Chapter Text
Nothing would ever convince Johnny that the aliens hadn’t planned their invasion specifically to inconvenience him.
To begin with, the first wave of their invasion had been timed to interrupt his weekly mani-pedi. Come on. That couldn’t be a coincidence.
His appointment was at precisely the same time every week. Had been for years. The aliens must have known. They’d done it so he wouldn’t be as hot as usual, hadn’t they? Unravel the war effort from within by lowering the morale of all of the other heroes he had to fight alongside. Johnny knew for a fact that his hotness was totally inspiring to everyone, no matter what they all said to his face, repeatedly and loudly.
Then there was the fact that the aliens—who Reed would later figure out, by poring over their encrypted transmissions, were called the Krotrakka—had unforgivably decided to invade right at the beginning of July, Johnny’s favorite month. Coincidence? Johnny didn’t think so.
The worst part of it all was that he hadn’t even had time to finish his mani-pedi, so approximately three of the fingernails of his left hand had been left untrimmed.
It had proved extremely difficult to talk his manicurist into finishing when there was a whole fleet of alien ships in the skies above New York, firing unprovoked. She’d mostly just run away screaming at the top of her lungs, like everyone else in the beauty salon.
Johnny supposed he couldn’t really blame her. Most civilians weren’t as accustomed to aliens as he was. He’d found that after he’d dated a few of them and they hadn’t called him back ever, the fascination had really started to wear off.
The Krotrakka themselves appeared on the streets below Johnny as unexpectedly as their ships had in the skies above him. Some were tall, imposing, with jagged, sickly-white limbs that climbed into the sky, others smaller but sporting razor-sharp claws that tore through flesh as easily as a knife and thick, thick hides that were nearly impenetrable.
Johnny took down as many as he could and swept civilians out of the way of falling debris and blindingly bright alien death rays, but it didn’t do much good. Hundreds if not thousands of people died before New York was successfully evacuated of all civilians.
Plus, he never got to finish his mani-pedi. Hell, a month passed by and he hadn’t had a single one since the day the invasion began.
Johnny’s life was so trying at times. No one ever appreciated how difficult it was to maintain his standard levels of hotness. It took work. How on earth was he supposed to look hot when there were no active beauty salons he could go to? It didn’t just happen by itself, people.
He made the mistake of asking Reed one day if he could have an emergency beautician flown in by the army. In response, Reed gave him a look that was very much unamused and perhaps even a trifle—no, make that very—annoyed, and Johnny knew what it meant well enough to give up asking entirely. He probably shouldn’t have asked in the middle of battle, but, in his defense, it had been a real emergency. Johnny, horrifyingly, had broken one of his nails.
The worst part of it all was knowing that he could potentially die in battle at any moment and that he might have to do so with terrible nails, hair that hadn’t been trimmed in a month, and an unwaxed chest. He could see the funeral now. “Wow, he really let himself go,” people would say, and Johnny, tragically, wouldn’t even be alive to defend himself.
The next few weeks were somehow even more hellish than that. The New Avengers, the Mighty Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and every other team that could be scrambled together across the globe were all that stood between the Krotrakka and certain world domination.
Hero after hero fell before the Krotrakka. Some were untrained and untested, but they had wanted to help stem the tide of the alien invasion, and they paid the price.
Reed did his best to hide it, but Johnny knew him well enough to be able to tell that the invasion wasn’t going all that well for Earth. The humans were beginning to grow desperate. Reed, Tony, and Luke had been trying their best to capture one of the Krotrakka’s wormhole generators, but they were too heavily defended, and without one of them, the heroes’ defense plans weren’t viable.
But this was Reed. There was no doubt in Johnny’s mind that Reed would find some way to save them all. He always did.
If Reed could defeat Galactus, there was no way he was going to have his ass handed to him by these loser aliens no one had ever even heard of. That Johnny was sure of.
Johnny was more focused on worrying about the fact that he still hadn’t gotten to a beautician, even though he’d somehow managed to break four other nails as the weeks passed by. His hands looked hideous. He could hardly even stand to look at them.
It was all so depressing. Not at all the way Johnny had planned on spending his July. He’d wanted to be on a nice beach somewhere. Maybe he could’ve talked Pete into joining him.
Johnny knew, thanks to all of those joint FF-Parker family vacations, that Peter looked great in swim trunks…with water dripping down all of that tan, muscled skin...like something out of Baywatch.
Man, but that had been a good show. Maybe Johnny could talk Peter into reenacting some of his favorite scenes someday. Probably not, but a guy could dream, right?
His Baywatch Peter fantasy quickly became his go-to when he was bored on guard duty. Made his mouth water every time. Given that Johnny was going through a bit of a dry spell thanks to the incredibly inconvenient invasion, it didn’t take long for his fantasy to start ending with hot beach make-outs and vigorous beach sex.
The fantasy went something like this:
Fantasy Johnny would be floating around in the ocean in a form-fitting and very flattering set of swim trunks that clung to all the right places—the way that actual swim trunks never did—when he’d spot a very hot, buff lifeguard jogging down the beach, doing his rounds—fantasy Peter, of course.
Did lifeguards do rounds? Johnny didn’t know or care. This was his fantasy, after all, and in his fantasy, they did rounds. While running. In slow motion.
Johnny would sometimes pretend to drown to get fantasy Peter’s attention, sometimes actually drown, because it was hard paying attention to the swimming when there was someone that hot around.
Someone on the beach would notice fantasy Johnny floundering and shout, “Hey, there’s a really hot guy drowning out there! He is super hot, people! Like, we’re talking hottest guy I’ve ever seen! We have to save him for humanity’s sake! Think of the gene pool!”
Thank you, fantasy science lady. See? She gets it. Why couldn’t actual people be more like that lady? Johnny wondered that a lot.
Very Hot Lifeguard Peter would swim out purposefully and rescue Johnny. Sweep him up in strong arms that were bulging with muscles and pull him back to shore. They were important, those muscles.
Fantasy Peter would lay Johnny out on the sun-warmed beach—Johnny would look totally sexy, of course, even when soaking wet and half dead—and do CPR, the sexy kind that involved kissing, and his mouth would taste like the sea and those stupid cherry pies he liked eating so much. That’s what Johnny liked to imagine, anyways.
“Come on!” fantasy Peter would shout despairingly as he pressed his hands down on Johnny’s chest, over and over. “You’re too sexy to die and you know it!”
That was Johnny’s cue. He would come back to life without coughing up seawater because it wasn’t very sexy. Maybe there’d be a tiny trickle, just for realism’s sake, but that was it.
He’d just open his eyes, grin rakishly, say, “Did someone just say ‘sexy’?” and then pull fantasy Peter into a passionate kiss, much to the delight of the crowd around them.
Crowds were always suckers for true love, because in Johnny’s fantasy, that’s what it was.
“Wow,” fantasy Peter would sigh when Johnny finally stopped the kissing long enough to catch his breath, and then he’d grin in a handsome, devil-may-care way that made Johnny’s heart race, and why couldn’t the real Peter ever smile at him like that? Not fair, real Peter.
This next bit was Johnny’s favorite, because the real Peter had never admitted that he thought Johnny was hot and, honestly, would it kill him to say it just once? They both knew Johnny was totally hot, because everyone knew that. What was the point in pretending he wasn’t?
“I couldn’t let someone as sexy as you die, now could I?” fantasy Peter would say. “You’re really sexy, by the way.”
“No,” Johnny would agree, feeling triumphant and vindicated. “You really, really couldn’t, and yeah, I totally am, aren’t I? I knew you thought that.”
Fantasy Peter, taken aback because this version was a complete stranger, would say, “What?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Johnny’d say quickly. He’d slip back into the role of fantasy Johnny, give Peter an absolutely smoldering look, and say, “How about you show me just how sexy you think I am?” and Peter would.
That was the nice thing about fantasy Peter. He always did whatever Johnny wanted, unlike the real one, who was temperamental, stuck-up, and downright contrary sometimes. The real one would definitely never kiss Johnny, even if he asked nicely.
And then the cheering but ultimately inconvenient crowd would magically vanish and so would all of fantasy Johnny and Peter’s clothes, in one fell stroke. Then they would have hot, hot beach sex, all skin and sand and sun, accompanied only by the rhythmic sounds of the waves.
Sometimes there’d be an odd seagull or two screeching unpleasantly in the distance, but not often, because Johnny thought it totally spoiled the mood.
This was a fantasy, so in this version, sand didn’t get everywhere, the way it had every time Johnny’d tried to have actual beach sex, which, it turned out, was actually much less pleasant than it sounded.
Beach sex, for the record, was on Johnny’s List of Very Disappointing Things. Somewhere below oysters but above caviar.
He’d held on to his hopes that he’d manage to get Peter to a beach before summer ended and maybe even get to reenact parts of the Baywatch fantasy for a long, long time. If Johnny started drowning, Peter’d pull him out, right? They were buddies. It could happen.
But, sadly, no part of it had happened at all. Instead, Peter had spent most of the month covered head to toe in his Spidey-suit and being shot at by hideous aliens. It had been so disappointing for so many reasons.
Matters, somehow, got worse for Johnny, even though he hadn’t thought it was possible. It all started when Reed and Luke led the FF and the New Avengers over to the ruins of Times Square, where there had been reports of some kind of massive structure being built.
A battle had quickly broken out between the Krotrakka troops and the heroes of Earth, which had culminated in the Krotrakka flicking on their machine, which turned out to be a wormhole generator that was about twenty times the size of any with which Johnny’d ever seen them.
Johnny got so swept up in taking out the Krotrakka nearest him—he had a lot of pent-up anger and resentment towards them to work out—that he didn’t register Reed's order to pull back, and that’s how he ended up getting separated from everyone else and caught helplessly in the wormhole’s gravitational pull. Or whatever it was.
It didn’t…look like any wormhole Johnny’d ever seen.
All Johnny knew was that it was growing and he couldn’t get away, no matter how hard he tried.
He was beginning to lose hope until he heard someone shout, “Johnny, hang on!” over the roar of the air getting sucked into the wormhole beneath him.
When he looked up, he saw Peter swinging towards him, weaving gracefully through all of the debris that was careening through the air. Watching Peter move like that…it stole Johnny’s breath away sometimes.
When Peter got close enough, he reached out desperately and shouted at Johnny to take his hand. Johnny’s fire was hardly even burning anymore, all but quenched by the churning winds that surrounded him. He was so close to falling in, and they both knew it.
The tips of Johnny’s fingers grazed Peter’s, but it was useless. The anomaly lurched wider, and Johnny slipped far beyond Peter’s grasp, and that was when he knew it was over.
He kept his eyes fixed on Peter’s mask. At least the last thing he’d ever get to see would be Peter. That wasn’t so bad. He wished he could see Peter's face one last time, but this would have to do.
The moment Johnny crossed the event horizon into the anomaly, it was like everything began to move in slow motion. Even months later, Johnny could still remember it in excruciating detail.
Johnny could see Peter’s lips moving beneath the mask, but he couldn’t quite make out what he was shouting over the deafening roar of the winds swirling around him. He thought it might be, “Please, god, no!”
Johnny wanted to tell him everything was going to be okay, but he couldn’t, because that was when he fell into the anomaly and was swept away to god knows where. He couldn’t really remember what happened after that all that well.
Next thing he knew, he was shooting out of the wormhole and landing in an undignified heap on the floor.
He leaped to his feet immediately on the off chance there was someone watching or, worse yet, recording him. The very last thing he needed was more videos on YouTube making fun of him.
Wherever he’d ended up, it was pitch-black. A murky darkness so thick it was like a living, breathing entity of its own enveloped him. The only pale glimmers of light were those that emanated from the yellow ring of the wormhole, and they didn’t illuminate much.
There was a strange sort of black stone, so dark that it felt, disconcertingly, like he was staring into a lightless void, that stretched out beneath his dizzy feet. It was shot through with veins of a muted red stone that seemed to almost glow when struck by the shimmering light from the wormhole.
Ringed around the wormhole’s opening, in a nearly perfectly concentric half-moon shape, were bits of debris that had been sucked in along with Johnny—bricks and wrecked billboards and long-abandoned cars.
Wormholes always left Johnny feeling disoriented, his head pounding, so it took him a few seconds of stumbling around blearily to find the opening once more.
Of course, it was just his luck that the precise moment he did, someone else flew out of the wormhole and knocked him right back off his feet and onto the cold black stone, wedged awkwardly between a billboard for Coca-Cola and the rear fender of a Honda Accord.
Everyone always copied Johnny. It was a curse. He went through a wormhole, and everyone else followed. He’d complained about it many times to everyone who would listen, not that they usually paid him much attention.
It was so difficult to maintain your dignity when you were a superhero, Johnny thought gloomily as he stared up into the darkness, pinned helplessly to the floor by whoever had fallen on top of him. You always ended up covered in goo (Johnny minded that a lot) or naked in front of hundreds of people (Johnny minded that less) or being forced to listen to the very tedious lectures of Reed and Sue on everything you did wrong (Johnny minded those most).
The mystery person on top of Johnny stirred, groaned, and lifted his head, which was when a dazed Johnny—he was convinced he might have a concussion—realized belatedly that it was Peter. His mask had partially been torn off, and Johnny could see his right eye, most of his charred forehead, and a shock of characteristic brown curls.
In any other situation, Johnny would have very much enjoyed having Peter on top of him and maybe even made a risqué joke or two, but time, sadly, was of the essence. The wormhole could close at any moment, and they had a very important battle to fight back home.
Dammit. Johnny just wanted Peter to kiss him. Was it really too much to ask after years of selflessly saving the planet? Johnny deserved that much, universe.
Really he deserved all of the hot guys, gals, aliens, and so on kissing him that he wanted, and he only wanted Peter. He was being reasonable, universe, and yet you still couldn’t come through for him, could you?
Johnny found the universe very disappointing. He ranked it right near the top of his list of the most disappointing things he’d ever come across. Somewhere near The Matrix sequels and that pair of skinny jeans that had made him look anything but.
He’d been trying his best to make the kissing happen for years now, but Peter’s reactions to his flirting tended to veer from “There’s a time and a place, Torchy” to “What the hell is wrong with you?”
The latter comment had been made after Johnny’d made the mistake of trying to serenade Peter at 4 a.m. from the filthy alley beneath Peter’s bedroom window. Johnny had been extremely drunk at the time, and, very irresponsibly, neither Ben nor Wyatt had been there to stop him.
In drunk Johnny’s defense, serenades were very romantic. Peter clearly wasn’t a romantic at heart, and neither were his neighbors.
It was okay. Johnny could deal with that. He’d just have to be romantic for both of them. The neighbors, however, could all go to hell, especially the wrinkly old man who’d tipped a gallon of orange soda on Johnny’s head to shut him up. Get a facelift, dude.
Even Johnny’s most intricate and devious plans to get Peter to kiss him failed.
Strategically-placed mistletoe last Christmas had resulted in nothing more than an awkward peck on the cheek from Peter that, worse yet, Ben, Reed, and Sue, those heels, had laughed about for days. Also an embarrassing photo or twelve. Thanks a lot, New Avengers. Johnny was making sure they didn’t get invited to the FF’s Christmas party this year. He’d just “accidentally” lose (in other words, secretly burn) their invitations.
Peter’d misinterpreted the barrage of flowers Johnny’d sent him last Valentine’s Day as an extremely irritating prank. Johnny, admittedly, had maybe overdone it with the flowers. He should’ve remembered how pathetically small Peter's apartment was and sent twenty-five bouquets instead of a hundred. Ah, well. Next year.
It was a pity, really. If Peter ever gave him the chance to kiss him, Johnny knew he could knock his socks right off. The ideal situation, really, since Johnny was a very talented kisser who was mostly opposed to socks.
Well, when someone (Peter) was so dead-set on making terrible choices (not kissing Johnny, wearing awful socks), there really wasn’t anything Johnny could do about it. He supposed he could burn the socks off of Peter’s feet if he had to, but it would definitely lower the chances of getting kissed. Peter always got so tetchy when Johnny burned his ugly clothes off. Was a thank you really so difficult? Johnny was totally just looking out for his buddy by not letting him make terrible fashion choices he’d only regret later.
Thank god Peter wasn’t currently wearing anything that left his socks visible.
Johnny shoved futilely at Peter’s shoulders. “Get off me!” he shouted ill-temperedly. Peter was as heavy as a pile of bricks. Luckily he was much more attractive than bricks if you squinted in exactly the right way and imagined an entirely different haircut.
“Whoops, sorry,” Peter said sheepishly and rolled off. He sat up and cradled his throbbing head in his arms. “Oy,” he groaned, “my poor head!”
Yeah, Johnny thought sympathetically, travel through wormholes without a spaceship to protect you was rough.
With a herculean effort, Johnny struggled back onto his feet just in time to see the wormhole flicker shut. Not fair. He’d gotten up for nothing.
“Dammit!” he shouted at Peter. “Look what you did! The wormhole’s closed! We’re stuck here now!”
“What?!” Peter hollered. Johnny heard him get to his feet, but it was so dark without the light of the wormhole that it was impossible to see much of anything. Johnny lit up his left hand in time to see the stricken, worried look on Peter’s face. “No. No, no, no, no, no! We’ve gotta get back! The fight wasn’t over yet!”
“I know,” Johnny yelled, frustrated. “Don’t you think I know that?”
“But the—”
“Wormhole wasn’t closed yet on the other end? I know. They’ll never get it closed without me.”
“I think you’re confusing yourself with your brother-in-law.”
“He needs me,” Johnny sniffed. “They all do. We’re a team.”
“Man, I was supposed to go see Aunt May tomorrow,” Peter said despairingly. “I hope she doesn’t worry too much.”
“I know what you mean. We were all gonna go see the kids on New Attilan. Now Sue’ll probably be too freaked out to go.”
“Yeah,” Peter said, voice pitched a little too high to be convincing. “That’s probably why she won’t make it.”
Johnny’s eyes narrowed. He knew Peter far too well to be fooled by any of his lies, which he was awful at and always had been. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing, man,” Peter said quickly, shaking his head. “Really. It’s nothing.”
He was lying. He was so bad at lying. Johnny could always tell. “Pete. I’m not stupid, and I know you. Spill it.”
Peter shut his eyes, clenched his jaw, and shook his head a few times as though he was steeling himself. “Okay. It’s just the wormhole anomaly was…not like the ones the Krotrakka usually travel through. This one was growing. Fast. Like it was weaponized…somehow.”
“Yeah,” Johnny said. He’d definitely noticed that this one had been drawing in everything around it, seeing as how he was one of the things. “So?”
“So if Reed, Tony, Bruce, and the other scientists don’t figure out a way to stop it—fast—that thing could suck in all of New York.” He took in Johnny’s stricken face, and, in a softer voice, added, “Buddy…it could suck in the whole planet.”
Johnny felt sick. Here he was, stuck god knows where, and his whole planet was maybe on the verge of being destroyed. He shouldn’t be here. He should be back on Earth, in the thick of the battle, shoulder to shoulder with his family where he belonged. “We have to get back,” he said desperately. “You’re the brains. How do we get back? Tell me what to do.”
Peter looked up and around. It was fairly impossible to see anything with such dim light. “We should figure out where we are first, don’t you think? I mean, who knows? Maybe we got really lucky and we’re still on Earth.”
Johnny didn’t know about that. That stone had looked nothing like anything he’d ever seen on Earth, and he’d been everywhere.
“Okay, so I can’t see anything,” Peter said, frowning at the thick darkness. “How about some more light, firefly?”
Johnny made the light emanating from his left hand brighter, which illuminated the cavernous room they were in enough to let Johnny see that it was immense. There were pillars laced evenly throughout every few yards as far as they could see.
The arched ceiling, which had been carved into the same sort of strange glowing red and lightless black stone as the floor, towered over them, and even after Johnny flamed on completely to increase the strength of his flames, he still couldn’t quite manage to glimpse the other side of the room. There was only a black nothingness, stretching out to infinity.
There could be anything lurking in that darkness, watching them even now. Johnny grew tense and alert now that his focus had shifted away from getting back home and to surviving wherever the hell he was.
Knowing Johnny’s luck, there was probably a monster. One that would try to eat him and Peter for breakfast. Johnny was far too hot and beloved to end up monster food here, where no one would ever know what had happened to him or how heroically he’d died. He wouldn’t even get to have the enormous funeral, with hordes of hot men and women wailing over his grave, of which he had always dreamed.
The air around them was cold and stale. Johnny had the impression that they were deep, deep, deep underground. Perhaps miles. There could be anything down here. Johnny knew all too well what terrors lurked beneath Earth’s surface. This place could be just as dangerous.
Peter whirled around as he took in their surroundings. His eyes shone from wonder, curiosity, and what was perhaps even joy, which made his face look achingly beautiful. The hope of seeing precisely that expression was precisely why Johnny invited Peter on the FF’s space trips whenever he could.
“Whoa,” Peter said, amazed. “This place is totally cool! But, yeah, it’s definitely not Earth.”
Johnny was impressed too, he had to admit, but he wasn’t about to let Peter know that. Johnny liked to feign an air of indifference when he was in space with Peter, just to emphasize how accustomed he was to this, and how much cooler his life was than Peter’s, because it was. “’s okay,” he said with a shrug. “It’s just a room.”
“Yeah,” Peter said, grinning joyously, eyes alight, “but it’s an alien room.”
Johnny smiled at Peter then, in a way that was probably much too fond and much too transparent about his feelings, judging by the way Peter’s grin faltered into a puzzled frown when he caught sight of it.
Johnny quickly wiped it away and hoped he hadn’t let too much of what he felt show on his face. “So what do we do, then?” he said, trying his best to sound businesslike. “Should we wait here to see if Reed can get it open again, or should we take off and try to find our own way back?”
Peter’s frown deepened. “Yeah,” he hedged. “It’s just...I don’t think Reed’s gonna want to risk reopening that wormhole.”
“Why the hell not?” Johnny asked wearily. He heroically resisted the urge to face palm. This was turning into a complete and utter trainwreck. “I’m sure he could figure out how to do it. It’s Reed. He’s never let me down. I’ve seen him do the impossible, especially when it’s his family on the line. And we’re both his family. For us, he’ll do it.”
Peter was shaking his head vigorously before Johnny had even finished talking. “No. Buddy, you aren’t getting it. If he turns it on, he couldn’t control it. He’d risking destroying Earth. Even for us, I don’t think he’d risk that. I know I wouldn’t want him to.”
Dammit. Johnny wouldn’t either. “Maybe he could just…figure out where it opened and come get us in a spaceship when he stops being so busy.”
Peter eyed their surroundings. “Hey. Does this look like all of the debris that got sucked in to you?”
Now that Johnny really looked, he had to admit that it didn’t. “No. Why?”
“That means that the wormhole’s mouth on this end wasn’t stable. It was opening in different places. I don’t think Reed’ll be able to figure out where it was we were dropped. And I, for one, don’t want to stick around here until he figures it out.”
“So you’re saying we need to get back on our own.”
Johnny took a second to hope that everyone on Earth would be okay without them and that his sister wouldn’t worry about him too much, but he knew she would.
Peter nodded, and Johnny groaned. “I think so. I think that’s the right call. I don’t know. Why are you asking me, space boy? You’ve been lost in space before. How’d you get back?”
Well, that was easy to answer. “Reed always got us back.”
“How’d he do it?”
Johnny was at a bit of a loss. “Um. I dunno? I never paid attention.”
“You never paid attention,” Peter repeated disapprovingly. He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “Well, isn’t that just great.”
“I didn’t need to! Reed always figured everything out! That’s what he’s there for! I just set things on fire when he tells me to. He’s the brains!”
“Yeah,” Peter shot back. “Obviously, because you don’t have any! It didn’t occur to you that you might get lost on your own someday and that you’d maybe have to figure out how to get back by yourself?”
“No!” Johnny said. “Why would I go to space without Reed or, I dunno, a map? I’m not dumb. I wouldn’t do that.”
“Except now we’re both stuck in space and neither of us know where we are or how to get back!”
This was getting them nowhere. Time to defuse. “Pete, relax. We’ll get back. We always get back. This isn’t a big deal.”
This was nothing new to Johnny. Well. Parts of it were new, but being lost in space? Been there, done that.
Johnny wasn’t worried about whether they’d get back because he knew they would. He was just worried about doing it quickly. He didn’t have months to spare this time.
“Except all the times you’ve been lost before, you’ve been with Reed. Do you see Reed here?”
“No,” Johnny said. He walked up to Peter, put his hands on his shoulders, and looked him square in the eyes. “But I do see the second smartest guy I know. I’m not worried, Pete, ‘cause I know you’ll get us back. So how about you take a deep breath, calm down, and start thinking about how you’re gonna get us out of this?”
“You can’t put that all on me!” Peter said. He was still panicking. Hard. “That’s not fair!”
Johnny sighed and rolled his eyes. He just needed to get Peter to focus. “Can we build a wormhole thing?”
Peter started to pace. “In a cave with no tools or equipment? No, we can’t build a wormhole generator! And even if we did, we’d need to know where Earth was to tell it where to open, and we don’t. I can’t work magic, Johnny! I’m not Reed! You can’t expect me to be Reed.”
“I know you aren’t Reed. You’re you, and that’s why I know you’re gonna get us back. C’mon, buddy. We’ve been in worse spots. Think. How do we get home?”
Peter’s eyes skimmed across the wall behind Johnny. He frowned and walked over, as he tugged off one of his gloves and tore off what was left of his mask. He started running his fingertips lightly against the wall.
Johnny smothered a fond smile. There he went. Being a giant nerd. Their problems would be solved in no time.
“You know,” Peter said distractedly, “it looks like this place was carved in here. This is too smooth to be natural. Meaning that there must be intelligent life on this planet.” He turned and gave Johnny an excited grin. “That’s it! Maybe they’ve got a way of contacting Earth. Maybe they even know where it is. Maybe they've got spaceships."
Johnny grinned back. He’d known Peter could do it, if he just calmed down enough to think. “So we just have to find someone and ask, and we’ll be home in no time.”
Peter snorted. “I don’t think it’s gonna be that easy, pal. When is it ever that easy?”
“Good point,” Johnny said ruefully.
Johnny had no idea how long they walked through the seemingly endless darkness before they found what they hoped was a way out. It was, at first, a narrow tunnel that didn’t give them much room for movement—Johnny had to duck his head to avoid bumping it against the ceiling since it was a good foot too short for him. But it was definitely moving upwards, so it likely was leading them out.
Eventually, the tunnel led them to a thin ribbon of a path that wound alongside a steep, rocky cliff face and overlooked a bottomless chasm.
“What the hell is this,” Peter hissed, as he peered down into the chasm, “the Mines of Moria? I take it back. This place is not awesome. Torchy, buddy, if I fall in, I want you to come get me right away.”
Johnny slung an arm across Peter’s shoulders and squeezed. “Don’t worry, bug brain,” he said reassuringly. “I won’t let you go splat. I mean, I might wait a few minutes before I catch you, just because you make hilarious faces when you fall.”
“As long as you catch me before I hit anything, we’re good.”
Johnny led the way through the dark, his fiery hand raised above his head like a torch, while Peter trailed behind him.
Johnny kept expecting someone—guards or something—to show up and chase them out, probably with blasters, but there was nothing other than an eerie, unsettling silence.
“Is it just me or is this place really spooky?” Johnny ventured.
His voice echoed in the darkness. It felt wrong somehow, talking in this place, so he realized that he’d instinctively lowered his voice.
“Oh, it isn’t just you,” Peter whispered. “Johnny…I think there’s someone’s following us.”
“What, is your Spidey sense tingling or something?”
Johnny was still a little bit convinced that half the time Peter claimed it was going off, he was just making it up to mess with Johnny.
Peter nodded. “I think there’s something…watching us...” A distant look crept into his eyes. “…something very, very old. I can feel it.”
Johnny’s heart nearly stopped. He rounded on Peter, whose eyes were glinting strangely in the dark. There was something about Peter, all of a sudden, that Johnny found unnerving, and that was unsettling in and of itself.
For a long, long time now, Johnny had assumed that he knew Peter, through and through, infinitely better than even he knew himself, but every now and then would come a reminder that there was more to him than even Johnny had glimpsed.
“You’re just trying to creep me out, aren’t you? This is you messing with me? It’s not gonna work, webs-for-brains.”
Peter shook his head. “Sorry, dude, but no. My Spidey sense is…I don’t know what’s going on with it. But it’s telling me something’s off.”
Well, that settled it. Johnny wasn’t just going to sit around and get ambushed or something like a loser. Johnny favored the direct approach.
He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey!” he bellowed into the darkness. “If anybody’s following us, how about you show your face instead of just creeping around in the dark like a—a creep!”
Peter was guffawing behind him. “Oh, man. You really need to work on your tough guy talk.” He clapped a hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, buddy. We’ll practice later.”
“Bite me,” Johnny hissed, too busy to formulate a wittier reply, not that he couldn’t have if he’d wanted to.
He was watching the darkness around them tensely, ears straining to detect the slightest hint of movement.
When the sign came, it turned out he really didn’t have to focus so hard, dammit. Johnny hated working too hard on anything. Just work as hard as you have to in order to get by, that was his motto.
There was a fiery roar from the chasm beneath their feet. Literally fiery. If Johnny hadn’t flamed on, flown in front of him, and absorbed the heat, Peter would have been a roasted spider.
“What the hell was that?” Peter shouted frantically. Johnny glanced back and found that he’d sprung up onto the wall behind him and was gaping down at the abyss.
“I dunno,” Johnny shouted, “but I’m sure as hell not sticking around to find out!” He flew up, extinguished the flame on his forearms, and held them out to Peter. “Grab on!”
Peter glanced up at Johnny and then down again at the darkness beneath their feet. Johnny could see the wheels in his head ticking away already, and he didn’t have to ask what he was thinking. Maybe they should fight the monster?
Please. Peter was just stupid enough to think that was a good idea. If traveling around through space and time and alternate dimensions and all had taught Johnny anything, it was that he should pick his battles. Some monsters you couldn’t defeat, and some there was no reason to fight. It didn’t seem like this monster was hurting anybody, because there was no one around to hurt. There was no point in fighting it, and if they did, he or Peter could get hurt, which would be very bad, out here without doctors or medical facilities.
“Pick your battles, Pete,” Johnny urged. “We have to get back to Earth and our families. Who’re all in danger. We don’t have time to be fighting space monsters!”
The rocks began to shake and tumble down around them. The chaos was accompanied by the sound of thunderous footsteps that were growing closer by the second.
That did it. Peter grabbed on to Johnny’s forearms, and Johnny flew away as fast as he could.
It was exhausting. If he ever started to think that maybe they were safe and stopped to rest, inevitably they’d hear distant roars and earth-shaking footsteps and be forced to set off again.
“Can’t you go any faster?” Peter shouted up at Johnny at one point.
“You try flying this fast for so long!” Johnny retorted. “Do you want to trade?”
“Not much room for web-slinging in these tunnels,” Peter pointed out.
Johnny grumbled something about Peter weighing more than Benjy. He probably didn’t, but it was definitely starting to feel like it.
“Aw, am I too heavy for you, buddy? You need to lift more weights.”
“No,” Johnny scoffed. “I really don’t. But you could really stand to lose some weight. For everyone’s sake, go on a diet when we get home.”
“Diet, shmiet,” Peter said uncaringly. “I don’t gain weight. Just muscle.”
“Sometimes I really hate you,” Johnny said bitterly, thinking about how hard he worked to keep slim and fit. The diets and the exercise and the personal trainers, and here was Peter, stuffing his face with hamburgers and hot dogs and donuts whenever he felt like it, and never gaining weight.
Peter grinned cheerfully up at Johnny. “Sometimes I hate you too, pal.”
Johnny had the fleeting desire to pull Peter up and kiss him, hard, but he shoved it down and away as quickly as it arose.
Why did Peter have to smile so much? It always made the not kissing him so much more difficult.
It took probably about an hour for them to reach an enormous red-and-black door, engraved with all kinds of writing and artwork that Johnny’d never seen before. Johnny set Peter down on the ground and started trying to melt through the door with a stream of his hottest fire. It seemed to have no effect at all.
“Why won’t this damn thing open?!” he shouted, frustrated.
His flame could burn through anything. This was a personal insult.
“How about you give me a shot, Flamebrain?” Peter said.
Oh, it would be just Johnny’s luck if Peter managed to open the door when Johnny couldn’t. Peter would get smug. Johnny hated it when Peter was smug. That was on his List of the Most Annoying Things in the Universe, sure to set everyone’s teeth on edge.
He sighed and moved aside, and gestured for Peter to walk up and take his best shot.
Peter strolled up casually. No, it was smug, the way he was walking. Definitely smug. Johnny wanted to shoot fire at Peter’s feet, but Peter would probably just waste a lot of time yelling at him if he did that.
Peter wedged his fingers in the narrow space between the door and the wall and started trying to haul the door open. It didn’t so much as budge.
“Oh, come on,” Johnny heckled. “Ben would’ve had that door open by now, you third-rate loser. Put your back into it!”
Peter stopped trying to force the door open long enough to give Johnny an absolutely murderous glare. Johnny was going to wake up webbed to the floor again, wasn’t he?
“Well,” Johnny said defensively, “he would have!”
“So why don’t you go get him, then?” Peter ground out as he strained to open the door.
“Well, I would if I could, old buddy, old pal,” Johnny sighed. “Ben’s great company when there are fire-breathing monsters chasing you. You don’t have to worry about him singeing his hair.”
“I wasn’t worried about singeing my hair.” Peter stopped. “Wait. Is my hair singed? Please tell me my hair’s not singed.”
Johnny knew he had to play this moment perfectly. He looked up at Peter’s hair, pretended to cringe a little, and said, “Uh, well, Pete. Buddy. It’s—I hate to tell you this, but…it’s mostly the eyebrows, really.”
Peter’s hair and eyebrows were completely fine. Johnny had sucked up all of the heat long before it had gotten anywhere near Peter. If Peter was stupid enough to believe that Johnny’d ever let a hair on his head get so much as singed, that was his own stupid fault.
“Oy,” Peter said, rolling his eyes. “That’s just great. Now I’m the hairless wonder. That was exactly what I needed to round out the month from hell.”
Well, it wasn’t like Johnny’s month had been going so great either, what with the lack of beauticians and the very inconvenient aliens and the threat of dying while unmanicured. Add to that the fact that he’d been deprived the chance of seeing Peter in swim trunks, and his month had been absolutely hellish.
There was an ear-shattering roar off in the tunnels below them, coming from somewhere much closer than Johnny was entirely comfortable with.
Johnny and Peter’s eyes met, both wide and not at all happy with their current predicament.
“Get the—” Johnny started.
“Door open,” Peter finished. “On it!”
Peter wedged his fingers back into the black stone and groaned and strained with the effort of pulling it open. The door began to shudder and splinter, but it still wasn’t moving.
The creature’s thunderous footsteps were growing closer and closer, and a blast of fire came rushing up towards them. Johnny rushed forward and absorbed it before it got near Peter.
“Pete,” he said urgently, eyes fixed warily on the tunnels behind them. “Any time now would be good!”
“I’m trying!” Peter grunted. “This door’s heavy!”
There was another stream of fire. Johnny needed to expel this heat and fast. “Pete! Do it now!”
“Johnny, I don’t know if I can do this!” Peter said hopelessly, muscles straining with effort.
“Peter Parker,” Johnny bellowed, because he was through being nice, “be a goddamn hero and open the goddamn door! Because if you don’t, we are going to die here in the middle of nowhere, and your aunt will never even know what happened to you!”
That did it. The prospect of Aunt May in any kind of pain, especially if it was because of him, was always a sore subject with Peter, and Johnny knew it was exactly the right button to push to get the reaction out of Peter that he needed.
Never let it be said that Johnny didn’t know how to play Peter Parker like a fiddle.
Peter took out all of his anger and frustration on the door, which didn’t stand a chance. It crumpled in his bare hands like a sheet of paper.
Johnny stumbled backward to avoid the debris from the collapsing door and wound up tripping onto the ground, which gave him the perfect vantage point to enjoy what came next.
When he looked up, Peter was standing there, chest-heaving, above the rubble of the door he’d destroyed, lit by the bright orange sunlight streaming through the opening behind him.
It was all kinds of hot. Unfortunately, Johnny didn’t have time to enjoy it. Why did Peter always do totally hot things when there wasn’t time for Johnny to do anything about it? It wasn’t fair.
Strike three million, universe. This is exactly why Johnny hates you.
“Let’s go!” Johnny said, as he flamed on and flew out the door above Peter. Peter caught his arms as he sped by in a blur of motion. Johnny flew up and up and up in the hopes that their pursuer wouldn’t be able to follow.
There was a terrifying roar beneath them as the monster that had been chasing them finally emerged into the sunlight.
“What the hell is that?” Johnny said, gawping at it. He’d never seen anything like it, and he had seen many strange things in his life.
It looked exactly like a dragon, if dragons were fluffy and resembled extremely large house cats with wings and the odd scale here and there. It had heart-stoppingly sharp teeth and claws. Enormous ones. The size of Johnny’s left arm, not the right one, which was .08 centimeters shorter than the left, according to Reed, who wouldn’t take it back, no matter how many times Johnny threatened to set him on fire.
It was a dark shade of garnet, save for the tips of its wings, which were a burnt orange, and its eyes, which were gold.
It was somehow cute and fluffy and scary and intimidating all at once. Johnny didn’t know whether to coo, take a picture, or scream.
“Hello,” the dragon-cat said. Johnny’s brain had a hard time processing its words because they sounded somewhere in between a roar, a purr, and spoken words. His universal translator must be on the fritz. “Why did you intrude into my home and wake me from my long slumber? Are you some of those foolish adventurers who fly through here every now and then and are always trying to steal my eggs? It’s not nice to steal other people’s children, you know. It’s even less nice to eat them, if that’s what you’re doing with them. I shall be very cross with you if you are.”
It said it all very politely and made no signs of taking off after them, despite its outstretched wings. Johnny had no idea what to make of it.
“What the hell are you doing, Hothead?” Peter shouted, twisting his neck to scowl up at Johnny. “Keep flying!”
Johnny ignored him and drifted closer instead. He was friends with plenty of people who looked terrifying on the outside but were actually very nice on the inside. Granted, this dragon-cat had chased them for an hour and tried to set them on fire, but Johnny was still willing to give it a chance.
“Um,” he told it. “It was an accident? There was a wormhole. We don’t really even know what planet we’re on. We’re…sorry for not knocking, or whatever. We didn’t know anyone lived there. My name is Johnny Storm and he’s, uh, Spider-Man. We come from really far away. A planet called Earth. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of it?”
Johnny didn’t know what point there was in not saying Peter’s real name—he wasn’t wearing a mask anymore, and it wasn’t like anyone around here had any clue who Peter Parker was.
“Are you really going to stop and have a nice little chat with the cat…dragon...thing that’s been chasing us for hours?” Peter asked incredulously.
“Yes,” Johnny hissed. “Now shut up, or I’ll drop you.” They were high up enough that it would definitely sting. Also, the dragon-cat might eat him, and Johnny’d like to hear him complain when he was cat food. Dragon food. Whatever.
“No,” the dragon-cat said. “I have not heard of your…Earth.” It pronounced the word carefully, as though it had never heard anything like it, and it came out sounding more like, “Eee-arth.” “It is a strange word, is it not?” It stretched out its front paws, dug its claws into the dirt, arched its back, and stretched, exactly like a cat. “I suppose I can’t blame you for being in my home. I shan’t eat you, then. It wouldn’t be fair, and there’s not much meat on your bones anyhow, although it is true that it has been many years since I have eaten anything other than rhaetar rocks.” It sat up and curled its spindly tail around itself. “May I ask, did I frighten you? I’ve been trying very hard to work on being frightening, but I haven’t had much practice. It’s been a great many years since I’ve had visitors, and it does get dull trying to frighten one’s own reflection.”
“Yeah,” Johnny said, nonplussed. This was certainly the politest dragon…cat he’d ever met. “That was—it was really scary. Kudos. We were practically peeing our pants there for a while. Right, Pete?”
There was a silent but very heated argument as Peter insisted that he wasn’t going to talk to the dragon-cat on principle, mostly because it had chased and seriously considered eating them, and Johnny threatened repeatedly to drop him.
Johnny and the fear of falling where the dragon-cat could get at him won.
“Yeah,” Peter said resentfully. “You were scary. I guess.”
“Pants?” the dragon-cat asked. It tilted its great big head to one side. “What are…pants?”
“They’re—” Johnny cast about for a way to explain pants to someone who had clearly never heard of them. “Oh, never mind. Not important. Could you maybe tell us where we could find a spaceship?”
“We need one that’ll take us far,” Peter added. “And that goes as fast as possible. We have a war to get back to.”
“I do not know if you will find any more on this planet. It was laid to waste many years ago by cruel invaders. There is not much left of what once was. It is a miracle I survived, and I fear I am the last of my kind, until, that is, my children are born, but that will be many long millennia from now.”
Playing a hunch, Johnny said, “These invaders…they wouldn’t be called the Krotrakka, by any chance, would they?”
The dragon-cat’s fur instantly stood on end. “Krotrakka!” it boomed. Its voice thundered through the desolate canyon. Peter and Johnny both flinched. “Yes, that was their name. They pillaged and plundered and took all that was bright and beautiful and good in this world, and left behind nothing but ashes.”
Johnny bit his lower lip. This didn’t sound promising. “Oh,” he said. “We’re…sorry.”
They all fell into a respectful silence for a moment, lost in their memories of all to which the Krotrakka had laid waste. Johnny’s thoughts wound forlornly to the small world from which he and Peter had been torn. He wondered glumly if it was still out there, glimmering in the darkness, and if his family yet lived.
“So…” Peter said, breaking the silence. “There’s nothing on this planet that can help us?”
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “Were there—did there used to be cities? Anywhere we could look for—for food or water? Maybe parts to build a spaceship? People we could ask for help?”
Between him and Peter they should be able to figure it out, right? God knows he’d helped Reed design enough FTL drives.
“There is no one else on this planet. I have searched long and hard and found no one. But you can look in the ruins of the once-great city of Raltashar. A wonder it once was, with twisting spires that climbed endlessly towards the sun, where now there is nothing. Fly for a day towards the setting suns, and you will reach what little is left.”
“And this planet—the people who lived here—they were spaceflight capable?”
The dragon-cat inclined its head. “Musicians and artists were they once. They grew and nurtured living spaceships as wondrous as their cities so they could travel and spread their joy throughout the universe. I do not know if any of their ships yet live. Search for this sign.” It drew the symbol of a strange sort of star in the sand with a claw the size of a house. “If you find any, tell them that the Lasat of the Canyon of Jetun sent you. I am known. They will help you.”
“Thanks,” Johnny said. “Good luck to you and your, uh, eggs. I hope they’re all healthy.”
The Lasat bowed its head in thanks. “Good luck to you as well, Johnny Storm. You and your friend will need it.”
Johnny and Peter watched in silence as it turned and slunk back into its cavern, which was followed by one hell of a blow-out argument between Peter and Johnny over Johnny’s recklessness.
“Don’t you ever stop to think about anything before you do it?” Peter shouted at one point, which was soon followed by Johnny listing every single stupid, reckless thing Peter had ever done in his life. That Johnny knew about, anyways.
Needless to say, there were a lot of them. Peter cut him off after about fifteen minutes, and Johnny hadn’t even gotten through half of them, which he made a point of telling Peter, much to Peter’s chagrin.