigeon cooed and Peter’s attention went to it.

“What’s he like?” he asked it.

It didn’t have an answer for him.

It turned out to be Daredevil.

Peter came to watch the moths after a dive from a crane that he hadn’t planned on taking that night. His ankle burned with each step and every little bit of weight he put on it. It wasn’t bleeding, but it was still hot.

He didn’t expect to find anyone there with the moths, but sure enough, when he lifted his head from the final step up, he found the top of a mask waiting.

Daredevil blew into his hands and rubbed them together. His nose was puffy. Peter said hi and he startled bad and looked all around even though Peter was stood right in front of him.

Peter asked him if he’d come to watch the moths.

Daredevil stopped looking all around and made a weird face at Peter.

He asked who was there.

Peter gave him his moniker.

Daredevil made a confused sound and said that he didn’t know who that was. Peter shrugged and said that that was okay, most people didn’t. He was a neighborhood kind of guy.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

Daredevil cocked his head.

“Are you?” he asked back.

Peter hummed.

“I’m here for the moths,” he said.

Daredevil didn’t understand. He had more questions. Too many questions. Peter didn’t like them. He decided not to answer any.

Moths could wait for another day. There were always pigeons.

Daredevil didn’t know Queens very well, he admitted so a few weeks later when he’d learned to stop asking Peter questions.

He wasn’t there for himself; he was waiting for a friend who was doing things down below. She was Jessica Jones. Daredevil came with her when she met with a particular person because she didn’t trust this guy not to try to shoot her in the foot when she wasn’t looking.

Peter asked if he could see DD’s hands and Daredevil made a funny face before shrugging and saying ‘why not?’

Peter asked him to move then and put his shoes in the marks that DD left behind.

“What are you doing?” Daredevil asked him—not in the judgey way that Peter had found he leant towards sometimes.

“You’re not my friend,” Peter told him, tracing a good inch and more around the soles of his feet.

“Oh?”

“No,” Peter said. “He’s got smaller feet and hands than you.”

“Oh,” Daredevil said in a different tone this time. “You’re tracking?”

“No, just checking,” Peter said.

DD hummed and said that he’d keep an ear out for anyone else watching the moths. Peter thought that would be helpful but told DD not to worry too much about it.

He wasn’t sure that he really wanted to know who was sharing their shelter.

By late November, the moths were gone, but the neon lights at Frederico’s still flickered. Peter missed the moths. His ribs hurt. His lip burned.

He settled into the place in a crouch and wrapped his arms around himself.

He missed the pigeons. The snow had scared them off.

A crunch chased all those thoughts away in an instant and before he knew he was doing it, Peter was out of his crouch and hunched over with his legs tense and his fingertips grazing the roof.

“Woah, sorry,” a shadow said. “I—I didn’t realize someone was already here.”

Peter gave it a moment before straightening himself up out of the spider-crawl. The shape of the person standing just out of range of the neon lights wasn’t very big. It was about Peter’s size, and it held its hands up in surrender.

Then it gasped.

“Wait,” the person said. “Are you Spiderman?”

Peter considered his options. Answering, he’d found, often led to more rib-aching, whereas not-answering made him feel immensely tired and broody.

“You are,” the person said. “Oh my god. You’re Spiderman.”

They stepped into the light and Peter stepped back to get his spine facing something hard and solid.

The face that met him was pale, even more so in the white neon haze between them. It had pale lashes that threw shadows over darker eyes. The person’s nose was thin and their upper lip was sharp, but what Peter noticed most was the person’s hair.

It was feathery and light-colored and it blew all over the place.

“Hi,” the person—a guy, a boy, around Peter’s own age—said. “I’m Johnny.”

Peter didn’t know what to say. He knew somehow, based on the knobbly knuckles that Johnny was holding up over there, that he was the one who left at dawn. The friend who shared the roost but who wasn’t Daredevil.

“I’m leaving,” Peter told him. “It’s all yours.”

“Oh. You don’t have to,” Johnny said. “I can find somewhere else.”

Peter considered his ribs and then his cold, raw fingers.

“No, it’s okay, it’s almost three,” he said. “You can have it.”

He made to leave but, quick as a fox, a hand latched onto his wrist. It was warm—unbelievably warm. Warm like August. Warm like fresh clothes right out of the dryer, smelling like detergent and Sunday mornings.

He almost gasped.

“Wait,” Johnny said with eyes close enough now for Peter to see that they were blue. “Aren’t you cold?”

Peter looked from where their hands were connected up to Johnny’s face and then shrugged.

“A little,” he said.

“I can fix that,” Johnny said. “Lemme try. Then you can go.”

Johnny was a pale person with hot, hot hands. He held Peter’s suited fingers in his own and somehow made the burn in them go away.

For someone with such knobbly knuckles, his hold was surprisingly gentle.

“My name’s Johnny Storm,” he told Peter while staring into his mask, “You might have heard of me.”

Peter had.

He pulled his hands away.

“Thanks, Johnny,” he said. “But I gotta bounce.”

“Are you sure?”

Yes, he was.

There were no moths at that place. Without them, going back was pointless. Moreover, the place wasn’t special anymore now that Peter knew he was sharing it with so many bodies. He resolved to return when the moths did. In the meantime, he decided to follow the pigeons.

He didn’t expect Johnny to do the same.

“Why don’t you go back to the light-cove anymore?” Johnny asked him even though Peter thought he’d made it clear that he wasn’t talking to any official superpeople.

Johnny had asked him why. Peter told him that they all cramped his style, which Johnny thought was funny.

“It’s not the light-cove,” Peter said. “It’s where the moths live.”

“The moths?” Johnny asked. “What, are you huntin’ ‘em or something?”

No. And frankly it was none of his business even if Peter was.

“You sure like animals.”

What was it going to take to shake this guy, huh?

“They don’t like me, here, look.”

Peter didn’t blame the damn birds for taking flight at Johnny’s eruption into flames. Humans took flight at the sight of him. It wasn’t just the birds.

“Don’t do that,” Peter snapped. “They aren’t doing anything.”

“They’re pigeons,” Johnny said. “Flying rats.”

“That’s bullshit,” Peter said. “They’re minding their own business. Why don’t you try minding yours for once?”

Johnny turned to him smiling. Always smiling, this guy.

“You’re grumpy,” Johnny said.

“You’re privileged,” Peter shot back.

“Oho! That’s big talk. You don’t even know me,” Johnny said.

Peter huffed.

“I know enough,” he said.

“From who?” Johnny pressed.

Peter pushed him back out of his space and went back to listening to the pigeons cooing. One had hopped up on his knee and was checking him out, one eye at a time.

“Tabloids?” Johnny asked. “People? The Times? The Bugle?”

“Google,” Peter snipped at him. “They left out how annoying you are.”

Johnny twittered like the birds at the insult. Peter didn’t understand him. He seemed physically incapable of taking a hint. Peter had followed May around the apartment, trying to get her to tell him why, but she just kept hiding her face behind her hand and smiling.

“If I’m so annoying, why don’t you make me leave?” Johnny asked.

Peter longed for a camera to stare directly into. He puffed himself up and shooed the bird off his knee so that he could turn around and catch Johnny by surprise.

“I’m. Trying.” He sounded out for him.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“This is you trying?”

“Yeah.”

“Ah. Well, it’s not working.”

“Clearly,” Peter sighed. “Buzz off, flamebrain. I’ve got work to do.”

Johnny puffed up and did his excited shuffle.

“Work? You mean vigilantism?” he asked.

Peter considered the bird roost. Johnny Storm was a superhero. He’d probably survive that fall.

“Hey, what if I helped you?”

Nah. Someone was bound to see Peter do it and then he’d feel guilty or make the news or something.

“You can’t help me, I work alone,” Peter groaned. “Go away already.”

“No, no. I feel something here, I think we’d be a good team,” Johnny said. “Whaddya think, huh? You, Spiderman, me, the Human Torch. Together we could be—”

“The Spider Torch,” Peter deadpanned.

“No,” Johnny said, drooping. “No, that’s not—”

“ManSpider,” Peter said.

“What? Dude. No.”

“Torchman.”

“Wh—where are you even getting these? No. I meant we’d be a—”

Peter checked his phone. May was asking him to pick up eggs on the way home.

“I gotta go,” he said before Johnny could finish.

Peter just wanted the moths to come back, alright? He didn’t want this other guy.

“He’s establishment,” Daredevil said. “That’s why he tastes bad.”

Peter stared.

“I didn’t eat him,” he said.

“My bad. That’s why he leaves a bad taste in your mouth,” Daredevil said.

Hell’s Kitchen was busier than Queens, but it was the only place that Peter had found that Johnny wouldn’t follow him into. Daredevil made sure of that.

“I thought it was because he’s famous,” Peter hummed.

DD considered it.

“That too,” he said.

“What do I do about him?” Peter asked.

Daredevil drummed a few fingers across his bottom lip. One of his nails was black. He said he’d slammed it in a door and as usual, no one at his job believed him.

“Well, do you want to be friends?” DD asked.

Peter didn’t know. He wasn’t good at making friends.

DD seemed surprised when he explained this.

“We’re friends, are we not?” he said. “That wasn’t hard for you.”

“You’re old,” Peter said. “I’m good with old people.”

That made DD laugh and he nudged Peter to the side and sat down with him to kick his feet off the edge of the church’s roof.

“Are we really friends?” Peter asked him without looking his way.

“I think we’re on the way,” DD said. “Can I tell you a secret?”

Peter’s head snapped up.

“I hoard them,” he said. “It’s my secret dragon-power.”

DD smirked.

“I’m not good at making friends either,” he said.

Ah. Well, that wasn’t a secret. Everyone knew that already, big guy.

“LET ME IN.”

Peter couldn’t believe this.

“LET ME IN.”

For God’s sake. Fine.

He opened the condemned apartment’s window abruptly and watched Johnny flail outside of it before catching his balance. He crawled in gracelessly and then joined Peter on the floor with his legs crossed.

“You and me? We’re a great team,” Johnny said. “Doc Oct didn’t even see us comin’. You went in there like bang and then I came in like WOW and then that thing where I fell and you caught me was—”

“You make me feel like I don’t talk a lot, Johnny,” Peter said, cutting him off. “And that’s like, a Herculean task. I talk to myself constantly.”

There was a pause. Johnny vibrated happily in front of him.

He was older than Peter. A whole year older, not that Peter ever planned to let him in on this fact. And his hands and feet really were bigger and he smiled like one of those cat-clocks that moved its eyes back and forth to count the seconds.

“A team, Webs. You and me.”

Gah. More of this.

“I don’t even like you, Johnny,” Peter said.

“Yeah you do. You’ve saved me from terrible death twice this month.”

Well, that was because Johnny had the sense of a startled lemur. Someone had to catch him when he went tumbling out of the sky like that, and it wasn’t Peter’s fault that he seemed to do it most often when he was around to catch him. That was just Peter doing his job. Being responsible.

“Come on, Spidey. Admit it, you like me. You’re charmed by me. Everyone is, it’s okay to say it.”

Hm. Yes. DD had taught Peter a phrase for this very situation.

“Fuck off,” he said.

Johnny gasped with his hands over his face.

“Bad word,” he said.

“Fuck off,” Peter told him again. He got up and went over to the window and nearly got out of it, too, if it weren’t for Mr. Clean’s long-lost nephew grabbing his wrist before he could release a line of web.

He lifted his mask heavenwards and then brought it back down to squint at Johnny.

“Let go,” he said.

“Come home with me,” Johnny said. “My family wants to say thank you.”

Hell no. Let go.

“You’ve got a foul mouth, you know that?”

Fuck off, Candlestick.

“Oh, that’s new. I like that one—okay, I lied, alright? Maybe they aren’t so gung-ho, but hey, that’s not their fault. They’re just sticklers for this kind of thing. They’ve started to come around on Daredevil ever since the whole Fisk thing, so why not you, hm?”

…since the what?

“The Fisk thing?” Johnny repeated. “You didn’t know? Wilson Fisk? The guy who’s running for mayor from jail? Yeah, Daredevil is the one who got the evidence to throw him in there. He’s got contacts with some lawyers or whatever, so Reed and Sue and Ben were like ‘look, at least he’s using legal channels in a second-hand kind of way. That’s better than what he was doing before.’ So that means that there’s hope for you, too. If you join me and then join us, then you could do legal things too and then—”

Peter twisted his hand out of Johnny’s grip.

“I’m not like you, Johnny,” he said firmly. “Stop following me.”

He left Johnny to go find Daredevil and verify that what he’d heard was true, but DD was nowhere to be found. He wasn’t even at his favorite church roost. Peter sat at it and flexed his fingers on his knees. He’d always thought that if he touched a church, he’d go up in flames or something. Being with DD, who said he was Catholic, he’d figured had mitigated some of that risk.

Without him, the roof felt lonely. Like even God had left it for warmer climes.

Wilson Fisk was dangerous.

Wilson Fisk was a murderer.

DD had to be careful. He couldn’t be going up against that guy alone.

Daredevil found him and took him to a different roof. His hands were all busted up. His lip was split in two places. His voice shook with the cold and he asked Peter if he minded if they talked inside.

Peter’s own fingertips were nearly numb, so he looked back at the door that DD was standing in front of. It was trouble to go inside with strangers. Especially strangers who could crack your neck in .02 seconds and then leave you for dead, or worse, leave you to go scatter the cells of a biological chemical into the water supply.

But, DD wasn’t a villain or even a bad guy. Nothing like that.

He was just cold.

Peter said okay.

Daredevil’s shelter was a home. A sad lookin’, empty lookin’ place, but a home nonetheless. He didn’t call it that, but Peter watched his fingers skirt over things in the kitchen like he knew where everything was even with his eyes closed. He eventually stopped shaking and made some tea that smelled like lemon and tulips at the same time.

Daredevil then sat down across from Peter on the couch and wrapped cracking fingers around his mug.

He told Peter that they had a common enemy. And then he told Peter that yes, he’d helped put Fisk away. He’d worked with a lawyer. Yeah, he’d finally caught a bit of a break and could sit down for a while, but he didn’t think it would last and Peter watched the swell in his bottom lip get sad at the thought.

“How old are you, Spidey?”

Bad questions get no answers.

“Fourteen? Fifteen?”

Bad questions get no answers.

“And you went after Fisk?”

“He went after me,” Peter corrected quietly.

DD huffed, but in a good kind of way. A chuckle almost.

“Asshole,” he said.

“How long until he gets out?” Peter asked.

DD took a hand from his mug to rub at the side of his face.

“God knows,” he said. “A day? A week? A month.”

Peter said nothing as one of DD’s scabs broke and he started smearing blood on his face.

“We’ll be ready,” Peter finally whispered.

DD’s head came up to face him and then that swell in his lip turned the other way out; the corners at the edges lifted.

“Yeah,” he said, less hoarse than usual, “Yeah, kid, I think we will be.”

Daredevil took off his mask. He had red, red, red hair and blue, blue, blue eyes. Peter told him that he looked like the Spiderman suit and DD laughed really hard—for real this time. He was blind. But he had powers like Peter did. He could feel things coming before they got to him. He held out a hand and Peter gave him his own.

“I’m fifteen now,” he said.

“You’re an amazing kid, Spidey, to still be hanging around here, doin’ what you do,” DD said. “You can call me ‘Red.’”

Red was an okay name. It didn’t quite meet the mark, though.

“You look like a Matthew,” Peter said.

Red laughed even harder, edging into hoarseness again.

“I get that a lot,” he said.

“Johnny Storm won’t leave me alone,” Peter told him. “I don’t know what to do to make him stop.”

Red’s eyebrows came together and so did his lips.

“Maybe he sees something in you that he wants for himself,” he said.

Peter didn’t know what that could be. He didn’t have anything. His backpacks were left in-tact even by muggers.

“Maybe he’s just lonely then?” Red offered.

Oh.

Maybe?

It felt good, in some weird kind of way, to have told DD what no one else knew. It felt good, too, to hold onto his secret—to have been trusted with it.

Red didn’t seem to have a lot of money. His apartment was big, but it was empty like he didn’t know how to fill it. Peter offered to help him and Red said that he’d think about it. It didn’t matter much to him, he explained, he only knew what he could touch and feel.

Peter got that. But still, it was nice sometimes to just have tchotchkes and stuff laying around—you know, just in case you were in a mood to touch and feel different things.

Red loaned him a puffy blue jacket to wear on the way home. He said it was ‘too damn cold out there’ for them both to be running around in single layers.

His jacket smelt like nutmeg.

May asked where Peter had gotten it when he got home and then had a heart attack when he told her that he and Daredevil were friends now. She freaked out until Peter explained that they’d gone inside and Red had made tea and said that he and Peter would team up when Fisk inevitably got out of jail. Then she paused and chewed her lip really hard, and finally threw her hands up and said ‘well, hell. It’s better than nothing.’

She told Peter never to tell Red his name, but Peter already knew that.

“He thinks Johnny’s bothering me because he’s lonely,” he told May in the morning while she rushed around, checking for her stethoscope, ID, and keys.

“Might be,” May said.

Peter picked at his toast. May closed the front door after her.

He just. Wanted. The Moths.

“To eat?” Johnny asked him for the thousandth time.

“No, not to eat,” Peter scolded. “I just like watching them.”

“Why?”

None of your business, Johnny Storm.

“Don’t you have Fantastic Four things to do?” Peter shot back.

“Not today,” Johnny sang, following him to the other edge of Frederico’s. With the sun coming down as it was, he looked like the world’s most golden golden retriever. Peter frowned at him.

“So you’re bothering me, then?” he asked.

“Gotta fill the time somehow, man,” Johnny said.

Hm. Red was right.

“What, are you tellin’ me that the great Johnny Storm can’t find some willing girl to bother for an hour every day?” Peter threw at him.

Johnny’s hands crunched in the gray slush that the day had forgotten to freeze on the roof edge.

“Bye, Spidey,” he said.

Wh—no, wait.

He hadn’t—

That came out wrong.

His hands felt more empty than ever in the wake of Johnny’s disappearance.

The next time Peter found him, Johnny wasn’t on Frederico’s roof. He was curled up in a ball in a place that Peter himself hadn’t planned on being that night.

He’d gotten tied up with some stuff on a ferry. He’d climbed up the Statue to figure out how to get back. He was freezing. The water had seeped through his suit barely moments after he’d hit it and he couldn’t stop shivering.

And then there was Johnny. Curled up in a ball in a big, faded brown coat with a fluffy hood and only that over his super-blue suit.

Peter had never seen him wear it before, and in it, he was far more recognizable as who he really was.

The Human Torch.

It was kind of ironic for him to have picked the Statue of Liberty to hide out in, wasn’t it?

“Whatcha feelin’ sorry for yourself about, Candlestick?” he asked.

Johnny’s head jerked up from his knees in surprise. His eyes were wide enough for Peter to see them, even without good light.

“Spidey?”

“That’s me,” Peter said, bopping on over and settling in at Johnny’s side. He was warm—thank God. He cuddled closer and Johnny made a little sound like a giggle.

“What’re you doing here? What are you doing?” he asked.

“Just havin’ a stroll,” Peter said. “Hey, share?”

He gestured to the big coat and Johnny laughed at him for real this time. He pulled his right arm out of the sleeve and waved Peter in to take his place. It was a really big coat. They both fit.

“Dude, you’re wet,” Johnny said.

“So fix it,” Peter told him. “And answer my question: what’re you wallowin’ for?”

Johnny blinked at him and then reached over and put a hand on Peter’s shoulder. The heat nearly scorched him, but then was gone in the next second. He blinked in surprise as Johnny hand-ironed as much of the suit he could reach—evaporating the water as he went. It was still a little damp in the places that were folded over onto each other and the undersides of Peter’s thighs and arms, but it was way more manageable now--especially tucked in next to Johnny’s human radiator body.

Johnny gave him a tight smile when he was done, then looked away as though to hide his quavering lip. Peter shoved him playfully. He got a ‘hey,’ so he did it again, this time hard enough to push Johnny off balance. The only thing holding them up was the shared coat.

“Don’t cry,” Peter said after Johnny shoved him back.

Johnny went stock still. He turned away again.

“I’m not,” he said.

“You were going to,” Peter said.

“I’m not.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

Johnny’s neck turned into stone. He slowly, slowly turned his face back Peter’s way.

“You won’t?” he asked.

Peter crossed his heart. Johnny laughed.

“You’re so weird,” he said. “No one does that.”

Peter did it again as a ‘fuck you’ to all those people. Sorry, but he was different.

Johnny laughed harder than ever until he coughed and got himself back together to look sad at the heels of his shiny blue suit.

“I miss my mom,” he admitted. “And my dad. Kinda. Sorta.”

Peter cocked his head.

“Kinda?” he asked.

Johnny flicked his thumb against his index finger.

“Kinda,” he repeated.

Hm.

“Go say hi?” Peter offered.

“Can’t.”

“No?”

“Mom’s gone.”

Oh.

“And dad?”

“Sue doesn’t like to talk about him.”

Yeah, okay. Peter felt that.

“I feel like sometimes I should miss my folks too,” he said. “But it doesn’t stick. I can’t remember them.”

Johnny made a weird movement next to him, like a startled deer.

“You too?” he asked.

“Me too, what?” Peter shot back.

“You don’t have parents?”

Pft. No.

“I’ve got parents,” Peter said.

“No, I mean, like—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean, Torchy. But you’re not listening. I said I’ve got parents.”

Johnny’s face was all over the place.

“But you said--?” he tried.

Peter shrugged.

“My aunt’s been my mom for as long as I can remember,” he said.

Johnny’s mouth made a little ‘o.’

“She’s your mom?” he asked.

“According to the court and CPS,” Peter said.

Johnny stared at him.

“What’s CPS?” he asked.

Oh, you sweet summer child.

“Child Protective Services,” Peter said.

“Oh. So me.”

Dude.

“Not you,” Peter said. “Definitely not you.”

“No, no, definitely me,” Johnny said. “I am a protector of childs.”

Peter resisted the urge to shove him again.

“You’re not an agency,” he said.

Johnny gave him a fake smile.

“I could be,” he said. “Do you have a social worker?”

Mm. Sort of. For a minute there.

“Three people in my family died,” Peter said. “All of them were my legal guardians. Some rando decided that my aunt caused it all and there was a big mess about it for a minute.”

Johnny gaped at him.

“She didn’t, though, did she?” he asked.

Peter blinked at him and then pushed him hard to distract him while he confiscated the rest of the coat. Johnny yelped and then jabbed fingers into Peter’s ribs until he forked over half.

“She didn’t,” Johnny translated.

“She’d never,” Peter said forcibly.

Johnny hummed.

“What was your mom like?” he asked.

“Don’t remember,” Peter said immediately.

Johnny sighed.

“Mine died. Car accident,” he said.

That sucked.

“Yeah. My dad’s…not a good person anymore either.”

Major bummer, man.

“Sue’s technically my legal guardian.”

Sue Storm? Really?

“She’s eight years older than me.”

Oh.

“She doesn’t look it,” Peter pointed out.

Johnny’s eyebrows flattened. Peter snickered.

“She doesn’t talk about Dad,” Johnny sighed. “And she’s always telling me what to do and she won’t ever tell me why. That’s all I want to know, you know? Just give me a why. How hard is that? I’m not trying to be difficult, Spidey. I just—I don’t even know. It’s stupid. I’m being stupid.”

Oh? How so?

Johnny lifted his head from his heels and directed those grumpy eyebrows at Peter.

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked.

Peter shrugged.

“Just askin’ how wantin’ to know why you gotta do one thing over another is stupid,” he said.

“It’s not,” Johnny said.

“Okay, then,” Peter said.

“Clearly it’s not,” Johnny said.

“Great. Glad we had this conversation.”

“Why would you ask that?”

“Because you were callin’ yourself stupid,” Peter said. “And you’re not stupid. So I was tryin’ to figure out why you were talkin’ shit about my friend.”

There was a long silence which Johnny broke by stealing the whole coat back and leaving Peter out in the cold.

“Rude,” Peter huffed at him. “Fine, I’m just gonna go throw myself into the sea and you’ll see—”

“Sea, see,” Johnny chimed.

“You’ll see,” Peter sniffed.

“Oh, I’ll sea, won’t I?”

“See this? This is being stupid. Lemme back in.”

“No. It’s my coat.”

“Share.”

“No.”

Peter puffed himself up and then stood up suddenly. Johnny grabbed his hand and pulled him down so that he crash-landed all over his lap. He pulled the coat over the both of them like a tent.

Peter twisted around and tried to find Johnny’s face in the dark.

“You’re my friend?” Johnny asked above him.

Peter held his breath.

“Only if you want me to be,” he said.

“I want you to be so bad,” Johnny admitted. “Can we be friends?”

Sure thing, bud. Was there anything else Peter could get him while they were down there? Ice? Popcorn? Those horrible Bertie-Bots flavored beans that ruined every slumber party and marriage in the continental US?

Johnny laughed so hard that the jacket shook above them.

The Statue of Liberty was Johnny’s safe place, just like Peter’s was the roof of Frederico’s. Peter explained to him the moths’ selfishness. Johnny told him that he didn’t think they weren’t being selfish and neither was Peter. Peter told him to watch his damn mouth.

He and the moths had an unbreakable bond. He just had to wait for them to return from war.

Johnny asked him if the whole Snow White schtick had been a him-thing before Spiderman and Peter was so offended he couldn’t even speak.

“Animals are nicer than people,” he eventually decided to say.

“Depends on the animal—and the people,” Johnny pointed out.

Peter threatened to throw him off the roof.

A week later he found Johnny at the ledge first, though, talking to the pigeons. A swell of something started up in Peter’s chest. He pushed it down.

“Hey.”

“Hey, yourself,” Peter said, trying to puzzle out the phone that Red had given him alongside the saddest puppy face ever.

Red wasn’t great with screens and this one, Peter had to say, was especially a pain in the ass. It was unlocked but all the apps had passcodes and Peter didn’t recognize any of them. They seemed like they were maybe in Russian?

“Are you busy tonight?”

Yes.

“Oh, okay. Nevermind then.”

Cool.

“Hey. Like, how busy?”

Busy enough that he wasn’t going to make any dinner plans, Johnny. Ever. Please, please stop asking.

“I was just thinkin’, you know, for my school it’s winter break starting tomorrow and—”

“I can’t,” Peter said. “It’s Hannukah.”

There was a pause.

“Oh,” Johnny said. “That’s, uh. Early.”

Not really?

Peter looked up and found Johnny wringing the life out of his hands. He glanced back down at the phone. It was a lost cause. Sorry, Red.

“Have you heard of Jewish Christmas?” he asked the phone.

Johnny perked up.

“Is that what Hannukah is?” he asked.

Peter snorted.

Not quite.

“This is Chinese food.”

Yeah. And?

“Are you fucking with me?”

Peter laughed.

He gave Johnny his phone number. He didn’t think it would hurt. It wasn’t to his normal phone anyways, but to the cheap one that he took out as Spiderman. He paid its bill by tutoring the neighbor’s kids on Wednesdays.

May didn’t need to know about it. Red’s number was in there now, too.

Johnny texted it all day long. Peter eventually told him he had to stop because unlimited text was not a thing for him. The phone was for light use only. Johnny told him that he’d stop, but only if Peter gave him his real phone number.

“What do I look like, a schmuck?” Peter asked him.

“Yes.”

Back into the sea you go, Candelabra.

“NO. No. I mean no,” Johnny claimed, “You don’t look like a schmuck. I just want to taaaaalk to you. That’s all.”

Hm. Well, this street went two ways, did it not?

“I don’t know what that means,” Johnny chirped.

“It means stop,” Peter told him.

“Oh.”

Yeesh.

“So you’re still mad about the crows—”

Yes, he was still mad about the crows, jackass.

It wasn’t Johnny’s fault that his teammates did not approve of Peter; really it wasn’t. It was cool enough to Peter that Johnny was open-minded enough to chill with a vigilante when they weren’t, but that wasn’t enough for Johnny.

Peter didn’t know how to tell him that sometimes, lives are allowed to be kept separate. Just because May didn’t mind DD handing off info to Peter didn’t mean she wanted him to come around for dinner.

Hell, even Spiderman wasn’t allowed in the house for any longer than was strictly necessary. It wasn’t anything personal, Peter wanted to explain, it was just adjusting things so that everyone was comfortable.

“They’ll love you,” Johnny argued. “They just don’t know it yet.”

Peter said nothing.

His heart pounded fast at the thought of standing in front of any blue suit but Johnny’s.

In his experience, real superpeople weren’t like the ones they pretended to be in the papers. They were almost always more curt. Shorter. Their patience was thinner and the so-called ideals that they stood for were way more flexible than any of them wanted to admit.

Peter had done his share of bumping elbows with Ironman, Captain America, and the Black Widow. He knew where he stood with them, and that was in the background or out the way. DD was safer. DD pushed Peter behind him when the Black Widow approached and said that Peter was one of ‘theirs.’

‘Theirs’ meaning a vigilante. ‘Theirs’ meaning Red, Luke Cage, the Punisher, Jessica Jones, and so on and so forth. The street-level guys. Red had introduced Peter to them. They, like the superpeople, weren’t all they were chocked up to be either. Luke Cage had laid a huge hand on Peter’s head and informed him that in the absence of a name, he was calling him Gary the Second. Red had sighed and held his face in his palm.

Peter felt safe under both of those hands. They didn’t twist or bend like others might have. Hell, he felt safer sitting on tiles with Deadpool next to him, poking at his suit and trying to stick Hello Kitty stickers on his mask eyes as pupils, than he did stood next to Captain America.

DP wouldn’t hurt him. He was way gentler than everyone said he was—with Peter at least.

Cap? Hard to know. Harder to read. Peter felt like he was always lying, but he didn’t know why or how.

Johnny didn’t lie, but that didn’t mean anything. Sue Storm was eight years older than him and Dr. Richards was twelve. They and Ben Grimm had plenty of time to learn how to lie and be curt and to not like people like Luke Cage and DP.

There was only so many times Peter could beg off meeting Johnny’s teammates, especially with him rushing to Johnny’s aid in the city when the occasion called for it. He was bound to stumble and he did.

He missed the moths.

“Johnny, come here. Now.”

He wanted to run for Frederico’s.

“No, he’s my friend.”

“Jonathan.”

“Listen to me, Sue. Just listen to me for once.”

No, this was too much.

“Wait, Spidey—No! Sue, why do you do this every time? He’s not a danger. He’s my—”

Peter didn’t hear the rest of it. Reed Richards was tall. Ben Grimm’s face was, well, grim, and Peter knew when he wasn’t welcome.

The moths weren’t there that night. It was still too cold. They were probably inside some closet, eating someone’s clothes and making moth-babies. The pigeons had roosted for the night, too. It made Frederico’s roof with its flickering lights feel mighty lonely.

Peter curled himself into a ball in the usual place. He’d gotten so used to Johnny being there with him that even the alcove didn’t bring the comfort it used to. He pressed his forehead to his knees. The rim of his mask eyes pressed into the bridge of his nose from the inside. It hurt. He tore off the mask and left it to sit on his feet.

It was cold.

He wanted to go home. May wouldn’t be there yet, though. She was working the night shift this week. It would be just as lonely.

Although maybe not as cold.

He’d just rest his eyes for a while then. Maybe an hour. She got off in an hour. He could meet her at home.

“Spidey?”

He jerked and jolted up to his feet, legs splayed, shoulders low. Daredevil had taught him how to roll them forward to look intimidating.

There was a long silence.

Peter blinked once, then again, down at the ground.

In front of him was the red fabric of the mask. He felt his back lift with the next few breaths. He looked up to see blue. A line of blue.

He did some calculations.

It took barely five seconds to grab the mask and get gone, putting it on as he swung. He dug through his pocket and found the burner phone.

It was 4:21am. May would be getting off in ten minutes. Homeward bound, it was.

Johnny texted him.

Johnny texted him a lot.

Peter left the phone where it was. He deleted Johnny’s name so that only his number appeared on the screen with the messages. He avoided Frederico’s for the next few days, until he knew Johnny would give up camping out there, waiting for him.

He went to Hell’s Kitchen instead. He went to the Upper West Side. DP heard his buzzing phone and  took it, only to hand Peter a neon yellow one minutes later with all his contacts transferred but one.

Peter felt guilty about it. But he’d made his bed now, and he had to lie in it.

He took the phone.

He found a new perch. Frederico’s was too lonely, too out of the way, too personal. This new perch was much livelier. Peter shared it with a family of crows that had adopted him. He brought them a handful of shiny things he’d found on the ground and they rewarded him by sitting on his shoulders while he watched the traffic blustering around way down below.

The crows liked to nibble at his ears and try to eat his hair through his mask. It was part of their charm. Peter laughed at them and it felt like a release.

The new perch was good for watching and sleeping. There was a little niche behind it that Peter fit perfectly into. It had a small roof over the top that kept the rain out of the hollow inside. Peter had to clear the plastic bags and torn advertisements out of it before he got in and every so often, he had to share with the crows or this one particularly grumpy rat, but beyond that, it was safe and available.

There were no moths, but there hadn’t been any at Frederico’s for a long time now.

“Spiderman.”

Peter opened his eyes to a long face framed by dark hair. Its owner was crouched outside the niche. The crows and the rat had vanished.

Dr. Richards’s face was more creased than it was in the pictures online.

“Is this where you hide at night?” he asked.

Begone, interloper.

“Do you have a name I can call you?”

Peter’s back brushed the concrete wall of the niche and he tucked his feet further under him. He’d learned it from the pigeons, from the crows.

“Okay, then,” Dr. Richards said gently, “Can I say sorry?”

He was long, lanky, and tall. Even crouching as he was, he took up almost the entire mouth of the niche. Getting past him would be tricky. Peter was going to have to be fast—as fast as humanly possible. Mr. Fantastic would grab him if he was within sight.

He had to get out of sight.

“We didn’t realize who you were to Johnny,” Dr. Richards said with his eyes down at the ground. “And I just wanted to say…well. Thank you.”

Thank you?

“I guess we didn’t realize how much better he was doing until we scared you off.”

Better?

“He doesn’t talk to us much anymore,” Dr. Richards said. “I mean, over the last two years or so. He’s gotten withdrawn. He and Sue were going off at each other more and more and then a few months ago, he just shut down. Shut everyone out. We couldn’t make sense of it and we started to get worried—Johnny’s masks have never been that good, I’m sure you know that.”

Johnny, why?

“I thought it was because we had to switch his schools, of course, Ben thought it was more than that. But I guess in the daily rush of things, it’s easy to miss you young ones slipping through the cracks, huh?”

Peter blinked slowly and flattened his shoulders against the concrete.

Dr. Richards edged an inch closer. There was nowhere else to go.

“So let’s start over,” Dr. Richards said carefully. “My name’s Reed. It’s nice to meet you, Spidey. Thanks for helping my little brother find his spark again.”

The hand held out was wide. Peter knew that his own fingers would barely come to the guy’s third knuckles.

“Merry Christmas,” he mumbled instead.

There was no where else to go.

“Oh, honey,” Dr. Richards said.

Dr. Richards’s hands were warm and he sat with Peter halfway in the niche and tried to understand. He didn’t fully get it, but he admitted that. He told Peter that there were ways to become a hero without having to be a vigilante.

Peter didn’t laugh, but he wanted to.

“My family doesn’t have money,” he ended up admitting. “And if you don’t look like you have money, people don’t care why you do things, they only care about making you stop.”

Dr. Richards pressed a fist against his mouth.

“Has it always been that way for you?” he asked.

Peter shrugged.

He hadn’t known how tight things were at home until Ben was no longer there to fill the gaps.

“Johnny says that you live with your aunt. Does she know that you do this?”

“Yes,” Peter said to his toes.

Dr. Richards waited. Peter didn’t know what else he wanted.

“She knows, and she lets you?” Richards eventually said.

“I don’t know,” Peter said because it was the first thing on his tongue.

“You don’t know if she lets you?”

“No, she lets me,” Peter said.

“But you don’t know why?”

His knees wanted to bounce. He wanted out of the niche.

Dr. Richards sighed.

“Does she know who you’ve been running with?” he asked.

“Yes,” Peter mumbled into the tops of his thighs.

“She does?”

“Well, I tell her, don’t I?”

There was a long silence.

“Spidey, how old are you?”

None of your business, sir.

“My birthday’s in August.”

Richard sighed and leaned his forehead into his hand.

“Please just—tell me you’re seventeen,” he said.

“I’m seventeen,” Peter told him.

“Christ.”

“Can I go now?” Peter asked.

“Jesus.”

“Can you tell Johnny I’m sorry? I didn’t mean to cut him out, I just—I dunno if we can be friends anymore.”

Dr. Richards froze and turned his head towards Peter like some kind of robot.

“Why’s that?” he asked. “Is it—is it because of us?”

Well, kinda? Yeah?

“Aw, for—alright, no. No, no, no. Spidey, I—we—me, Sue, and Ben—we—hoo boy. No, no, start over. This has nothing to do with you, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong. We were in the wrong here, do you understand?”

Uh? No?

Peter was pretty sure he was in the wrong here. He was very used to being in the wrong, too, it wasn’t a surprise. In fact, it was much, much easier to just assume that he was the one in the wrong always, until a supervillain or a guy determined to be named after some kind of angry animal came looking for him, and then it became really easy to for once not be the one in the wrong.

Spiderman came with privileges like that. Peter liked them. It was part of the reason that he kept doing the damn thing.

“Spidey? Are you listening to me?”

“Yes,” Peter lied. “I can tell him I’m sorry myself, don’t worry.”

Dr. Richards made a weird face and his hands twitched a little into a clawing motion. He caught himself and took a deep breath.

“Okay, I don’t think you’re listening,” he said.

“No, I’m listening,” Peter assured him. “Can I go now?”

“Wh—I mean. You could always go.”

Mmm. You sure, bud?

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Peter said. “So can I go? For real?”

“I’m not trying to block you in, Spidey. I’m sorry if it came across like that, it’s more of a—”

“Can I go now, Doc?”

Dr. Richards’s hands fell and his voice vanished altogether. He seemed kind of hollow when he moved back enough for Peter to wriggle out from the niche and hop up on top of it. He slid down the side and then down the side of the building proper, the way Red had taught him to.

Red wasn’t at any of his perches. Peter couldn’t find him, so he went and settled down outside of his apartment door. He was only there for ten minutes when he heard something inside open then close. It was only another few before DD opened the upstairs door and asked Peter what he was doing sitting out in the rain.

Red was wearing nice clothes. A red tie. He said that he’d been at a party.

Peter told him about Dr. Richards and asked what he was supposed to do next. Red leaned against the counter across from him in his tiny kitchen and chomped on his perpetually swollen lip while he thought.

“Well, they’re the ones who owe you an apology,” he eventually decided.

“But they didn’t do anything. I’m the one who cleared off, and then I shut Johnny out, and that was…”

Not cool. Friends didn’t do that.

“Maybe,” Red said. “But you’re also like twelve, kid. Sometimes, it’s not up to you to broker world peace in these kinds of things.”

No? It felt like it was.

“Nah. It’s gotta be a mutual agreement. A compromise. They came at you with closed fists first, you were within your rights to clear off.”

Oh. Okay. Why didn’t it feel like that, then?

Red shrugged.

“Probably the guilt,” he said, whacking that nail right on the head.

Nice.

“I’m guilty,” Peter sighed.

“Objection, your honor,” Red said.

Peter stared at him.

“Inside joke,” he said.

Ah.

“Hey, do you do Christmas?” Red asked.

No.

“Alright, do you like weird cake?”

Yeah.

“Can you eat whatever this is for me so I can lie to my neighbors and say it was great?”

That looked like stollen.

“Smells like fruitcake,” Red said.

Well, that was because it was Fruitcake Lite™.

“I’ll take it. Thanks for the brain power,” Peter said.

“Anytime kid. Hey, go home, would you? Rain’s only going to get worse.”

May asked him why all he did was bring home powdered sugar and he told her that it was a present from Daredevil who apparently didn’t like powdered sugar much either. She sighed and put the cake on the table. Peter went and took a shower over the sound of the TV chattering away. It was dark now. He’d spent nearly the whole morning out and about, then in the niche. It was quiet.

He liked when the city was quiet. It was a novelty.

He got out of the shower and sat at the table while May ordered food on the phone. He fiddled with his personal phone.

He knew Johnny’s number. Had it memorized. Maybe he hadn’t seen it for a few days, but it was still there.

He typed it into his phone.

‘Merry Christmas,’ he sent.

Two minutes. No response.

‘I’m sorry for running away,’ he wrote. ‘I’m not good at making new friends.’

Another minute.

‘If you’re mad, that’s okay. If you don’t want to be friends anymore that’s okay, too. I just thought I should say I’m sorry.’

Thirty seconds.

‘Your BIL came to find me. He said you’ve been sad. I’m sorry for being a bad friend, Johnny.’

Half an hour.

There were boxes of savory and sweet smelling food on the table. May was hunting around the kitchen drawers wondering where the other black chopstick had gone.

‘I miss you.’

Peter turned the phone over on the table and took the glass of bubbly diet coke May offered him.

He flopped into bed with a homemade rice-filled heat pack clutched to his chest. May told him to take it with him so that he wouldn’t be so cold while the covers were warmed up.

He unlocked his phone while he hunkered down under the winter duvet and then promptly dropped it on his face.

‘I MISSED YOU TOOOOOOO’ Johnny typed back, no doubt sobbing with the full force of an oncoming train.

‘IM SORRY MY FAMILY IS A PACK OF WOLVES.’

Peter laughed.

‘REED SAYS YOURE BAD AT LISTENING. I told him that’s how I know we’re soulmates.’

Peter laughed harder.

JS: HES LANGUISHING IN GUILT. Anyways I asked Ben about Jewish Christmas and he told me that he takes back everything he’s ever said about you.

SM: oh??? Does this mean I’m a good 50/50 with the f4?

JS: you’ll be 4/4 when I’m done here

Awwww.

SM: lol okay man. Dream big I guess

JS: is this your real number?

SM: don’t abuse it

JS: I WONT

SM: I don’t believe you

JS: you shouldn’t

SM: are you doing things tomorrow?

JS: I mean I cleared like 80% of my schedule to guilt trip Sue but I can make time?

SM: cool I want you to meet my new friends.

JS: are they crows

SM: shut up you don’t know me

JS: lololololol okay I’ll come meet the crows. Meet at the moth home?

SM: sure

SM: oh

SM: do you like stollen?

Peter got up and started to put on his suit. Then he stopped and looked in the mirror. It was early. Dawn was breaking.

He took the biggest scarf he had instead.

He saw Johnny before Johnny saw him. He was wearing a white coat and was half-bent over the roof ledge, making kissy noses at the little ball of newborn mice that were living in the decorative stucco over there.

He looked a little orange in the rising sun.

Peter watched him in silence until Johnny picked up on the presence of another body. He swung up and turned around, all bright with color in his cheeks. And then he stopped and his mouth fell open.

Peter breathed into his scarf and cocked his head.

“Gotcha speechless, Candlestick?” he asked.

Johnny gaped a little more, then flailed and eventually decided to slam his hands over his eyes.

“I SEE NOTHING,” he announced.

Peter chuckled.

“Johnny,” he said.

“I KNOW YOU NOT, STRANGER. WHAT IS THOU’ST NAME?”

“Johnny,” Peter said again, unable to hide his smile in the scarf anymore.

“Is it—”

“Peter.”

Silence.

Johnny’s hands inched down.

“Peter?” he repeated.

Peter nodded.

“Peter Parker,” he sounded out.

Johnny made a strange noise that made Peter feel like there were bubbles in his chest. He smiled and held up the bag in his hand.

“I come bearing gifts,” he said.

Johnny let loose a sound like he was dying.  

“It’s not good,” Johnny told the bread in his hand sadly.

“That’s what my aunt said,” Peter hummed.

“Lord help this bread, it is the body of your son.”

Peter choked.

“I joke,” Johnny said.

“Yeah I got that,” Peter said, tearing off pieces of stollen for the mama mouse in the stucco. He stopped.

“What?” he asked.

Johnny jerked his face away from him like he’d been caught ogling some girl’s butt.

“Nothing,” he said.

Hm. Whatever.

“Come on,” Peter said. “Crows wait for no man.”

There were more of them. Some burst into flight when Peter climbed up onto the ledge. They were amazing. Shiny and black with glistening eyes.

Some cawed and did a quick turn-around mid-air to come back to settle on the roof again. They cocked their heads all over as Johnny hauled himself up after Peter. He went still.

“Crow town,” Johnny breathed.

“Crow central,” Peter agreed. He wriggled the rest of the way up. The crows watched him. He hunkered down low as Johnny pulled his torso and legs up. Peter dug the rest of the bad stollen out of the bag.

“Presents for you,” he said, tossing out a stripe of crumbs out gently in their direction. “Merry Chrysler.”

He now had the crows’ attention.

“I don’t know how you do this,” Johnny said, leaning all the way back to take a picture of Peter with his arms extended in front of him. The crows ignored him, too busy picking at Peter’s jacket; a few tried to eat his hair. It tickled.

“They’re easy to talk to,” Peter said.

Johnny pulled himself back up and swiped through his pictures.

“I guess,” he said. “Like you, the only word they know is ‘fuck.’”

“How dare you.”

Johnny ignored him and paused at one of his pictures. He shook his head and swiped through.

“If I bring crows to Lady Liberty, would you come back there with me?” he asked.

Peter thought about it.

“Depends,” he said. “What else is in it for me?”

“A kiss.”

“A—?”

“A MISS,” Johnny shrieked. “A Miss. You know? Cause I missed you?”

Peter stared.

“Are you sick?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Don’t give it to me.”

“No promises,” Johnny seemed to whimper.  

They were out of stollen. The crows were sated and flapping up higher and farther to return to their nests. Peter dusted off his pants and stood up.

“Are we going now?” Johnny asked him.

“I’ve gotta jet,” Peter told him.

Johnny tilted his head to the side and with the sky as empty as it was, his eyes seemed bluer than ever.

“I missed you, though,” he said.

“I missed you, too,” Peter admitted.

Two crows took flight at Peter’s left.

“I’ll see you around?” Peter asked.

Johnny’s lips lifted at the corners into a big happy smile.

“Sure thing, Webs,” he said.

It was easy after that. Easy, in a manner of speaking anyways. The cold clung to the city even as the tips of bulbs started to reach for the sky. Peter checked the ones on the balcony every morning before school. May told him that a watched bulb never boiled. He started to tell her that maybe, if he just concentrated really, really hard—and she laughed on her way out the door.

Peter saw Johnny on Saturday nights. Usually at the Statue. Peter couldn’t get there himself without a freak ferry accident to guide him, so he waited at whatever location Johnny texted him to be consensually kidnapped, more or less.

The first time he was swept up by the Human Torch had been a panic-fest. The time after, though, was calmer. Johnny learned not to just grab him around the waist. He took to grabbing Peter under his knees and making him cling to his neck. The alternative was a piggy back ride that was somehow even less dignifying.

Johnny always had loads to talk about.

He complained about his sister and his brother-in-law. He could talk about cars for hours. He went on and on about the levels of security he had to deal with at his new school.

Peter liked to listen.

Johnny asked him about his life and Peter tried to lie to him as much as he could. Deadpool had held both his cheeks in a single palm the other month and told him not to trust anyone under any circumstances. And Peter wanted to follow that advice. It was sound. Luke Cage and Iron Fist had echoed it.

But there was just something about Johnny.

Johnny said he got that a lot.

There came a day where he couldn’t lie to Johnny.  

He didn’t have the bandwidth. He barely even knew the guy was there next to him.

His hands instead dug into the earth and yet somehow still felt empty. He couldn’t stop the tears or the sounds that shuddered through his chest and throat.

Johnny clung to him and told him that everything was going to be okay. Johnny begged him to stop crying.

It was impossible.

Right there, right under his nose. On his so-called watch, Ben’s grave had been torn up. Dug up. His body—no one would tell Peter what had happened to his body.

May couldn’t.

Peter didn’t know how Johnny found him. He didn’t care, honestly. He didn’t care about anything at the moment--not even the long hands that wrapped themselves around his shoulders and pulled him up, away from the grave.

He fought them—lashed out--but didn’t get anywhere. Johnny pleaded somewhere behind him. Other voices answered him.

“—my friend—” Johnny said in the distance, or maybe not in the distance. Who cared?

Peter’s fingernails were filled with dirt and he wouldn’t leave. No one could make him. This was his fault.

His fault.

“Mr.--” A voice somewhat familiar was saying to him. “Mr.—what’s his name?”

Ben.

Ben, I’m so sorry.

“His name’s Peter.”

“How do you know that Johnny?”

“His name. Is Peter.”

“Jesus, look at this place. Someone came out here to send a message—Sue, I just got your text.”

The voices didn’t matter. The hands around Peter’s arms were relentless.

Everything went numb.

It wasn’t just Ben. It was the whole graveyard, and Peter couldn’t make himself do anything but shake and swallow. He sat with May on a plastic chair in the Baxter building along with what felt like hundreds of other people. Some of them had dirt under their fingernails, too.

Peter hugged his knees to his chest. His legs wouldn’t stop shaking. May’s arm stayed around his shoulders. Her fingers trembled, too.

“Why Ben?” Peter whispered.

May’s hand found his hair to stroke.

“Why’s it always Ben?” Peter asked her.

“Shhh.”

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

“Parker?” Someone called. A woman. Blonde hair, blue eyes. Very familiar. Peter would know her from anywhere.

She froze upon seeing him. He didn’t know if she remembered him or if it was the mess of tears on his face. She fumbled the clipboard in her hand for a moment, then swallowed hard and turned her eyes back to May’s.

“Can you answer some questions for me?” she asked.

May said yes.

Sue Storm closed the door to the small room behind her and had May and Peter sit down on the other side of a desk, where she appeared to be collecting information on all of the people whose loved ones’ graves had been desecrated.

She said she was sorry.

She didn’t stop looking at Peter. Peter looked away first.

“I’m sorry, excuse me,” Sue Storm said again, “I just have to check on one thing.”

She closed the door again behind her and Peter turned to May and whispered in her ear what he knew was happening. May breathed in hard, then out slowly.

“Okay,” she said. “We’ll deal with it.”

Peter swallowed a scream.

Sue Storm came back with Dr. Richards. He looked stern and upright in his blue suit. He entered the room and closed the door behind him tightly. Then he turned to May and Peter and the tension in his shoulders eased.

“Mrs. Parker,” he said. “I’m so sorry your family is going through this.”

Peter wanted to bite him.

“Please understand that we’re going to do our best to help—”

Bullshit. This was an interrogation.

“—So if you could answer our questions as best as you—”

“Stop,” Peter said forcefully, before the falsehoods dragged May into this. “Just. Stop.”

Sue Storm bit her lip. Dr. Richards’s own thinned.

“You know who I am,” Peter said with a throat that felt clogged with gritty, wet mud. “But this isn’t about me. Or May. Or us. We have nothing to do with this. I swear to you.”

Silence held the room hostage.

Dr. Richards cleared his throat.

“Mr. Parker,” he started.

“My name is Peter,” Peter snapped at him. “Peter. Benjamin. Parker. And I already said you know who I am. So just skip it. We don’t need to do this song and dance. Whoever that was, they broke open my family’s graves. They touched my uncle’s bones.”

Dr. Richards took a deep breath and let his shoulders fall again. His eyes seemed to get darker.

Johnny found Peter vibrating out by a planter box outside the building. He sat down next to him and swung his feet. Peter chewed his thumbnail viciously.

“Sue says she didn’t expect you to be so articulate,” Johnny finally said.

Good for her.

“Do you want a hug?”

No. Too angry.

“Okay.”

His breathing was getting ragged, Peter knew that Johnny could tell.

“Tell me about him?” Johnny asked out of nowhere.

And then the floodgates opened.

May came back and thought Johnny was the one who’d made Peter start sobbing like a little kid. It took a few minutes and a lot of shuddery breaths, but Peter managed to convince her that he was okay. Johnny was too.

Or maybe he wasn’t. Johnny had all these tears in his eyes. He kept wiping at his face and stuff. It maybe didn’t look super reassuring, but in terms of like, trustworthiness, he was solid. Peter could feel it.

“We’re gonna figure it out,” Johnny promised. “Cross my heart.”

He made the motion against his chest.

Peter touched his own.

“I made you cry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” Johnny said. “Sometimes, it’s okay.”

“Oh, I see,” May said after a moment, pushing Peter’s legs to the side so that she could sit down. “You’re Johnny.”

Johnny snapped up straight.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

Peter didn’t recognize this person. He jabbed him in the ribs.

“Stop that,” he said.

May’s lips lifted a bit into a smile.

“I’m May,” she said, holding out a hand. “The aunt. Thank you for being friends with my Peter.”

Embarrassing. That’s what this was. Johnny took her hand anyways.

“He’s my favorite Webhead so far,” he sniffed, wiping his at his face with his other sleeve.

“So far?” Peter demanded. “Are you plannin’ on replacing me, Birthday Cake?”

Johnny cut his eyes at him.

“Shut up, I’m trying to make an impression,” he said.

“You’re doing a bad job,” Peter told him. “Find the guy who screwed with my uncle.”

“Well, maybe I will.”

“Good.”

“Okay.”

“Fine.”

May laughed out loud and the sound was the best thing Peter had heard in days.

Johnny said that he’d text, but he had to go do work now. He left May and Peter and they went home. May asked Peter not to go out as Spiderman. Not until Ben was home. She wanted to know where he was at all times. She couldn’t lose both of them like this.

Peter relented, as bad as he itched to get out there and hunt.

May had to come first.

He took a shower, then did homework until there was no more homework to do. He cleaned his room. He cleared out his phone pictures.

He flew through all that in two hours and was left vibrating against the kitchen counter.

He texted Johnny.

SM: grounded

JS: what for someone else’s crimes? That’s harsh

SM: no. grounded like a plane.

JS: oooooooooh

JS: yeah okay that makes more sense. It shouldn’t be too much longer, just fyi. Ben’s shaking the shit out of a guy who’s calling himself the Reaper. Asserting Grimm dominance, you know how it is.

SM: no? I don’t? What is happening?

JS: I have been told not to say anymore.

SM: this violates the patriot act

JS: I don’t think it does?

SM: UGH

JS: not much longer now, Spidey. Extra super promise.

SM: timeframe?

JS: classified

SM: WHY

SM: god being a civilian sucks

JS: lolololol oop gotta fly ttyl

Damnit.

“Peter, child, you are taking me to the edge today.”

He buried himself in his arms when May came out of her room and joined him at the counter.

“Frederico’s,” she said. “Go. Back in 2 hours. Understood?”

Yes. Perfectly clear. Crystal clear. Amazing. He’d be right back, she wouldn’t even know he was gone.

Red was there when Peter arrived in streetclothes. It didn’t make a difference to Red, though. Peter collapsed next to him.

“I hate Queens,” Red greeted him, reaching an arm out to drape across Peter’s shoulders.

“The bastard dug up my uncle,” Peter growled.

DD whistled.

“Boy, have I been there,” he said.

“Are you here for me?”

“I thought you’d be here,” Red said. “Heard about it on the news. Only so many Jewish cemeteries in Queens. Only so many jaded Spiderkids running around with chips on their shoulders.”

“It’s the size of a boulder,” Peter said bitterly.

Red snickered harder than that deserved.

“Why is your sense of humor like that?” Peter blurted out.

Red caught himself and then shrugged.

“Anxious coping mechanism,” he said.

Oh.

Fair.

“Hey, do you hear them?”

Peter frowned and looked around, craning his neck for someone else on the roof.

“Hear what?” he asked.

“They’re back,” Red said, pointing with his chin the direction of the neon lights. They weren’t on during the day, but Peter caught his drift immediately.

The moths.

“Oh, thank god,” Peter breathed.

He got home to May on the phone and he closed the door carefully behind him. He could hear in her voice the good news. He knelt down on the floor by the door and stretched himself out fully in front of it.

Be a rug, he thought exhaustedly.

The moths weren’t ever allowed to go away again. Peter couldn’t go back to relying on other people to solve problems for him. His heart couldn’t take it.

“Peter?”

“Yeah?” he mumbled into the hardwood.

“We’re keeping the F4.”

“Alright,” he relented. “But only them.”

Johnny’s toes were blue with a white soles and Peter thought that, this high up, he probably blended in with the sky. Peter’s own toes were red.

“So,” Johnny said. “When you said your folks were dead, you didn’t say they were Mary and Richard Parker.”

Peter nudged him over and climbed up onto the concrete to sit next to him.

“By the way,” he said casually, “I’m the kid of the two semi-famous geneticists.”

Johnny beamed out at the city.

“Reed started hyperventilating,” he said.

“I don’t remember them,” Peter said.

“That’s okay, I don’t remember much of mine either.”

The city hissed underneath. A plane with streams of white on its tail roared overhead.

“Sue says she’s sorry for making you think that she hated you,” Johnny said.

“She’s scary.”

“This is what I keep telling people, but no one listens to me.”

“Johnny?”

Johnny turned Peter’s way and the sun was so bright that if they weren’t outside, Peter would have thought it was summer.

“Thank you,” he said.

Johnny’s eyes crinkled in the corners.

“Anytime,” he said. “It’s what we do.”

Peter hesitated.

“Is there anything I can do to repay you?” he asked.

Johnny made a show of humming and hawing over it, watching the sky.

“Well, I mean besides the endless gratitude and compliments and—”

“Johnny,” Peter warned.

Johnny turned his way and leaned his chin on his knuckles to hide a cheeky smirk.

“How about a kiss and we’ll call it even?” he offered.

Peter scoffed.

“I’m being serious,” he said. “You have no idea that this—Ben’s why I’m here. Next to you. Doing this.”

Johnny softened.

“I know,” he said. “Which is why I’m being serious.”

Wh—What?

“I like you.”

WHAT.

“Do you like me back?”

N—Mm—HNG.

“Peter?”

Somewhere, deep in his heart of hearts, Peter had known this. Since the moment he’d gone under that coat with Johnny on the Statue of Liberty, really. They’d been close enough in the dark back then that if Peter had just lifted his neck a little bit…well.

Ahem.

HNG.

“It’s cool if you don’t,” Johnny said hurriedly, “I mean, I’ve been trying to read the signs for a while now, and to be honest, dude, you don’t really leave many. So if I’m wrong about this, I’m really sorry. We can just be friends. I’m beyond happy with that. But if I’m not wrong and there’s maybe a chance that—”

HNG. Stop. Talking.

“A kiss?” Peter blurted out. “You’re sure? That’s what you want?”

Johnny mercifully stopped himself.

“Yeah?” he said. “If that’s cool with you.”

Fine. Sure. Kiss. Whatever.

“Come here, then,” Peter said.

His heart needed to chill out. They weren’t going into cardiac arrest. It was just a kiss.

Johnny scrambled forward in an instant until their thighs were pressed together and the heat at the contact seemed to feed directly up into Peter’s face. He cleared his throat.

Johnny leaned forward. Peter started to, with his pulse racing faster than it had been when taking down the Vulture, but then Johnny stopped, with barely inches between them.

“Peter Parker,” he said in a sickening, knowing tone. “Have you ever kissed anyone before?”

Welp, nice knowing you, world. Time to dive off this building.

Johnny grabbed a handful of his suit, cackling like a witch over a cauldron. Peter struggled against his grip, then settled for slapping hands over his face.

“I should have known,” Johnny said. “Here, it’s okay. Let me show you.”

Peter could have died as Johnny’s hands pulled him back up to sitting with their thighs touching. Those hands cradled Peter’s cheeks in their palms, then they left them to find the seam where Peter’s mask met his suit neck. And then fold by fold, they painstakingly rolled it up.

“On three,” Johnny said. His breath ghosted over Peter’s own lips and Peter felt like he was burning.

“One.”

Two.

“Three.”