Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They met at Johnny’s Sweet Sixteen, which Spidey crashed with no regard for the highly curated guest list.

Driven by an incredibly translucent urge to earn Sue’s unending admiration before his inevitable proposal, Reed had spared no expenses — a swanky venue with a floor-to-ceiling window façade, a celebrity DJ duo, and, most importantly, the most amazing car Johnny had ever laid eyes on, parked smack-dab in the middle of the ballroom, the polished hood adorned with a massive golden bow. 

As Johnny completed his giddy orbit around his newly acquired precious, he solemnly vowed never to talk to Sue again if she were to reject Reed. If Reed weren’t old and also practically his brother, Johnny would also have considered applying as his sugar baby. 

Everything — the music, the excited chatter, hundreds of socialites pointing their cellphones at him — faded into the background as Johnny slipped his hand into the door handle and pulled it open. 

An infernal noise sent people scrambling just a split-second before a body collided with Johnny at full speed, wrapping itself around him and twisting as the two of them slammed into the ground, careened across the room, and finally crashed through the window front. When they came to a stop on the plaza outside the venue, the other person’s limbs were tightly locked around Johnny, keeping his arms and legs pinned against his body. 

“Oh God,” Johnny gasped weakly, drowned out by the person beneath him urgently rasping into his ear, “Are you alright?” as they loosened their hold so they could push Johnny up onto his knees. 

A truly pathetic whimper escaped Johnny’s throat as he stared down at fucking Spider-Man, slumped on the mangled door of Johnny’s brand-new car. He was beaten to all hell, and Johnny was suddenly ridiculously aware of his own hands, pressing Spidey down by his chest and shoulder. Their skin touched where the Spidey suit was ripped open. Spidey’s surprisingly bony knees poked Johnny’s sides, because he was totally kneeling between Spidey’s open legs. Never had Johnny’s head felt so empty. 

“Are you hurt?” Spidey asked, letting go of Johnny’s biceps so his hands could travel down Johnny’s back, checking for injuries. Without Spidey’s support, Johnny’s trembling arms threatened to give out any moment, and Johnny was kinda scared by how badly he wanted to press his body back against Spidey’s, never mind that both of them were covered in tiny shards of safety glass. 

“Uh,” said Johnny, who wouldn’t have been able to tell if both his feet had been ripped off. All he could feel were Spidey’s nimble hands patting him down. 

“Johnny!” Sue shouted directly beside him, grabbing him beneath his arms and heaving him off this literal angel until he lay cradled in his sister’s lap instead. When Johnny looked up at her face, she was glaring daggers at Spidey, who immediately peeled himself off Johnny’s precious slab of scrap metal. 

“Sorry,” he squeaked, and then he fired off a web and was gone. 

Johnny was left staring at Spidey’s blood on his hands while a helicopter’s searchlight briefly flitted across the plaza, an explosion sounded off in the distance, and Sue carefully carded her probing fingers through his hair. 

“I’m in love,” Johnny declared breathlessly, and then promptly passed out. 

~o~ 

Johnny didn’t meet Spidey again for over a year, forced to watch from afar as the love of his life thwarted petty crime as well as a revolving door of supervillains, probably not even remembering Johnny. And all the while, the general public — including Sue — kept badmouthing Spidey and his vigilante ways. Philistines. 

Johnny was sorely tempted to throw his sister’s condescending ‘We live in a society’ and ‘There are laws for a reason’ spiel into her face during their whole rocket ship heist, but … space, man! Johnny wanted to go to space far more than he wanted to call her out on her hypocrisy. He was flexible like that. If only he could’ve had a chance to show Spidey how fucking flexible he was. And hot! So fucking hot.

Unfortunately, watching her seventeen-year-old (definitely not a baby!) brother burst into flames only strengthened Sue’s initial conviction. As they settled into their rooms at one of those super-secret government facilities to get prodded like lab rats, Johnny kissed his one chance at wooing Spider-Man goodbye. He seriously doubted that Sue would let him pick up a mask any time soon.

~o~ 

Johnny didn’t mean to go against the Fantastic Four’s oppressive rules concerning vigilantism and interacting with those practicing it, but … well, what was he supposed to do? Watch that Goblin dirtbag blow Spidey to smithereens when it was so easy just to throw himself in front of his hero and absorb the blast? Surely, there had to be a loophole for this kind of situation?

“Uh,” Spidey said to Johnny’s back. “Thanks? I hope?”

“No big,” Johnny said incredibly smoothly, flinging a fireball at Goblin for good measure. Goblin dodged with a mad cackle, but Johnny wasn’t stingy –

“Don’t!” Spidey yelled, shooting a web at Johnny’s flaming arm. The web burned before it even made contact, but Johnny had already ceased fire the moment Spidey had shouted at him. Both hands still raised at Goblin, he frowned at him over his shoulder.

“If you’re not careful, you’ll set off all the bombs on his glider,” Spidey pressed out. Before Johnny could explain that he could totally absorb the blast of at least a hundred of those pretentious pumpkin bombs, Spidey tensed and shot another web out, muttering, “Ah, shit,” as he flung himself forward to chase after the Goblin, who seemed to have decided that Johnny and Spidey together were a far too formidable match for him to face off against.

Johnny, feeling just a bit off-kilter by the sudden criticism, stayed right where he was, squinting at the rapidly receding dot that was the Goblin. Spidey, who wasn’t riding an eerily glowing glider, had already dropped out of view.

Well, that certainly hadn’t gone down like Johnny had imagined it (countless times, in astounding detail). Spidey probably thought that Johnny was nothing more than an inexperienced, reckless kid. Johnny didn’t know why he had expected anything else. Why would a seasoned hero like Spider-Man, who had been in the business for close to two years now, need help from a teenage newbie with less than three months of experience under his belt? Johnny didn’t even have an arch-nemesis, yet. Spidey had several, and it wasn’t just one-sided either. Those guys wanted him fucking obliterated. Because they knew he was the real deal. 

God, he was so fucking stupid. Sue had been right. He wasn’t cut out to be a vigilante. Clearly, he needed his team to tell him what to do and when to do it. (Not that he listened, most of the time.) Dragging his feet across the bubbling tar of the roof, Johnny began his shameful trek home, praying nobody had witnessed his utter humiliation.

He hadn’t even made it to the edge when something thwipped past him, rooting him to the spot. Spidey landed on the side of a water tank, attaching himself with one hand and one foot as he looked down at Johnny, head cocked. 

“This isn’t one of those situations, is it?”

Johnny had a feeling Spidey wasn’t talking about one of those ‘I’ve loved you for ages, please finally notice me’ situations. At least he hoped that wasn’t what he meant. Johnny was trying to charm him. 

“No?” he tried. 

“So, you didn’t just save me from the Goblin because you also have a vendetta against me, which is, of course, much more meaningful than his, so only you get to kill me?”

“Um … what?” Johnny stammered. “That doesn’t happen in real life.” 

Why? Why would Johnny disagree with Spidey? He wasn’t usually this awkward! Even Ben agreed that Johnny was the smoothest of smooth talkers! Johnny was pretty sure it hadn’t even been sarcasm, because he’d admitted it during one of their rare heart-to-hearts. 

“Does too!” Spidey insisted. “That’s what happened with Doc Ock and Green Goblin last Christmas. Like watching a divorced couple fight over who gets the kid for the holidays. Only both of them thought they’d earned the right to slaughter the metaphorical kid in question.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Johnny said, “I don’t have parents, divorced or otherwise.” What the fuck. What was he even trying to do here? God, if he asked Spidey on a date now, he’d totally think Johnny was trying to pity-trap him. 

“Look, are you or are you not going to try and kill me?” Spidey probed, clearly oblivious to Johnny’s inner turmoil.

“Don’t you know who I am?” Johnny squawked, because seriously! Why would Johnny, a hero in his own right, ever want to kill his greatest love, Spider-Man?

Spidery seemed to take issue with Johnny's indignant tone. He shifted to plant both feet on the side of the water tower so he could fold his arms, which made his actually-rather-slim-but-incredibly-firm biceps pop. Johnny had to wrench his eyes away so he could concentrate on the words coming out of Spidey's (no doubt incredibly cute) mouth. 

“Seriously?” Spidey threw both arms into the air. “That’s why I’m even asking about this whole vendetta thing, Storm!”

Johnny’s feet left the ground as his flames surged. Spidey knew his name! Without even seeing his deflamed face! Operation ‘Seduce Spidey’ was back on track!

“So, what’s it gonna be?” Spidey smoothly slipped into a half-crouch, one leg stretched out to the side, but he didn’t sound angry, per se, but rather resigned. “Are you here to get revenge for that Richie Rich party I crashed last year?”

“Uh,” Johnny said, dropping back to his feet so abruptly it rattled his teeth. Someone seemed to have dumped a whole bunch of rocks into his stomach. Cold, spikey ones. “What? No. That’s so stupid.”

Spidey cocked his head. “So, you’re not angry about that Rolls-Royce I smashed?”

“Actually, it was a —” Johnny hesitated, then waved a flaming hand through the air and tried not to wince at the way Spidey tensed. “You know what, never mind. I can see you don’t know the first thing about cars.”

Spidey straightened up most of the way, crossing his arms again. Johnny held up both hands in a placating gesture. 

“Not that you have to! You don’t need to know anything about anything!”

Spidey cocked his head in the other direction, which Johnny took to mean he was now offended rather than confused. Even without seeing his face, Johnny could just read him like the thousands of screenshotted articles he had collected in a special, top-secret folder on his laptop.

“That came out wrong,” Johnny said urgently. “I didn’t mean to imply that you’re an idiot or anything. Just … You’ve got other things to worry about, right? You’re a literal superhero!” 

“Oh …” Spidey breathed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m really not a superhero. Literally nobody thinks that. Anytime I show up anywhere, at least one person tries to apprehend me. Did you know there’s a thing called citizen’s arrest?”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing when you’re stopping criminals?”

“You’d think!” Spidey shook his head. “But apparently it’s illegal when I do it. So, no. I’m definitely not a hero.”

“You totally saved my life!” Johnny said hotly. “If you hadn’t shielded me with your body, I would’ve been a sweet-sixteen-year-old pancake.”

“You almost got pancaked by my body,” Spidey countered. “Your sister was this close to murdering me on the spot.”

“It wasn’t your fault that some maniac tossed you through a building!” Johnny had grown accustomed to arguing this point till he was red (and flaming) in the face, but he was always eager to do it again. 

Spidey flipped onto the roof soundlessly. “So, you’re really not mad?”

“Never,” Johnny breathed. “Why would you even think that?”

“Just seemed par for the course of my life.” Spidey shrugged lightly. “Also, you haven’t stopped burning. With rage, I figured.”

“No!” Johnny protested. “I’m not like that, okay? I don’t care about a stupid party or some random car.” Except that Johnny cared very much, but only because those things had brought them both together. 

“Okay?” Spidey gestured at him, still several feet away. “So, why the flames? Can’t be to protect your secret identity, considering you don't have one.” 

“Ha,” Johnny said tonelessly, glancing around for a distraction. Spidey’s lenses contracted, giving him a supremely suspicious look. “Alright,” Johnny added. “So, I was in bed when I saw you chase that Goblin guy past my window.”

Spidey nodded along. “Okay.”

Johnny tipped his head back so he was facing the night sky instead. “So, I didn’t have time to put on my suit.”

“Uh-hu,” Spidey said, sounding much less confused and much more amused now. “And?” he prompted, because the love of Johnny's life was apparently a menace after all. Figured. 

Johnny sighed deeply, producing a small burst of flames. “And I’m technically naked,” he rushed out as quietly as he could manage. 

“This is great,” Spidey said, grinning so broadly it was noticeable through the mask. “I am suddenly feeling much better about losing the Goblin.” He closed some of the distance separating them, stopping just at the border of bubbling tar that surrounded Johnny. “Say, are you hungry, Naked Boy?”

“Am I?” Johnny breathed, staring at Spidey’s mask in awe. He was slightly smaller than Johnny, both in height and width, and Johnny was suddenly seized by a whole new slew of fantasies. Instead of Spidey pressing him against various surfaces, it was now Johnny who was cradling him, wrapping his arms around Spidey’s slender body and shielding him from harm. “Spidey, you have no idea how —”

“— incredibly grounded my little brother is,” Sue said, popping into existence somewhere behind Johnny, who couldn’t suppress a shriek as he spun around to gape at her. “What were you thinking?” she demanded, poking his flaming chest with her force field. “Sneaking out in the middle of the night to do something so incredibly stupid?”

“Excuse me, Dr. Storm?” Spidey piped up, crouching high atop the water tower all of a sudden. “Johnny kinda saved me from getting blown up just now.”

“And you!” Sue pressed out, pointing an angrily shaking finger at poor, innocent Spidey, who slunk back further around the bend of the tower. “You stay away from him! I’m only going to say this once. My baby brother will not be hanging around shady vigilantes, and especially not you! He has a bright future ahead of him, and I won’t let you groom him!”

“Sue!” Johnny spluttered, horrified. “You can’t — I can look after myself!”

“Yes, Ma’am, Dr. Storm, Sir,” Spidey muttered, and then he flung himself backwards off the tower, rapidly falling away from the hand a heartbroken Johnny had thrown out in silent yearning.

God, his family was the worst. Spidey probably didn’t have to put up with something like this at home. 

~o~ 

The thing was: Johnny was a rebel at heart. And also slightly obsessed with forbidden romance movies. It was a universal truth that star-crossed lovers made for the most passionate couples, and Johnny was passionate, alright. He wanted something like Leonardo DiCaprio and Juliet had – minus the double suicide, preferably. Or maybe like Maria and that guy snapping his fingers – who also might’ve died, he wasn’t entierely sure of the top of his head. He was kinda blanking on a third movie at the moment, but — oh! Titanic, totally. Johnny would wear the hell out of that massive heart-shaped rock, no question. Especially if Spidey was gonna paint him like one of his French boys. Another tragic ending, sure, but Johnny figured that was probably a skill issue. Surely someone as hyper-competent as Spidey wouldn’t just die on Johnny – much less let him die. No way.

So, Johnny was a rebellious lover (at the very least in theory). And Sue knew this. She’d been right there watching those movies with him, sobbing at all the same parts. Ergo, Johnny had to logically assume that she secretly wanted him to date Spidey, and also that he was allowed to be sneaky about it, which was an excellent way to keep up that spark, anyway. (Ha. Spark.)

It was a good thing that he also ate up a certain kind of ‘Will They, Won’t They?’ dynamic (Barney and Robin, Katniss and Liam Hemsworth, and uuuh … whatever Woody and Buzz had going on) because Johnny’s soulmate was one hard-to-catch hero. It wasn’t difficult to find him – all Johnny had to do was follow the path of destruction (or, on a more regular afternoon, keep track of social media). Johnny never quite managed to get face time with him, though. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought that Spidey was avoiding him. Johnny wasn’t exactly easily overlooked, even in broad daylight. 

Three weeks after the meeting Sue had so embarrassingly interrupted, Johnny finally got lucky. It was after midnight on a Friday, and someone on Insta had posted a grainy picture of Spidey chilling on a slightly lower roof on Staten Island, one of his arms draped across his stomach and the other over his eyes. He was still there when Johnny flamed off beside him fifteen minutes later, which was a minor miracle. Spidey wasn’t known for slacking off on patrol.

“Hey, Spidey,” Johnny said in a tone that suggested he wasn’t absolutely freaking out on the inside. He was gonna be his usual smooth self this time, even if it killed him. “What’s up?”

A whine escaped Spidey as he let his arm slip from his face. It flopped to the ground above his head with none of his usual grace. This did not sit right with Johnny in the slightest. He held out a flaming hand and recoiled from the sight before him. Spidey looked rough, worse even than when they’d first met. His suit was shredded, and Spidey raised his arm just a split second too late to shield the smashed lens of his mask from view. 

“Fuck, Spidey.” Johnny dropped to his knees beside him, hands hovering above Spidey’s body without touching. 

“Oh,” Spidey breathed, followed by a full-body shiver. “You’re so warm.”

“Yeah,” Johnny croaked. “What do you need?”

“No,” Spidey muttered, trying to push himself up with one elbow and immediately crumbling back into a whimpering heap. 

“Spidey, please tell me what to do.”

“Jus– just … can you …” Spidey blinked up at him. This was not how Johnny had imagined making eye contact for the first time. His eyes were brown, and glistening with tears. Some had fallen already, mingling with the blood trickling from a gash above Spidey’s cheekbone. “Just set my arm, yeah? The right one. Got dislocated. I tried to do it myself, but I couldn’t get the angle.”

Fuck. This was so above Johnny’s pay grade. He was supposed to fling fireballs and one-liners, not brute-force joints back into their sockets. If it had been anyone else, Johnny didn’t think he would’ve been able to go through with it. He would’ve called an ambulance, or maybe his sister. She always had a plan. But this was Spidey. And Spidey trusted Johnny to do it. 

“Okay,” Johnny whispered. “Don’t worry, Spidey. I’ve got you. I … How do I …?”

“Flame off, first,” Spidey muttered. 

“Right, yeah, totally,” Johnny babbled, frantically shaking his hand until the flame fizzled out. “Good call.”

“Okay,” Spidey muttered, extending his arm to the side in slow, jerky movements. “Sit down, feet flat against my ribs. Then you gotta take my wrist and just … slowly pull it straight towards you. Until I tell you to stop.”

Johnny stared at where he knew Spidey’s uncovered eye had to be hidden in the near-darkness. “What?”

“Just do it, please. It really fucking hurts.”

“No, yeah, sorry. I said I got you, and I do! I promise. But … are you sure that’s how you do it? What if you’ve got broken ribs? I don’t wanna crush you! I could puncture your lung!”

“You won’t, trust me. Just keep …. keep going … in case I pass out, yeah?”

“What?” Johnny repeated in an increasingly hysteric tone. 

“I really don’t wanna have to do it a second time. Please, Johnny. Just … just …”

“Okay,” Johnny breathed, gingerly sitting down beside poor Spidey, placing his legs on either side of his outstretched arm. “Okay. It’s going to be alright. Don't worry; I’ve got you.”

Spidey released several shaky breaths but was otherwise silent as Johnny touched his feet to Spidey’s torso and took his hand. His fingers fit around Spidey’s wrist easily, but the web shooter poked Johnny's palm, which seemed weirdly appropriate, considering he was about to subject the most perfect person on Earth to even more pain. 

This was, of course, also not how Johnny had pictured holding hands with Spidey, but maybe that was on him for having unrealistic expectations on dating a badass vigilante. He could do this, though. Johnny was a superhero. He was absolutely up to the task. He would be the best damn partner Spidey could ever want. 

Johnny planted his feet, gritted his teeth and pulled. 

Spidey, bless his heart, did not pass out. He didn’t even scream. All that left his mouth was a high-pitched whine, and even that had to fight its way up his throat as he finally gave a thumbs-up with his good hand. Spidey was hardcore like that. God, Johnny wanted to make a nest inside his ribcage and live there. 

“Thanks,” Spidey croaked, webbing his injured arm against his rapidly moving torso before extending his free hand. “Help me up?”

“Yeah,” Johnny said in a wobbly voice that really undermined the persona he was trying to build here — an immovable, solid rock for Spidey to lean on. A really, really hot rock. Charming and witty. Suave. Certainly not stammering. 

There was only one way to salvage this. Johnny shifted to his knees, gathered Spidey’s tense body into his arms and then tried not to show how much he struggled getting to his feet from a kneel. Maybe he should start lifting weights. In the name of love.

“Johnny,” Spidey pleaded, fumbling for purchase at Johnny’s skintight suit as he finally managed to straighten up. “I don’t wanna die.”

“You are not gonna die,” Johnny promised, flaming on his legs with more precision than he ever had afforded his powers before. He secured Spidey against his chest and took off as fast as he dared. “I’m gonna take you to the Baxter Building. Don’t worry; Reed’s gonna fix you up.”

“No!” Spidey gasped, flinging out an arm. His web connected with the corner of a nearby building, and Spidey wrenched himself away from Johnny’s loving embrace.

“Fuck,” Johnny gasped as he stopped in midair, just in time to watch a one-armed Spidey try and fail to round a corner. He smacked into the façade sideways, rattling four stories’ worth of windows, and then just stuck there, breathing heavily. 

“What the hell was that about?” Johnny shrieked as he came to float next to Spidey. “You need help!”

“What, this?” Spidey rasped, clutching his shoulder. “Nuh-uh. I’ll be fine. But only so long as the Invisible Woman doesn’t find out I got anywhere near you. You can just leave me here. I’ll make it home.”

“Someone’s gonna have to scrape you off their windshield,” Johnny pointed out. “At least let me take you to a hospital.”

Spidey barked out a laugh. “Yeah, right. Might as well drop me off at the nearest precinct.”

Johnny huffed in frustration. “Alright, no hospitals. But listen, Spidey. I could totally sneak you into my room to patch you up. Nobody’d have to know!”

“Absolutely not.” Spidey shook his head frantically and nearly brained himself on the bricks. “You’re really not the sneaky type. Don’t worry about it. I’ll just go home and sleep it off.”

Johnny placed both hands on his hips. “That is a terrible idea!”

“No, I do it all the time,” Spidey said much too lightly. “I heal really quickly. It’s fine.”

“What if you get jumped on your way home? You can’t fight like this.”

Spidey pressed his back against the bricks so he could cross his good arm over his chest. “Can too.”

“Can’t.”

“Ca— whoa!” Spidey slipped down several feet to avoid the fistful of sparks Johnny flung at him. The window he landed on squeaked horribly, and light spilled into the interior through an open door. 

“Now we’ve got an audience,” Johnny pointed out. “Maybe they’ll even want to take our picture, which they will post online where my sister will definitely see it. You should probably let me take you away before that happens.”

“Why do you have to make this so difficult?” Spidey whined. “I don’t need a babysitter. I can totally look after myself.”

With a jolt, Johnny very unexpectedly and very clearly realized that Spidey was only a teenager, just like him. After the initial shock, his heart burst into flames, perhaps not quite just metaphorically. 

“I —” Jonny breathed. 

Spidey rolled around the edge of the building just before a full bucket’s worth of water splashed down the window front. Johnny’s flaming body sizzled where some of it splattered him.

“Shut the fuck up!” roared a guy from up above, shaking his fist at Johnny from the fire escape.

“Chill!” Johnny shouted back. “We’re just —”

“A couple of fucking menaces is what you are!” the guy cut in, drawing his arm back as if he was winding up to throw the empty bucket. “I got fucking work in fucking three hours!”

“Sorry,” Johnny muttered distractedly, both hands raised. He floated around the edge of the building to find Spidey plastered flat against the wall, his tattered mask rolled up to his nose so he could take open-mouthed breaths. Johnny was going to dream about his mouth for years to come — puffy, split lips and all. It should’ve been illegal to look this hot, battered and bruised. 

“Alright,” Spidey squeezed out through wheezing breaths. “You can take me up to the roof. But that’s it.”

“And I get to patch you up,” Johnny demanded, feigning confidence.

“Sure,” Spidey gasped. “You got a fireproof first-aid kit stashed somewhere in that skintight suit?”

“It’s not too tight, is it?” Johnny asked, turning around in midair to show off his backside. It took a bit of neck-contortion to maintain eye contact with Spidey at the same time but Johnny managed it through sheer determination. 

The response was nothing but another wheeze, so Johnny closed the gap. Spidey’s body peeled off the building top to bottom, flopping into Johnny’s outstretched arms. 

“Welcome aboard Storm Air. This is your captain speaking,” Johnny announced cheerfully. Spidey totally snickered. His nose bumped Johnny's collarbone, and his good hand landed on Johnny’s shoulder as they ascended. 

Sadly, flying up to the roof took all of two seconds, and then Johnny had to set him down on top of an air conditioning unit. On the plus side, Spidey’s hand stuck to Johnny’s uniform when he tried to release him, and Spidey had to remove his fingers one by one, tongue wedged between his teeth. Johnny, standing between Spidey’s open legs, had to concentrate very deliberately on keeping the heat inside his chest from spreading. 

“Sorry, thanks,” Spidey muttered, rolling his mask down before tipping his head back to face him. 

“Damn, your suit’s really sticky.” Johnny chuckled to cloak his disappointment. If it were up to him, Spidey could stick to him all day and all night and also all over. 

“No, that’s umm …” Spidey cleared his throat. “Me. I stick through the suit. I know it’s —”

Johnny’s mouth fell open. “Holy shit, that’s so cool!” 

“Um.”

“I bet you never drop your phone. I already melted three. Sue’s gonna make me buy the next one with my allowance. Sometimes she’s really mean.”

Spidey snorted. “I take it you’ve never let go of something a second after you should’ve. I’m on my thirteenth phone in two years. This one has buttons.”

“Ugh, gross.” Johnny shuddered. “How do you Snapchat?”

Spidey actually laughed, followed immediately by a groan, hand pressed against his rib cage. Johnny winced in sympathy, mentally berating himself for being too distractingly charming when he should’ve been focused on Spidey’s injuries. 

“Alright, what do we need?” he asked in a disgustingly serious tone. This was his time to shine, his chance to show Spidey what he was worth. “Bandages, obviously.”

“Fruit pies,” Spidey suggested as his stomach growled in agreement. 

"Disinfectant. That’s important.”

“Something with lots of peanuts. Snickers or something.” Spidey cocked his head. “You’re buying, right?”

Johnny hummed. “Gauze pads,” he added, gently skirting the suit’s frayed edges, which framed the giant slash leading from Spidey’s shoulder to his elbow.

“Can you do Hot Pockets?” Spidey gestured at the flame emblem on Johnny’s chest, stopping short of tapping it. “Heat them up? With your hands?”

“Any god damn microwave can do Hot Pockets,” Johnny said indignantly. 

“Sure, if you like them frozen on the inside and scorching on the outside,” Spidey said. “Don’t believe everything the media tells you. Ads are not real life.”

“I’ve had Hot Pockets before,” Johnny argued. “In real life. Before I got my powers.”

“Nah,” Spidey said dismissively. “Whatever gourmet thing your private chef made doesn’t count, Richie Rich.”

“I’m not rich,” Johnny pointed out in a truly uncharacteristic move. Not typically something you’d announce while trying to woo the love of your life, right? It seemed like the right option with Spidey, though. The guy clearly held some resentment. 

“The Rolls-Royce I smashed says otherwise.”

“It wasn’t a —” Johnny had to take a deep breath so he wouldn’t get worked up about something guaranteed to hurt his case. “My sister's fiancé is rich,” he said slowly. “We only moved in with him like three years ago. Before that, we struggled like basically anyone else. I owned four pairs of shoes. We only went on vacation every three years or so. To Philly!”

Spidey made a very strange noise somewhere between a cough and a laugh and also a groan. “What a struggle!” he said. “Can’t imagine the hardship. Philly, you say?”

Johnny couldn’t help but pout a bit. “I can tell you’ve never been to Philly.”

“Dude, I’ve never even left the city.” Spidey froze and then added in a hushed voice, “Except that one time Vulture kidnapped me to Jersey, but I’m working very hard on suppressing that memory. My point stands, though.”

“Spidey, I promise I did not grow up rich,” Johnny said gravely. “This is common knowledge. There were pictures of my childhood home in Teen Vogue last year. They’re on the internet.”

“I don’t follow celebrity gossip.”

“When l by came to introduce myself after I got my powers, that thing with Goblin? You already knew who I was!” Johnny pointed out. 

“Yeah, because you’re not just a celebrity now, are you?” Spidey gestured at Johnny’s chest. “You’re the boy on fire.”

“But you remembered me from my birthday party,” Johnny insisted. “That was almost a year before I turned into this.”

“Fine,” Spidey relented. “I knew who you were before you burst into flames.” He held up a finger. “But only because your fans kept throwing stuff and yelling at me for ‘ruining Johnny’s life’. That sorta thing kinda sticks. I just assumed you posted your beef with me on Snapchat.”

“That’s what Twitter is for,” Johnny said. “And I haven't said a bad word about you ever in my life. I would never. Ever.”

“Huh,” Spidey said, kicking his feet against the AC unit with a bang bang bang. One of his knees brushed Johnny’s hip, who had to take an inconspicuous step back before he burst into flames — or worse. 

“I hope my … uh …” Johnny hesitated, grimaced and — in lieu of a better word because he had never bothered too hard to find one — continued, “— ‘fans’ weren’t too mean to you?”

“One of them threw a tin of paint at me when I was in line for a hot dog,” Spidey said with a shrug. His legs had gone still, kept in place by the length of his good arm braced across both knees. “Don’t ask me why she had it with her, ready to throw.”

Johnny winced, feeling oddly responsible. He tried to lighten the mood, even if Spidey didn’t seem particularly bothered. “What color?”

“Just like the car I smashed, which was totally not a Rolls-Royce.” 

“Royal Maroon,” Johnny said, nodding, at the same time Spidey said, “Red.”

Johnny swallowed the argument he had queued up regarding the intricate differences between Royal Maroon and plain old red and forced himself to keep a straight face. “Was it hard to clean?”

“For the people behind me who got hit when I flipped out of the way? Definitely.”

Johnny snorted. Spidey kicked his shin, but his voice was tinged with amusement. “Don’t laugh. The Bugle blamed me. People tried to sue me for damages.”

Huh. Johnny did remember reading about that, actually. Would’ve been hard not to, considering he was subscribed to any and all Spidey news tickers. There’d been no mention of Johnny’s involvement in the paint incident, though. 

“Ah, so that’s why you wear a mask,” he said instead of revealing any of this to the very object of his affection. Fanatic stalker was not a good look. 

“Yep,” Spidey agreed easily. “Now go and get me something to eat.”

“I’m going,” Johnny agreed. “To get first aid supplies.”

“Hot Pockets.”

“Bandages.”

“If you promise to bring me pie, I’ll consider not sneaking off the moment your back is turned.”

“Hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re a damn menace,” Johnny said, pointing a flaming finger at him. “Stay.”

“Pie!” Spidey shouted as Johnny took off, weirdly delighted. It sounded a bit like ‘Bye!’ actually, but Johnny vehemently told himself Spidey wouldn’t just bail … a third time. 

Shit. Time to hustle. 

~o~

When Johnny touched down on the roof fifteen minutes later, Spidey wasn’t where he had left him. He could tell it was the right building by the footprints — two for himself, scorched into the tar, and two for Spidey, denting the AC unit. No sign of the patient, though.

“Aw, man,” Johnny grumbled, kicking the AC right between its two dents. “That little —”

He never got to find out what loving insult his brain would’ve come up with, on account of getting wacked squarely on the ass. Johnny twisted, yelping, to find himself still absolutely alone on the roof. His first thought was an invisible Sue, of course, and the second a visceral ‘Ew, no’. They weren’t that weird.

Johnny shuffled both grocery bags into one arm so he could rub his backside, and promptly got his hand stuck to his butt. He had to ignite his legs to free himself, but whatever, who cared? Not Johnny. He was too busy scanning the surrounding buildings for his sticky sweetheart. 

He spotted the webbing first, two silvery strands of it fluttering in the air above a skyscraper to the right. Spidey popped into focus a moment after that, part of the backdrop one second and the center of Johnny’s attention the next. He sat propped up against the rooftop exit, legs outstretched, and his good arm raised no higher than his head, waving him over in jerky movements.

“Sorry,” Spidey croaked when Johnny landed next to him. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Windier than I thought. I was aiming for your back.”

“No worries,” said Johnny, who had already added the feeling of Spidey remote-slapping his ass to his stash of core memories. “Why the move?”

“Better lighting?” Spidey offered, gesturing half-heartedly towards the single flickering light tube above the door.

“Uh-hu,” Johnny said, looking from the abandoned webbing to the swath of displaced rooftop gravel to the vigilante-shaped dent in the door. Finally, his eyes snapped back to Spidey, who was massaging his recently reset shoulder. “Here,” he said, dropping a perfectly heated burrito into Spidey’s lap. “Even though you don’t deserve it. Trying to take care of you feels like chasing a feral stray cat that’s got its head stuck in a jar.”

“Yes, I’m a menace, I’m sorry, thanks,” Spidey babbled, tearing the tinfoil open with his teeth and cramming approximately half the burrito into his mouth in one go. Unfortunately, this wasn’t nearly the turn-off it should have been, and Johnny, still reeling as he tried to process when Spidey had even shoved up his mask, had to redirect his attention to his grocery bag. 

“Do you always just eat unsealed food that someone hands you?” he asked as he rummaged around for the disinfectant. 

“As if you’d poison me,” Spidey said through a mouthful of food. “You totally could’ve burned me to a crisp if you had seized the opportunity about twenty minutes ago.”

Johnny froze because … Holy shit. Spidey trusted him! With his life!! Johnny was going to patch him up better than he’d ever been patched up before. 

“Also, I’ve got a danger sense,” Spidey prattled on as he absolutely wrecked his food. “That’s how I evaded that bucket of paint. And also the usual stuff people throw at me. You know —” he rotated his wrist, scattering burrito filling to the four winds “— food, knives, bullets, etcetera.”

“How do you know it works for non-smashy things?” Johnny pressed out, desperately not picturing people trying to murder the love of his life. With the bottle of disinfectant now in his hand, he knelt next to Spidey. 

“First-hand experience,” Spidey said by-the-by, like this was just as ordinary an occurrence as the fans staking out the Baxter Building in hopes of getting the chance to take a selfie with Johnny and sniff his hair a bit. 

The bottle creaked in Johnny’s grip. “Someone tried to poison you?”

Spidey shrugged and crumbled the empty tinfoil into a tiny ball. “Oh, all the time.” 

“Holy shit, Spidey!”

“It’s fine,” Spidey said, using a web to snatch the second grocery bag. He set it down in his lap so he could use his immobilized arm to hold it open while he rummaged with his good hand. “Oh, nice! Brand-name Snickers and M&Ms! You’re my new favorite person!” He paused. “Well, top five!”

“Murder attempts are not fine,” Johnny pointed out, oddly breathless. His madly beating heart was trying to escape the furnace inside his ribcage, and Johnny had to ignite his hand to give the heat somewhere to go. He held it a safe distance away from Spidey and used the light to inspect him from head to toe, triaging his injuries. Beaten up as he was, Johnny could almost distract himself from what a killer bod he had.

“I don’t think they’re trying to kill me,” Spidey clarified, shivering slightly. He ripped the peanut M&Ms open with his teeth (why was that so hot?) and grimaced when some of them clattered to the roof. Then he sighed, put the bag down in his lap and started shoveling candy into his mouth. “I suspect that six times out of ten they are just trying to knock me out so they can hand me over to the cops. Because of the bounty.” 

“Those odds are really not as great as you make them sound!”

“Pretty sure the odds are in my favor,” Spidey said. He’d somehow shoved all the food into one bulging cheek, expertly articulating himself through the empty side. How anyone had ever thought he was an adult was entirely beyond Johnny. His parents probably had to remind him to wash the blood off his hands before dinner every single time without fail.

“Barely!” Johnny argued, brandishing his flaming index finger. “And also, actually, not at all. The ‘good’ outcome here is people turning you in for money.”

“Yeah, but that’s normal. I don’t think your sister’s gonna bother with the cops. If she finds out I’ve been associating with you, she’s just gonna squish me. Speaking of, you’ve got until I’ve eaten all these snacks, and then I’m gone. I don’t wanna get squished by a good guy.”

“She’s not gonna hurt you,” Johnny insisted, rocking back onto his heels so he could sterilize both his hands without scorching Spidey. 

Spidey scoffed and tipped the remaining M&Ms into his mouth straight from the bag.

“No, really,” Johnny said as he doused a cotton ball in disinfectant. “She’s my legal guardian, and we’ve got the government to answer to, so of course she’s gotta pretend that she disapproves. But she doesn’t really.”

Spidey didn’t even flinch when Johnny pulled aside his torn sleeve and started dabbing at his flesh wound. He was busy peeling a Snickers out of its packaging. “She told me in no uncertain terms to stay away from you.”

Johnny pressed a gauze pad onto the wound and fixed it, slipping his fingers underneath the fabric of the suit to smooth down the edges of the medical tape. “Subtext, man!”

“The subtext was that she’ll put me through a wall if I so much as breathe in your direction.”

“Eh,” Johnny said, igniting one fingertip to check his handiwork. “If we keep hanging out, she’s bound to realize you’re not going to corrupt me.”

“Yeah, right,” Spidey said as he stuffed his trash into the grocery bag. “Didn’t you hear that asshole down there calling you a menace?”

“Eh, cut him some slack. He was just tired,” Johnny argued, feeling strongly compelled to defend the guy who had called them — Spidey and him — a couple. A couple! Of menaces, sure, but who cared? Johnny could absolutely be a menace as long as Spidey was right there with him. It could be their couple’s activity. Something to bond over. Johnny’s previously established rebel heart thoroughly agreed. 

“It’s New York; people are always tired or stressed or pissed off. If you hang out with me, they will let you feel it.”

“Or,” Johnny said, shifting so he could examine Spidey’s thigh next, “maybe I will rub off on you.” A boy could hope, right?

Spidey inhaled the two stray M&Ms he’d picked off his lap and lapsed into a mixture of choking, snorting and groaning in pain, hand pressed against his ribs. Unwilling to hurt him even further, Johnny gently patted Spidey’s sternum, which was admittedly more about support than assistance. 

“Keep dreaming, Torch,” Spidey wheezed. (As if Johnny needed further encouragement. He wasn’t going to stop dreaming about Spidey anytime soon, that much was sure.) “But don’t expect me to play nice with the authorities.”

“Never,” Johnny promised, hooking his fingers underneath the ripped fabric on either side of a gash in Spidey’s upper thigh. 

Spidey dropped his Snickers to snatch Johnny’s wrist. “What are you doing?”

“Sorry,” Johnny said, raising the hand that wasn’t trapped in a vice, and telling himself he wasn’t hoping from the bottom of his … heart that Spidey’s fingers would leave bruises. “I’m not trying to cop a feel, I promise. But I gotta rip your suit a bit more so I can bandage it.”

“I gotta sew that back together again,” Spidey protested, even as he (regrettably) released him. 

“Spidey, buddy. This thing is toast. Garbage.” Johnny gestured at the entirety of the suit. “More holes than fabric. Just toss it, sentimental value be damned.” 

“Yeah, right. ‘Just toss it.’ Where am I gonna get a new suit?”

“Where’d you get this one?” Johnny asked, already drafting a glowing thank-you letter in his head. It took a lot to make spandex look good, but Spidey’s suit guy had certainly managed. Then again, he had a feeling Spidey could wear a burlap sack and still be the hottest person in the city. 

Spidey took a second to retrieve his half-eaten chocolate bar and finish it. “Broke into Stark Industries and pilfered a bunch of scrap fabric,” he said like they were talking about a trip to the bodega. 

Johnny couldn’t help but gape at him. “You stole from Iron Man?” 

Spidey shrugged. “It was already in the dumpster. They were gonna destroy it anyway, so really I kinda just took it off their hands?”

“That’s so cool!” Johnny breathed. “You’ve got to teach me!”

“What?” Spidey squeaked. “No. I can’t take you on a B&E. Your sister’s gonna kill me for real!”

“Come on,” Johnny said, demonstratively beginning his work on Spidey’s thigh. “You owe me for the patch-up.”

“Nope,” Spidey said, tossing the empty grocery bag at Johnny’s head before laboriously pulling himself up by a hastily flung web and with no regard to his half-bandaged wound. “I endured this so you would stop nagging, and it’s totally over now. All the snacks are gone.”

Johnny got to his feet as well, just in case he had to catch Spidey, should he faint or something. He was a hero, after all. A completely selfless hero. 

“Are you aware that you’ve got a really bad case of helpless helper syndrome?”

“I’m not helpless,” Spidey protested, snatching the medical tape from Johnny and unceremoniously winding it around his thigh twice. Since he was still one-handed, he then pulled the tape up to his face, ripped it with his teeth and tossed the roll at Johnny so he could wrap the free-hanging piece another two times. “I repeatedly asked you to let me handle this myself,” he added, pulling down his mask. “You’re mother-henning.”

“It means you’ve got a helper complex but don’t know how to ask for help even if you really need it.”

Spidey crossed his good arm over the webbed one. “I don’t need help. I can look out for myself.”

Johnny pointed the tape at him. “Spoken like a true helpless helper.”

“What do you know?”

“A lot, actually,” Johnny said. He wasn’t just a gorgeous face, alright? He knew things! “That government psychologist warned us this might happen. Have you ever thought about talking to someone?”

“What, like a shrink?” Spidey’s one visible eyebrow scrunched up. His eye was nothing but a suspicious slit. “Didn’t we just establish that I’m flat-out broke?”

“Isn’t therapy covered by health insurance?” Johnny pointed out, fully aware that the chances of Spidey talking to a therapist were slim, even if it were free. 

Spidey couldn’t stop laughing hysterically for what felt like five minutes to Johnny’s bruised ego. 

“Okay, so I take it you don’t have health insurance,” Johnny concluded when Spidey finally simmered down on account of having to clutch his aching ribs. “But —”

Spidey flinched so hard he ended up with his back stuck to the wall, which Johnny thought was a rather dramatic reaction to a well-intentioned suggestion.

“Shit,” Spidey muttered, fishing an honest-to-God flip phone out of his waistband. (Realizing the suit was actually a two-piece was a goddamn revelation that would drastically improve Johnny’s less tame fantasies.)

“Heeeey,” Spidey greeted the lucky bastard who had his number. “I was just about to call you. Mhhm. Yeah, eleven, I know. Sorry. Mhhm … Yeah, not exactly...”

Spidey peered at Johnny, who wasn’t even gonna pretend he wasn’t listening, and shimmied further up the wall until he came to sit atop the rooftop exit. 

“Alright, so, the thing is —” A pause during which Spidey tapped his heels against the bricks. “Brooklyn. Yep. No, I was going to, promise! But I kinda ate it at the park and — no, I’m fine, just a few bruises.”

A pebble hit Johnny’s shoulder, which he took as a demand to get his grin under control while Spidey continued to spin his web of lies. 

“Yeah, no, I know. We took turns on Gwen’s board and —” Spidey broke off again, nodding along like a bobblehead. “Yup, I know. Yeah, if it weren’t attached, I’d forget that too.” 

Johnny snorted, earning himself another pebble to the chest. Spidey had wedged the phone between his cheek and shoulder so he could make the cutthroat gesture at him next. 

“No, I did go with Harry. But his board’s like a million bucks; there’s no way I’d even think about borrowing it. Gwen met up with us at the park. Yeah … Gee, what’s with the third degree tonight?”

Spidey made a shooing motion while he listened, which Johnny resolutely ignored. Spidey resorted to shimmying along the edge instead, as if another few feet of distance could buy him privacy.

“No, I know,” Spidey said quietly. “Me too. Listen, we’re on our way to Gwen’s. She’s gonna patch me up. Would it be alright if I stayed over? I promise I’ll be back in time for breakfast. Mmmm. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, you’re the best. Love you too.”

Spidey jabbed some god-damned buttons before he snapped his turn-of-the-century flip phone shut and flopped onto his back with a heavy groan, followed immediately by a pained hiss. 

“Wow,” Johnny said heavily, leaning his shoulder against the rooftop door next to Spidey’s dangling feet. “How many lies was that?”

Spidey’s voice came out muffled and defeated. “Don’t even start.” He heaved an endless breath and kicked Johnny’s shoulder. “Where did you tell your family you were going?”

“I just locked my door and jumped out the window.”

“Won’t they notice you’re gone?”

Johnny shrugged, jostling Spidey’s foot right back. “They don’t usually check up on me after midnight. Also, I’m basically an adult. And they know I can look after myself.”

“Must be nice,” Spidey muttered.

“You could talk to me,” Johnny offered after a beat of silence, trying not to sound too hopeful. “If you want. I’m really good at keeping secrets.” 

“Are you?” Spidey asked. “I’ve been told the whole world has seen your childhood home.”

“Not because I told them where to look,” Johnny argued. “And besides, who cares about a house? This is much more important. I would never betray your trust, Spidey.”

“I …” Spidey turned his head to squint at Johnny then, masked cheek smushed against the concrete. They were silent for a moment, holding the most intense eye contact Johnny had ever experienced — he kinda suspected that the smashed lens accounted for at least half the intensity. Then Spidey blinked and swiftly rolled off the stair enclosure and onto his feet. “Thanks for the help,” he said, dropping off the side of the roof before Johnny could reply.

Johnny made an aborted noise, heartbroken, and approached the ledge to stare into the night, searching in vain for a last glimpse of Spidey. Not even a single strand of webbing caught his eye to indicate in which direction Spidey had gone. Only Johnny remained, utterly alone again, mentally berating himself for foolishly thinking that —

“Ouch,” someone whined from directly below. When Johnny shuffled the last few steps forward so he could look straight down, he spotted Spidey, sticking to the building sideways with just one hand and the opposite foot, contorted like a pretzel. A really, really delicious pretzel.

“Hi again,” Johnny quipped as he flamed down beside him. “You good?”

“Peachy,” Spidey pressed out, tipping his head back so he could look at Johnny. In the light of Johnny’s flames, his body quivered. Once again, they regarded each other in silence — Spidey blinking sluggishly while Johnny restrained himself from simply plucking him off the bricks and taking him home for a proper patch-up. Finally, Spidey sighed and asked in a toneless voice, “Any chance you’re headed for Brooklyn?”

“Spidey, I could be headed for Australia if you asked me to.”

“That’s … kinda a lot, man,” Spidey huffed, verbally striking Johnny right in the solar plexus. “Brooklyn’s fine. Try not to be too conspicuous?”

“Yeah,” Johnny squeezed out through the tightness in his chest. Why’d he always have to be so intense whenever he was face to mask with Spidey? If Spidey ended up figuring him for some kind of crazy stalker, Johnny would be left with no option but to exile himself to Alaska. Or maybe somewhere he’d been before. Like outer space, for example. “Alright,” he muttered as he gathered Spidey up by his shoulders and knees. “I’ve got you. You can let go.”

Spidey totally groaned into Johnny’s shoulder the second he was able to relax his hold. He coughed once to cover it up and then ordered in a tight voice, “Just drop me off at Prospect Park. Try not to set anything on fire, or they’re one-hundred percent gonna pin it on me.”

Johnny could totally not burn down the park for Spidey.

Chapter Text

Johnny was no coward. He also wasn’t ashamed to admit that he flinched when Sue stomped into the kitchen, carrying the Leaning Tower of Daily Papers in both arms.

“Four trees,” Sue hissed the second she spotted Johnny over the topmost paper. Ben, who’d been leaning against the breakfast bar beside him, shoveling wheat cakes while wearing a fuzzy pink bathrobe, performed a noisy rockslide to the other end of the kitchen, cackling madly. Sue didn’t even spare him a single glance. “Two benches and a trash can!”

Johnny raised both hands in self-defense. “It wasn’t —”

“A pavilion!” 

“It just got scorched a bit!” Johnny argued. “There wasn’t even any structural damage.” He knew this for a fact because it had held fast when Spidey had used the columns to slingshot himself at the lizard dude that had jumped them at one in the morning like the total jackass he was.

“That pavilion is over a hundred years old! You severely damaged a historic landmark!”

Johnny pouted. “It sounds really bad when you say it like that.”

“It is bad, Johnny! Really, really bad.” Sue slammed the stack of newspapers onto Johnny’s plate without a trace of remorse, obliterating the dishware and flattening his breakfast. “Explain,” she demanded.

“Holy shit,” Johnny breathed, staring down at the topmost paper. “We made the cover?”

“You made all the covers,” Sue said in an icy tone. “Now explain to me why you destroyed a public park with a wanted delinquent vigilante when I explicitly told you to stay away from him?”

“You actually bought printed newspapers?” Johnny flipped through the stack with steadily growing awe, insanely glad he’d fixed his hair before he’d gone to find Spidey. “Oh my God.” Johnny swiveled his barstool around so he could crush Sue against his chest. “Thank you, Sis! You’re the best!”

“Excuse me?” Sue hissed, her tone contradicted by the tender embrace she’d automatically returned.

“We look so freaking good together!” Johnny declared, letting go of her so he could point at the picture of himself with Spidey’s good arm slung across his shoulders, the Lizard expertly webbed up between two scorched columns in the background.

“Jonathan.” Sue pointed a finger at him. “This is the most moronic thing you have ever done. And that is really saying something.”

“We got attacked by that Lizard Guy!” Johnny protested, stabbing a finger at the picture. “What was I supposed to do? Step aside and watch him murder Spidey? Dude was already banged up good. No way he could’ve fought off the Lizard on his own.”

“Call us! You’re supposed to call us!”

“I didn’t have my comm.”

She slapped his shoulder. “You’ve got to take your communicator with you when you leave! While we’re at it, you’re also supposed to tell us where you go! Sneaking out the window in the middle of the night is not alright!”

“I am seventeen!” Johnny squawked. “I’m practically an adult!”

“Your voice still breaks,” Ben rudely cut in, gesturing at Johnny’s face with the stack of wheat cakes he’d speared with his barbecue fork. “Do you even gotta shave?”

“What kind of question is that?! I’m not a giant rock, of course I gotta shave.” Johnny was gonna grow the most majestic mustache. That would show Ben!

“You are a child!” Sue insisted, so sure of herself that she didn’t even pick up where Ben had left off. “You haven’t even finished school yet!”

“You don’t even let me go to an actual school!”

“You know what I mean!”

“If I wanted to, I could totally get emancipated. I am a literal superhero!” Johnny let his hair go up in flames purely because he knew she hated it.

“Indoors!” Sue protested, putting his fire out with one of her vacuum-filled force fields. “This is precisely the reason why nobody in their right mind would emancipate you.”

“Wanna bet?!” 

“I’d love to,” Sue said cooly. “Let me know if you stick with it long enough to figure out how to start the process. In the meantime, I’ve got a meeting with the Parks Department to fix your mess.” 

“Want me to come with so they can thank me for preventing further Lizard damage?” Johnny asked, pointedly tapping the headline, which was actually worded incredibly favorably (as long as you weren’t Spidey). 

‘Human Torch apprehends Lizard,’ it read, and then right underneath: ‘Spider-Man desecrates priceless historic landmark’. Surely, Spidey wasn’t gonna blame him, right? Johnny had only defended him, after all. It wasn’t like the Bugle had approached him and asked him to approve the headline. 

“I’m sure they’d love to hear why you had to burn down Prospect Park,” Sue shot back. “Unfortunately, you are grounded. Again.”

“Fine,” Johnny said flatly. “Whatever.”

“No electronics.”

Johnny shrugged. “Don’t care.”

“And stay away from Spider-Man. Permanently.”

“No.”

Sue threw her hands up in exasperation. “Johnny, he’s a criminal.”

“He’s a hero!” 

“Vigilantism is illegal! Also, don’t you see how creepy it is for a grown man to repeatedly seek out a seventeen-year-old boy?”

Alright, so Johnny was pretty sure — almost convinced, even — that Spidey was at most a year older than him. And he could’ve told Sue that, pointed to the evidence (curfew on a Friday night, anyone?) and convinced her. But! Sue didn’t have a leg to stand on, did she? Who was she to lecture him about inappropriate age gaps? A fucking hypocrite, that was who!

Also, there was still that one percent chance that Spidey was actually a thirty-something in a very codependent relationship with his mommy, and if that was the case, he didn’t want to give Sue any ammunition. Because, cards on the table, that probably wouldn’t stop Johnny from wanting to date the fuck out of him. 

“Spidey has never sought me out,” Johnny clarified, arms crossed. “But alright, let’s go there. Remember how you met Reed when you were eighteen?”

“O-ho-ho,” Ben hollered, clacking his hands together in delight.

Sue’s face froze in a glacial expression. “Excuse me?”

“Yep, eighteen,” Johnny repeated. “And how old was he, huh? Twenty-four,” he added before Sue could divert the conversation. “He had two doctorates already.”

“Those two situations are not remotely the same.”

“So why was that okay but my thing with Spidey isn’t?” Johnny demanded, putting a flaming finger right in front of her face. “Is it because of the gay? Shame on you, Susan!”

Sue clamped a force-field-clad hand around Johnny’s finger to extinguish it. “You’re not seriously comparing my long-term relationship to your harebrained crush on a complete stranger whose real name you don’t even know.”

“Yeah, I am." 

Ben crashed one rocky hand over his equally rocky mouth purely to make a ruckus and remind them that he was still there.

“Reed is a respected scientist.”

“Spidey’s a hero of the people!”

“I notice you don’t claim that he’s respected.” 

“People respect him!” Johnny insisted. “People less uptight than you.”

“Spider-Man is a wanted vigilante with no regard to the collateral damage he regularly causes. It is not uptight to demand accountability for the consequences of his actions.”

“Accountability? All he does is try to help people, and as thanks, they attack and try to poison him! Is that his fault as well?” 

“Oh, is that what he’s told you? I thought he was respected? Face it, Johnny. That man is trying to manipulate you!”

“Into doing what, huh? Buying him peanut M&Ms? Heating up hot pockets?”

“You and him against the rest of the world!” Sue snapped. “Poor, misunderstood Spider-Man, hm? How could anyone possibly understand what he’s going through? But wait, there you are, bending over backwards to show him that you are not like the others. The only person Spider-Man can truly trust, right?”

“What’s so bad about Spidey trusting me?”

“You are as stubborn as you are hot-headed,” Sue said. “Once he’s got you invested, you can’t ever leave him, no matter what he does. Because he needs you, right? And you don’t give up on people who need you. But he doesn’t, Johnny. He doesn’t need you. That’s what he doesn’t tell you.”

“He does need me!” Johnny protested, slapping the newspaper. “Look at him! He’s tiny! The Lizard smashed two benches with him!”

“The trash can, too?” Ben asked, as if he couldn’t see the fucking claw marks in the picture.

“I have looked at him! While he was lifting a car with his bare hands!”

Johnny scoffed. “He wears gloves!”

“It’s a figure of speech,” Sue snapped. “He could break you in half. Easily.”

“Like a twig,” Ben supplied.

“I could burn him to a crisp! He said so himself!”

Ben wiggled a creaky hand. “Eh.”

“Oh, he said so,” Sue parroted. “God knows someone who conceals his identity to break the law every day could never lie to a seventeen-year-old.”

“He didn’t even want my help!” Johnny shouted. “He had a dislocated shoulder and countless open wounds and I still had to blackmail him into letting me patch him up, alright? Because you scared him off! There’s no way he’s trying to manipulate me!”

“And did you maybe stop to consider why he would be scared of me?”

“Because you are clearly a crazy person!”

“Because he knows it is inappropriate, that’s why!”

“Fucking hell,” Johnny hissed, jumping off the barstool and narrowly missing Sue’s stupid tiny feet. “Ben,” he snapped, spreading the newspapers out on the countertop. “Hand me the scissors. I’ve got some scrap-booking to do.” 

“Fuck you too, Kid,” Ben grumbled, waving his massive, unwieldy hands at him. Whoops. Since beefing with one team member was already demanding enough, Johnny roughly patted Ben’s elbow in a silent apology on his way to fetch the scissors from the knife block himself.

Sue harrumphed as she stomped out of the kitchen, sending him a glare that Johnny steadfastly ignored. She could lecture him until she was blue in the face but he wasn’t fooled. Why would anyone buy an actual printed magazine if they didn’t want him to have these pictures?

“You see it, right?” Johnny asked Ben, shuffling through the papers until he found one of Spidey flipping over his flaming shoulder, the athletic curve of him accentuated by the fiery glow of Johnny’s body. “Like, we look super hot together, right? The ultimate power couple, you could say. With my face and his a—?”

“Jar!” Ben rumbled. 

“Abs!” Johnny insisted as he fished a Jackson out of his pocket and stuffed it into the Spidey Jar sitting atop the hood above the stove, buying himself credit to rave about his love nineteen more times. 

Ben groaned deeply and at length. “One a’ those days, eh? Fuckin’ fantastic.” He grabbed the cast-iron roasting pan he was using as a plate and slid Johnny aside to clear his way out of the kitchen. “I’ll be anywhere else.” 

“No, wait! I wasn’t finished!” 

“I figured.”

“I already paid! You’re contractually obligated to listen! Like — did I tell you how he just ripped off the sling he made for his arm when the Lizard ambushed us? With one hand, like it was nothing! Hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Do me a favor and tell someone who might care,” Ben said over his shoulder. “Like that web-head, for example.”

“Really?” Johnny breathed. “Do you honestly think he would? Care about me liking him?” Truth be told, Johnny had his doubts. Sure, he was attractive, but what did he have to offer besides that? Spidey was the most perfect creature in the universe — surely, he wasn’t so shallow that good looks were all it took to win him over. 

“The sooner you tell him, the sooner he can file for that restraining order,” Ben said solemnly. “Would be doing all of us a huge favor!”

Johnny glared holes into the back of Ben’s fuzzy bathrobe, and not just figuratively. The gap between the words ‘ROCK’ and ‘SOLID’ spanning Ben’s shoulders began to smolder, and Johnny briefly considered putting the fire out before it could flare up. It wasn’t like Ben would get hurt, though, was it? And he sure as hell deserved it — even just for wearing that crime against fashion if not for anything else.

~o~

Spidey’s suit looked much worse in the daylight, despite his best (and rather eye-catching) efforts to salvage it. His mask was intact but several shades lighter than the rest of his suit. Due to how horribly the two reds clashed, it was glaringly obvious where one ended and the other began. To patch the biggest gash across his shoulder, he’d used a long strip of duct tape, for heaven’s sake. 

Johnny tried to keep his expression judgement-free as he landed on the roof beside Spidey, who seemed to be watching the sunset. 

“Are we breaking in tonight?” Johnny asked, followed by a yelp as two webs caught him around one ankle and the opposite wrist. 

“Holy fuck,” Spidey hissed, straightening out of his impromptu crouch instead of yanking Johnny off the roof. “How the fuck did you manage to sneak up on me?”

“I don’t know,” Johnny said, burning himself out of his web restraints. “I wasn’t trying to.”

“Wonderful,” Spidey muttered. “What are you doing here?”

“Providing backup for your heist.” Johnny cracked his knuckles to signal how eager he was to get started. “Like we discussed.”

“No! Haven’t you seen the news? Like, any of them?”

“Caught a glimpse,” said Johnny, expertly concealing how he’d spent the last three days cutting out articles and arranging them from most to least flattering. He’d also decided on their mash-up couple’s name — SpideyStorm — which was both cool and classy, if he did say so himself. 

“Then why on earth would you wanna hang out with me again?”

“I want to break into Stark Industries with you,” Johnny said confidently. “You shouldn’t do it alone.”

“I do everything alone.”

“But now you don’t have to. What if you get caught?”

“Taking you along is what would get me caught in the first place.” Spidey hopped onto a nearby antenna and gestured down at Johnny. “When I think stealth, I don’t exactly picture a five-foot-ten chatterbox in flames.”

“You know how tall I am?” Johnny said in an embarrassingly husky voice. 

“That’s not weird!” Spidey insisted, crossing his arms tightly. “I’ve got a great sense of proportion. Height. I — It's one of my superpowers.”

“Is it?”

“We’re the same height! That’s how I know!”

“We are?” Johnny breathed, eyeballing Spidey’s crouched form. “You looked quite a bit smaller in our newspaper pictures. I think I remember hoisting you up a bit.”

Here was the thing, though: Johnny was five-ten on paper. The smooth, glossy paper of Vanity Fair, for example. In actuality? Not so much — at least not yet. So, to think that Johnny was actually five-ten, Spidey either had to have researched him, or … Yeah, no, Johnny was gonna go with Option A. Spidey was a fan. 

“I wasn’t straight!” Spidey insisted, neatly enabling Johnny’s wishful thoughts. “I mean — I couldn’t really stand … straight. Because at least three of my ribs were broken. That’s why I didn’t seem as tall.”

Johnny hovered upwards to meet him at eye level. “Another reason why you should let me provide backup. Well, a reason you should be in the hospital, actually, but since you’re not gonna go —” Johnny wiggled his fingers. “Backup.”

“Dude, your sister is so going to hunt me down.”

“Not if she doesn’t find out about this.”

“When has she ever not?” Spidey pointed out. “She’s three for three, man.”

“Not yet!”

“Yeah, I’m counting the initial Rolls-Royce incident. Plus Green Goblin plus Lizard makes three.”

“Fourth time is the charm,” Johnny said, smugly patting the Four on his chest before remembering he was wearing his second, much more flattering suit with the flame emblem instead. 

Spidey tipped his head back with a groan, giving Johnny a truly fantastic view of the slender curve of his throat. “Fine. You can be the lookout,” he finally said in a tone that allowed no argument. 

“Great!” Johnny beamed, stuffing his hand into his suit pocket. “I’ve got a spare comm so we can stay in cont—”

“Just stay here and look pretty,” Spidey cut in, grabbing the bar between his feet with one hand and letting himself drop. He changed his grip mid-fall, twisting his body to face away from Johnny and towards the fenced compound. 

Between the impressive display of athleticism and Spidey calling him pretty, Johnny completely forgot about the communications issue. He just hovered in place, watching in awe as Spidey circled the bar, steadily picking up speed. 

“Later, Torchy,” he called on his fourth go-around, and then launched into a triple somersault. He landed atop a high pole smack-dab in the middle of the compound without even jostling the attached surveillance cameras, fished a large heart-shaped leaf out of his waistband and webbed it to one of the lenses. Then he leaped onto the building's wall and vanished into a worryingly narrow air vent without breaking motion. 

On second thought, staying outside to keep watch did seem like a great use of Johnny’s talents. 

Johnny, hyper-aware of his very vital role in this heist, kept glancing between the vent, the door and all the courtyard-facing windows. A good five minutes passed during which an increasingly nervous Johnny started planning his impromptu rescue mission — stealth optional — before the vent inched open again. 

Spidey peeked out, scanning the courtyard twice before angling his face up at Johnny, who gave him two thumps-up. Exiting the vent was a far less graceful affair than entering it, and contained quite a bit of wiggling on Spidey’s part. Just when Johnny began to worry about possible injuries that might’ve been impeding him, Spidey fired a web at Johnny’s roof and wrenched himself free.

Johnny barely had time to flame out of the way before Spidey shoulder-rolled past him, leapt as the motion carried him across the tar, and swung himself up onto the antenna again, where he ended up in his trademark crouch. God, Johnny could watch him move all day. He once again thanked his lucky stars that YouTube was a thing that had provided him with several hours of (admittedly mostly grainy and/or blurry) material. 

“So, that was fun,” Johnny said cheerfully. 

“Yeah,” Spidey agreed, patting the side of the makeshift web-pack attached to his back. No wonder he’d barely fit through the vent on his way out. The thing easily doubled his circumference. “I take it all back, Torchy. You’re my good luck charm. Someone tossed a whole spool of Kevlar thread and a set of Titanium needles. Just when I was running out. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to sew Kevlar weave without the proper tools.”

“Glad to be of service.” Johnny beamed. “Maybe next time I could be of service inside? Promise to polish up my stealth ‘til then. I’ll get a camo suit. Or some cloaking tech.”

Spidey scoffed. “Awesome as that sounds, I don’t think you’re gonna fit through that vent.”

Since Johnny hadn’t really been banking on Spidey agreeing with his plan, this answer suited him just fine. Just watching Spidey squeeze through the vent had made Johnny feel awfully claustrophobic. He’d gladly pass any time of the day. The actual plan was to make Spidey feel guilty about denying him so he would be more likely to agree on a smaller scale. Psychology! One day, Johnny would be a master manipulator. 

Also, if he could make Spidey admit to researching his height like a regular fanboy, that would be cool as well. Oh God, did Spidey know his birthday?!

“Thought you said we were the same height?” Johnny said pointedly, floating up so he was eye level with Spidey, who notably had yet to straighten up ever since he’d made the claim. 

“But you’ve got massive shoulders,” Spidey insisted stubbornly. Johnny, who really wasn’t broad in any sense of the word, except maybe when he was standing next to Spidey, decided to take this as a compliment. 

“Fine, you win. I’ll stay on as your personal lookout,” Johnny very graciously conceded. The set of Spidey’s shoulders relaxed. Psychology! Time to advance. Cool as a cucumber, Johnny added, “Hey, wanna come back to the Baxter Building for a bit to celebrate?”

Immediately, Spidey tensed back up. “For the last time, Storm: No. Please don’t ask me again to visit the home of my future murderer.”

“She’s not gonna murder you.”

“Yet you knew exactly who I was referring to.”

“Because you’re paranoid about her. There’s no danger, though, because she’s not gonna catch us.”

“In her own home?”

“Exactly! She’d never expect you to be there. Psychology!”

Spidey managed to look skeptical even with the mask covering his whole face. Maybe it worked because Johnny could still remember the judgmental squint of his eye when it had been visible behind his cracked lens three nights ago. 

“Just yelling ‘Psychology’ doesn’t make it a smart plan.”

Johnny pouted. “What makes it a smart plan is knowing that nobody will notice you coming in if I open the window for you.”

“Don’t you live on the billionth floor? I don’t think those windows are designed to open.”

“I can fly. They’re not exactly worried about me accidentally falling to my death. My window opens now.”

“Somehow I don’t see your sister being okay with you just exiting through the window.”

“Well, she also wasn’t okay with me melting my way through the window three times, so she reconsidered in the end. Compromise.”

“And you’re telling me the Fantastic Four aren’t monitoring all the entrances.”

“Didn’t you just sneak into Stark Industries and steal some of the Avengers’ super-spandex without getting caught?”

“I wouldn’t call it stealing,” Spidey protested. “Dumpster diving isn’t illegal. If they really didn’t want me to take it, they shouldn’t have put that stuff in the regular trash in the first place.”

“Alright, you got me there,” Johnny acquiesced. “Let me rephrase: Didn’t you just break into Stark Industries without getting caught?”

“Yeah, but only for the common good. Can’t really fight crime in a shredded suit, right?”

“Right.” Johnny gave him a far too quick once-over. “That definitely doesn’t look safe.”

“Also, it’s apparently considered indecent exposure.”

“Heh,” Johnny chuckled, trying not to show how very much he agreed with that assessment. Sure, Spidey always looked like he’d just flipped out of one of Johnny’s wet dreams, but dressed like this? In all honesty, a half-shredded suit would definitely work in Spidey’s favor should he ever snap and turn on Johnny, who really wasn’t sure whether he’d be able to concentrate enough to properly defend himself. A counter-attack would definitely be out of the question. Then again, he couldn’t imagine attacking Spidey even if his hero were brainwashed and somehow also trapped in Ben’s rocky body. 

A full-body shiver knocked Johnny straight out of his musings, and he fought down a retch. Now, there was a thought he could’ve lived without. 

Not that Spidey’s appearance mattered, of course. Someone as good and heroic and sassy and perfect as Spidey could never be ugly to Johnny. Even if Spidey’s mask came off to reveal a face only a mother could love — well, then Spidey’s mom would simply have to make room for Johnny. Upgraded to a face only Spidey’s mom and his soulmate could love. 

“Come on. Two high-security buildings in one day? Don’t tell me you’re not tempted. Who else can say they did that?” 

“Criminals, usually.”

“Well, you’re already halfway there, right? Might as well go for broke.”

“Oh, I’m more than halfway there already. I’ve never not been broke.”

“Come on!” Johnny said, seizing the opportunity. “We could play video games or watch a movie. Whatever you want. I’ve got all the streaming services.”

“Of course you do,” Spidey said, sounding tired. 

Ah, shit. Johnny had leaned too heavily on the money aspect of things. Time to course-correct. “And snacks!”

Following a rhythm Johnny didn’t recognize, Spidey tapped his fingers against his thigh while he considered him for a moment, cocking his head this way and that. Maybe it was morse code. Quite possibly Spidey was talking to himself, weighing the pros and cons. Johnny should definitely learn morse. 

“What kind of snacks?” Spidey finally asked out loud. 

“Oh!” Johnny yelped, surprised by his own success. He blurted out the first thing he knew Spidey liked. “Peanuts! Peanut stuff. Like — Snickers. And M&Ms. And …”

He was cut off by the loudest stomach growl he’d ever heard. Having lived with Ben for six months already, that really was saying something. The big guy sounded just as rocky on the inside as he did on the outside. 

Spidey shifted reflexively, as if trying to convince his stomach to cut it out. “And?”

“Pizza,” Johnny blurted out. “I’ll get pizza on the way. It won’t even be a delay. I don’t have to wait in line. People always let me go first, especially when I’m wearing the suit.”

Spidey muttered something to himself that sounded suspiciously like, “Damn it.”

Sensing victory, Johnny doubled down immediately. “My treat, obviously. A whole pie to yourself. Any kind you want.”

Spidey sighed heavily as he straightened. “Double pepperoni,” he said without any kind of enthusiasm, squeezing the words out like they pained him. “I’ll swing by in twenty minutes. If your window isn’t open, I’ll keep on swinging straight home. Don’t make me regret this.”

“Never,” Johnny said heavily. “See you in twenty!”

Spidey saluted him with two fingers, muttered, “I must be mad,” and backflipped off the roof.

Dinner and a movie, Johnny thought giddily. It was a date.

~o~

Looking back at it rationally, Johnny maybe should’ve expected Sue to get suspicious when he tried to sneak into his room with two large pizzas, a six-pack of coke and an insanely noisy grocery bag jam-packed with snacks. 

For some reason, she didn’t quite believe him when he claimed to be hungry enough to eat a horse. Luckily, she finished scouring his room for unannounced guests (while Johnny crossed his arms and commented the blatant sign of distrust by huffing indignantly in five-second intervals) a mere two minutes before Spidey launched himself through Johnny’s open window and stuck to the opposite wall. He was no longer carrying his web-pack. Did that mean he lived close-by? Had he dropped his loot off at home before coming here?

“Sorry I’m late,” Spidey whispered as if he expected the rest of the family to linger just outside the room with their ears pressed to the door — which actually wasn’t all that unlikely. “Ran into — There was this — ” He made a round shape with his hands. “— Did you know there’s a crook running ‘round with a giant eight ball for a head?”

Johnny, who’d hurried to change into a more casual outfit the moment the door had closed behind Sue’s back, froze with his arms inside the sleeves of his best button-down and the rest of his bare torso still out of it. “I’m … what?”

“I know, so weird,” Spidey said. He seemed rather unfazed by Johnny’s half-nakedness, which was plain rude, to say the least. “I was a bit embarrassed even being seen fighting him. Or her. Them. As far as villain personas go, it’s really pathetic.”

“Come on,” Johnny said, eyebrows raised. “Next, you’ll tell me there’s ‘gullible’ written on the ceiling.”

“No, I’m serious!” Spidey insisted, voice trending up in volume towards the end of his sentence. “Can’t make this shit up, man.”

“Pics or it didn’t happen.”

“God. With my luck, there are photos.”

“I deserve them,” Johnny said, finally pulling the shirt over his head so he could snatch his phone from the nightstand and sit down. He didn’t even have to search for the pictures. His feed was full of them, one blurrier than the next. 

Spidey’s criminal really did have an enormous billiard ball for a head. It was the most ridiculous thing Johnny had ever seen, and people in the comments still found a way to mostly bitch about Spidey’s shredded suit. Several people had tagged the NYPD, demanding an arrest on charges of public indecency. 

“Did anyone get a good shot?” Spidey asked from directly above Johnny’s bed, peeking over Johnny’s shoulder while hanging upside down from the ceiling. 

Johnny quickly exited out of the app before Spidey could notice that he was following the SpiderMenace account. It wasn’t Johnny’s fault that they were usually the best at keeping up with Spidey’s movements (so they could tear him to shreds in the comment section).

Spidey cocked his head. “Did you make us your phone background?”

“Um,” Johnny retorted expertly, completely diverting any and all suspicion Spidey might’ve had about the scope of Johnny’s feelings for him. At least he didn’t do something rash and stupid like incinerate his phone. Instead, Johnny wiggled it at Spidey, super smooth and nonchalant. “It’s a cool picture, right? Real … actiony.”

“Actiony,” Spidey parroted.

“Yup.” Johnny stuffed the phone under his pillow and proceeded to deflect Spidey’s attention. “So, movies. I’ve got Netflix and so on, like I mentioned. But I’ve also got a couple of Blu-rays, if you wanna have a look. They’re mostly movies my aunt gave me for birthdays — she’s old, I don’t think she knows about streaming — but that’s beside the point. Let me think … Pride and Prejudice, definitely. Aaaand … To be honest, I never watched anything she gave me, they’re all so … Oh, wait, Great Gatsby. I saw that one.” 

Spidey, still upside down, went stock-still. “Sorry, what?”

“The Great Gatsby,” Johnny repeated, leaning back onto his elbows for a better view of Spidey above him. “It’s super boring, I know. I only watched it because I had to read it for English class last year, so I figured …”

“Read …” Spidey breathed.

“Yeah, I know; stereotypical jock, right? ‘What’s a book?’” Johnny asked in his best impression of his former classmate Jaxxon (with two x’s). “But it was so boring, Spidey, you can’t imagine. And also, I had a lot on my plate last year.” Namely, yearning for a hero who didn’t even know Johnny existed.

Spidey nodded mechanically and luckily didn’t question Johnny’s self-assigned label as a jock. “Does it stay true to the book?” he asked surprisingly urgently. “Do you think, if someone hadn’t read more than, let’s say, ten pages of the book  — because they also had a lot on their plate — and then he — they — watched the movie, would that be enough to pass an exam on the book? Like, literally tomorrow?”

“Hypothetically?” Johnny asked, narrowing his eyes at Spidey. He didn’t have to be a genius to pick up on the subtext.

“Asking for a friend.”

Johnny reached up and sagely patted the top of Spidey’s shoulder. “If this person had a great and very wise friend, who gave him —”

“Them.”

“— some pointers along the way, I’m sure he —”

“They.”

“— would do just fine.”

“Good to know.” Spidey detached from the ceiling and landed on his butt beside Johnny. Through some obscure magic means, he had also acquired one of the pizza boxes in the second it took him to flip around. “Great Gatsby’s fine, I guess,” he mumbled into the slice of double pepperoni that had somehow found its way into his mouth between one blink and the next. “It’s whatever.”

“Great!” Johnny leapt to his feet before Spidey could inhale his pizza and decide to dip, and rifled through his stack of Blu-rays, his hands only slightly shaky. Once he’d managed to slip the disc into his PlayStation, he turned back to face Spidey and found him still on the bed, scooted all the way back so he was leaning against the headboard. Johnny didn’t even care that his suit was ripped and filthy — Spidey’s phenomenal butt was touching Johnny’s (now) favorite pillow! 

“Do you wanna borrow some sweats?” Johnny asked super casually, fully aware that he was without a doubt gonna burst into flames if Spidey ever wore his clothes — or faint, more likely, considering the actual fire hazard and how he certainly didn’t want to be perceived as one. 

Spidey stopped chewing abruptly, wrenching his eyes away from his pizza to look himself up and down. “I’m good,” he said slowly, tugging his mask lower until it covered his nose again, leaving only his mouth accessible for pizza purposes. 

“Here.” Johnny snatched a brand-new bathrobe from the box at his feet and tossed it at him. “At least put that on over your suit. It’s absolutely shredded. Can’t be comfortable.”

Spidey stared at the bathrobe that had landed in his lap, tracing the pattern of red-and-yellow racing flames with one gloved finger. His other hand — the one handling the food — was bare, revealing his bruised knuckles. His parents definitely had to remind him to wash his hands before meals. Johnny felt itchy just looking at him.

“Wow,” Spidey said heavily. 

“It was a gag,” Johnny justified. “Had to order one for Ben, so I figured … might as well get one for myself, right? If I’m paying for shipping anyway …”

“You are without a doubt the most on-brand person I’ve ever met,” said Spider-Man of all people, balancing the pizza box on his knees while he slipped both arms into the robe and tightened the fuzzy belt. The sleeves swallowed his hands whole, and he had to turn them up twice before he could go back to eating his pizza. “Fuck, that’s comfy,” he groaned, flipping up the hood. “I could’ve lived without knowing I’m a bathrobe person. Now I’ve got to buy one.”

“I don’t see the problem,” Johnny said, “Bathrobes are awesome.”

“I’m flat broke, Torch. I don’t have bathrobe money.”

“You can keep that one,” Johnny blurted. “I’ve got another one.”

Spidey cocked his head, which clearly was his number one mode of nonverbal communication. “What do you need two bathrobes for?”

“They had a discount offer,” Johnny said instead of just pointing out that regular people washed their bathrobes from time to time. 

“Buy two, get one free?” Spidey suggested. 

“Something like that,” Johnny hedged. The box scraped across the carpet as Johnny tried to stealthily slide it under his bed with one foot. The way Spidey cocked his head indicated that he hadn’t missed this damning noise. “Hit it,” Johnny said, tossing him the remote. 

By the time Johnny located his copy of Great Gatsby amidst his stack of school books, Spidey had started the movie and finished half his pizza. It was a good thing that Johnny had eaten dinner with his family before he’d gone out, because it allowed him to focus most of his attention on leafing through the book while they watched the movie, pointing out differences and similarities, highlighting important passages and bookmarking relevant pages with his favorite red-and-blue sticky tabs. 

Fifteen minutes into the movie, Spidey frisbeed his empty pizza box at Johnny’s desk and then proceeded to glance at Johnny’s leftovers in thirty-second intervals. 

Johnny groaned demonstratively, patted his stomach and gestured at the remaining two slices with his neon-green highlighter. “Do you wanna —?” The box was empty before Johnny could finish his sentence. 

“You know you’re not the one who’s got to do the test tomorrow, right?” Spidey munched. “You don’t have to prep your copy.”

“It’s for you,” Johnny said slowly. “Obviously.”

“I can’t take your book,” Spidey protested. “For my friend, I mean. The one who’s got the test tomorrow.”

“How’s your friend gonna find anything to cite if he —”

“They,” Spidey cut in. 

“— hasn’t even read the book?” 

“I can’t just take it. Those things are ten bucks.”

“Seriously?” Johnny raised an eyebrow at him. “I just bought us like fifty dollars’ worth of snacks. You can definitely accept a used book.”

“That’s different,” Spidey insisted. “Offering food is part of hosting guests. You don’t usually offer up part of your inventory on top.”

“Please take it,” Johnny pleaded. The thought of Spidey (who was attending class fully costumed in this fantasy) flipping through Johnny’s copy, reading passages Johnny had underlined for him, made his heart flutter in excitement. “I don’t need it anymore. Right? Like, school wouldn’t make me read it twice, would they? Nobody’s that cruel.”

“You might need it in college,” Spidey said pointedly. 

Shit. Did that mean Spidey was in college already? Was he prepping for a college exam? Did college students need their parents’ permission to sleep over at a friend’s house on a Friday night? Well, it didn’t matter either way. Johnny could totally date a college student. He had the emotional maturity to pull it off.

“Yeah, right,” Johnny said half-heartedly. “Me going to college. Good one.”

Spidey, now done with Johnny’s pizza, drew his knees against his chest and placed his chin on top of them. “Why not?”

“I’m not exactly a genius,” Johnny pointed out. 

“You’ve literally been to space.”

"Not because I was qualified.” 

“But you went!”

“We totally crashed.”

“That story’s gonna make for one hell of a college essay, though. Besides, you did not crash.” Spidey paused, tapping his chin, which was still unmasked. “Well, okay, you did, but you probably wouldn’t have, if it hadn’t been for that storm.”

“You seem to know a lot about what happened.”

“I’m not gonna justify myself for being informed about the hero scene. Especially the part of the scene that wants to bring me in.”

“The Four wouldn’t hand you over to the police,” Johnny insisted, pointing his highlighter at Spidey. 

“How do you know?” Spidey asked drily. 

“Well, for one, I’d never talk to them again,” Johnny declared, viciously tearing a sticky tab from the pad purely to underline the seriousness of his statement. He then stuck it to Spidey’s nose to lighten the mood. “So, if they know what’s good for them, they won’t do it.”

“Oh, so you’re delusional,” Spidey said. “Yeah, maybe college really isn’t for you. Good thing you’re ridiculously pretty, huh?” Instead of using his hands, which were now hidden somewhere in his enormous sleeves, he detached the sticky tab by blowing some air up at his own nose.

Johnny’s brain twisted itself into a pretzel. On the one hand, Spidey had just called him gorgeous (paraphrasing). On the other hand, someone as amazing as Spidey could never exclusively care about looks. Despite having proclaimed himself dumb just a minute ago, Johnny suddenly felt the desperate urge to prove himself worthy of Spidey’s intellect. He uncapped the highlighter with his teeth and doubled his book-annotating efforts while Spidey started in on the snacks, completely oblivious. 

Johnny’s stomach balled into a nauseous knot just watching him eat. He was only about fifty percent sure that Spidey’s buried hands were the reason he tipped half the bag of M&Ms directly into his mouth. 

“Don’t they feed you at home?” Johnny blurted out. 

Spidey froze with the bag still dangling above his open mouth. “I eat at home,” he said after a second or two, M&Ms clacking against his teeth. “But I also burn ten thousand calories a day, so.” He shrugged and proceeded to chew. 

“That’s a lot,” Johnny agreed. “How do you know?”

“It’s not exactly rocket science,” Spidey replied. “All you gotta do is track your intake and your weight, then the rest is math.”

“Oh, so you’re a nerd,” Johnny said in the exact same tone Spidey had used to call him delusional. 

“I mean,” Spidey said, sounding unsurprisingly unperturbed. Without even looking, he shot a teeny tiny web out of the depths of his sleeve that struck Johnny's cheek. “I thought that was pretty much obvious.”

“I always thought of you more as a jock,” Johnny blabbed as he burned the web off. 

“A jock,” Spidey echoed hollowly, lowering the bag so he could turn to look at Johnny after all. 

“Well, an athlete.” Johnny poked his bathrobe-clad side, totally nonchalant and cool about it. “It’s really not that far-fetched. You’ve got to be captain of like four different teams, right?”

While Johnny didn’t expect Spidey to deny or confirm anything that could be used to identify him, Spidey’s answer completely caught him off-guard. 

“Jocks eat me for breakfast,” he said just a tad too harshly for it to have been a simple joke. It almost distracted Johnny from picturing himself eating Spidey for breakfast. He had a feeling Spidey’s bullies went about it a bit differently than he would. 

“But you’re Spider-Man!” Johnny protested. 

“Not at school, I’m not.” Spidey shrugged. “Besides, when you get stabbed as much as I do, getting shoved into lockers kinda loses its impact.”

“What?”

“Builds character, right?”

“Extra! Extra!” Johnny announced, waving his book around like an old-timey newspaper boy. “Spider-Menace Condones Bullying. Read all about it!”

“You’re not allowed to talk to The Bugle ever,” Spidey said heavily. He finished his M&Ms and turned his attention back to the movie, which had been going for a good twenty minutes at that point. “So, who’s that?”

Johnny blinked. “That’s Gatsby.”

“Huh.” Spidey cocked his head and unwrapped one of the fruit pies Johnny had bought him. “Well, shit.”

“Yep,” Johnny said, resolving to use his most obnoxious neon pink highlighter for the most basic, need-to-know information in the book. Like the main characters’ names, apparently. 

Some kind of nerd.

If Spidey, by some miracle, actually passed this test, Johnny had surely earned a kiss at the bare minimum. Anything above a C minus and Johnny deserved his hand in marriage. 

~o~

Johnny was busy posing for pictures and signing autographs in Times Square when something whacked him right between the shoulder blades. Always prepared for an ambush, Johnny whirled around, throwing out his arms to shield the girls he’d previously been hugging to his side. The street in front of him was bustling with traffic but devoid of obvious culprits. 

Johnny continued to scan the sidewalk on the other side of the street as he twisted his arm to rub his back and make sure there wasn’t a throwing knife or something equally uncool sticking out of it. His hand promptly got stuck. Stomach swooping, Johnny adjusted his search radius upwards. 

The billboards cycled through their ads two times before he spotted Spidey, and only because he was sitting atop an enormous depiction of the Fantastic Four, his legs dangling over The Thing’s face. A person less acquainted with Spidey’s body might not even have recognized him — he was dressed in an all-black suit Johnny had never seen before. Still, Johnny would probably be able to identify him by the shape of his biceps alone. 

“Gotta jet,” Johnny announced in the general direction of his adoring audience, and then he was off to fawn over his own idol. 

“Spidey!” he called as he came to hover in front of the billboard that had switched over to a sunscreen ad in the meantime. “Almost didn’t see you!”

“That’s the point,” Spidey said, extending his arms to show off the pitch-black fabric of his new suit. “You like it?”

“Love it!” Johnny assured him automatically, even though he kind of missed the familiar red-and-blue. Far be it from him to criticize Spidey, though. “What’s it for? Are you headed to a wedding or something?”

The bright sound of Spidey’s laughter spawned a million butterflies in Johnny’s stomach. Spidey kicked his feet as he leaned back on his hands so he could look up at Johnny. “Who would want me at their wedding?”

“I would,” Johnny blurted out, because obviously. It wouldn’t even be a wedding without Spidey there, would it now? The spouse was kinda essential. 

Spidey huffed. “Thanks, dude.”

“No problem,” Johnny said awkwardly, flaming off so he could land on top of the billboard next to Spidey. “So, the suit?”

“Made it from the material I pilfered from Stark Industries. Might come in handy for stealth missions, right?”

“It’s definitely giving cat burglar,” Johnny confirmed. 

“Huh,” Spidey muttered, cocking his head. He had stopped kicking his feet. 

Johnny handed him a slightly squished peanut butter sandwich from his recently dedicated snack pocket and Spidey perked up almost comically. Johnny would have to ask Reed about adding active cooling to his pocket’s insulation to further protect the integrity of Spidey’s treats. The better the snacks, the greater Spidey’s affections would be, right?

“That’s why you’re my favorite,” Spidey said as he tore the plastic wrap. 

“You’re my favorite too,” Johnny gushed immediately because he had no damn filter, apparently. Thankfully, Spidey didn’t comment on the weirdness. 

“Saw you on the news.” Spidey jerked his head at one of the giant screens that currently showed Johnny flying a previously-possessed-by-an-ancient-pharaoh-now-very-apologetic girl towards the DODC vans waiting outside the Museum of Natural History. “Not bad.”

“Piece of cake,” Johnny said casually, praying that Spidey hadn’t also seen him get blasted through two consecutive windows. 

“You know she was totally hitting on you, right?” Spidey pointed his sandwich at the screen, where Past-Johnny was setting the girl down on a stretcher. 

Johnny squinted, trying to see what Spidey saw and coming up empty. She might’ve held on to Johnny’s shoulders a few seconds longer than necessary but that had probably been plain anxiety. “Who, Akasha?”

“Is that Dollar Store Cleopatra’s name?” 

“Her villain name was The Living Pharao,” Johnny said noncommittally. “Also, her clothes looked ancient. Definitely not dollar store.”

“Eh,” said Spidey, flapping his hand. “So, what, wasn’t she your type?”

“She committed countless crimes.” Coming to think of it, she had tried to convince Johnny to help her escape. Maybe that might’ve looked kinda like flirting from an outsider’s perspective. She had flicked the cloth flaps of her stripy headpiece a lot more than strictly necessary.

“Wasn’t she possessed or something?” Spidey asked.

“Still! I can’t go on a date with a girl who just destroyed half a museum and a bus stop thingy.” — with Johnny’s body. 

Spidey scoffed. “So, what — are you just never gonna date because it might hurt your image?”

“Totally ignoring the fact that you seem to think that the only people I might date are criminals — My image does not factor into my love life whatsoever!” Johnny said vehemently, lest Spidey got the wrong impression. “Besides, your reputation is garbage and I don’t see you dating either.” 

“Guess you haven’t been looking hard enough,” Spidey quipped. 

Jonny snorted. “Yeah, right.” 

“Yeah,” Spidey agreed, slipping the crumbled plastic wrap into the waistband of his pants. “I am right.”

Johnny froze, stomach twisting. “Wait, are you serious?”

“Sure am,” Spidey said, leaning back so he could look up at Johnny’s face (so much about being the same height!). “Why? Does it seem that unlikely that someone would want to date me?”

Johnny, who thought everyone should want to date Spidey, almost laughed. “You’re the one who’s always going on and on about how everybody hates you,” he pointed out. 

“Huh, yeah,” Spidey admitted, pulling his mask back down. (Johnny's heart wept.) “I wanted to ask you something, actually.”

“Anything,” Johnny breathed, hoping against better judgement that Spidey was about to ask him if he wanted to go steady. 

“You’ve dated before, right?

“Umm,” Johnny said eloquently, unsure what the correct answer was. Was Spidey looking for someone experienced or rather someone who was waiting for their one true love? “I mean …”

“Right, yeah, obviously,” Spidey said, apparently satisfied with this trainwreck of an answer. “So, I met this … person. As Spider-Man. Another vigilante.”

“A vigilante?” Johnny perked up. 

“Yeah, I guess that’s not really the right word,” Spidey allowed. “We’re definitely not in the same line of work, despite the tight spandex.”

Oh God. Johnny wasn’t crazy, right? Spidey was obviously talking about him, right? “You two probably have more in common than you think,” he said, a bit breathless. 

“But wouldn’t it be foolish to try and start something with them? Considering our morals don’t quite align and they don’t know who I really am?” 

Johnny frowned. “Why don’t your morals align?”

Spidey tipped his head to face the sky. “We’ve got different ideas of our places in the eye of the law, I guess. They’re following in their family’s footsteps and I’m doing … this.”

“But you’re both doing what you think is right, right?”

Spidey turned his still tipped head to look at Johnny. “I … guess? Well, technically …”

“You should go for it,” Johnny said resolutely.

Spidey seemed to be almost surprised by the enthusiasm. “You think?”

“Definitely. You’ll always regret it if you don’t. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Spidey shrugged. “Prison, probably?”

“Nobody’s going to prison!” Johnny insisted, although he admittedly wasn’t actually sure what the law said about seventeen-year-old minors (Johnny)  dating possibly-already-legal vigilantes (Spidey).  It couldn’t be jail-bad, right? A four-year age gap was practically nothing. He should probably look it up before they took the next big step, just to be safe. 

“Love your optimism.” Spidey nudged his arm, and then failed to ask Johnny to marry him. He did the next best thing, though, which was to stand up on the very edge of the billboard and ask, “Wanna buy me —” he paused to listen to his stomach growl loudly, index finger raised, “— three hot dogs?” 

That question immediately following the conversation they’d just had … It was a date, right? Spidey had totally just asked Johnny on a date? 

“That sounds amazing,” Johnny said instead of questioning Spidey’s sudden willingness to be seen with him. Maybe the black suit had an emboldening effect. Or maybe he was just hungry. Either way, Johnny was fully on board.

Spidey did a showy somersault off the roof and Johnny flamed after him, heart pounding madly. He had only just set foot on the sidewalk when a sudden motion out of the corner of his eye caused him to spin towards the street.

“Watch out!” Spidey shouted, twist-flipping onto a nearby wall while also shooting a web line at Johnny, probably to yank him aside as well. Unfortunately, Johnny had spun right out of the web’s path, and something smacked into Johnny’s chest a moment later, exploding upon contact and splattering him head-to-toe with red paint. 

“No,” whispered the horrified assailant, who was staring at him instead of hauling ass. Both her hands were clasped in front of her mouth, further muffling her voice. “What did I do? I didn’t mean to, I swear!”

“Have we met?” Spidey asked, cocking his head at her from his crouch on the wall. “I feel like I recognize that color.”

“It’s Royal Maroon,” Johnny said flatly, staring at his dripping palms and wondering how the hell he was supposed to get rid of the stuff without producing a cloud of toxic fumes.

Spidey produced a cute little squeal that might’ve started as a laugh and had gotten twisted along the way. He cleared his throat and said, “This is great.” 

Johnny gently punched Spidey’s sternum, inadvertently marking his suit with a red splotch. 

“Hey!” Spidey protested, looking down at his chest. “That’s brand-new!”

Johnny, trying not to show how much he was panicking about ruining Spidey’s home-made super suit, quickly pressed four fingers against Spidey’s chest on either side of the splotch, creating spider legs. 

Spidey kept staring at his suit, frozen. “Okay, that’s kinda cool,” he finally allowed. 

“Johnny Storm Original,” Johnny said, doing jazz hands because he had apparently gone completely insane. “One of one. If I find this on eBay, I’m suing you.”

“If you find my suit on eBay, I’m dead in a dumpster. So, feel free to send your lawyers after me, I guess.” Spidey flicked his wrist and webbed the crazy paint lady to the ground before she could complete her stealthy little shuffle away from them. 

Johnny twisted to pout at her. “What did I do to you?” 

“I was aiming at him,” she shot out, pointing an accusing finger at Spidey. “If he hadn’t jumped out of the way, this wouldn’t have happened!”

“Did you expect him to hold still while a stranger attacks him?” Johnny asked.

“He should! He deserves punishment.”

Spidey, for some unfathomable reason, nodded along, although he might’ve just been confirming that this aligned with what he’d been expecting from her.

“For what?” Johnny demanded.

“For attacking you!” Paint Lady glared at Spidey and then nearly fell flat on her face when she tried to brute-force her feet out of her sticky restraints. 

“He didn’t attack me,” Johnny insisted. “He got thrown through the building and into me by Doc Ock. That wasn’t his fault.”

“Wasn’t it Green Goblin?” Spidey mused. 

“No,” said Johnny, who knew the SpideyWiki inside and out. Also, Sue was still cursing Doc Ock’s name at every opportunity. 

Spidey shrugged. “They all just blur together after a while.” He jerked his head towards the cart on the other side of the street. “So, hot dogs?”

If Spidey had been literally anyone else, Johnny would’ve postponed their date so he could change into something less ruined. But Spidey was Spidey and Johnny was a goner. So, he dragged himself across the street — dripping paint along the way — to buy six hot dogs and two cokes, which they demolished atop a Midtown skyscraper, out of reach of Johnny’s crazy fans. 

Next morning’s Bugle headline read, unsurprisingly, ‘Spider-Menace viciously attacks beloved hero Human Torch’. Considering the picture — Spidey sticking to the wall above a paint-soaked Johnny, his hand still outstretched in his direction while a shell-shocked soccer mom gaped at them — Johnny almost couldn’t blame Jameson.