Chapter Text
“You’re lucky I have my spidey-sense,” Peter said, flipping through his open apartment window and landing in a crouch on the coffee table, which was suspiciously clean. “Otherwise I would’ve come in swinging at the intruder in my place.”
“Hi, to you, too, Wallcrawler,” the intruder in question replied, grinning up at him with his supermodel perfect teeth, sprawled all over Peter’s couch as if he owned it. Peter wondered if Johnny would look so comfortable if he knew that that couch had come from the dumpster. He decided not to tell him, because he was generous like that.
“You know, just because you know who I am now doesn’t mean you have a free invite to waltz into my apartment.” He hopped off the table and yanked off his mask, breathing in the semi-fresh air uninhibited. “Please tell me you didn’t melt my lock to get in here, because my landlord already hates me and I can’t afford to replace it.”
“Chill, bro, I didn’t melt or break anything. You left your door unlocked.” Johnny rolled into a sitting position, his hair so perfectly messy Peter knew he’d styled it that way. He hated that it made him look hotter instead of ridiculous. “Aren’t you worried about robbers?”
The arachnid hero only deigned to reply with a snort. He went to shut his window and a wave of heat hit him, which he knew didn’t come from his heater, because that only worked every other Thursday. He turned back to Johnny, whose expression hadn’t changed.
“Thanks.”
“Even I could tell your apartment was cold, and I don’t feel the temperature anymore.”
Peter didn’t reply, and slowly Johnny’s grin slipped. He could’ve kept bantering, they both could have, they could chatter away the night and day...and they might have, when they were younger. They were older now, though, and this wasn’t something they could avoid forever.
“It’s been a bit since you came by the Baxter Building. Reed misses you in the lab,” Johnny said, tone light, eyes heavy. “Sue and Ben keep bugging me about asking you on missions. I called you.”
It had been two months exactly Peter had teamed up with the FF for a mission, and another two months since then that he’d hung out in the Baxter Building. He hadn’t been back after moving out, after kissing Johnny and getting shoved away, a ruined T-shirt the only evidence that that night had happened, because as far as he could tell, neither of them had told another person what happened and they certainly hadn’t talked about it with each other.
“I’ve been busy.”
Johnny snorted. “Right. Busy.”
Peter threw his hands up. “What is this? What do you want from me, Johnny? I kissed you, you literally burned me, so I left. That’s what you wanted, right?”
“No, I didn’t want you to ghost me!” He was on his feet now, his edges simmering, heat cramming into every corner of the apartment. “Four months, Peter, four months of you avoiding me and dodging my calls! I visited Aunt May just to hear how you were doing! I tried to go to ESU, but I literally saw you jump out a window to avoid me!” Peter winced at that (he hadn't though Johnny had spotted him yet), but the Torch wasn’t done. “So here I am, in your apartment, so we can actually talk to each other like normal people for once! I know we both suck at it, but if we don’t talk I think I’m just going to burn down your apartment!”
Flames were flickering along his slim fingers and the slope of his shoulders, which was equally sexy, dangerous, and alarming. Peter hadn’t seen Johnny lose control of his flames like this, in the heat (heh) of the moment, since they were seventeen.
“I’ve missed you,” Peter whispered.
Just like that, the flames snuffed out. Johnny stared at him with his baby blue eyes (the same color as Gwen’s), then sat down on the couch, sinking into the distressed cushions.
“I’m getting a migraine. Talking to you is giving me an actual migraine,” the blonde groaned.
“Trust me, I have to listen to myself all the time. I understand your pain.” Johnny just glared at him, so he sat down on the coffee table and shoved down all his jokes and defenses. “Okay, I’m sorry.”
“Jesus. You ghost me for four months and then say you missed me?”
“I did say I was sorry.”
“ Jesus, Peter. Why haven’t you just called?”
“I didn’t think you wanted to see me.”
Johnny threw his hands up. “I’ve literally been stalking you for the last two months, and I know you know that because of your stupid spider-sense. Of course I wanted to talk to you!”
Peter didn’t say anything, because anything he said would just sound ridiculous, because it was ridiculous. He knew he was ridiculous. He knew he’d been running away from his problems. But with Johnny, he always reverted back to a fifteen year old who was realizing for the first time that his best friend was hot and rich and famous and way out of his league. It was easier to run than face that head on.
“Say something? I thought I hated your jokes, but I think I hate you being quiet even more.”
“I visited Gwen’s grave today,” he blurted out, then regretted it as he saw something in Johnny’s eyes shutter. He reached out without thinking and squeezed Johnny’s knee. “I’m not saying that to make you feel bad or something. I’m just— I visit her grave sometimes, now. I put it off for months, but I do it now. And I miss her, I do, but she’s gone. And I don’t know if I’m ever going to be okay with that. Honestly, I don’t think I ever can be, but I can handle it now. And that’s because of you.”
Johnny seemed confused, but he was sincere as he said, “I’m glad.”
Peter waved an impatient hand. “Because of you, Johnny Storm. You help me be better. You’ve always helped me, since we were both starting out and I was scared I was going to fail someone the way I failed Uncle Ben. You helped me through that, even if you didn’t know my name or face yet.”
“I didn’t—” he protested, but Peter wasn’t interested in his self-deprecation.
“You were right to shove me away when I kissed you. I was still grieving Gwen and I wasn’t ready for a relationship. I’m still not sure I'm ready, to be honest. But I have loved you since I was fifteen years old and first broke into your house and I have loved you since we were seventeen and went to the microverse together and I have loved you every day since, even when I was too stupid to realize it.”
Johnny went pale, but Peter remained firm, even as every instinct he had screamed for him to break the tension with a joke. He meant every word, though, and he wasn’t going to screw it up by making Johnny think he wasn’t one hundred percent serious. For the first time in a while, he was determined to do something right by Johnny Storm.
“Were you hit on the head?”
Peter winced. That was not the answer he’d been hoping for. Sure, a heartfelt declaration of love back might have been asking for too much, but the downright disbelief on Johnny's face was insulting.
“Yes, many times, but that’s not what this is about.” He withdrew his hand from Johnny’s knee. “Okay, look, I said what I had to say. Clearly, we’ve reached the extent of our ability to actually talk to each other. It's fine—”
Johnny’s hand shot out and grabbed Peter’s so hard he almost thought Johnny had super strength for a second. As it was, his grip would have bruised a normal person, but Peter wasn’t normal.
“Johnny, what the—?”
“You’re not concussed?” he demanded, eyes piercing.
“Yes, we already went over this—”
“And you’re not mind-controlled or otherwise incapacitated?”
“Not as far as I’m aware, no.”
“And you’re not messing with me?”
Peter stared at him. “Okay, I know I’ve been a bad friend for a while now, but I didn’t realize your opinion of me was that low.”
Johnny’s shell cracked and suddenly he looked like the desperate, lonely twenty-one year old he was, under all the power and fame and bravado. He looked as fragile as he did after going Nova, and Peter’s heart ached knowing that he looked like that because of him.
“I’ve been in love with you since the first time I bandaged you up,” Johnny whispered, squeezing Peter’s hand. “And I’ve spent way too long pretending that I wasn’t, because you were my only friend, you were all I had, and I didn’t want to ruin it. I mean, I didn’t even know what you looked like or your real name, but it didn’t even matter because I knew you, maybe better than anyone else. Pushing you away when you kissed me was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“I was so mad at you for that, for weeks,” Peter admitted, and somehow they were knee to knee now, faces a breath away. “Now, I think you were right.”
“I hope I was. It wasn’t exactly easy for me to do that.” And then Johnny was gone, standing, and Peter felt oddly cold, even with his heat still radiating through the apartment.
“Johnny—”
“Look, I’m absolutely flipping out that my feelings aren’t unrequited,” the blonde said, pacing by the window. Peter swiveled around to face him. “But you’re the one who just said you don’t think you’re ready for another relationship.”
“I-I know. But I love you.”
Johnny groaned, tugging at his hair, which somehow stayed perfectly styled even with the manhandling. Peter wanted to be the one tugging at those sunshine locks. Shit, he might be more head over heels than he’d thought, and he was already pretty sure he had it bad.
“Parker, why can’t you not make things more difficult for once in our lives?”
“Sorry, Storm, but it’s my superpower. Along with the stickiness."
“Still not helping!”
“You’re the one who broke into my apartment! I wasn’t exactly planning to confess my love to you in this shithole, so I don’t see how you can expect me to know what to do here!”
Johnny came to an abrupt stop, eyes closed and shoulders shaking with laughter. Peter’s lips twitched, even if he wasn’t entirely sure what the joke was.
“You know, this isn’t how I was expecting it to go either, but it seems oddly fitting given how we’ve messed everything else up already. I mean, we met because you broke into my house—”
“I’m never going to live that one down, am I?” Peter sighed.
“Never,” he agreed.
“I think I have an idea.”
“About what?”
“Us?” Peter shrugged.
Johnny leaned against the wall, face guarded, but not closed off. “I’m listening.”
“Let’s take this...whatever it is, between us, slow. I’m still pulling my life back together and I know the FF are planning another space trip.”
“Wait, have you been stalking me?”
“Torchie, I don’t have to stalk you because you’re on every newspaper, magazine, and TV show on the planet. I saw Reed do an interview talking about the trip on the evening news.” Johnny actually had the audacity to look disappointed that Peter hadn’t been stalking him. He shook his head and forged on. “Anyways, we go back to how it was. Team-ups, hang-outs, the usual. And—” he swallowed, “and in a few months, maybe we give this dating thing a shot. Do it right, for once in our lives.”
“Think we could get it right?” His tone was teasing, but his eyes were anything but.
Peter grinned, crooked and hopeful. “We have to get something right, eventually. Let’s make it this.”