Archive of Our Own

It was Peter’s fault and he admitted that. After all, he’d made the mistake of asking the question. Anyone smart would have learned years ago.

“So, are you going to stay up here or at the Baxter Building?” he asked.

“I dunno, maybe neither,” Johnny said with a sigh, tipping his head back. “I kind of feel like I should do something different. You ever get that?”

Peter had been doing something different for the last few months, and honestly he was pretty sick of it. The life fantastic was fantastic, in every sense of the word, but it wasn’t his life, street signs and weblines, the wind rushing by as he swung through Manhattan.

He had to admit, though, that he couldn’t beat the view. He put his hands up against the viewscreen like a kid at a store window, staring out at the stars all around them and Earth down below, big and blue and beautiful. It was dazzling.

Johnny was dazzling, too. Gaunt, tired, circles beneath his eyes like bruises and his hair lank and lifeless, and he was still one of the best things Peter had ever seen in his life, because he was real and alive and right beside him.

He hadn’t realized how much Johnny’s absence had felt like a piece cut right out of his chest until he had him back again.

Maybe that was why he opened his big, dumb mouth and said it.

“Pffssh. I swear, I don’t know how you deal with all this sometimes.” He knocked an elbow into Johnny—gently, even more gently than he usually would, because Johnny had lost weight while he’d been away, the sharp angles of him even sharper than usual, and Peter was afraid he’d break him if he breathed on him too hard. “Do what I do—run home to your apartment—”

“Okay,” Johnny said, in a tone that was far too calm. “Sure.”

For a second, Peter’s thoughts didn’t want to seem to work right.

“Huh?” he said, like a genius.

“Sure,” Johny repeated, putting his hands on his hips. He kept staring out the window, not looking at Peter at all. “I’ll be happy to move in. It’ll be nice. Fun. Fun and nice.”

Peter opened his mouth to argue, but all that came out was a noise like a stalled car.

He could have told Johnny no. He was good at doing that, usually. But then Johnny had to go and sling his arm around Peter’s shoulder, leaning into him, and he was so warm. Peter thought he’d never feel the sunshine heat of him at his side again.

“Wuh,” he said, intelligently.

“Exactly!” Johnny said, grinning, and suddenly he didn’t look half as tired as before. “Roommates. That’s pretty cool, right?”

What else was Peter supposed to say?

“I guess.”

He’d meant to spend the night in what used to be the Baxter Building’s residential floors, the ones reserved for tenants besides the Fantastic Four. They’d mostly been converted into lab and storage space, Sue explained to Peter on the elevator ride down, but a scant few functional apartments remained. They were useful for when they had unexpected guests, she said.

What she neglected to say, but what Peter knew perfectly well, were that the Fantastic Four’s visitors were usually Wakandan royal envoys, or the fish people from the land time forgot. Not sweaty, tired Spider-Man and a gaggle of human, Moloid, and clone children who were up well past their bedtime.

There were just enough rooms for everyone. How that ended up with Peter on the floor of a luxury apartment’s bedroom, listening to Johnny shift around on the bed was beyond him.

No, he thought, staring up at the dark ceiling, it wasn’t. He knew exactly how he’d ended up here. First, Sue had grabbed his wrist and asked him to keep an eye on Johnny.

“Please, Peter,” she said. “He’ll get upset if he thinks I’m hovering. But if it’s you…”

Peter had a headache just thinking about it.

And second… second was the gaping, ice cold hole that he’d danced around for the past few months. Johnny had been dead, and now he was alive again. What else was Peter supposed to do about that?

And now he was lying on a mattress that cost more than six months of his rent, staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep. He tossed. He turned. He replayed grudges from seventh grade over in his head ad nauseum and contemplated some deeply petty options.

Giving up, he grabbed the blanket and one pillow from the bed. The other bedroom was just down the hall. Peter opened the door silently, and for a long moment he just stood there, watching. Johnny was on his side, facing away from the door. Peter could see the shine of his hair in the hall light, peeking above the sheets.

He didn’t so much as stir.

Peter shut the door as quietly as he’d opened it and stretched out on the floor by the bed, the pillow under his head and the blanket abandoned.

All was quiet for a moment. Then Johnny said, “Can’t sleep without me, huh?”

“The ceiling’s leaking in my room,” Peter lied, stone-faced. “Go back to bed.”

There was a long pause, and then a shifting sound, like Johnny had rolled onto his back.

“Okay,” he said.

Peter closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. He ignored the part of him that felt like crawling onto the ceiling and hanging there like an overgrown bat instead of a spider, knowing that it tended to freak bedroom partners out – that was probably the last thing Johnny needed right now.

He’d camped out with Johnny and the Fantastic Four before. He knew Johnny to be a deep sleeper – all the more convenient for pranking him – so he lay in the dark and listened, waiting for Johnny’s breathing to even out.

Except every few minutes, Johnny would shift, his body sliding against the sheets. Every little movement, every twitch of his fingers and toes, every sigh against the pillow seemed to skate along the edges of Peter’s awareness, every inch of Johnny plucking at threads of his mental web.

It should have been grating. Instead, it felt—familiar. Like sliding into bed at the crack of dawn after a long night of swinging and knowing Mary Jane was only pretending to be asleep.

“What’s the matter?” Peter finally said. “Thread count not high enough for His Majesty?”

He winced as soon as the words left his mouth. Johnny hadn’t even been back for long enough for Peter to get his breath back, and there he went with the Richie Rich jokes again. He was going to web his own big mouth shut.

“Shut up,” Johnny snorted. “It’s nothing. I just…”

He broke off. He sat up suddenly, shaking his head, and Peter, by some minor miracle, managed to keep quiet and wait for him to continue.

“I haven’t,” Johnny started, then stopped. His breathing came hard and fast, then he swallowed, and it slowed. “Never mind.”

“What?” Peter asked, leaning up on an elbow. He could see Johnny silhouetted in the city lights through the windows, shoulders hunched and miserable. “Torch. Talk to me.”

For a long moment, he thought Johnny wasn’t going to speak. When he started again, it was slow and halting.

“I haven’t actually slept on a real bed in two years,” he said, so quietly Peter barely heard him. “I can’t get comfortable. It’s too soft.”

Peter had nothing to say to that. Nothing good, anyway.

“What?” Johnny said after a stilted, silent moment. “No jokes, no quips? Black Cat got your tongue again while I was away?”

Peter snorted, pushing a hand up into his hair.

“Please,” he said. “When would I have had the time? It’s a twenty-four-seven daycare service around here.”

Johnny huffed, slinging his legs over the side of the bed.

“Move over,” Johnny said, kicking him. Peter groaned and rolled over reluctantly, making room between the floor and the bed. Johnny got down into the little space with him, grabbing half the blanket and pulling it over himself. The position didn’t leave much room, and there was basically nowhere for him to put his head but on Peter’s shoulder.

“Seriously?” Peter said, curling his arm around Johnny’s shoulders even as he spoke. He was just as comfortingly warm as ever, but there was something a little brittle about him. Peter had felt it that first moment he’d picked him up on the threshold of the Negative Zone. It simultaneously made him want to tighten and loosen his grip. “We couldn’t do this on the bed?”

“Shh,” Johnny murmured, patting at Peter’s chest. He sounded drowsy. “Getting comfortable.”

“Watch the knees, pointy,” Peter said. Somehow, his hand found its way into Johnny’s hair, stroking a little, keeping Johnny’s head down against his shoulder. “Better?”

Johnny only said, “You’re warm,” slinging an arm over Peter’s chest. Back from the dead barely twelve hours – Peter wasn’t even going to say anything about him snuggling up.

“Well, you won’t have any problems with goose feather mattresses or unstable molecule memory foam or whatever it is you Fantastics use in your bedding down at Chez Parker,” Peter said. He couldn’t believe he was actually entertaining the insane notion of Johnny moving in with him, but something about the way he’d curled into Peter made it seem impossible to say no.

Besides, he and Johnny liked each other. Peter only had the urge to dunk him in the East River about once every two or three hours, which was pretty good as far as his social skills were concerned.

“Really gonna let me move in?” Johnny mumbled around a yawn. Peter resumed stroking his hair. He found it soothing, the repetitive motion of his fingers sliding through Johnny’s blond locks. He hoped maybe Johnny found it soothing, too.

“Oh, sure,” he said, sighing. “Why not? It can’t be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Ha,” Johnny said. Peter could hear the smile in his voice. His fingers tightened in Peter’s shirt. “S’gonna be great, Pete.”

Peter waited until Johnny was soundly asleep to curl his fingers in his hair and press his mouth against Johnny’s forehead, lingering until some of the awful cagey tension in his own chest loosened.

“Happy to have you back, Johnny,” he whispered.

The move was a chaotic affair. Peter had, for some reason, thought it would just be him and Johnny. Instead, when moving day rolled around, the entire Future Foundation stood there on his doorstep.

“We come in peace,” the moloids drawled in unison.

“I don’t,” Bentley added. He had something that looked like a nerf gun in his hands. Peter raised his eyes to the ceiling briefly.

“You’re not leaving them here, too, are you?” Peter asked Sue.

She leaned up and patted him on the cheek.

“One is punishment enough,” she said, and for just a second, everything felt like how it used to be. Then she seemed to realize what she said, and she looked over her shoulder, her face the picture of guilt. Behind her, Johnny stood there, bag slung over his shoulder and his eyebrows raised.

“I’m not going to die if you make fun of me,” he said pointedly. “You know. Again.”

The silence was heavy, weighing down on the room.

Johnny looked terrible. There was no way around it. In the stark light of day, stripped away from the adrenaline rush of battle, the differences showed more than before. Peter’s heart hurt just looking at him. He looked breakable, suddenly. He’d known Johnny since they were kids. He’d never thought about him that way before.

Peter cleared his throat before he could even think about it and then, suddenly, everyone was looking at him.

There were angry sparks burning bright in the depths of Johnny’s eyes. For some reason, that was what struck Peter.

“You know something, Torch?” he said. “You can still light up a room.”

He hadn’t even really meant it as a joke. It was just—the truth. Even after everything that Johnny must have seen and suffered, he was still one of the brightest things Peter had ever seen.

It felt like he was holding his breath. Then the corner of Johnny’s mouth lifted, barely a smile.

“Really?” he said. “That’s the best you can do, webhead?”

“Give me time to get back into the swing of things,” he said. “I’m out of practice. My favorite punching bag was missing in action, after all.”

“You got lazy without me around,” Johnny said. “Hope you enjoyed that Human Torch is dead vacation.”

He collapsed backwards onto the sofa, staring up at Peter. Everyone around them seemed like they were holding their breaths, but Peter knew a challenge when he saw one, and he’d never backed down from a fight before.

“Try not to die on me again, Torch,” he said. “It’s bad for my reputation.”

Some of the tension left Johnny’s shoulders.

“I’ll do it for you, Webs,” he said. “And only for you.”

He turned to stare at the group still clustered, anxiously, around Peter’s sad excuse for a kitchen table.

“Okay, are you all happy now?” he said to his family. “We can make jokes about me dying without me shattering into a thousand pieces. Now can we just get me moved into this dump already?”

“I have regrets,” Peter said to no one in particular. He had to bite the inside of his cheek to hide his smile.

The move went about as well as he could have expected. Sue rearranged his kitchen cabinets and Ben went through his bathroom drawers. They lost a moloid behind the couch for a solid hour.

When it was all over, Peter was left lying prone on his couch, contemplating the benefits of faking his own death.

He watched as Johnny talked to Sue and Ben in quiet voices. He could see from the set of Sue’s shoulders that she wasn’t really happy about Johnny’s decision to move into Peter’s place, and Peter couldn’t exactly blame her. In her position, he’d want to keep him close, too.

Before he could even realize what he was doing, he found himself tracing the long lines of Johnny’s body, illuminated by the fading evening sunlight streaming in through the window. If there was one thing Peter tried to never sacrifice in a living space, it was the windows—he needed them to slip in and out of the apartment easily. But he was a photographer by trade, too, and there was something about Johnny in that light, even though he could still see how thin and rangy he looked under that designer hoodie, could practically feel the exhaustion coming off of him in waves.

“Beautiful.”

The word left his lips, quiet and unbidden.

Someone behind him cleared their throat and Peter jumped, nearly knocking off his own coffee table. He spun around to see Reed standing behind him, looking bemused.

“Can I talk to you for a moment?” he asked.

Peter spared another glance at Johnny before he nodded towards Reed, hauling himself off the sofa.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

Reed hesitated, like he wanted to say something, then pressed his lips into a thin, grim line. He clapped Peter on the shoulder and then, to Peter’s surprise, he pulled him into a hug.

“Call us if you need anything,” he said when he pulled back. Then, quieter, so no one else could hear, he added, “Take care of him, please.”

“Yeah,” Peter said, feeling caught off guard. There was something so vulnerable in Reed’s eyes, like there was more he wanted to say, but he just offered him a lopsided smile and squeezed his shoulder before he left with his family.

He and Johnny ate pizza on the couch that night, some movie Johnny liked playing on the TV. It struck Peter as oddly nostalgic, reminding him of the first night he and Mary Jane had moved into that loft apartment in the building Harry and Liz owned, and how they’d eaten takeout on the floor, all their stuff still in boxes, laughing at the novelty of it all.

Except this time nobody was laughing. They ate in silence, Peter only half-watching the movie. He spent the rest of his time watching Johnny, taking in the slump in his shoulders, the shadows beneath his eyes.

When Johnny started listing to the side, Peter made a decision and grabbed for the remote. The TV shut off with a click.

“Okay, hot stuff,” he said, getting up and holding out his hand. “Come on. Time for bed.”

Johnny glanced at him, confusion in his eyes.

“I’ll haul you like a sack of potatoes if you want, firefly,” Peter said. “Or you can get up and walk by yourself.”

Johnny snorted, but after a second, he reached up and took Peter’s hand. Peter pulled him to his feet with an exaggerated groan, like it took any effort at all, and began tugging him, backwards step by step, to the bedroom.

“Wait,” Johnny said when Peter dragged him through the doorway, looking around as if he’d just realized something important. “Where are you going to sleep?”

Peter was a bachelor in New York. He didn’t have an extra bedroom. Any other night, he would have laughed at Johnny’s surprised expression, would have made some dumb joke about watching the wheels in that pretty blond head turn.

But it wasn’t any other night, and Peter was tired and hurting, too, just looking at Johnny. Like a light had gone out somewhere inside both of them.

“I’ll take the couch,” Peter said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

Johnny’s mouth twisted to the side, his expression unhappy.

“What?” Peter said before he could stop himself.

Johnny grimaced, rubbing the back of his neck.

“The bed’s big enough for two people,” he said.

It wasn’t, not really. Peter hadn’t needed a bed big enough for two for a long time.

Do you want me to stay? he almost asked, but he didn’t know what he would do if Johnny said yes.

He didn’t know what he would do if he said no, either.

He wasn’t used to feeling awkward and unsure around Johnny. There was no reason to feel awkward around Johnny, he told himself. They’d shared a nest of blankets on the floor of the Baxter Building just days ago, ankles and knees knocking into each other, Johnny’s head on his shoulder. But that had been different, somehow.

Let no one ever say Spider-Man wasn’t a man of action, he thought to himself, yanking the covers back.

“You’re not going out swinging?” Johnny asked, suspicious.

“I might later,” Peter admitted. “I’ll wait until you fall asleep. It’s still early out there for the dastardly devils that demonically dare to dance with the ever-dashing, daring, dynamic Spider—ow, Torch, watch the elbows.”

“You deserved that, masked man,” Johnny grumbled, settling down on the other side of the bed. “Don’t worry about me. I’m a big boy.”

He settled his head on the pillow, his shoulders slightly hunched, like he was cold.

Maybe it was just Peter’s overactive imagination. Mary Jane was always chilly at night, sticking her cold toes against his leg and sneaking freezing fingers down the waistband of his underwear, pretending to be cheeky when really she just wanted him to warm her up. Different from Gwen, who stole all the blankets in her sleep. Peter would wake up early for class to find her cocooned in them, the top of her blonde head the only thing visible to the waking world. Felicia like a little heatseeking missile, happily burying her face into his chest as soon as the leaves turned colors. Peter had done his due diligence as a hot water bottle before, so he knew the signs.

But Johnny didn’t get cold, so that couldn’t have been it. Peter’s fingers itched to pull him close anyway. To fix it, all of it, somehow.

He wished he knew how to fix any of it.

He raised a hand, like he was going to brush a lock of Johnny’s hair back, and then caught himself a split second later. For a long, tense moment, he and Johnny just stared at each other, Peter caught there frozen and Johnny looking at him like he was waiting for… something.

For Peter to touch him. Or someone to hurt him. There were shadows lurking behind Johnny’s eyes that Peter didn’t know how to make go away.

“I’m going swinging after all,” he said, his voice strange in his own ears.

Johnny snorted and rolled over, grabbing Peter’s pillow while he was at it.

“Good,” he grumbled. “Go, hit something, fight a grown man dressed like a buzzard.”

“I will,” Peter said, feeling strangely petulant as he pulled on the bottom half of his spider-suit, hopping in place as he shimmied it over his hips. “And I’ll have fun doing it, too.”

“Someone should get something out of that,” Johnny said, pulling the pillow over his head. “I mean, besides the humiliation, anyway. What’s the median age of your villains? Eighty-five?”

“Median,” Peter snorted. “Spell it for me, blondie.”

Johnny flipped him off. For just that one moment, everything felt normal again.

Then Peter went and ruined it. Halfway out his bedroom window, he had to turn and look at Johnny. He saw him lying there on the bed, his shoulders still hunched, those circles still under his eyes, and he felt something uncomfortable twist in his chest.

“Call me if you need anything, Torch,” he said. “Burner phone’s number is on the fridge.”

Johnny raised his head, the blanket slipping from his shoulders, and for a second, Peter saw someone else. Not his Johnny, sunshine bright, polished, perfect pretty boy. The thing was, Peter had been Spider-Man for a long time. He’d seen all kinds of people.

He knew when he was looking at a killer.

And then he blinked, and Johnny shifted, an ambulance down below sending red and blue lights scattering across the windowpane, and whatever Peter had seen in that split second was gone. Like it had never happened. But Peter still knew what he saw, and he knew what it meant.

The Negative Zone had changed Johnny.

“I can take care of myself, Pete,” Johnny said, his voice rough.

Peter believed him. That was the part that hurt.

His throat felt tight, so rather than risk saying anything, he just nodded, his hand tightening on the windowsill. He tugged on the mask and flung himself out into the night before he could do something else stupid.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

For a week, seven whole nights, one after the other, he went out and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He saw Annihilus’ face wherever he went, reflected in skyscraper windows and passing cars. He blinked and saw Johnny, hollowed out, dead eyed, skin and bones and muscle, nothing like his vibrant, thriving Human Torch.

It all tangled together. Johnny’s pain became Harry’s, became Flash’s, became Mary Jane’s, Felicia’s. Gwen’s, and tied together in the center of Peter’s chest, and there was nothing he could do to fix anything of it. There was nothing he could do to protect the people he loved.

Johnny had been shut away behind a gate to be tormented and tortured, and what had Peter even been doing that night? He couldn’t remember. He hated himself because he couldn’t even remember.

There was nothing he could hit hard enough to make any of it go away. He would have given anything for the Green Goblin, or Carnage, or the Jackal—someone who deserved his rage. Someone like the Kingpin, or Tombstone—someone he could hit and hit and keep hitting until he felt like he could breathe again. Someone who had hurt people enough that Peter hurting them back would make up for the fact that he hadn’t been there for Johnny.

But there was nothing and no one. Just Peter and a handful of petty bargain bin costumed criminals who couldn’t take the brunt of his wrath. He left them webbed to lampposts and hot dog carts so he wouldn’t do something irresponsible like put someone through a wall.

Then he went home and he lurked in the corner like a creep, listening to Johnny just breathe, until daylight broke across the horizon and he made himself get ready for his day job.

After a week of that, he almost looked worse than Johnny. He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror and bravely resisted the urge to do something like call himself a stupid bastard, or break his reflection. He didn’t cry—he’d never been good at it. He figured that as a child he’d swallowed down so many tears that now they just refused to spill at all.

It didn’t mean he didn’t want to, watching Johnny haunt the apartment like a ghost.

That long, hard first week, Johnny just slept.

Peter got in from swinging to find him curled up under the covers. When he left for work, he was still there.

Peter couldn’t say anything. Johnny looked like he needed it, like he’d been hollowed out from the inside. If he needed to sleep, then Peter would let him sleep. If he wanted to get up at six in the evening so they could eat cheap takeout on Peter’s floor, then that was fine. Who was Peter to tell anyone how to come back to the land of the living.

That’s what he told himself the first few mornings as he smoothed the blanket up over Johnny’s shoulders and made sure the blinds were down to shield him from the sunlight.

But they weren’t talking.

Even when they’d been dumb kids at each other’s throats, they’d always known what to say to each other.

How many times had Johnny been talking a mile a minute and Peter had desperately wished for him to shut up? Now he found himself resenting the quiet. He wanted Johnny to laugh too loudly or tell an obnoxious joke he’d already heard a hundred times or call him an idiot. He wanted to hear his voice.

Peter had lived with house spiders that made more noise than Johnny, those first few days.

A few times, he thought about calling Reed. But at the end of the day, Johnny had come to him. Johnny had wanted to be with him—even if things were strange and silent.

Peter wouldn’t violate his trust like that.

So he went out swinging and he went to work and he waited for Johnny to talk to him again.

When things broke, it didn’t happen how he thought it would.

He’d taken to coming in through any other window but the one in the bedroom, if only so he didn’t disturb Johnny. Or maybe because he couldn’t stand to see Johnny lying still and silent in bed like he was dead all over again. He was too tired to know the difference anymore.

Safely inside, he tugged the mask off and scrubbed his hands over his face. Sometimes, he felt like ever since that spider bit him, he hadn’t gotten one single moment of peace.

“Couldn’t have been bit by a radioactive lottery ticket, huh?” he mumbled, stretching his arms high above his head. “Would have saved me a lot of grief.”

The hair on the back of his neck prickled, a phantom scream echoing through his head, and he braced himself seconds before he heard something crash in the bedroom. Alarms blaring in his mind, he moved before he could even think about it.

The bedroom door rattled as he threw it open.

Sometimes, with his spider-sense blazing, nothing quite made sense. He was always waiting for some big, all consuming danger—the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, a bomb designed to take out a city block. The little things didn’t seem to register right.

The bedroom lamp was broken on the ground, glass and cheap ceramic scattered in shards. Johnny was on the bed, twisting, a gasp on his lips.

But there was no shadowy figure leaning over him. No villain lurking nearby. The only danger was in Johnny’s mind.

“Nightmare,” the word fell from Peter’s lips. “He’s having a nightmare.”

The realization did little to calm the panicked buzzing inside of him. He leaned back against the doorframe, his heart still hammering against his ribs.

The air around Johnny shimmered from the heat coming off of him, and Peter spared a moment of concern for his cheap sheets and bedframe. He should have asked Reed for some unstable molecule linens, but then—he hadn’t known, had he?

That Johnny would have nightmares.

He should have known.

“Stop,” Johnny gasped, fingers grasping the pillow, brow twisted in distress. “I’ll burn you—I’ll burn…”

“Torch,” Peter croaked.

Johnny made a strangled noise, his hand reaching for his own throat.

Peter crossed the room before he could even register moving. He grabbed Johnny’s wrist as gently as he could, wrapping his own gloved fingers around it and squeezing.

“Stop,” he said. “Stop. You’re safe. You’re with me.”

Like a switch had been flipped, the heat vanished beneath his touch. It stole Peter’s breath for just a second, that Johnny’s control was so great that even in the grips of a nightmare, he wouldn’t hurt anyone.

“Come on, Torch,” he said, swallowing hard. He shook him gently. “Wake up. I’ve got you.”

Johnny’s lashes fluttered. Just for a second, there were sparks burning in his eyes, and it took Peter’s breath away. Then he blinked, and they cleared away, replaced by confusion.

“Pete?” he mumbled.

Peter collapsed backwards onto the bed, behind Johnny, relief flooding him as sure as anything.

“Pete?” Johnny said sleepily. “S’that you? When did you get back?”

He groped behind him, reaching for Peter, and Peter moved forward to meet him, curling his own body protectively around Johnny, knees tucked together and nose buried in Johnny’s hair.

He smelled like smoke and sunshine. Peter had never noticed that before. Now the scent made him greedy, and he inhaled deeply, wanting more.

“Go back to sleep, Johnny,” he murmured against the nape of his neck, squeezing his hip. “It’s all okay. I’m here now.”

The headline was splashed across the front of his old friend Daily Globe. He saw the paper in the hands of an old man while he was paying for a cup of coffee, and it took a moment for the words to really hit him.

FLAMED OUT: Doubt Cast on Rumors of the Human Torch’s Recent “Death!”

He snatched the paper out of the man’s hands before he could stop himself, turning it to the front page in disbelief. He heard the man he’d grabbed the newspaper from insulting his mother like he was in another room, or down a long, dark tunnel. The only thing he could focus on was the article itself.

The article full of supposed quotes from Johnny’s celebrity friends and confidantes, saying that he hadn’t really been dead. That it had all been a stunt to distract from some stupid celebrity dating scandal from six months ago.

That Johnny was a liar and a fraud. That his family had been in on it.

“How could they say that?” he mumbled, his brow creased. “He hasn’t even done anything.”

No late night talk show appearances. No flaming declarations in the sky. The only thing Johnny had done was hide in Peter’s apartment and talk to his sister on the phone in monosyllabic half-conversations. How could anyone say he’d done it for the attention?

He found himself ruminating on the article long after he’d been chased out of the coffee shop by an angry member of Barney Bushkin’s fan club. He took himself up high—he always thought better when he was up high—and tossed bits of his hot dog bun to the pigeons as he turned it over in his head.

He’d recognized the names in the article. That was part of the problem. The people quoted were people he knew that Johnny knew—people he’d thought were Johnny’s friends.

Clearly, he’d been wrong about that. Nobody who really knew Johnny would ever accuse him of faking his own death for the drama and the attention.

He’d always thought of Johnny as someone who was, well—loved. Johnny was handsome, and funny, and smart even if Peter would rather stick his foot in a bear trap than say that out loud. He had money, and fame, and the kind of dazzling powers that made people fall all over himself.

Johnny had to have a lot of friends.

There was him, after all, and She-Hulk, and the big guy Peter saw on television with the Fantastic Four sometimes. There had to be others.

Right?

He remembered when he’d found Mary Jane again, after her kidnapping, when the world had assumed the famous model had been tragically killed in an accident. The way sleazy journalists and publicity hounds had rung their phone off the hook trying to get interviews with her. Trying to claim she’d faked it to boost her profile. The way half her modeling friends had turned on her.

He didn’t know why this kind of thing always surprised him. He could be cynical about anything else, but the idea that someone could look at someone like Mary Jane, or Johnny, and imagine them as anything but sincere was just something he could never get through his head.

Stupid of him, he thought.

He ended up detouring to a familiar cemetery in Queens, wandering through the lines of tombstones until he came to the one he was looking for, a single flower in his hand. He rarely came here in costume. It never felt right to be anything but himself in front of her.

He stood in front of Gwen’s grave for a long, long time, until the sun sank beyond the horizon and the anger drained out of him.

She could always do that for him, take the anger away. Johnny could, too.

He took a pebble from the ground, twisting it between his fingers for a long moment, the corner of his mouth quirked upwards.

“I miss you, pretty girl,” he said, setting it on top of her gravestone. “Love you always and lots. Don’t you forget it, okay?”

He looked back towards the skyline and made a decision.

“Did you make my manager cry?” Johnny asked. He looked distinctly unimpressed, but he was also dressed in Peter’s old sweatpants and the ESU shirt with a stain on the collar, so Peter wasn’t intimidated.

“Nope,” he said, popping the “p” as he leaned in the doorway. “That could have been any incredibly handsome masked man dangling some sleazy two-bit excuse for a human being over the side of the roof of his favorite Italian restaurant. By the way, I picked up some takeout.”

Johnny snorted.

“He’s been blowing up my phone,” he said. “He wants to press charges.”

“He’ll have to find me first,” Peter said. He arched his eyebrows at Johnny. “That guy isn’t fit to represent dancing roaches, Torch, let alone you.”

“Thanks,” Johnny drawled.

He was trying hard to look like he minded, but Peter could see the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, the spark in his eyes. He’d always found Peter funny, whether he wanted to or not. Right now, sitting on the edge of Peter’s bed, his hair unstyled and curling, he looked soft. Warm. Like he belonged right there in Peter’s crappy apartment, back in the land of the living.

Peter’s heart thudded against his ribs, butterflies in his stomach. If he had to threaten a dozen leeches to the stars to keep Johnny looking like that, then it was all worth it.

Anything was worth it, to keep Johnny looking like that.

“Get a new one,” he said, pointing at Johnny.

Startled, Johnny actually laughed.

Peter didn’t remember how long it had been since he’d heard that sound. Days, at least. That felt wrong.

Johnny should always be laughing, smiling. Bright as the sun and warm as summer in Central Park.

“Are you serious?” he said.

“Deadly,” Peter said, walking over to the stand in between his spread legs. “I don’t like him.”

“He’s been my manager since I was twenty,” Johnny said, smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Well, then he should be doing a better job,” Peter said. “I didn’t see any little gold men on that Fantastic Four mantle. Ow!”

Johnny thumped him on the leg again with Peter’s one lonely throw pillow.

“Baby. You didn’t even feel that,” he drawled.

He squawked when Peter retaliated by collapsing on top of him, sending them both sprawling down on top of the mattress, Johnny’s knee nearly shoved somewhere unmentionable as Peter settled over him on his elbows. He sighed, unimpressed, but made no move to shove Peter off, so Peter let himself get comfortable. The way Johnny radiated warmth always seemed to seep right into his tired bones.

He raked one hand through the hair at the back of Peter’s head, probably feeling for bumps. “Sue hates my manager, too.”

“He’s a uniquely slimy little man,” Peter said. “You should return him to whatever subway grate you fished him out of. His people probably miss their king.”

Johnny snorted, shoving a hand in his face.

“He knows me,” he grumbled, twisting away. “That’s worth something.”

“I know you,” Peter said.

It felt important. He did know Johnny. He knew him better than all his so-called friends and his sleazy hair piece of a manager.

None of them knew how bright Johnny could really shine.

Johnny looked up at him, a smile tugging at his lips.

“You know me, huh?” he said. “That’s why you’re on top of me? Come on, Spidey, I’m not that cheap of a date.”

“Should I take you out to dinner first?” Peter asked, not bothering to get off of him. “I already told you, there’s ravioli on the table. I got recommendations while I was playing yo-yo with the superhero’s answer to Colonel Tom Parker.”

“I do not get him fifty percent,” Johnny snorted, shoving at his shoulder.

When he started laughing, it was contagious. Peter couldn’t help it, smothering his smile against Johnny’s throat, his body shaking as he tried to stop snickering. It wasn’t even funny, but everything from the past few weeks seemed to spill out of him, hopeless, as he clutched at Johnny’s sides.

It was a couple seconds before he managed to raise his head again. He found Johnny smiling up at him, something soft and fond in his eyes.

“You’re smiling,” Peter said.

I missed it, he almost added.

“You say that like it’s weird,” Johnny replied, his voice easy. But Peter was still on top of him. He could feel the way Johnny’s body went tense.

“It’s been a little rare,” Peter said, throat clicking as he swallowed. “Lately.”

Johnny didn’t say anything. He just pushed his fingers up into Peter’s messy mask hair, carefully combing the tangles out.

“What can I do here, Torch?” he asked. “How do I help?”

“I don’t know,” Johnny said. It sounded like it hurt him to admit it. “Sometimes I think it’s like… the Annihilation wave was so big, but I fought it back.” His eyes went a little distant. “And then there was a second wave. So now, every time I feel the tide coming back in again, I just think—what’s the point? There’s a second wave coming.”

“There doesn’t have to be,” Peter said. “It’s over now.”

Johnny nodded and shrugged one shoulder, helpless, hopeless. He tugged on a stubborn knot in Peter’s hair.

“You know better than that,” he said. “It’s never really over, is it?”

Peter’s heart ached. He raised himself up on his elbows and stared down at Johnny beneath him, the hollows under his eyes and his cheeks, the way the shine hadn’t come back into his hair yet. He knew exactly how the world hurt bright, beautiful people, and he still couldn’t fathom how it had happened to Johnny Storm.

How it was still hurting him.

“I think,” Johnny said, his fingertips skimming down the side of Peter’s face, past his jaw, to play with the line at his costume at his throat. “Maybe I need a distraction?”

“A distraction,” Peter replied, swallowing hard. Johnny’s eyes were stormy as he traced the webbing on Peter’s suit down his chest, to wear the spider emblem lay in the middle of it. He pressed his palm against it.

“Something to get me out of my head,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be… something serious.”

Peter’s mind didn’t seem to be working right.

It wasn’t like he’d never thought about it. Johnny was gorgeous, and they were close, and sometimes he got the feeling like Johnny liked him a little bit more than what was strictly platonic—of course he’d thought about it.

He’d thought about it after he’d lost Johnny, too.

“I will do anything you want to do,” Peter said, leaning over him.

Johnny blinked up at him.

“Anything?” he said.

The challenge in his voice should have made Peter wary, but he was desperate. In that second, he really would have done anything to make Johnny smile again.

“Anything,” he repeated.

Johnny seemed to consider it.

“Okay,” he said at last. “Let’s go to Vegas.”

“Wait,” he said. “What?”

“Would you prefer Monaco?” Johnny asked, leaning up on one elbow. Peter was forced to sit back on his heels to give him space.

“No,” Peter said automatically, before the words even registered.

“Great,” Johnny said. “Vegas it is.”

“Like,” Peter said. “Viva Las Vegas? That Vegas? Elvis Vegas?”

His mind didn’t seem to be working right.

Johnny clapped Peter on the shoulder, smiling winningly.

“You ever been?” he said.

“Sure,” Peter said faintly. He still wasn’t entirely sure what was happening. “I fought the Hulk there.”

“Who hasn’t?” Johnny scoffed, rolling his eyes.

Peter deeply regretted his reality: a beautiful blond in his bed and Johnny didn’t even think it was impressive that he’d fought the Hulk.

“Anyway,” Johnny continued. “That doesn’t count. You weren’t there with me.”

“Johnny,” he said, trying to will patience into his voice. “I have a job.”

“So we’ll go on the weekend,” Johnny said, tilting his head to the side. “Forty-eight hours, there and back. You won’t even be hungover on Monday, I promise.”

Peter would have sooner believed him if he’d said Doom was giving it all up to open a little Latverian cuisine place out over in Flushing called Mama Doom’s.

“And you’re, what, fine flying economy now?” he asked, hands on his hips.

Johnny rolled his eyes. He sat up suddenly, the fading afternoon sunlight catching on the still too sharp lines of him, the high cheekbones and the rangy cut of his muscles. There was a coldness to his gaze suddenly, one Peter had seen before. It was the look of men who had been hunted.

He’d just never seen it on Johnny before.

“Yeah, Pete, I think I’ve been in worse places,” he said.

He clapped Peter on the shoulder and stood, stretching his arms above his head. The expression was there and gone in the blink of an eye, but Peter had seen it, and that made all the difference.

“Don’t worry, bro,” Johnny said. “I have my own way to fly.”

“You know I can’t swing to Las Vegas, Johnny,” Peter said, in a pathetic last ditch effort to get himself out of this situation. He knew he’d said he’d do anything, but he hadn’t been anticipating leaving the city to do it. He’d been thinking more of a “playing yo-yo with Johnny’s so-called celebrity friends off the top of the Statue of Liberty with some webbing” situation.

“I’ve got it covered,” Johnny said, the least comforting words Peter had ever heard.

For a second, he thought about putting his foot down. Johnny couldn’t really make him go anywhere he didn’t want to, not if Peter didn’t decide to play along with him. But then he thought about that look in Johnny’s eyes again, about the way he’d said I think I’ve been in worse places, and the fight just went out of him.

“Yello, Reed?” Johnny said, wandering down the hall. “Can I borrow the plane for the weekend? Just a quick trip. No, I don’t think I’ll need backup for a boy’s weekend. Thanks, bro.”

“What just happened,” Peter asked no one in particular.

Three days later, Peter woke up in a penthouse suite. For a few moments, dazed and confused, he thought maybe he’d gone ten rounds with the Hulk again and lost every single one of them. He ached in places he didn’t even know he’d had.

The memories came back in a hazy, champagne bubble filled sea. The drinks. The dancing. The—Doctor Doom cosplayer?

There had definitely been—showgirls, and a fountain, and his arm slung around Johnny’s waist, pulling him against his side. “Feeling lucky, hot stuff?”

Now Peter was feeling every inch of the old Parker luck.

“Water,” he croaked, his hand searching fruitlessly against what felt like acres of crisp hotel sheets.

His spider-sense crackled like an old radio as someone lobbed a bottle at his head. He caught it in midair, lazily croaking out a thanks before he guzzled half of it.

He had vague memories of a casino and the blackjack table. Johnny laughing in his ear, whispering, are you counting cards? Like Peter could help it. He had to stop before he got them thrown out. Then more drinks, something fruity with a little umbrella—Aunt May had always warned him about the fruity drinks—and Johnny a line of heat at his side, his arm draped over Peter’s shoulder, cool and casual in Armani.

He’d felt like the old Johnny again, and maybe that was why Peter let himself get carried away.

Now if only he could remember what exactly had hit him the night before, everything would be golden.

“Johnny?” he croaked.

There was a groan from the other side of the bed. That seemed promising.

“What?” came the sweet, frog-voiced reply of his best friend. His co-conspirator. The man he was going to strangle just as soon as his arms stopped feeling like pool noodles. “Did you finish that? The minifridge is across the room. Don’t expect me to get up for you.”

“Love you, too, Torch,” Peter grumbled, pulling a pillow over his face. “And I am never leaving Manhattan with you ever again.”

“Spoilsport.”

He felt Johnny sit up, the bed shifting underneath him, and the blazing line of heat at the edges of his senses. He’d always felt a little special to the web of Peter’s perception, hazy heat and summer warm even from across the room. Like stepping out into a sunny day after too long in the office.

He cracked one eye open just to watch Johnny, glowing and golden in the sun. He was beautiful, every inch of him. Peter’s fingers itched for a camera.

Then something caught his eye. At first he thought it was a reflection, just a glimmer of light at Johnny’s finger. But it wasn’t a reflection; it was a ring.

A ring Johnny definitely hadn’t been wearing the night before.

His Idiot Parker Decisions sense started blaring in his head.

“Is that a ring,” Peter said, like an idiot, his voice dangerously flat even to his own ears.

Johnny held his hand out in front of him. Slowly, his eyebrows rose up, disappearing beneath his fluffy blond hair.

“Huh,” he said. He flipped his hand over, fingers splayed to display the gold band to the fullest. “Well, what do you know.”

He didn’t sound particularly surprised.

“Johnny,” Peter said. “Why are you wearing a ring?”

“I don’t know, Pete,” Johnny said, collapsing back into the blankets. He waved a hand at him. “Why don’t you ask yourself that same question?”

A sense of dread filled Peter.

“Wow,” Johnny drawled. “You really don’t remember anything about last night, do you, wild man?”

Slowly, with great trepidation, Peter held up his own hand. For a moment, his head refused to register what his eyes were seeing. The band was simple, plain and gold, and fit on his ring finger like he’d been made to wear it.

“Johnny,” he said, feeling faint. “Tell me we just decided to get matching accessories last night.”

“Okay,” Johnny said after a beat. “We just decided to get matching accessories last night.” He glanced over at Peter, raising his eyebrows. “And a certificate to go with them.”

He held out his phone to Peter. There was a video open on it.

“Here,” he said. “Watch.”

There was a video open on the screen. With great trepidation, Peter pressed play. He saw himself and Johnny at an altar that looked like it belonged out of a bad production of Dracula, and his mind went curiously blank.

“Is that a Doctor Doom impersonator,” Peter said, staring down at Johnny’s phone in horror.

“I wanted Elvis,” Johnny yawned. “But you said this was funnier.”

“He’s going to kill me,” Peter said blankly. “Doctor Doom is going to kill me because I married his fourth favorite nemesis—”

“Hey, Ben is the fourth favorite. I’m a solid third.”

“His fourth favorite nemesis in Las Vegas—”

“The Little Latverian Chapel, if you want to get exact.”

“With a Doctor Doom impersonator officiating.”

“He said we were his favorite couple of the night, by the way,” Johnny said, yawning. “And he just smiled and nodded when you told him you were actually Spider-Man.”

Peter made a noise like he was dying. He felt like maybe he was. He turned to Johnny and all of the shock and indignation must have shown on his face, because Johnny promptly burst out laughing.

“Relax,” he said, falling back against the pillows with a winning smile. “You’re acting like it’s the end of the world. So we got drunk and made a dumb mistake. So what?”

A horrible thought occurred to Peter.

“Jonah is going to kill me this time.”

Johnny snorted. He reached out and poked Peter in the side.

“You’re in bed with People Magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Year five times running—”

“Twice.”

“Two time’s more than you. Anyway,” Johnny yawned again, jaw cracking. “Why are you thinking about J Jonah Jameson of all people?”

It was a good question. Peter had no answer for it. He was too busy contemplating changing his name and running away to France.

He wondered if Ben had any tips.

“First time?” Johnny asked with fake sympathy.

“First time doing what?”

Johnny gestured from himself, to Peter, to the rings, and then to the luxurious suite all around them. It took Peter a moment to catch on.

“Who else did you marry in Vegas?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Johnny said, spitefully.

He climbed to his feet, every inch of him glinting golden in the morning sunlight, and Peter’s headache was instantly worse.

“Was it Matt?” he croaked. “Tell me it wasn’t Matt.”

Johnny hummed noncommittally. Peter’s fingers twitched where they were tangled in the luxury sheets.

“Johnny,” he growled. “Why aren’t you taking this more seriously?”

“Hm,” Johnny said, tilting his head to the side. “Maybe because it’s not that serious?”

Peter froze. Slowly, he turned to look at Johnny, standing there by the side of the bed in nothing but a pair of silken flame print boxer shorts and a wedding ring. His posture was easy and relaxed as he ran a hand through his hair.

“Look, Pete,” he said, glancing away out the window. “We had fun last night. Sure, it got a little out of hand, but stuff happens. Don’t make yourself crazy over it.”

“Have you met me before?” Peter croaked.

Johnny snorted, shaking his head.

“I’m taking a shower,” he said. “Try not to get an ulcer thinking about it.”

“We’re annulling this marriage!” Peter yelled at Johnny’s back.

Johnny raised one middle finger in his direction and slammed the bathroom door.

Peter fell back against the bed and put his hands over his face. But Johnny’s words stuck with him—they calmed something inside of him. If Johnny didn’t think it was that serious, then maybe Peter didn’t have to, either. Friends did get drunk and make stupid mistakes, after all. Only the good graces of Gwen Stacy had saved Harry from getting a pinup girl tattooed on his thigh in college. Flash and Mary Jane, after all, would have let him do it.

It was just that, for a little while there back in his apartment, he’d thought that he’d felt something. He thought that Johnny had felt it, too. But then maybe he was wrong. Maybe it had just been some lingering ghost, a shadow of his grief, his relief to have Johnny back again. Maybe he’d been making the whole thing up.

It was possible that everything he’d thought before had just been in his imagination. That he and Johnny were just friends and everything was going to work out fine.

Friends married each other in Las Vegas all the time, probably. Good close, personal, platonic friends. Friends like him and Johnny Storm.

They’d laugh about this someday.

After they annulled the marriage.

They didn’t annul the marriage.

In Peter’s defense, he kept meaning to get around to it. It was just that he was—busy. He had a job, a life. Two lives, even. He didn’t have time to do minor things like “annul his drunken sham marriage” or “think about his life choices.” It didn’t matter what the little voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like his aunt said.

You can always annul your drunken mistake of a marriage tomorrow, or however the old saying went. Or three weeks after that. Or the next calendar year. Peter wasn’t thinking about it.

In Peter’s defense, he hadn’t exactly had time to think about it, at all.

Everything changed once they got back from Las Vegas. Suddenly, Johnny was the life of the party again.

It was like none of it had ever happened. Johnny haunting his apartment like a ghost, sleeping all day, leaving his phone unanswered until someone called Peter and got him to pick up—none of it.

If Peter hadn’t lived it, he’d never have believed it, because now every single night he had the Universal Inhuman equivalent of Animal House happening in his one bedroom apartment.

Aliens of varieties Peter had never even imagined, let alone heard of, were hooking up in his bathroom. Johnny taught a space horse how to play beer pong. Someone had brought a chandelier to swing from.

Worst of all, maybe, his beautiful, perfect ex-girlfriend had somehow found out about all of it and thrown herself into the mix in what Peter was beginning to suspect was an elaborate plan to get revenge on him specifically.

“This is so fun, tiger!” Mary Jane whooped, shimmying past him on a Thursday night. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were shining, a cup full of something Peter was fairly sure hadn’t originated on Earth dangling from one hand. “Do not tell Harry about it, we’ll lose to him to Mars.”

That was the least of Peter’s problems.

The most of Peter’s problems, by contrast, was probably the wedding ring he was no longer wearing, and the itchy spot on his ring finger it had left behind. But he was thinking about that, which was easy, considering the sensory nightmare he suddenly lived in.

Every single night it was something. Or several somethings.

Like Johnny and MJ dancing together on top of Peter’s rickety coffee table, her head thrown back, her hands in his hair, her thigh between his long, long legs and, yeah, all right, Peter was going to save that image for some very special late night alone time. He had a hot ex and a hot best friend. So sue him.

It wasn’t like he didn’t get any action himself, though. He made out with a blue alien while his hot ex and his hot best friend watched. He didn’t want to talk about it. He told his hot best friend that repeatedly when Johnny, disturbingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and equally disturbingly wearing nothing but an apron and some very tight underwear—again—in Peter’s kitchenette when Johnny wouldn’t stop bringing it up.

Annulment wasn’t the only option, Peter reflected, hungover at the office. There was also murder.

It wasn’t like he could complain about it, not really. He had wanted Johnny to get back on his feet. He’d wanted, selfishly, to see the old Johnny Storm again.

He just also didn’t want the old Johnny Storm to be throwing an intergalactic TMZ-worthy bash in his apartment at three in the morning on a weekday.

Worst of all, he had no idea how to bring up the idea of the annulment. They hadn’t actually talked about their disastrous little decision in Las Vegas since they’d gotten back to New York.

Sometimes Peter thought he’d dreamed the whole thing. The only thing that convinced him it was real was the plain golden band hidden away in his bedside drawer and the strange sensation he sometimes got on his ring finger, like something important was missing from around it.

He groaned, pushing his hands up into his hair.

“You doing okay, Pete?” Bella Fishbach asked, sympathy in her voice.

“Yeah,” he groaned.

“Your tie’s in your coffee.”

“Yeah.”

He had to kick Johnny Storm out of his apartment. And he had to get an annulment. Probably, but not necessarily, in that order.

One night, only a day or so after he’d reclaimed his apartment from Johnny and the Light Brigade, he was going through the place, throwing away red plastic cups and ping pong balls and what he was pretty sure were the remnants of drinking games from other planets, too, when he stopped.

The television was on, just background noise, but on it the news was talking about the Fantastic Four.

Like he was in a daze, Peter put the trash bag down and sat on the couch, leaning forward with his elbows braced on his spread knees. He curled his fingers in front of his mouth, only half-listening to what the newscaster was saying. Something about the Fantastic Four taking off. Something about some kind of attack.

Suddenly, it was just a handful of months ago and he was standing in his apartment, barefoot on a Sunday, Reed’s hollowed out voice on the other end of the line.

Peter, I’m so sorry to have to tell you—it’s about Johnny.

He didn’t really remember what he’d done next. He just remembered that awful, clawing, blank feeling, the phone slipping through his fingers. He’d broken it and he hadn’t even cared. It had all seemed so inconsequential.

Johnny. Sunshine bright, loudmouthed, incorrigible Johnny. Those kinds of things weren’t supposed to happen to the Fantastic Four.

They weren’t supposed to happen to Johnny Storm.

(But then he’d known that was a lie even as he thought it. He’d snuck into Johnny’s private hospital room in the early days of the Superhero Registration Act, stealing a few moments between Ben and Sue’s shifts at his bedside, taking a break from all the chaos of the superhuman war brewing outside just for the chance to hold Johnny’s limp hand. Come on, Torch, come back to me.)

He gnawed on a thumbnail, only half-listening to the news. It was just a run-of-the-mill Fantastic Four mission. Johnny would have had to go on one of them again sooner or later. It was inevitable. It was normal. Peter should have been happy.

He fumbled for his cell phone, but there was no message from Johnny, no text. And it wasn’t like he’d expected it, he told himself, cursing under his breath. It was like Johnny had to text him before he went off with his family on dangerous missions. He was under no obligation to tell Peter, hey, hon, I’ll be late for dinner tonight.

Because they weren’t married. Not really. Not in any way that actually mattered.

He growled under his breath, grabbing his mask from where he’d shoved it between the couch cushions the night before. He needed some fresh air. He needed to be up high.

He needed to blow off some steam.

Would it have killed Johnny, he wondered, swinging at breakneck speed down 5th Avenue, pushing himself harder and faster than he usually did when there was no goal in mind, to just give him a heads up? So what if they weren’t really married. Peter couldn’t care about him and his safety? Maybe Peter had wanted to go wherever it was Johnny had gone, too.

In sickness and in health and in harebrained supervillain scheme. That was how it was supposed to go, wasn’t it?

“You’re out of your tiny arachnid mind, Parker,” he said, hitting the Bugle hard enough to rattle the windows. He took a deep breath, craning his head to look at the blazing red sign above him. “He’s not your husband. Not yours. Not really.”

Then, because his whole life was some kind of big cosmic joke, the sky opened up. Rain pelted down like it was trying to prove something, and Peter sighed, banging the back of his head against the glass. Another night, another costume to squeeze out over the bathtub, and no one to lean there in the doorway and laugh at him for it.

It wasn’t like it had been all bad living with Johnny. Yeah, okay, so he’d hated the partying. He’d hated stepping over a snoring humanoid horse on his way to work. He’d hated trying to lie to the neighbors downstairs that all the noise was actually coming from the next apartment over, bullshitting about physics and sound traveling while a ninety-year-old Ukrainian grandmother tried to hit him with a broom.

But the actual living with Johnny part, when it was just the two of them, that hadn’t been bad. Not really. They liked each other. They always had. Even as stupid kids. And he could look out for Johnny, just like the way Johnny looked out for him, always making sure that Peter’s costume was dry by the morning and that there was something edible on the table before he left for work.

If something happened to Johnny again, he didn’t know what he would do.

At least, if he were Johnny’s husband, he’d have certain rights.

Except, depending on how he looked at it, he really was Johnny’s husband.

He hung there, half-stuck to the rainslick Bugle building, and let himself think about it. It had merit. If he and Johnny were married—legally married, dubious as it was—then Peter had certain rights as his husband.

If Johnny were injured, or worse—and Peter didn’t want to think about worse again—then Peter could be there. There would be no barriers between them.

That was an angle he hadn’t considered before.

He didn’t really have to think of it as a marriage. He could think of it more like a medical directive, or an addendum to Johnny’s will. If something happened to Johnny, Peter would be able to make decisions. He’d be able to help.

Peter took a deep breath and made up his mind.

If Johnny didn’t bring up the annulment, then Peter wouldn’t either.

There had been so many sickening moments in Peter’s life. The moments he thought he’d never recover from, when the world seemed to crumble beneath his feet.

Uncle Ben, shot, and then the realization that he could have stopped his killer before it had ever happened if only he’d bothered to stop and care about anything but himself. The moment he’d held Gwen, too still, in his arms, and seen the unnatural angle of her neck. Harry on the stretcher that night, reaching for his hand. Ben, his clone, the closest thing he’d ever had to a brother, crumbling to dust beneath him. Walking into that hospital room and hearing MJ’s heartbeat where before there had been two. The feeling of the crusty motel carpet beneath his palms, MJ’s chest heaving beneath him, as he looked up and saw the gaping hole in his aunt’s stomach.

He’d felt his world fall apart so many times before.

It had just never happened to him while the rest of world was actually ending.

One moment, he was leading giants on a merry chase through the ruins of Manhattan, and the next the Fantastic Four had done what they did and zapped him on board the life raft. It happened so fast Peter’s head spun, but then Peter’s head had been spinning for days at that point.

He was not, by nature, a pessimist. In spite of everything life had thrown at him, he still believed in a brighter, better tomorrow.

The Fantastic Four were a huge part of the reason why.

“You’re here!”

Johnny threw his arms around him almost as soon as he finished materializing. Peter grabbed him back, gasping for the life raft’s clean air. After hours of fighting, his arms felt like limp noodles, but he still sank his fingers into Johnny’s hair.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

Johnny pulled back, still holding him by the shoulders, as he looked him up and down. Peter had to laugh.

“I’m fine, Torchy,” he promised. “It was just a couple of skyscraper-sized giants. You think I’d go down that easy, huh?”

He laughed when Johnny threw his arms around him again, planting his own palm flat between Johnny’s shoulder blades and nosing at his temple. He was so warm and solid and not a sixty-foot-tall monster, which made him the best thing Peter had seen all day.

“You okay?” he asked. “How about the kids? Are they all packed and ready to go?”

“You’re making it sound like a field trip,” Johnny said.

“I’m telling you now, Torch, make them all grab a buddy,” Peter said. He reached down, tangling his fingers with Johnny’s and squeezing briefly. “You hold your buddy’s hand all the way to the next multiversal incursion event, all right?”

Johnny laughed.

The life raft gave a great, shuddering jerk. Somewhere an alarm began to sound. Johnny pulled away from Peter, but not before giving his hand one last squeeze.

“Hey,” he said. “I gotta go see what that is. You go find Reed, okay? Go be with the other geniuses.”

There was something about the way Johnny always neatly slotted him into that space, like what Peter did was on the same level as Reed. The way Johnny just believed he was that smart. Somedays, like today, Peter needed that.

“You sure?” Peter said. “I could come with you, help out.”

“Nope,” Johnny said, rolling his eyes. “We’ll be fine, Spidey. But, uh…”

He bit his lip, flashing Peter a helpless grin.

“Don’t hate me,” he said. “But I want to try something.”

Johnny found the seam between the top half of the costume and the mask, humming to himself as he rolled the mask up over Peter’s nose.

“What are you doing?” Peter asked, amused and maybe a little bit hysterical.

It wasn’t his fault. The world was ending after all.

Johnny took Peter’s face between his warm hands and leaned in and kissed him. Nothing complicated, nothing fancy. Nothing earth shaking. But warm. Familiar. Like somehow Johnny had kissed him a thousand times before.

It was a kiss that felt right.

Peter sighed when Johnny pulled back. For once, he had nothing to say.

“For luck,” Johnny said, looking almost bashful, grin tugging at his lips. “Don’t think about it too hard, huh, Pete? I have to go help Sue and Ben.”

“We’re gonna talk about that later, right, hot stuff?” Peter said.

Johnny laughed, sparks flying as he winked. He turned, walking backwards, his hands cupped around his mouth.

“Play your cards right, Spidey, and we’ll do more than talk,” he promised, beautiful and warm and so alive.

The end of the world, and Peter couldn’t stop smiling. If there was anyone he believed in, it was the Fantastic Four.

Then the life raft failed and splintered. It broke apart. All Peter could see was Johnny, Sue, Ben, and the kids, falling away from them. His heart was in his throat as he watched Reed reach out, but then everything went white, and then—there was nothing. Johnny was gone.

For a while, Peter thought he’d never see them again. It was Reed who made him think like that. He remembered sitting on the floor of the fractured life raft with him, held together in that great white space by their shields alone, as Reed spoke. Every word was carefully chosen and enunciated.

“You spend your entire life looking for that one perfect someone, and then you find her, and you think you’ll never love anything more… Then you have children, and you realize what a food you were to believe that. And now, I have lost everything. We have all lost everything. My entire life I believed in better days ahead. I believed in tomorrow. I hid that belief in my heart—a stronghold against a world that devours hope. But now the walls have fallen. I have been overrun. And I hope… I believe… in nothing.”

He’d looked up at Peter, broken shell of a man, and asked if he thought he could understand.

Peter could.

Reed Richards was the smartest man in the world. If he believed they would never see Sue and Johnny again, then who was Peter to doubt him?

Then, slowly, the magnitude of what Doom had done unfolded. Sue and the kids shackled to Doom’s throne. Ben’s rocky body transformed into the wall. And Johnny, his Johnny, brave, beautiful, stupid Johnny, who would never have been able to stand Doom’s world for long, turned into the sun itself.

Peter looked up at the man burning in the sky and thought, That’s my husband.

He’d never let himself think it before. Not really. Not with any kind of sincerity. He let the word settle inside of him with the kind of gravity it deserved, a miniature sun inside of his own chest, everything in him orbiting around it.

That was his husband, his Johnny, burning for Doom’s world.

Peter was going to tear that world apart with his bare hands.

Everything ended.

Then everything began.

After everything, he woke up on the floor of his apartment, the sunlight shining on his face. He felt—not bad, not exactly. Whole, hearty, healed. No aches, no pains, no well-earned bruises. Everything that had happened on Battleworld felt a little bit like a dream.

But it had happened. He knew that deep in his bones.

And even though nothing actually hurt, he still felt like he’d been hit by a bus. He leveraged himself up off the floor and propped his hands up on the windowsill, just looking out at the world. His world.

His world, his terrible view of his alley down below, his dumpster, his pigeons, his street over there, wild with the sounds of passing cars and laughing people and his New York. Just for a second, his eyes prickled at the corners. He wanted to laugh, but the sound got stuck in his throat.

Everything old was new again.

It was the sunlight that made him think of it. It was so warm on his skin, so comforting, that for a moment, he forgot.

Johnny, burning at the center of the sky. Trapped, immobile, and with no idea of who he was—or who Peter was.

His husband.

Peter was out the window before he had a chance to even think about it. He scrambled up the side of the building, shot a webline across the street, and swung like he was brand new to it all over again. He careened into the sides of buildings, thudded against windows, scared the pigeons and the pedestrians, and none of it even mattered a little bit, because all he could think about was getting to Johnny.

It was a whole new world, and a whole new him. He was going to tell Johnny that he wanted him. That he wanted to be together. That he thought what they had together could become something more, if Johnny felt the same way, and Peter was pretty sure he did.

That kiss before everything went wrong had to mean something. Didn’t it?

Every single inch of him was buzzing with energy. He hit the side of the Baxter Building going eighty miles per hour, the glass rattling underneath his palms.

It felt so right. Like the first time all over again, when he’d been fifteen and so, so stupid, crawling into the Baxter Building looking for a paying gig. Poor dumb kid, he thought, grinning. He had no idea what he was getting himself into, the pretty boy he’d meet that day.

The pretty man he hoped was waiting for him inside.

He slipped inside easily, the security system still configured to let Spider-Man come and go as he pleased. Family doesn’t have to knock, Ben had said once, snorting, when he’d caught sight of Peter dangling outside the living room windows.

His world. His Baxter Building. Now all he had to was find his husband.

“Johnny!” he shouted, ripping the mask off. “Are you here? It’s Pete!”

He moved through the halls, finding them all empty. He wondered if the Fantastic Four were out. But surely the kids would be home, or Dragon Man. He rarely left the building.

“Johnny?”

He was just about to give up and try somewhere else when he rounded a corner and saw him. Johnny was just standing there, in the kitchen, barefoot in jeans and a t-shirt, his hair curly the way it was when he didn’t bother to style it. Ben stood next to him, tall and silent.

Johnny looked devastated.

“Johnny?” Peter said, stopping in the doorway.

“Pete,” Johnny said, his voice breaking. “Sue—Reed—the kids. I can’t find them anywhere.”

At first Peter didn’t believe it could be all that bad.

It was the Fantastic Four, after all. Nothing could touch them, not really. Not even the end of reality.

Hadn’t he been there when Reed proved that? Johnny was the sun, and Ben was the wall, and Sue didn’t remember them, and none of it had mattered in the end, because Reed had put things back together.

Except that something had touched them, because the days went by, and then the weeks, and then it was eight months later, and Sue and Reed and the kids were just—gone. The only proof of them was their empty rooms in the Baxter Building.

It broke Peter’s heart to watch Johnny sit on the floor of his nephew’s room with a dogeared Pokémon card clutched in his hands. To see him stand in Sue and Reed’s master bedroom, turning in slow circles like some new clue might appear.

But no matter where they looked, who they called, how they searched—there was nothing.

No hints where they’d gone. No maps to their location.

No signals in the stars. Just nothing.

It felt like watching a disaster in slow motion. Peter could see it on the horizon, but he couldn’t do anything to stop it. All he could do was try to run damage control while keeping his own life afloat. Running a business, it turned out, was not as easy as it looked on television.

They didn’t talk about the kiss. How could Peter even bring it up? Johnny’s family was missing. There were bigger problems.

He didn’t even know if Jonny remembered it. He didn’t remember anything from Battleworld, after all. Peter was thankful for that part. He’d asked Reed one night if it hurt Johnny, being the sun.

He hadn’t really needed to ask. He could do the math himself. But he wanted someone else to acknowledge it, and he knew Reed wouldn’t be able to lie about that.

“Yes,” Reed had said after a long pause. “It would feel like he’s being torn apart. Every second of every hour of every day.”

Peter was glad that Johnny didn’t remember that. He wanted to spare Johnny from whatever pain he could.

That was why it hurt so much that he couldn’t spare Johnny from any of it now.

On the sixth month anniversary of Reed and Sue’s disappearance, Johnny stopped answering his phone.

The next day, Peter picked up a copy of the Bugle to read that Ben Grimm had left the planet. Peter, exhausted from an overnight trip for the company, was distantly surprised it had made the headline at all.

It felt sometimes like the world had forgotten the Fantastic Four. Peter had expected something different. A public outpouring of grief, or at least some respect for what the Fantastic Four had given of themselves over the years. Instead, the world just moved on, and it left Johnny behind.

Peter knew about him and Ben losing the Baxter Building. He would have talked to Johnny about it, except Johnny clearly didn’t want to talk, so instead Peter went behind his back and threw all his weight and newfound riches into vying for ownership of the building in a way that had Harry breathing into a paper bag off camera on conference calls.

(That they were up against Harry’s ex-wife probably didn’t help, but also Liz didn’t need to bring up the time Peter had food poisoning and puked over the side of one of those Central Park swan boats on a double date.)

Johnny avoided him with the kind of skill and speed Peter had only ever seen him use in serious fights. Wherever Peter went, whatever he tried, it seemed like Johnny was two steps ahead of him, which was impressive for a man currently gracing the cover of every celebrity rag for drunken and embarrassing displays in public.

He should have been grateful when Medusa stepped in, but all he could think was that it should have been him. All he could do was wonder why it was him that Johnny was avoiding.

“Do you think it would help if I got hair extensions?” he mumbled into his desk, delirious after a long week of a double life that was more exhausting than ever before.

“What?” Harry said. “No, don’t. Not where the board can see you.”

Peter managed to summon up just enough strength to give him a thumbs up.

Another month slipped by, then another. Some things changed. Peter was busier than ever, busy in a way he hadn’t known was physically possible. Parker Industries was doing well. Harry was happy and stable. In some ways, Peter couldn’t ask for more.

But only in some ways. In other ways, there was room for improvement.

Story of his life.

The Fantastic Four were still gone. No matter who Peter tried to talk to, what he tried to do, every road came up a dead end. The other people in the community he spoke to were starting to look at him a little strange, like he was the weird one for still asking questions.

Only Alicia Masters seemed to understand. She didn’t question why Spider-Man commissioned her for a statue of the Fantastic Four for the Parker Industries New York headquarters’ lobby. She just threw herself into it with the kind of intensity that Peter felt nagging under his own skin every single time he thought about Johnny.

And Johnny wouldn’t see him, wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t pick up his phone to save his damn life. Peter couldn’t even shake down Ben to get to him that way, because Ben had gone and left for space.

Sometimes, Peter was pretty sure the world had been put back wrong. An alley would look a little bit off. There would be a restaurant everyone said was a neighborhood staple that he could have sworn he’d never seen before eight months ago.

No Fantastic Four. Peter Parker was in Forbes. The pigeons looked strangely iridescent when Peter tilted his head the wrong way.

And Johnny Storm wouldn’t talk to him.

The world being wrong was the only explanation.

On one rainy Sunday, he took a deep breath, pulled out his phone, and dialed one of the only people who had ever been able to make everything feel right.

“Hello, MJ? Are you in town? Think you can spare a lunch break for one little ex-soulmate?”

Mary Jane, hot off a red eye flight from some fashion week, looked fresh as a daisy, but then Peter wasn’t surprised. She always looked beautiful to him, whether she was dressed to the nines or wearing his ratty old ESU shirt like the world’s shortest minidress. Still, he remembered all the old conversations.

You look perfect. Why do you even need all that stuff?

If they see the bags under my eyes, tiger, they’ll eat me alive.

He knew she was right. That didn’t mean he had to like it.

“Why’d you call me, tiger?” she asked after a few minutes of meaningless small talk, the usual catch up. How was she? She was busy. So was he. Hey, how about them Yankees, MJ?

There was a faint, expectant smile on her face, like she was waiting for him to cut to the chase. She’d always been able to see right through him.

“Do you remember,” Peter started, then stopped.

He downed the rest of his lukewarm coffee all in one go and vaguely hoped it would put a hole in his stomach and he wouldn’t have to finish this conversation. When ten seconds went by and he didn’t keel over, he leveled with the universe and looked at MJ. Her eyebrows were raised.

“Remember what, tiger?” she asked, arms crossed.

“Do you remember when Johnny and I were living together?” he said.

She snorted, tossing her hair over her shoulder.

“Who could forget?” she said. “I haven’t partied that hard since we were in college. Why, is Kal Blackbane back in town? He didn’t tell me.”

“The horse guy?” Peter said. “Why would the horse tell you?”

“We keep in touch,” MJ said, shrugging. “You going to tell me what’s on your mind or do you want to just go in circles for another hour?”

Sometimes he hated that she knew him.

“I might have done something during that time,” Peter said. “Something I never told you about.”

“Oh my God!” Mary Jane said, reaching over to slap him on the arm. “You slept with him! I knew it!”

“What?” Peter said. “No! I didn’t sleep with him—why was that where your mind went first?”

Mary Jane didn’t look convinced.

“Please,” she said. “You think I don’t know what you’re like when you want someone? Your breathing gets all choppy whenever he bends over.”

Peter’s eyebrow twitched, remembering something Felicia had said a long time ago. Stop staring at my chest. Your breathing gets all choppy.

Mary Jane rolled her eyes and reached for her soda.

“That’s not—I—that’s not the point,” Peter said, deciding to circle back to the other thing later. “I didn’t sleep with him. I married him.”

He probably should have waited until she put the soda down. She coughed, spluttering, and he fumbled for a napkin, only to get waved off.

“You what?”

“I married him,” Peter repeated, grimacing. “In Vegas.”

There was a long, horrible moment of silence where Peter just sat there and watched Mary Jane fight with her own expression.

“You can judge,” he told her. “Believe me, I have, and I’m the one who did it.”

Her lips trembled where she’d pressed them into a line. Peter just sat there and waited until the urge won out and she practically slid out of her seat laughing.

“Okay,” he said, after counting down from twenty, when she still hadn’t stopped. “It’s not that funny.”

Mary Jane pounded on the table with one fist, waving the other hand helplessly in the air.

“You married him in Vegas?” she finally asked when she came up for air, but only after downing a glass of water.

“Yes,” Peter said through gritted teeth. “Over a year ago. C’mon, MJ, I really need some advice.”

“So let me get this, pardon the expression, straight,” Mary Jane said, and Peter groaned as she began ticking off on her fingers. “You just said you didn’t sleep with him.”

“No,” he said after a beat when he realized she was waiting for an answer. “I did not sleep with him. Well, I did spend nights, you know, in bed next to him, but I didn’t fuck him, MJ, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Don’t be crass,” she said primly, as if she hadn’t been thinking it. “So you didn’t sleep with him. But you married him.”

“Yes,” he confirmed, gritting his teeth.

“And you didn’t get it annulled afterwards?”

“No,” he said.

“Why not?” she pressed. “People make stupid, drunk mistakes in Vegas all the time, Pete. It’s not the end of the world. Why not just call it off and then say it was a funny story?”

“I don’t know,” he said, looking away. He crossed his arms and sank back down against the table, feeling the weight of the question pressing along his back. “It just—never felt right.”

“Are you in love with him?” she asked.

He turned back to her, set his jaw, and said nothing.

“You can’t blame me for asking, tiger,” she said. “It’s one thing to get married. It’s another thing to stay married.”

“I…” he trailed off, sucking in a breath. “I do love him. Obviously, I love him.”

“Of course,” Mary Jane said. “He’s one of your best friends. But honesty hour, tiger—is it more than that?”

Peter had never been very good at lying to her. He’d used it all up pretending not to be Spider-Man when she’d known the whole time anyway.

“Yeah,” he said, slumping back in his seat. He tilted his head up towards the sky, shielding his eyes as he looked up at the sun. “You’re right. I’m in love with him, MJ.”

“Oh, Petey,” Mary Jane said, wide-eyed. “That’s worse. You realize that’s worse, right?”

“Yes, MJ,” he said, groaning. “I realize that it’s worse.”

He put his head down on the table. After a second, he felt her fingers push through his hair, long nails scratching lightly at his scalp.

“Chin up, tiger,” she said, not unkindly. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

He lifted his head just enough to glare at her.

“If I say brood silently and manfully, will you let me?” he asked.

She kicked him under the table.

“You know I don’t like seeing you unhappy,” she said. “And Johnny’s my friend, too. I’m worried about him, Pete. The celebrity gossip mill is worse than your rogue’s gallery.” She sighed, leaning back in her chair. “He doesn’t have a lot of people in his corner.”

“I know that,” Peter said, mouth grimly twisting to the side. Johnny had less now than ever before, with Ben having taken off for the great unknown, and Reed and Sue—gone.

Just gone.

Peter wouldn’t say the other thing, the one on newspaper headlines and late night talk shows. That wasn’t who he was and that wasn’t what Johnny needed.

“You’re good at protecting the people you love, tiger,” Mary Jane said, like she could read his mind.

After all these years, she probably could.

“I should have taken you to Vegas years ago, pretty girl,” he said, propping his chin up on his palm.

She snorted.

“Can you imagine?”

He could. In another life.

The problem was that talking to Johnny was easier said than done.

It was one thing when Johnny was the only one avoiding him, but then he’d gone and moved to the Inhumans’ floating fortress, and apparently neither Spider-Man nor Peter Parker were on the guestlist. Peter could imagine who had come up with that little rule. He’d tried the old showing up unannounced bit, and the webbing paper plane bit, and the message in a bottle bit, and got exactly nowhere for his troubles.

The Inhumans wouldn’t even let him anywhere near Johnny. Peter had started having vivid, petty daydreams about Medusa and a bottle of Nair.

He wanted to tell him that he’d bought the Baxter Building to keep it safe until the Fantastic Four returned. He wanted to show him the statue he’d commissioned from Alicia, despite all of Harry’s bitching and moaning.

He wanted to see Johnny. He wanted to talk to him. He wanted to know what he could do to help.

He just didn’t know how to make any of that happen.

That was when he got the invitation from Steve Rogers. He was launching a new faction of the Unity Squad, and he wanted Spider-Man on it.

Peter wasn’t exactly in the mood. His first instinct was to tell him to stick his dentures somewhere unmentionable. But something made him stop and actually ask who else would be on the team.

He barely listened as the names went by at first. Rogue. Quicksilver. Doctor Voodoo.

The Human Torch.

Peter only gave it a split second thought after verifying it was the flesh-and-blood version, something Steve didn’t seem to appreciate very much at all. He accepted the invitation.

“When the going gets tough,” he said to himself. “The tough get desperate.”

His erstwhile husband did not look happy to see him at the first Unity Squad meeting. After months of dodging him left and right, Peter hadn’t expected him to, but it still made the backs of his teeth ache when Johnny wouldn’t look at him.

What he wouldn’t have given for a flying octogenarian to take it out on. He guessed he’d have to settle for annoying a World War II veteran instead.

The first mission went—interesting. He could see that Steve and Rogue were really trying, which almost made him feel bad about what he was about to do.

Almost. Every time Johnny refused to look him right in the mask, his determination grew.

“Yeah, the thing is, I lied,” Peter said when the subject of permanent membership came up. “Sorry, not sorry. I’m just here for my husband.”

There was a long moment of silence. Every pair of eyes—and every mask—in the room turned to look at him.

“Your husband,” Steve repeated. He sounded suspicious. Peter couldn’t really blame him, but the geriatric judgmental committee would have to wait until the next business day.

“Yeah,” Peter said. There was a growing rumble of interest going around the room, and on the other side of it, Johnny had frozen like a deer in the headlight. Peter pointed straight at him. “That one over there.”

Someone started clapping. Peter was just going to ignore that.

Johnny was staring at him like he’d grown a second head, but Peter didn’t plan on leaving without him. He held out his hand.

“Come on, Torch,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

“No,” Johnny said.

Steve cleared his throat right before the entire room burst into commentary. Peter had expected that; no one loved a superhero scandal more than other superheroes.

Except maybe J Jonah Jameson.

So Peter leaned back and watched as everyone started yelling over each other and Rogue and Johnny started whispering furiously and Steve got that look on his face like he wasn’t going to try to kill Peter, but he might have a pleasantly guilty dream about it later.

“Oh, sorry,” Peter said. “Did I not put that on the RSVP?”

“There’s a reason we have your name under the Do Not Call section of the roster,” Steve said, rubbing his temples.

“Yeah, yeah, I came in the name of love.”

Steve didn’t look like he was impressed. Peter was spared whatever judgment he’d probably earned when Johnny grabbed a fistful of his costume and yanked.

“You’re making a scene,” Johnny hissed in his ear. “This is my team, Spidey.”

Peter turned his head. Their noses brushed together, separated only by the mask. Close enough to kiss if Peter just yanked his mask up.

“I will make it a hundred times worse,” he promised. “Don’t test me here, Torch.”

Johnny looked at him and grimaced, like he was imagining it.

“Come on,” Peter said. “I just want to talk. You remember how to do that with me, right?”

Johnny didn’t look too sure, but he also didn’t set Peter on fire. Peter was counting it as a win.

They took Peter’s car, which Peter realized a second too late was a tactical error, on account of Johnny not having any of his cars anymore, and Peter currently being able to afford a really nice one.

“What is wrong with you?” Johnny demanded as soon as they were inside the car. “You know it’s going to be everywhere overnight!”

Peter shrugged nonchalantly.

“Great,” he said. “Then you won’t be able to hide from me. Divorce me if you want, but that’ll just make them talk more. Besides, my lawyers will take you for everything you’ve got.”

Johnny gaped at him like a fish.

“I don’t know where to start,” he finally said. “Your lawyers?”

“Yeah, that’s right, Barnum & Bailey, attorneys at law,” Peter said, rolling his eyes. “What do you think? Harry hired someone. That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?” Johnny demanded, throwing his hands up.

The point is that I miss you, Peter thought, his stomach churning. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel.

He should have just said it. He should just be honest.

“The point is that you’re avoiding me,” he said.

“No, I’m not,” Johnny said, looking away. “I’m not avoiding you.”

Peter grit his teeth and manfully didn’t point out that Johnny couldn’t even look at him.

“And I’m not your husband,” Johnny said after a beat.

Peter had to stop short so he didn’t slam into the back of the taxi in front of them.

“What do you mean,” he demanded, ignoring the pedestrian on the other side of the window, yelling at him about where he’d learned to drive, “I’m not your husband?”

Johnny crossed his arms and sank down in his seat, glowering out the windshield.

“I said what I said,” he hissed. “Us being stupid in Vegas for like two minutes does not make you my husband.”

“It does when we never did anything about it,” Peter pointed out. “We’re married, hot stuff. There’s nothing else to call me.”

“I can think of about a hundred things, asshole,” Johnny said, his eyes flashing.

“It’s the sweet talk, Torch,” Peter said through gritted teeth as traffic started moving again. He yanked the steering wheel harder than necessary taking a turn. “That’s what keeps me coming back to you.”

Johnny didn’t seem to realize where Peter was taking him until they turned into the underground parking lot. Peter watched from the corner of his eye as realization hit him. His jaw went slack, his knuckles white. His eyes flashed as he turned on Peter.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

Peter didn’t answer until he peeled into the executive parking spot and threw the car into park. He turned to Johnny, not afraid of a little fire.

“Welcome to Parker Industries’ brand new New York headquarters, hot stuff,” he said. “Surprised?”

He knew he should have broken the news differently. He’d planned to do it in a nice way. But Johnny had that way of pushing his buttons, and now Peter wasn’t even sure if he’d get another chance to talk to him again. He watched as Johnny’s face shifted from shock to horror to rage.

“The Baxter Building?” he said, sparks spilling from his lips and dancing along his hair. “Really, Pete?!”

“Before you completely freak out—”

“We are well past that point, Parker!”

“—There’s something upstairs you need to see.”

Johnny’s face twisted, his eyes blazing. His hands shook as he unbuckled his seatbelt and reached for the door.

“You are unbelievable!”

He slammed the car door behind him. Peter caught up to him easily, grabbing him by the wrist before he could do something stupid, like fly off. He held on tight enough that Johnny couldn’t shake him off, not without burning him.

“You need to listen to me!” he said.

“Why?” Johnny demanded, turning to him. “Give me one good reason, Peter, why I should bother sticking around while you trample my family’s legacy!”

Peter moved before he could even think about it. The next thing he knew, Johnny’s back had hit the wall, and he was leaning in so close that their noses almost brushed.

“You want a reason, Johnny?” he said. “Fine. Because I miss you. Because I miss them too. And because I love you.”

The fire in Johnny’s eyes flickered and sparked, then faded.

“What?” he said.

“Come on, Johnny,” Peter said, feeling defeated all the way down to his bones. He dug his heels in and forced himself to stay strong. Just another day. Just another fight. And Johnny was worth fighting for, every inch of him. “I stayed married to you all this time. What other reason could I have besides loving you?”

Johnny shook his head, suddenly speechless. Peter wanted to make a joke, but everything hurt too much.

“Talk to me, Torch,” Peter said, his hands on either side of Johnny’s head. “If you don’t, I’ll skywrite my burning desire for you somewhere everyone will see it.”

“You wouldn’t,” Johnny said, wide-eyed.

“Try me,” Peter bit out. “The Hamptons or Manhattan, blondie? Take your pick.”

“Pete, move,” Johnny said. “I’ll set your stupid off the rack suit on fire, don’t even try me.”

It was a stupid, pointless threat and they both knew it. Peter tilted his head to the side and leaned in closer, until he could count every single one of Johnny’s long blonde eyelashes and see every angry, heartbroken spark in his blue eyes.

“Go ahead, hot stuff,” he said, dragging out every word. He made sure Johnny could feel his breath on his lips. “Burn me.”

Johnny shuddered. The back of his head hit the wall with a thump as he covered his face with his hands.

“You’re such a fucking asshole,” he said. “I can’t believe I married you.”

“Yeah, well, you did, and now you’re stuck with me,” Peter said. “So we have to figure this whole mess out together, blondie. You and me.”

Johnny opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He looked away after a moment, still scrubbing at his face, and Peter felt the fight go out of him.

“Come on,” he said after a second. “Come upstairs with me, please. I promise you’ll like what you see.”

The building wasn’t officially open yet, so the lobby was deserted. Normally, Peter hated seeing it empty. The lobby was the part of the Baxter Building he probably spent the least time in, preferring to go through the windows when he could, but he still knew it like the back of his own hand. It had hurt to see it stripped bare. Looters had gotten to it after Johnny and Ben had lost the building, ransacked the gift store and smashed the windows. The FOUR NO MORE graffiti had still been sprawled bright blue on the walls when Peter had first bought it.

He was glad that it was cleaned away and that Johnny didn’t have to see that.

The statue stood tall and proud in the center of the lobby, larger than life. No one could miss it. Peter saw the exact moment Johnny realized what it was, when he took in the sculpted figures of himself, his sister, Ben, and Reed, and the kids.

“When did this…” he trailed off, his voice thick.

Peter took pity. He stepped up next to Johnny, rubbing the back of his own neck.

“I commissioned Alicia,” he said. “Do you like it?”

The statue wasn’t just of the four. Franklin and Valeria stood tall with their parents, Franklin smiling widely and Valeria with a haughty expression, her hands on her hips. Alicia had distilled every little nuance of their expressions into the statue.

Peter wasn’t the crying type. It just wasn’t what he did. But when he’d seen the statue for the first time in her studio, he’d gotten a little misty-eyed himself.

“Yeah,” Johnny said after a beat, nodding. He swiped at his eyes. “Yeah, I like it a lot. Alicia always does great work. Why’d you do this, Pete?”

“It’s the first thing anyone will see when they set foot in this building,” Peter pointed out. “A way for people to know that the Baxter Building will always be home to the Fantastic Four.” He took a breath, glancing at Johnny. “To you, Johnny. I didn’t buy this building for anyone else but you.”

Johnny stared right back, the angry flush from moments before gone. His eyes were electric, his lips trembling faintly, and Peter would give anything to never have to see him cry again, not over being left behind.

“Everyone was trying to buy the place,” he explained. “Roxxon, Hammer. Alchemax. Liz Allan has dirt on me like you wouldn’t believe and I still went toe-to-toe with her for the building. I outbid all of them, Johnny. So I could hold onto the building for you until the day the Fantastic Four are finally back.” He slung his arm around Johnny’s shoulders, tugging him closer as Johnny stared at the statue. “And that day will come.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Johnny said, his voice wet. He put one hand over his eyes, his shoulders shaking as he took a few long, deep breaths. “Pete?”

“Yeah?”

“Until that day comes, I’m glad it’s with family,” Johnny said. He took a great, shuddering breath, and turned to face Peter. His eyes were shining with tears. “I’m glad it’s with my husband.”

They kissed on the elevator ride up to the penthouse.

Nothing fancy. Nothing special. Nothing even particularly heated.

Just Johnny’s arms looped around Peter’s neck and Peter’s hands at his waist, and the careful, quiet press of their mouths, Johnny sighing against his lips.

“Why didn’t you ever kiss me again after the life raft?” Peter asked. “You remember that, don’t you?”

Johnny tipped his head back with a sigh, leaning back and trusting Peter to keep him grounded as he stared up at the ceiling. It always made him ache, the easy way Johnny trusted him to hold him steady or catch him when he fell.

“Yeah, I remember,” he said. “Who could forget? It’s the last thing I think I remember clearly before everything went fuzzy.”

“So why?” Peter pressed.

“Because I was a mess, Peter,” Johnny said, tilting his head to the side. “I was drowning. I still am. I wasn’t about to drag you down with me. That’s not fair to you.”

Peter made an annoyed noise and kissed him again just as the elevator doors opened. They fumbled backwards their way past the furniture the Harry-approved decorator had picked out, Peter’s spider-sense doing some heavy lifting as he slipped his hands under Johnny’s thighs and hauled him up. He only dropped him, unceremoniously, when they got to the couch.

“Hey!”

“Life’s not fair, Torch,” Peter told him, collapsing down next to him. “Don’t you start now.”

“I could ask you the same question, you know,” Johnny said. “You never kissed me again, either.”

Peter groaned, throwing his head back.

“C’mon, how bad do you think I am?” he said. “Your family had just gone missing. What was I supposed to do, pressure you into a relationship?”

“Yeah?” Johnny said. “And what was kidnapping me in front of Captain America supposed to accomplish, jerk?”

He settled back, half-leaning against Peter, his head almost resting on his shoulder. Peter raised a hand and let his knuckles drift gently across Johnny’s jaw.

“I just wanted you to talk to me,” he admitted. “I miss you, Johnny. Come back to me.”

Johnny was quiet for a minute. He caught Peter’s hand, twisting their fingers together.

“I didn’t mean to go away.”

“I know,” Peter said.

“It just… I just didn’t know what else to do.”

“I know,” Peter repeated. He shifted until he was lying back against the armrest, Johnny’s back to his chest, their fingers still loosely entwined.

He’d left the Baxter Building’s big floor to ceiling windows the way they were on the residential floors. Peter had always loved the view. All of his city, spread out before him, the skyline painted golden in the sunset. Johnny looked pensive, his features sharp in the light.

“Come back to me anyway,” Peter said, nearly pleading.

Johnny looked at him for a long time.

“I don’t have anything anymore, Peter,” he finally said. “Nothing to offer you, so if that’s what you’re looking for…”

“I’ll be the brains,” Peter offered. “You be the looks.”

Johnny barked out a laugh, scrubbing his hands over his face.

“You don’t want to be married to me, Pete,” he said. “Come on. This… whatever this is… can’t we just let it go? I’ll sign whatever you want. Just have your people send my people the papers.”

“You still have people?” Peter asked, and got an elbow thrust back into his ribs for the trouble. He rolled his eyes, wrapping his arms around Johnny’s waist. He settled his chin on Johnny’s shoulder. “Come on, Johnny. Why wouldn’t I want to be married to you?”

“I wasn’t good at being married last time,” Johnny said. “You can ask anyone. There were enough articles about it.”

“I’m not an alien, Johnny,” Peter pointed out.

Johnny snorted.

“No, you’re probably weirder,” he said. “I know that it wasn’t… real, that I didn’t marry the person I thought I’d married, but I was still bad at it. I tried, I really did. I wanted to be married. But when Crystal joined the team, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. And right before everything went to hell, I remembered talking to Sue, asking her if it ever got easier, because it was so hard, every day.”

There were a lot of things Peter could have said to that. That it wasn’t Johnny’s fault. That the two things couldn’t compare. That Peter loved him, and he would do his best not to hurt him if Johnny gave him a shot.

“Is it hard being with me?” he asked.

“Being with you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” Johnny said, slumping back against him. “Why do you think I moved in with you after the Negative Zone?”

“I don’t know, blondie, to torture me?” Peter said, playing with the collar of Johnny’s shirt. “It’s always been easy for me, too. Even when you turned my apartment into Studio 54.”

“Please, I let you off easy,” Johnny said. “I could have invited the Mole Man.”

“And why’d you even marry me, huh?” Peter asked before he could start imagining a world where he had to chase Harvey Elder out of his apartment with a broom.

Johnny was quiet for a long enough that Peter started to suspect he wouldn’t get a real answer. When he did speak, it was slow and faltering, like each word hurt him.

“Because I was so in love with you, and I still felt so dead inside,” Johnny said, staring at the wall. “And I thought… if I’m going to be like this for the rest of my life, then maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing, if I could have one night where I could just pretend I was yours, and you really loved me, and we could do something dumb together.”

Everything in Peter ached. He pressed a kiss to Johnny’s temple, squeezing his shoulder.

“I do really love you,” Peter said. “And we’ve done a lot of dumb things together. Don’t sell us short here, Torch.”

“I know it was stupid, and messed up, and wrong,” Johnny said, hunching in on himself. “And I’m sorry, Pete, about all of it. I really am.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “You would have been better off if you never met me.”

Peter knew he didn’t mean it. Or he wanted to believe that he didn’t. Either way, he could spend the rest of his life trying to make sure Johnny never felt like that again and it still wouldn’t be enough.

“Trust me, Torch,” he said. “On the long list of people I wish I’d never met, you don’t even come close. And on the long list of things I regret, drunkenly marrying you in Vegas isn’t on there.” He paused. “Except for the Doom part.”

Johnny snorted.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he said. “It’s not like I had some sinister plan to lure you to Las Vegas, get you drunk, and marry you. I really just wanted to let go for a weekend, and then you were drunk, and someone made a joke about us being a cute couple, and you kind of just… went with it. We were just joking. And then the next thing I knew, you said we should really do it.”

Peter grimaced. It did, unfortunately, sound like something he would do when he was drunk. He’d never really doubted that part.

“And I was going to write it off as a joke the next day,” Johnny continued. “I really was. But you never brought it up again.”

“Why didn’t you ever divorce me?” Peter asked, his arm around Johnny’s shoulders.

Johnny sighed and practically melted into him, his head down on Peter’s shoulder as he stared out the window.

“I don’t know,” he said. “A lot of reasons. You couldn’t afford it until now.”

“Please, you just didn’t want to pay me alimony.”

Johnny snorted. He reached up to grab Peter’s hand, playing idly with his fingers.

“I liked knowing that you were there,” he said quietly. “In case anything happened to me again.”

“I liked that, too,” Peter admitted.

“I knew that no matter what, you’d step up, Mr. Responsibility,” Johnny said. “Take care of it. Take care of the kids. When we were in space with our powers going haywire, I thought, at least there’s Peter. The kids will be okay because Peter’s there.”

Peter pressed his nose against Johnny’s hair, inhaling the faded bonfire scent of him. He had nothing to say to that. When Johnny had been in space, thinking like that, his powers failing him, Peter had been banished the recesses of his own mind, Otto Octavius in control. He didn’t want to think about a world where he’d wrestled back his own body and his own life and found Johnny gone.

“I love you,” Peter said. He pressed a kiss to the top of Johnny’s head.

Johnny made a noise of acknowledgment. His fingers tightened around Peter’s hand. He didn’t say it back.

“Why?” he asked.

“I need a reason?” Peter joked.

“Right now?” Johnny said. “Yeah, kind of.”

“It’s your lovely face, Torch,” he said, recalling the words from what seemed like a lifetime ago. “It keeps me up at night just thinking about it.”

Johnny snorted and shoved him.

“Not good enough. Try again.”

Peter sighed fondly.

“Because it’s always been easy with you, too,” he said. “Even when I was a dumb kid. And because I miss you, hot stuff. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

His other hand found Johnny’s hip, squeezing.

“Give me a chance here,” he said. “Just one chance to be good to you. What do you say?”

Johnny shifted, half turning so he could look Peter in the eyes.

“And if I crash and burn again?” he said. “What then, Peter? I’m supposed to drag you down with me?”

“No,” Peter said, knocking their foreheads together. He brought an arm around Johnny’s shoulders, loosely. Just keeping him close. “You’re supposed to trust me to help pull you out of the wreckage. For better or worse, Johnny.”

“Does it still count if I already died?” Johnny asked, his eyes searching Peter’s face.

“Yeah,” Peter said, Johnny’s breath hot on his lips. “It counts more than ever.”

Johnny tasted faintly like ashes when Peter kissed him. Peter wondered if he always tasted like that when he was heartbroken. He curled a hand at the back of Johnny’s neck and tried to lick the taste from his mouth.

“Let’s just try, Torch,” Peter said when Johnny pulled back, tears on his lashes and sparks deep in his eyes. He caught his face between his hands, thumb brushing one tear away from his cheek. “Just give it one shot. Let’s try it for real.”

Johnny laughed, sniffing, shaking his head. He settled against Peter again, head on his shoulder, fingers finding the spot on Peter’s chest where the spider insignia would lie if Peter was wearing the costume.

“I pawned my ring months ago,” Johnny said.

Peter snorted. He picked up Johnny hand and kissed his ring finger, thinking about how maybe one day there would be a ring there again. If Johnny wanted.

“I’ll get you a new one,” he promised. “Shinier. More expensive.”

“Little flames on it in rubies and diamonds.”

“Absolutely not. You get a spider or nothing.”

He kissed Johnny’s ring finger again.

“What happens now?” Johnny asked. “Usually you date someone before you get married. What if we can’t stand each other? What if we fight?”

“We already fight every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday,” Peter said, shrugging one shoulder. “So that puts us ahead of most couples I know.”

“Because they fight every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday,” Johnny filled in. Peter pretended to bite at his knuckles.

“Now you’re catching on, hot stuff. And all the days of the week, too. I’m impressed.”

Johnny snorted.

“What you’re doing is not answering the question,” he said. “What happens now, Pete? Really.”

He looked at Peter, right there in the same room where Peter had first met him, half a lifetime ago, when he’d been so young, with no idea about anything that would happen to him. To them. Losing Johnny. Getting him back. Marrying him. Kissing him. Losing him all over again. Getting a second chance and a third and however many after that.

Peter didn’t know what came next. But he knew that would love Johnny through it, come rain or shine, no matter how difficult. Because he’d promised himself that he would.

“I don’t know,” Peter admitted. “But I think we take it one day at a time.”

“Wait. So yer tellin’ me you two putzes were married the whole time?”

Two months later, they were sitting in the kitchen with Ben, who was fresh off a red eye flight after some fight with Doctor Doom that had landed him in Amsterdam. Johnny and Ben weren’t what Peter would quite call talking yet, but they could be in the same room together, and that had to be enough for now.

Even if Peter kind of wanted to fight him.

“Define the whole time,” Peter said, leaning back in his seat.

“He fell in love with me at first sight,” Johnny said. “Remember, Ben, you were there. There he was, some scrawny nerd, breaking into our home to beg for our scraps—”

“I’ll divorce you.”

“He was mesmerized by my radiance, Ben,” Johnny sighed, hand to his heart. “It was love at first sight. He pined for years, thinking that someone like me could never love someone like him. I had to take pity on him.”

“It was not love at first fight,” Peter said. “I was blinded by the lights flashing off your veneers.”

Johnny flipped him off with one flaming finger.

It hadn’t been love at first sight, Peter thought, watching the halo of his hair underneath the kitchen lights. But maybe it had been second. He’d never forgotten that speech, after all, the one Johnny had given at his high school a scant few weeks later, somehow saying everything Peter needed to hear.

But Johnny didn’t need to know that.

“And marry him in Las Vegas?” Ben repeated, skeptical, over the rim of his beer stein.

“In front of God and Doom and a pair of nice old ladies we met at the casino.” Johnny nodded solemnly.

“Oh my God,” Peter said. “Don’t tell him about the Doom part.”

Ben looked between the two of them.

“Yer serious, ain’t ya?” he said, pointing one rocky finger first at Peter, and then at Johnny. A wide grin split his rocky face. “Hey, mazel tov.”

“Don’t,” Peter said.

“I’m happy for you two crazy kids!” Ben guffawed. “Hey, matchstick, ya got pictures?”

Johnny had pictures. Johnny had the video. Peter had a headache.

“See, now we gotta send this to ol’ Doomsie,” Ben was saying, leaning over Johnny’s cellphone with him. Peter could hear himself stumbling through his vows over the speakers.

“To cherish and honor you all the days of my life, which by the way, hot stuff, the days of thy life, that refers to the days alone, but all the days of thy life include the nights as well. The doctors, however, sayeth thus…”

“Okay, webs, I’ll give to ya,” Ben said. “That wuz a good one.”

“I was drunk,” Peter reminded him, hand over his eyes.

“That’s what they all say.”

He was thankful when an hour later Ben was snoring on his couch. Getting teleported to Amsterdam really took it out of a man.

He was out on the balcony, enjoying the fresh air and the sound of the city below him. There was a restless feeling in the air tonight, like something was going to happen. Like the city was calling to Peter. For right now, though, he stayed where he was, smiling as Johnny wandered outside, holding two cups of hot tea in his hands.

“How are you feeling?” Peter asked, leaning on the railing. “You and Ben talking again. It’s a big deal.”

“Ugh, don’t make it weird,” Johnny said, handing him one mug.

His new ring flashed in city lights. They’d gone with another simple band of gold in the end, no spiders or flames. Just a simple message engraved on the inside, against Johnny’s skin, so that he wouldn’t forget. For better or worse. Peter was there for it all.

Two months, and things were going steady. They hadn’t made a big deal of it. Mary Jane knew. Peter had dug his old wedding ring out of the drawer the morning after Johnny had agreed to give it a shot, and Harry had nearly and had a heart attack over it at lunch the same day. He’d told May, because he tried to keep as few secrets from as possible, but he’d left out the drunk in Vegas part. But for the most part they were keeping things a secret for now, enjoying the thing between the two of them.

Besides, half of the superhero circle thought that Johnny was secretly married to Spider-Man. Just another piece of the ol’ Parker luck.

“One day at a time, right?” Peter said. “And if you want me to kick him to the curb, just give the word, Torch.”

The corner of Johnny’s mouth lifted.

“You’re my hero, Spider-Man,” he sang, smacking a kiss against Peter’s cheek.

“Yeah, and you’re my cosmic punishment,” Peter said. “Did you have that video queued up and ready to go?”

“It’s cute,” Johnny defended. “I like the part where you try to flirt with the two eighty-year-old barflies at your own wedding.”

“You married a charmer, Torch, so get used to it,” Peter said. “Do you ever think about it?”

“What?” Johnny said. “Our wedding?”

“Yeah,” Peter said. He scratched at the back of his neck. “Do you ever think about maybe doing it over again?”

It wasn’t the first time he’d had the thought. Just the first time he’d brought it up to Johnny.

His first marriage had been a disaster. His second wedding had been to a man who hadn’t known the extent of his own feelings at the time, who hadn’t chased after him the way he should. But now Peter had money to throw around, and they could do whatever Johnny wanted. Have the wedding at the Plaza, or on the beach, or the Blue Area of the moon.

Whatever Johnny wanted, Peter would do his best to make it come true.

“With who?” Johnny asked, tipping his head to the side.

Peter narrowed his eyes.

“I know what you’re doing,” he said.

“Is John Jameson still single?” Johnny said. “What about your friend, the one who used to be Venom?”

“Johnny,” Peter said. “I’m being serious here.”

“I know. It’s funny,” Johnny said, snickering. He shrugged one shoulder, leaning back halfway over the railing, to the point where, if he were anyone else, Peter would have been putting his sticky fingers all over him as a matter of safety and not out of a simple need to touch him.

“You’re not answering me.”

“Maybe because I don’t have an answer right now, webs,” Johnny said, sighing. He tilted his head back, staring up at the night sky. “It doesn’t feel right. Not without my family here.”

Peter understood that. Even if it stung.

“Okay,” he said. “I have a proposition.”

“Kinky,” Johnny said, eyeing him. “Not with Ben in the other room, though.”

“Not that kind of proposition,” Peter said, snorting, as Johnny draped his arms over his shoulders. “Let’s race tonight. Here to the end of the island and back.”

“A race, huh?” Johnny said, his eyes flashing. “And what does the winner get?”

“To pick the date to renew our vows,” Peter said, grabbing Johnny by the hips and pulling him close. “When your family comes back. Because they will come back, Johnny.”

He knew, sometimes, that it was hard for Johnny to believe it after all this time, but that was okay. Peter had always believed in the Fantastic Four. He could believe for Johnny.

Johnny swallowed hard, his eyes searching Peter’s face like he was looking for a lie. Whatever he found made him smile instead.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s race.”