Archive of Our Own ^beta

Peter Parker is a lot of things. 

Halfway to legally blind with a prescription so strong it gives him a migraine half the days of the week. Orphan one-and-a-half times over. L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Pâtisserie graduate. MENSA member. Sort of an asshole. 

He sees the world from eighty angles—a dozen windows a week—and none of them particularly excite him. 

The morning tells him when to rise and afternoon tells him when to grow weary and the crescent moon as it clings to navy night lets him know to retire. Any more than that, he floats. 

He loves his aunt; his weird, crooked family. Queens, which was part of that kin until he left it in favor of a promise awaiting him in Brooklyn. 

He’s never sure. He’s never on time. He’s never much. 

He does, and he does, and he does, and it’s glossed over. 

He isn’t upset. He’s just tired. 

He’s the one lackluster member of a group of five boisterous, attractive, extraordinary friends. 

He blends right into a crowd and then sinks there, batting his hands towards a surface he’ll never reach—a foamy crest he’ll never feel break against his face. 

Brilliant is something he thinks he’ll never be. 

He spends hours searching for it, perched on the rooftops and balconies of Queens and Brooklyn, taking pictures of the brownstones stacked together like the spines of worn books or a sunset melting all the colors of fruit punch over spires and piers and crosswalks. He tries to shape it out of flour and butter and brown sugar but he can never quite get it right. Not even if you squint, turn a little. It’s never there. Not really. 

But he thinks it’s the one thing he’ll spend his whole damn life chasing. Brilliance. 

To cradle it between his palms just once? Well. That would be everything to him. 

—

“Ugh,” MJ says, shoving a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Ugh.”

“Aw, what’s up yours, Red?” asks Gwen, perched on the edge of Peter’s lumpy mattress, squinting into her compact mirror while smushing her freshly glossed lips together. “An open umbrella?” 

Peter watches MJ’s reflection scowl haughtily. “My forehead is a fivehead, Gwendy, that’s what’s up mine. It’s a landing strip for a jumbo jet. Pete,” MJ turns over her shoulder, glamorous and pouty, “have you got a beanie for your best friend in the whole world to borrow? Just for tonight?”

Peter flicks a brow up, leaning deeper into the pillows against his headboard. “Mm. Maybe.” Then he calls, “Harry, you need to borrow a hat?”

Footsteps come thumping towards Peter’s bedroom. Harry peers his curly head around the door, a bottle of cheap vodka dangling from his fingers. “Nah,” he says. “I went for the artfully tousled look tonight.”

“You, Mister Parker, are a prick,” MJ announces, tugging at the corners of her eyes. She looks stunning as always, all wide hips and black-and-white tube dress and oversized leather jacket, but if there ever was a perfectionist, it was Mary Jane Watson. 

“I think you look lovely, MJ,” Harry says, eyes wide and earnest. “And Gwen, you’re as radiant as ever.”

“Fuck off, Har,” says Gwen, popping her gum. Her lips curl to the side in a smile. “You gonna share that?” she adds, nodding to the bottle of liquor. 

Harry comes into the room, stepping carefully over Flash, whose face is slack as he sneaks a cat-nap amid all of the hubbub, nesting in the dirty clothes on Peter’s floor. Harry unscrews the cap. It flings like a tiny metal frisbee at Peter, who attempts to dodge but really spectacularly fails. It dings off his glasses and lands in his lap. 

“Dude.”

“Ten points!!” Harry cheers. 

Peter picks up the cap and puts it on his nightstand as Harry prods Flash with his foot to wake him. 

Flash grumbles something unintelligible. 

“Vodka,” says Harry. 

Flash’s eyes pop open. He looks refreshed, never younger, ready to run a marathon. He holds his arms out, makes grabby hands, and says, “Gimme.”

Harry says, “Ah ah ah, slow your roll, champ. I gotta christen it first.”

“Make a toast,” Gwen says as she waves a hand imperiously, bracelets clicking together. 

“I toast,” Harry proclaims, “bread. Baguette. Ciabatta. To rolls! To bagels! To rye and pita!”

“Cheers!” MJ calls through a laugh. Flash has never looked so eager. 

“To—toast,” Harry says, his voice turning introspective and fond, “the most dependable of breakfasts, with avocado or jelly or just plain dry.”

“Dry?” Gwen repeats, wrinkling her nose. 

“Lemme finish,” Harry says crossly. He clears his throat, holds the bottle aloft. “I toast toast. It’s always had my back, especially when I’m super hungover and can’t stomach anything else. It’s the best pre-drink padding, the best mid-drunk snack, the best post-drunk stomach settler. God, toast, man!”

“Toast, man!” Flash crows, clapping. “Now gimme.”

Harry holds up a single commanding finger. He brings the bottle to his lips and sucks down a big mouthful, scrunching his face after and shaking himself out like a dog. 

“Brilliant,” he announces. “Flash, onto you.”

Flash takes the bottle like a gift from God and drinks. It goes to MJ, who chugs like a champ, to Gwen, who daintily sips at it like a glass of champagne rather than a thick-rimmed bottle of Smirnoff, to Peter, who fake-blushes under their earnest attention and takes a drag. It’s terrible, and he gags, but they don’t tease him for it. 

“Something nicer next time,” he suggests, stomach burning. 

“Smirnoff cranberry,” Harry suggests. “Green apple? I’ll even stray to watermelon for you, Petey, my great love, my best bro.”

“I was thinking scotch,” Peter says. 

“Ugh, grandpa,” says Flash. 

“That’s why we broke up,” says MJ. “Because he's actually an eighty year old in a skin suit.” Peter can tell from the clumsy way her fingers are fluffing her hair that it’s started to hit her stomach.

Harry holds his hands out for the bottle and Peter takes another disgusting sip before passing it along. Pregaming is always a tactical event for him—mostly because he would rather get shoved through a meat grinder than be sober in a club, even for the ten minutes before he orders shots and gets four of them down. 

Cheap vodka. He’s grateful for any vodka, really, but Smirnoff. It's a drain cleaner. Paint stripper. A nightmare in disguise.

Peter drinks another few shots—just enough that getting onto the subway feels like a sort of promising adventure as the stop and start makes his head bob side to side. MJ did not end up in one of Peter’s beanies, but Peter did, and he can see in the windows across from them that it's poking up from the top of his head like he’s a fucking smurf. Harry and Flash are slumped in their seats to his left, manspreading, and Gwen and MJ have their elbows linked as they stand in front of the boys. They’re all so intimidating. Peter is a cigarette butt in the gutter compared to them. 

They do have fun at the club. Gwen and MJ dance like a pair of animals, all swinging limbs and clumps of quickly frizzing hair. Completely graceless. Everyone watches them. Peter gets pulled away from the wall by Harry once or twice. He lets Harry spin him around and he laughs—because he’s drunk more than anything. The lights are bruising. The noise makes his head ache. 

He’s sipping at a glass of orange juice now, watching Flash dance with a girl he doesn’t recognize. Peter didn’t know he and Liz had split. Peter hopes they’d split, if Flash is out here dancing with someone else. 

Peter feels like a fixture, sort of. A frame on the wall, watching over the fun, the image of it reflected in the glass of him. But he’s separate from it all. Just there. Eyes glaze over him, never come close enough to catch on him. It’s like he’s in a movie, but the movie isn’t his. It’s one of theirs. And he’s the forgettable character.

This isn’t exactly a new feeling for Peter.

And it’s not that it’s his friends’ faults. They’re perfect, they’re wonderful, he loves them all in their own special ways. He’s fairly certain he’s even—no, he’s completely, one hundred percent certain he’s made out with all of them at some point. But Peter feels that, even with them, he’s never quite the first pick. Not anymore, at least. Harry’d choose a bottle of Bacardi and a joint over anyone most days of the week. Gwen and MJ have got that thing going on, whatever it is. Girl bond or something. They’re inseparable. And Flash is Flash, the same way he’s always been—a jock, which Peter shudders to so much as say—even if he’s done some soul-searching, some therapy-going, some soup-kitchen-serving by now.

Peter’s apart from it. Watching it all from a distance. Taking pictures idly with the camera he almost always keeps slung around his neck: strobe lights painting Gwen’s face turquoise and MJ’s purple, Harry with a glass in hand and his arms straight up, and Flash as he raps along with whatever mess of synths and white noise is playing over the speakers; Harry pressing a firm kiss to Gwen’s temple as she goes from grinding on MJ to him; MJ’s white boots almost glowing in the dark as Flash dips her; at one point, Gwen holding both hands out to Peter, beckoning to come dance, her face all open and sweet and inviting even with her flushed cheeks and dark eyes. Peter clicks the picture as he shakes his head. He’d rather watch them all have fun than get in the middle of it and trip them up. 

But the night is long. Peter’s drunkenness fades as he sips at his juice and his head starts to ache before it’s even gone. Hungover and still drunk. How fucking rude. 

So when Harry—face ruddy and hairline sweaty from dancing—comes over and tugs on Peter’s wrist, says they’re all ready to go, Peter feels relief flood down to his feet, feels it carry him back onto the subway, where the bumps send him listing and a sharp turn has his forehead falling on Harry’s shoulder. 

Harry drops his chin over Peter’s head, holding him in place. Across from them, Gwen and MJ hold hands, and Flash dozes with his cheek pressed into Gwen’s thigh. All of them linked. All five. 

They pick off as their stops come, one by one, and Peter brings Harry home with him. Peter can’t help it. He worries, all the time, but especially in the mornings—when Harry’s hands start shaking and don’t stop.

He and Harry wash their faces shoulder to shoulder, pull on pajamas, and lay back to back like commas in Peter’s bed the way they have since they met. The both of them in Paris, unsure if they were chasing dreams or running from memories. Harry studying business; Peter filling their fridge with fruit compotes and sourdough starters. Those college nights after long college days, tucking Harry under throw blankets with a trash can at the edge of the bed. Keeping him within arm’s reach just to make sure he’s there.

Peter may not be first pick, but Harry still needs him the same way he used to, so he stays. Slaps a few Advil and a bottle of Pedialyte in Harry’s trembling hand come morning. Makes him the best damn pancakes he could ever eat and a pot of espresso with a shot of Baileys in it to chase away his pain. 

Because the fact of the matter remains: Peter may not be first pick, but he desperately wants to be.

He’d do just about anything to be. 

—

Peter’s in the middle of tossing around a dough ball when Johnny comes sauntering over, standing just out of shot. 

This is a problem, mostly because Johnny watching as Peter films makes him, inexplicably, extremely nervous.

It’s partially because Johnny has got these big, earnest eyes, and being on the other end of their stare is like being caught in a crossfire. It’s a little because Peter constantly needs his help as a result of Johnny being creative as fuck and a great problem solver (even if everyone tends to ignore that about him) and Peter’s fairly sure Johnny will get tired of making him molds and forms eventually. It’s partially too because Johnny is charming and thoughtful and fucking cut and attractive people generally make Peter antsy. 

Peter’s known Johnny for ages—since high school—but their friendship is newer. 

Johnny had been popular and well-liked and athletic when they were kids, none of which applied to Peter in any sense. And then Johnny set his gaze on culinary school, just the same as Peter had, and it was a competition of who could get in where—who could pay for what. 

Peter had gotten a scholarship for a photography portfolio he’d completed and then a shadow position with Tony Stark—the Tony Stark, who owned pastry chains in Paris, Florence, and New York, and who was organizing a new program at the NYC Bon Appetit headquarters—over the summers, which lead to Peter getting a permanent job and his own YouTube series with the company. 

Gourmet Makes with Peter Parker. 

Now he makes high class versions of Combos Pretzels and Girl Scout cookies for an audience of millions. Maybe it isn’t his perfect dream of piping eclairs and filling profiteroles in one of Tony’s pastry shops, but it’s a way for him to come down from his eclectic European college experience and return to the real world; a way to afford New York rent in a shitty shoebox of a Brooklyn apartment, with the help of the freelance photography he does for the people in the main kitchens—if he can’t make the mille-feuille, he can take pictures of them, at least; a way to stay near enough to May that it doesn’t give him agita to think of her alone in her apartment with him a borough over.

Johnny, on the other hand, had stuck to the city. He’d gone to the Culinary Institute of America, which, wow, and he could pay his tuition dollar for dollar, because there are perks to having an older sister marry Reed Richards—all-around genius and master kitchen appliance developer. So Johnny got an awesome education, a great job at a Michelin Star restaurant, and then dropped it all to come to BA and join the motley crew of test kitchen bums, dancing around with a wooden spoon in one hand and a screwdriver in the other and hosting It’s Alive! with the hugest fucking smile on his face. 

And the thing is—Johnny’s good, he’s charming. He’s a reservoir of giving nature. 

So, by the time they met again, there was no reason for them to not get along. No competition. Just two young guys surrounded by older coworkers, trying to figure out exactly where they fit in. 

Somehow, between Peter stabbing straight through his hand while trying to make a form for a gourmet Taki and Johnny burning a strip up his arm when a flambé went wrong, they sort of became friends. Trench buddies. 

And you can’t fight a war side by side without getting along somehow, or however the saying goes. They eat lunch together most days and sometimes they go out for drinks, or coffee, or have hungover brunches during which they gossip about their coworkers. Lovingly. Because there has got to be something going on between Steve and Bucky and it’s driving them up the wall trying to figure it out.

Johnny is Peter’s best work friend; his rock in a raging sea; the only one who laughs at his jokes and isn’t offended when Peter gets snippy at the messes staining the countertops and smearing along the glass plate of the microwave. 

He only wishes they’d seen each other for what they are sooner. 

Peter grins sardonically at the camera. “And here’s our usual cameo from one Johnny Storm.”

Johnny comes bouncing behind the counter and bumps shoulders with Peter, staring at the dough on the tabletop. 

“What are we up to here?” Johnny says, dragging a finger through the flour. “Looks fun. Yeasted dough?” 

“The yeasitest.”

“Nice. Is it just bread?” Johnny puts his hands on his hips. “Boring bread? I can’t picture you choosing bread as something to make a gourmet version of. Homemade bread is the poor man’s paradox. It’s the most gourmet of pleb foods.”

“It’s pizza dough,” Peter corrects.

“Ugh. Ya basic.”

“Alright, Eleanor.” Peter digs his hands back into the dough, throwing in an eye roll for the camera. “Come back later when your content is original.”

“That was rude. You know The Good Place is the pinnacle of modern entertainment.”

“I’m honestly surprised you can keep up with the complex philosophical lessons in the episodes. You strike me as a Jason archetype.”

“Did you just call me stupid in front of millions of people? My Instagram following might shank you for that one. I can’t control them. They’re crazy.”

Peter blinks, then pauses kneading to address the camera again. “Hi, Johnny’s rabid Instagram following, please don’t shank me. I think he’s—fine, I guess.”

“Fine , I guess?” Johnny repeats, aghast. 

Peter grins at him.

Johnny pokes him in the chest.

“Hey, wanna help? We can make it Peter and Johnny’s Perfect Pizza Dough.”

Johnny tilts his head, considering. “Fine. I will help you make Johnny and Peter’s Perfect Pizza Dough.”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Alright, everyone. The shit-show starts now, I guess.”

While Peter gives a quick slate as to what the forming of the crusts will entail, Johnny rolls up his sleeves and washes his hands. By the time he’s ready, bouncing on his toes and raring to go as always, Peter’s got the dough separated onto trays along the countertop. 

“Help me help you,” Johnny says. “Teach me, Pete.”

Peter presses past the weird writhing in his stomach. “I’m gonna show you what I’ve learned over the years about the right way to form dough.”

“Did you learn a lot? Over the years?”

“Yeah,” Peter says, sticking his hand up to the elbow into the flour bag to grab the last dust from the folded bottom. He tosses it over the counter, on top of the dough. “It’s—it’s harder than it looks.”

“So they make it look easy.”

“They?”

“Pizza magicians.”

Peter snorts, then grabs the dough off the countertop. “Yeah. Yeah, pizza magicians make it look easy.”

Peter points out the doughs, the differences between them—one fermented, the other traditional—before they each take a tray and start at it, maneuvering the extra into floured bowls. Peter takes two dough balls and puts them on the countertop. 

Peter shows Johnny how to stretch the dough with his fingertips—“None of that fancy throwing stuff,” Johnny comments—and then by passing it back and forth between the heels of his hands, allowing the weight of the dough to stretch itself out.

“It’s got a great feel,” Johnny says. “A little springy, a little soft.”

Peter knows Johnny well enough to know where this is going. “Johnny, if you—”

“Like a really nice ass,” Johnny continues, prodding at the dough ball. “A slammin’ pair of cheeks.”

“I need you to leave my video.”

“The most pert derriere you have ever had the pleasure of pounding—”

“This is supposed to be family friendly, you dog. Get out right now.”

Johnny cackles, waving his hands. “Cut that part out, cut that.”

Peter stares at the camera crew, pained.

They assemble their pies, spreading sauce and chunks of mozzarella.

Peter’s poking at his crust, trying to define it further, when Johnny finishes his own with a flourish.

“Pizza,” he announces. “Mamma mia.” He slips into an exaggerated Italian accent, shaking his pinched-together fingers. “Tom-ayy-to. I like-a the cheese. The sauce is-a perfetto.”  

“Shh, I’m concentrating,” Peter says, his nose an inch from the dough. The crust is just not doing it for him.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect. This ain’t rocket surgery, Pete.”

Peter looks over his shoulder at him. 

“I take that back,” says Johnny. 

“I hope so. Gosh, Jay, think before you speak.”

Johnny pokes him with the butt of the ladle, but he’s grinning. 

Peter looks back at the dough in front of him to hide his grin. “Right. Anyway,” he says, and gets to work, feeling Johnny’s gaze like flames on the back of his neck.

—

Peter does not always get high when Harry gets high because, if he got high every time Harry got high, he thinks his brain would melt out of his ears.

That isn’t to say he doesn’t sometimes get high with Harry. Often, even. 

Nine times out of ten.

Harry and Peter are dangling bodily over the iron fence surrounding Peter’s fire escape, passing a joint of something ferocious and bitter back and forth between them. The air carries that heavy, sickly weed stink on it. Peter’s brain is tilting side to side in his skull.

“You still job-hunting?” Peter asks Harry, letting his eyes close. The sun is warm. He can feel his hair growing hot against his scalp. This is respite.

“Pfft. No. I’m going to keep funneling Daddy’s money into my spend account until he notices. Which he won’t, because he makes money faster than even I can use it.”

“I hate when you call him Daddy. Please don’t do that in front of me anymore.”

“Daddy.”

“Harry.”

“Big Daddy Osborn. Aw, are you jealous? I could call you Daddy, Daddy Pete.”

“I’m going to toss myself off the fire escape. Is this fall far enough to kill me? I don’t care. I’m taking the chance.”

Peter is kidding, but Harry buries a hand in the back of his shirt anyway, holding him down. 

Peter exhales a breath, enjoying the pressure of Harry’s touch.

A long moment passes before Harry lets go and nudges Peter’s hand. Peter opens his eyes to see the blunt held out to him. 

Peter brings it to his lips and takes a deep, deep pull. It strains his lungs, tickles in the back of his throat. 

He coughs a little, but he blames his asthma.

“Big weed Daddy,” Harry says. “Big smoking Daddy. Gimme the doobie, Daddy.”

“I’ll toss you off the fire escape.” 

Peter won’t. He passes the blunt over, turning his head to look over at Harry. Harry is staring right back at him, one eye closed against the sunlight, the hazel of the other brilliant against red-tinged white. His hair dangles loose over his forehead. He’s wearing a crisp white button up with flannel pajama pants, but he still carries this easy swagger in his shoulders, in the set of his hips.

Harry pulls. Waits a moment. Then blows the lungful of smoke right into Peter’s face.

Peter bats it away, coughing, laughing. 

Here, he feels like himself. Knees on the iron of the fire escape, waist bent over the fence, head hanging loose over Brooklyn. It’s not his borough, not the way Queens is, but it’s still home. It’s still a place that’s holding him, leading him, letting him into it. Letting him learn the cobbled streets and the hooked lamps and the cars parked against the sidewalks; the way the moonlight dapples around the corners; the best roofs upon which to capture the sun setting fiercely orange. Letting him take this place from dust to dust again when each of his footsteps scrapes the concrete away, wears down what was once an idea and is now this, his city, the thing that runs through his veins the same way his parents do. 

Peter looks over at Harry again. He’s chewing on the end of the blunt, staring at the people walking on the sidewalk. They look up. Harry grins and waves at them.

It feels like home, he tells himself again. It feels like home.  

It feels like he’s crossing his fingers behind his back.

—

“Hey, Johnny?” Peter calls, two trays in his arms, Clint holding a camera right over his shoulder. “Johnny, Johnny, Johnny.” 

Johnny appears around the corner like a groundhog out of a hole. “You called?”

“Would you hate me if I ask you to set up the dehydrator for me?”

“Ugh, Peter.”

“Please? Please please? Oh, ow. Ouch. Holy cow. That’s hot. That’s very hot.”

Peter is going to step on Clint. He is going to use his pointy elbows like battering rams and give Clint a black eye. He has burned a straight white line on his wrist with the edge of the tray because Clint is pigeoning over his shoulder. Fuck a pigeon. 

“Fine, fine, Jesus, stop hurting yourself to get my attention,” Johnny says, but he comes closer. He takes Peter’s now empty arm, brings it close to his eyes, and scrutinizes the burn.

Upon seeing it’s almost nothing and Peter is just a pussy, he drops it, yanks Peter’s earlobe, and goes to get the dehydrator from the storage closet. 

Peter just barely hears Ned mumble from the sound station, “Did someone get that?”

—

Tuesday, April 7

pp. (5:43pm)

u wanna come get krispy kreme w me

gs. (5:52pm)

a trained pastry chef eats kk donuts

pp. (5:52pm)

frankly i was gonna put duncan hines

icing on them too

pp. (5:52pm)

a snacky snack

pp. (5:52pm)

you coming?

gs. (5:55pm)

sorry pp boy you know i

love you but i’m hanging out w

someone

pp. (5:56pm)

GASP [sent with slam effect]

pp. (5:56pm)

GWENDY

pp. (5:56pm)

WHO

gs. (5:57pm)

mj

pp. (5:59pm)

hmmm

pp. (6:01pm)

hmmmmmm

pp. (7:56pm)

HMMMMMMMM

pp. (8:04pm)

many thoughts, head full

pp. (9:07pm)

i’m so lonely gwendy plz

pp. (9:27pm)

donut leave me hanging like this

gs. (11:34pm)

i will kill you and Eat the 

Evidence

pp. (11:34pm)

nice

—

Peter has been pulling sugar for hours. All he is? Is pulled sugar. He will dream in sugar on top of a pillow made of sugar underneath covers made of thinly pulled sheets of sugar. 

The sugar is very hot through his gloves and it is absolutely burning his fingertips off. He will be able to commit amazing crimes now because he has no fingerprints left. 

Peter probably has sugar in his hair. He knows he has cornstarch smeared on his face, because his camera crew keeps miming wiping their cheeks on their shoulders. Peter does not take the message. He keeps pulling. He’s going to pull until he dies, probably. There is no heaven or hell; just sugar.

“What am I even making again?” Peter says. 

Someone snorts. It might be Nat, at the station behind him. She’s making petit fours. Why can’t he make petit fours? Why must he die in this sugar cage?

The strands are legitimately the length of his arms. This one is draped around the hook attachment of the stand-mixer to ground it, and he’s just pulling. Still pulling. It isn’t cooled enough, isn’t long enough, lithe enough. 

“Do you want me to collect some helpers for you?” says Clint, holding a camera on his shoulder. He’s resting his cheek on top of it because he’s weird. Peter thinks he’s got rat DNA or something. Ferret. Some type of vermin.

“Oh my God yes,” says Peter. “Make everyone endure this torture with me.”

He is soon surrounded by helpers. Nat, having abandoned her petit fours to cool; Bucky, who keeps dropping the sugar to blow on his fingertips because it really is fucking obscene how hot it is; Steve, his jaw jutted out in grim determination; and Tony, whining about how he had been in the middle of a recipe developing bender and really, kid, you’ve gotta plan your emergencies better than this. For all he’s whining, he had been the quickest to agree to help, as always. Peter thinks that, if he were a slightly worse person, he could really abuse Tony’s soft spot for him to his advantage and, like, inherit his pastry shops when he croaks. 

“Everyone stay close and do what I say,” Peter says, pulling. He could literally use this shit as suspenders. “Except you, Tony, you do whatever you want. You’re my favorite. Tony is my favorite, everyone.”

Tony grins as he tugs yellow sugar. 

“Good way to lose helpers,” says Nat. “Picking favorites.”

“I take it back. You’re all my favorites. Every single one. I’d do your laundry for you if you wanted. Who am I kidding, no I wouldn’t. I don’t even do my own laundry. I wore this shirt four times last week.”

“We know,” Steve grunts. “We were here too.”

They’re all pulling, some of them out of glass bowls and some of them just in the air, freestyle. Tony is using that text-speak feature to make notes on an avocado-bearnaise as he stretches, cornstarch on the sleeves of the long shirt he’s wearing under his usual Black Sabbath tee. 

“Ah ah ah,” Bucky keeps saying.

Natasha is cursing at her sugar in Russian and giving Peter the stink eye. 

Steve has not stopped pulling since he started, cantaloupe-biceps straining miraculously. God bless America.

Cameras are wavering, unable to choose a shot amidst the chaos. The sound crew is bouncing around and snorting amongst themselves as they hear bits of people mumbling or outright shouting in protest.

Peter can literally hear his jaw creaking from how hard he’s clenching his teeth. His glasses are hanging off the tip of his nose and he’s honestly a few breaths from a sensory overload and his whole hands sting. Sugar everywhere.

This is the third day of recipe testing. This is ridiculous. Peter has tested so many combinations of ingredients and amounts of fat versus water that he is literally losing it. He just needs it to be good enough, at this point. Fucking gourmet—what the hell is he making, honestly? No, really, he forgets, Ned?

“Starburst,” Ned calls from the stool he’s perched on, manning a boom mic.

“Ah,” says Peter. “Why did I agree to this? Ow, mother—”

“Captain Peter, it’s congealing—”

“Oh, shit, shit, shit.”

“Ow! Jesus, ouch.”

“ Shluha vokzal’naja.”

“You’ve gotta—Steve, stop, it’s not integrating at all.”

“Ow, ow, ow.”

“My poor fingies.”

“Zhopoliz.”

“You changed the level without asking Pete? Why would you do that?”

“Oh! A third a cup of olive oil, sub two tablespoons with the good shit butter—”

“Ow, fucking hell.”

“ Zhopu porvu margala vikoliu.”

“Oh my God,” Peter mouths at the cameras. “Oh my God.”

“Breathe, kid,” Tony calls.

“I literally can’t,” says Peter.

“Okay,” says Tony loudly. “Everyone press your goddamn candy glop into the bread pans. That’s enough for today, my heart can’t handle this.”

Peter is shaking head to toe. He has no idea what’s happening anymore. Everything is sort of blurry and out of focus except for the beating of his own heart like the fucking pounding of the Thanksgiving parade coming around the corner.

Nat takes the pink taffy out of his hands and he lets her. He watches her press it into a pan for him. It’s all pressed into pans, the whole batch, all four colors. He didn’t even really realize it. Time is moving like molasses—slow, until the bottle tilts and they all start to drown in the dark syrupy stickiness of it.

A pair of hands on his shoulders. These calluses, he could make a map of. He knows them that well. 

“Come on, kid,” says Tony. He turns Peter to face him. “Take a deep breath with me.”

He does. Their chests rise and fall together. Peter feels a little better, then. Settled and upright.

“Time to go home, okay?” says Tony.

“No,” says Peter. “No, I’m not done yet. I should—stay until the sugar sets, so I can cut the little—squares out.” He shakes his head a little. It feels like he has water in his ears. “Gotta finish it.”

“No, you don’t,” Tony says evenly. “I’m the boss of you, and I say you don’t. Okay?”

“But—”

“Take a nap,” Tony says loudly, leaning into his face. Their noses practically touch. Tony has no concept of personal space. “I’m begging you to sleep.” Tony frowns, turning his head to the side as if it pains him to look at Peter any longer. “Come on, kid, you’re shaking apart in my hands. Go home. Take a load off. You can finish this tomorrow. The fucking—sugar monsters will still be there.”

Peter hangs his head. It nudges Tony’s shoulder.

Tony claps a hand on the back of Peter’s neck and squeezes.

“Go home,” Tony repeats. “The world continues to spin without you holding it together, Sticky Fingers.”

Peter huffs a ghost of a laugh. “Okay,” he says. His next breath stutters as he sucks it in. “I’ll go.”

“Good. Good. Go. I fully expect you to look extremely rested when you come in tomorrow, Mister Parker.”

Peter looks up to meet Tony’s gaze. It’s serious. Concerned. 

“Okay, Mister Stark,” he says, and gives him half a smile.

Tony slaps his shoulders one more time and lets Peter go.

Peter cleans his station, collects his shit, thanks his crew. The longer he’s here, while knowing that he’s leaving, the faster his heart beats. Like the walls are pressing in around him. This was always the safest place in the world for him, surrounded by stoves and stainless steel and pounds of butter. Now it’s like a mask has been peeled off his eyes to reveal this place was a fucking prison cell or something the whole time.

Peter presses his palm to his chest and starts his way out. 

He hardly makes it out of the main kitchen area before he bumps bodily into someone. 

“Oof,” he says.

A pair of warm hands grab his shoulders and right him. “You look like shit,” says Johnny. 

“Where were you earlier?” Peter asks, panting. He keeps massaging his chest. It’s all tight and painful. “Hiding in the storage closet?”

“Yes,” says Johnny honestly. “I heard the sounds of extreme stress and pain and ran the other way.”

Peter brandishes his burned fingertips right under Johnny’s nose. They’re white with blisters.

Johnny’s eyes cross as he tries to examine them. He takes Peter’s wrists and moves his hands so he can stare at them more easily.

He frowns. “Aw, Pete. What the fuck happened?”

“I was pulling sugar.”

Johnny shivers. “Disgusting. Did you take care of them?” He bounces Peter’s hands a little, as if to clarify that’s what he’s referring to.

“Ran them under lukewarm water. Not like that did much, mind you.” 

“Do you want me to kiss them better?”

“I wouldn’t be opposed,” Peter says mulishly.

Johnny smacks a loud kiss against both of Peter’s hands at once. 

“Thanks,” Peter says.

“Feel better?”

Peter shrugs a little, feeling petulant and young and tired. He’s five minutes from throwing a tantrum.

“Do you ever do anything fun?” Johnny says.

Peter blinks.

“No, literally, I’m looking at you right now and I can see waves of stress coming off you. It’s like heat warp. I can see it. Around you. Messing up everyone’s energies. The chakras are, like, so unaligned.”

Peter says, “I do fun stuff.”

“Like what?” says Johnny. “Watching Mets games? That’s not fun, Pete. That’s psychological torture.”

“They’ll win someday,” Peter says hotly. “I swear, we just need a solid pitcher-catcher combo, and a really good outfielder, and maybe a better shortstop. Also a better second baseman. And a real star of a third base coach. But then—then we’ll be golden.”

Johnny nods, an eyebrow raised. Peter doesn’t know how he does that—raise just one eyebrow. Everything he does is so talented and cool.

“If you hold your breath for that day, I promise you’ll die before it comes,” says Johnny. Then, before Peter can interject, “Come out with me tonight.”

“Uh,” says Peter. He thinks, and then winces. “I’ve got a photography gig. A friend of Tony’s hired me to take some shots at his daughter’s wedding reception.” 

Johnny’s eyebrow dips. It’s like watching a dog’s tail stop wagging. Peter’s heart starts tripping in his chest.

“You could be my plus one,” he says, fast.

Johnny’s eyebrow pauses.

“She—told me I can bring a plus one, and I wasn’t going to, but you can totally be mine. If you have a suit.”

“I have a suit,” Johnny says, the corners of his lips starting to raise.

“Awesome,” Peter breathes. He bobs his head in a nod. “Okay, awesome, perfect. Cool, I’ll—do you have my address? We can walk, it’s a few blocks over from my place. 26 Bridge, you heard of it?”

“I’ve heard of it,” Johnny says. His smile is like the first scoop of ice cream in late May when you can start calling the weather summer, or a perfect polaroid picture, or the sound of thunder on a lazy Sunday afternoon. “Of course I have your address, idiot, I was at your house last week. When should I meet you?”

“Oh, right, right. I’m so—does, um, seven-thirty work?”

Johnny just keeps smiling. He fucking glows. “Sure. I’ll see you then.”

Johnny turns and walks away, probably back to the storage closet or something.

Peter takes a few breaths, then scrambles his phone out of his pocket.

“Pete? Aren’t you at work?” says Gwen when she picks up.

“Gwendy I’m so sorry but I accidentally invited Johnny to the gig with me tonight I’m so, so sorry I know I said I’d bring you but—”

Peter cuts off as Gwen squeals shrilly in his ear. “Fucking finally, Peter! God, it’s fine, just bring me dancing this weekend so you can tell me all about it.”

“I adore you, Gwendolyne Stacy,” he says fervently.

“I know you do, Mister Parker. Don’t you ever forget it!” She smacks a kiss into the receiver, then hangs up on him.

He returns his phone to his pocket and then buries his face in his hands. He thinks all the sugar must’ve gone to his head. There’s no other excuse for—all of this. The craziness. Sugar rush.

Yeah. That’s what it is.

—

“You know, after you left, I overheard Bucky saying he felt bad for letting you down with your recipe test today,” Johnny says, sitting on the edge of Peter’s bed so as to not wrinkle his veeeery fine navy blue suit while Peter finishes taming his curls. He’s the late one, as usual. Johnny was perfectly on time. He showed up with a flask full of scotch in his pocket, his shirt unbuttoned a third of the way down his chest, suit jacket open, pants tapering down to just above his ankle—and, fuck, is that ever hot. He even let Peter have the first sip out of the flask. Seriously. Peter’s going batshit crazy.

“Aw, what?” Peter says, trying to cement one of his curls into place. He keeps running his fingers over it, sticky with gel. “No way. He didn’t disappoint me. They all saved my ass today.”

Peter took the train home from work today and listened to Fine Line the whole way because, frankly, Harry Styles may be the only deity with enough power to realign everything going wrong inside him. He got home, laid out on his bed because Tony had wanted him to, but decidedly did not sleep. His entire spine was tingling with anticipation and just—anxiety, he was a being of anxiety. Is. He is a being of anxiety. He’s actually peeling apart like wallpaper off really old, maggoty wood walls.

“I figured. You know they all have way more respect for you than you realize.”

Peter scowls. “They do not. I’m the kitchen baby. Somehow we’re the same age, and yet I’m the kitchen baby.”

Johnny laughs aloud. “You’re not the baby—you’re the kitchen Gestapo, are you kidding me?”

“I am not!” Peter cries, turning to face Johnny. He fixes his rumpled cuffs as he says, “Who said that? I am not the kitchen Gestapo. I’m so chill all the time.”

“Peter,” Johnny says gently, “you’ve never chilled, not even once in your life. And that’s fine. We like you just the way you are. A live wire, or, perhaps, a grenade with the pin pulled halfway out all the time.”

“I am so chill,” Peter grumbles, tugging his sleeves harder when they won’t adjust. They won’t fucking—lie flat under his jacket, Jesus, just fucking—

Johnny is all up in his personal space, reaching his deft fingers up the ends of Peter’s sleeves and tugging the shirt into place. “Here, here,” he’s saying quietly, “you crazy maniac. I’ve gotcha.”

“I could do it myself,” Peter informs him.

“I know you could, Petey,” Johnny says. “But that doesn’t mean someone else can’t help you anyway.”

“Well,” says Peter. He clears his throat. “Whatever. Let’s go. If we walk fast, we won’t be so late that Hope will cut my dick off if we still eat her hors d'oeuvres.”

“That would be a damn shame,” Johnny says dryly, following Peter as he jogs out of his apartment, locking the door behind him. He swears that, when he leaves it open, someone steals his Quaker oatmeal packets. It’s so fucking bizarre.

On the elevator ride down to the ground floor, Johnny pulls out his phone. After a moment, he wraps an arm over Peter’s shoulders, says, “Come here,” and grins coolly straight ahead. Johnny snaps a handful of pictures of their reflections in the warped aluminum walls before turning the camera towards them. 

Peter almost jumps in shock as their faces appear on the screen. It’s a little unfair that Johnny gets to look like that while Peter looks like Bigfoot, but whatever. He smiles with the most ease he can manage. Johnny seems content with the results, anyway, dropping his arm from around Peter’s shoulders so he can use both thumbs to furiously message the pictures to someone, or whatever he’s doing.

The walk after that isn’t long at all. The air is that special April type of crisp—no heavy humidity from the rain and just cold enough to raise goosebumps under Peter’s dress shirt. His nipples could cut glass.

The steady thud of his camera around his neck keeps him centered. This is something he knows he’s good at. No testing by mixing things that could very probably explode in the oven. No one watching him on a tiny screen from their bed or their couch. No pressure. Just photos. He can do just photos. Just photos are easy. 

It turns out just photos are not easy.

The reception is full when they get there, but Hope and Scott haven’t entered yet. A convenient traffic jam is making their car late. Thank God. Peter winds his way through the guests and starts snapping pictures of everyone and everything he can, the pressure of Johnny’s finger hooked around one of his belt loops so that he doesn’t get lost like something out of a dream. He takes pictures of the fairy lights wrapped all around the walls and dangling from the ceiling, and takes pictures of the candles and lilies on the tables, and he takes pictures of Johnny staring at the fairy lights and candles and lilies. He takes pictures of the champagne flutes and the big hangar doors and Johnny holding a champagne flute by the hangar doors. He takes pictures of Hope and Scott rushing in, pink-faced and beautiful and young as they mingle with the guests, and he takes pictures of Johnny introducing himself and Peter to the guests—many of whom know who they are, actually—and explaining why they’re here.

His SD card is filling ridiculously fast. He blames Johnny.

At some point Hope, who he has met a handful of times over the years at events and such, comes over and puts her hand over his lens.

“I haven’t seen you say a word the whole time you’ve been here,” she says to him wryly. 

“Whoops,” says Peter, realizing she’s right when his voice cracks from disuse.

She smirks at him. “You can make up for it by introducing me to your plus one.”

Peter sneaks a peek at Johnny, who really looks so soft and sweet with his cheeks peachy from the champagne. Johnny raises one eyebrow, as if giving Peter permission to continue.

“This is my—co-worker, Johnny Storm,” Peter says.

“Coworker, my ass,” snorts Johnny. “I’m his best friend. Hi, Missus Lang, it’s lovely to meet you.”

“Best friend,” Peter mouths as Hope grabs Johnny’s hand and pulls him into a hug. 

“It’s so great to meet Peter’s best friend! He never brings anyone to the events Tony and my dad drag us to. Maybe I’ll get to see you around more often, now?”

“Maybe,” Johnny says, smiling. “I’m always willing to be Pete’s begrudging plus one. Especially when there’s free food involved.”

“You just want to make more work connections,” Peter grumbles. “If I brought you to the conventions Tony drags me to, I’d never get another job offer for the rest of my life. It would be Johnny cooking at Le Bernardin, and Johnny cooking at the Gramercy Tavern, and Johnny cooking at frickin’ Disneyland.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad,” says Johnny thoughtfully.

Hope keeps smiling at the two of them like she knows something they don’t, her palms pressed together under her nose.

“What?” Peter says defensively.

“Oh, nothing!” she sings. She gives him one last joyful swat on the arm, grabs Johnny’s hand and says, “It was truly lovely to meet you, Mister Storm.” She then sashays away, her sleek ponytail bouncing behind her.

Peter lifts the camera to get a picture of it.

Johnny’s hand stops him halfway. He’s got a playful quirk to his grin. “Didn’t Hope say to stop focusing so hard on taking pictures? To let loose and live a little?”

“I don’t think that’s what she said at all, actually.”

“Well, it’s what I heard.” Johnny grabs Peter’s belt loop again and tugs him along behind him. 

“Where are we going?”

“To the bar!” Johnny crows.

A laugh bursts out of Peter. He doesn’t bother trying to stop it.

Peter lets Johnny push him onto a stool then climb onto the one next to him. He lets Johnny order two doubles of whiskey, and then two more pairs of doubles, and then they switch back to champagne because the champagne looks so nice and it’s got these little raspberries floating in it and gosh, isn’t that such a good idea Johnny? Look at it, let me get another picture. Look at that. Spectacular.

Johnny is snickering at Peter under his breath. 

Peter isn’t offended.

“God, I’m drunk,” he admits. 

Johnny grins at him softly and says, “Me, too.”

Peter stares for a moment and then says, “Alright, alright. I’m breaking the seal. Don’t go anywhere so I can find you when I come back.”

Johnny gives him a jaunty little salute and says, “I’ll be right here, waiting.”

Peter goes, following the silvery sign, and does his business. At the sink, while washing his hands, he catches a glimpse of himself and immediately feels uproariously drunk, stomach pithy and bitter. 

It’s like looking at a poor clay mold of himself—like he’s a mirror of smudges. A litany of melted doll faces and, beneath his crooked glasses, a badly healed broken nose and eyes with such deep bags that he looks like a caricature of someone he knew, once. 

Compared to Johnny? He’s a bonafide mess. 

He steels his jaw and marches back out.

Johnny’s waiting right where Peter left him, smiling lightly into space. It almost knocks Peter’s feet right out from under him.

Peter grabs Johnny’s hands and Johnny jumps, startled. 

“Let’s dance,” Peter commands.

Johnny grins.

Peter pulls them into the crowd on the dance floor. When he gets drunk, he always sort of loses his auditory processing abilities, so he can’t tell for shit what song is on, but Johnny is bouncing his head to it and grinning, and in the soft golden light from the baubles along the ceiling he looks like a goddamned prince. Like Adonis. Like he was carved by the hand of the greats of the Renaissance.

Johnny is laughing quietly.

“What?” says Peter, moving closer to hear Johnny’s answer over the noise.

“You dance like you’ve got eight knees,” he answers. “Here. Let me lead.”

And lead Johnny does. He takes Peter’s waist in his hands and moves his hips all fluid and easy and Peter honestly thinks he’s going to choke on his tonsils for a moment because wow. Johnny eases his knee between Peter’s legs and Peter finally picks up the rhythm, moving against Johnny, with him. Part of him.

Johnny’s hands sneak under Peter’s jacket. Peter can feel how warm they are through his shirt.

Not wanting to be outdone, he presses closer to Johnny so their breaths mingle. Their noses nearly bump. Peter drags one hand up Johnny’s neck, lets it curl in the sweaty ends of his hair. 

Johnny’s lips are parted. 

Peter’s head is spinning. 

He’s leaning forward when there’s a tap on his shoulder. 

He and Johnny practically fly apart.

Peter, feeling a blush crawl over his ears, turns to see Hank Pym—Hope’s father, and the only reason he’s here. 

“Mister Pym, hi,” he says, thoroughly mortified. Oh, God, Tony is totally gonna hear about this, and then Peter’s gonna get castrated, probably, and May will say something weird like Get it, honey! And then Peter will not only be castrated, but dead, too. 

“Hi, Peter,” Hank says. He looks uncomfortable. Peter doesn’t blame him. This is the most uncomfortable he’s ever been. “I was just wondering what email you’ll be sending the pictures to—mine, or Hope’s?” Hank winces. “Don’t send them to Scott. He’ll edit weird Poké-men onto them and then use them as their Christmas card.”

“I’ll send them to you and Hope both, Mister Pym, sir,” says Peter.

Hank waves a hand. “Enough with that sir shit, Jesus. I’ve known you since you had pimples.” He turns to Johnny, who says, “Johnny Storm, Mister Pym. Pleased to meet you.”

“I know who you are,” Hank says. “Tony’s mentioned you. He said you’re weird, but good at what you do.”

“That’s an honor, Mister Pym.”

“It’s a good way to be.” Hank clears his throat. “Alright, I’ll—leave you to your fun.”

Peter salutes Hank’s retreating figure and immediately regrets it.

“Cut my hand off,” Peter says urgently. “Cut it off now.”

Johnny laughs aloud, his head falling back. “Aw, Pete. That was adorable. You’re a fucking mess.”

“I need another drink. Two. Three drinks, and also an entire keg stand.”

“Drinks, I can do,” Johnny says, and maybe that’s their downfall, because, no matter what they want to think, they are no longer indomitable frat boys with constitutions of steel. 

Peter’s constitution is, perhaps, made of tissue paper and chewing gum. Johnny’s, in that case, is made of a single human whisper. The whispered words are That’s what you get, asshole.

They’re leaning on the bar, laughing, and Peter doesn’t know why. He doesn’t at all know why he’s laughing, but Johnny is laughing, and Johnny’s laugh is enough to make one of those scary British guard people with the big penis hats laugh. Peter has a stitch in his side from laughing. People are probably staring. He doesn’t care.

Peter brings his camera back out and starts clicking clumsy pictures of whatever he can. The man behind the bar, who shoots two peace signs. Johnny. Hope and Scott dancing on a table. A group of guests sleeping against the wall in folding chairs. Johnny. A bird that somehow got into the venue. The dilapidated remains of the cake. Johnny. Johnny. Johnny.

He thinks Johnny even sneaks a picture of him on his phone. He isn’t sure, because he can’t trust any of his senses, but he thinks so. He suspects, maybe. 

And if Johnny wants a picture of Peter on his phone—Peter with his Dumbo ears and his broken nose and his weird work addiction—well. Peter can be okay with that. He can be very, very okay with that. 

They don’t stay much longer. They drink some coffee in a desperate attempt to sober up—they’ve both reached the uncomfortable stage of too drunk where, in college, they would’ve just pulled the trig, but they’ve grown past that level of indignity—and then stumble out into the cold of night.

Johnny stops him on the sidewalk, pulled away from the horde exiting the venue.

Peter looks at him.

“Apparently you have the ability to be more fun than I ever gave you credit for,” Johnny says scrutinizingly, tilting his head to the side. 

For some reason, that feels like the best compliment Peter has ever received, and he thinks it shows on his face because Johnny bursts into laughter. 

“That wasn’t even that nice of me,” Johnny protests, yanking gently on the end of Peter’s tie. 

Peter shrugs, still grinning. “It sounded very, very, very nice to me, Jonathan.”

“I’m starting a new campaign to make people give you better compliments than that. I’ll be head of the Peter Parker appreciation club.”

Now it’s Peter’s turn to laugh, but he’s feeling a little mushy. “Dude,” he says. He grabs Johnny’s wrist and holds it tight, letting the warm thrum of his pulse knock against the ring between his thumb and forefinger. “Thanks,” he says, voice almost cracking, and what the fuck is up with that, honestly. “You’re really—the best, you’re so great. Thanks.”

Johnny looks concerned. “Pete. I’m—I mean, yeah, of course, I don’t—you’re my best friend. You really, really are. Like, what am I supposed to do, wipe my shoes on you?”

“I wouldn’t be mad if you did,” Peter says, sniffling a little. “If you had to. You could do it. I have a Tide stain stick in my pocket.”

“Dude,” Johnny says, horrified. “Come here.”

He pulls Peter under his arm, tucks him into his side, and drops his chin over Peter’s head. “What the hell do your friends treat you like?” 

Peter shrugs under the weight of Johnny’s arm. “They’re great. They are. I’m just—the boring one.”

“The boring one?” Johnny repeats. “You. What crazies are you friends with if you are the boring one?”

“A supermodel, a rich guy, an athlete, and a Gwen Stacy,” Peter says. 

Johnny tightens his arm. “I guess that’ll do it.”

Johnny’s phone bleeps in his pocket, and Johnny fumbles it out to check. “Uber is almost here.”

Peter pulls his face off Johnny’s broad chest to stare into his eyes, astonished. “You ordered an Uber for us?”

“Yeah,” Johnny says, brows knit together. “What, you were going to drunkenly take the subway?”

“Yes,” Peter says. “It’s sorta fun.”

“You are—so weird, Peter.” Johnny laughs a little, jostling Peter against his side. 

Peter feels himself smile again, so he stifles it in Johnny’s shoulder. He’ll be weird to Johnny. He’ll be anything to Johnny, as long as he’s something to him. 

“You know what?” Johnny says. 

Peter pulls away to look at him again. “Hm?”

“We'll do it your way. Subway it is. Consider this Silver Toyota Camry cancelled.”

Peter grins. “For the aesthetic.”

“Subway aesthetic.”

“Midnight subway aesthetic.”

“Drunk.”

“Skunk drunk.”

Johnny smiles. “Lead the way, prince of the night.”

Peter does, Johnny trailing behind with his finger firmly back around Peter’s belt loop. Peter hopes to God he’ll remember this tomorrow—all of it. Every second. Every single second he loses with Johnny is like dropping a hundred dollar bill in the sewer.

They take the N from 26th street closer to Peter’s apartment, the both of them sitting, their knees jostling each other’s with every bump and turn. Peter thinks his breath skips a little every time they touch. He feels stupid. He feels like he’s flying.

The midnight subway aesthetic is intact, the car empty except for a man sleeping at the far end, curled in a poncho. The lights flicker, and the bright orange seats shine dully, and every handhold is streaked with the prints of the thousands that had gripped them.

It’s so perfectly set up that Peter finds the drunken bravery to ask Johnny for pictures.

Johnny stands across from where Peter is sitting. He hangs onto the pole above him with one hand, and poses. In his goddamn navy suit, with his shirt rumpled and still unbuttoned halfway to his bellybutton, motherfucking Christ playing hopscotch on a unicycle.

Johnny knows how to pose. Johnny knows how relentlessly pretty he is, a face of angles but a body of soft curves, worn gracefully, worn carefully, worn gratefully. 

One hand stays on the bar, but the other goes to his hair, pulls at it; droops off his cheek, the corner of his lip sagging; lands on his chest and traces the plane of it; toys with his buttons all the way down to the waist of his slacks as if slinking along the sand towards the sea, waves encroaching, tide rising. Every exposed inch of Johnny’s skin seems to glimmer, even in the sick sallow fluorescents of the train. Peter cannot stop tracing every line of him—with his photographer’s eye, yes, but with his eye, with Peter’s eye, he’s starving, and Johnny is spread like this—like this—

Johnny slips the thumb of his right hand under the front zipper of his pants, fingers curled delicately atop his thigh. 

Peter can’t breathe.

“Move your hand a little to your left,” Peter says, voice thick.

Johnny’s eyes meet his. 

Peter nods.

Johnny’s hand moves slowly, all long and lithe and pretty, a paradox: the sun against the night sky. He pauses. His gaze is hot as he flicks a brow up.

“You can move it more,” Peter croaks.

Johnny does. 

Peter breathes. As if the pressure is relief to him. As if he can feel the touch between his own thighs, Johnny’s hand, oh, Johnny. “Perfect,” he breathes. He wavers. He wants. “You’re—that’s perfect, Jay.”

He takes the picture. And another. 

Johnny moves suddenly, and Peter knows the third picture will be blurred.

“This is your stop,” Johnny says.

The moment falls unceremoniously upon them like a sheet. Peter needs to feel his way out of it, blindsided.

They hop out of the car, elbows bumping.

When they make it onto the platform, Johnny walks almost a foot away, and Peter feels crushed. 

Too far, then. Not with Johnny. He doesn’t get that with Johnny. 

That’s fine. Any part of Johnny is more than Peter probably deserves of him.

Peter’s burning from the inside out.

His doorstep is too close, every step swallowed by silence. Peter feels violently, suddenly sobered. 

They stop on the stoop of his building.

Johnny climbs up the first step, so they’re at eye level. He reaches out, hands trembling, and straightens Peter’s tie, clearing his throat.

It’s too much. Peter can’t help himself.

“You could come inside,” Peter breathes. 

Johnny stares at him, eyes flicking between both of Peter’s. “Not tonight,” is what he says. 

“Oh.”

“Just—” Johnny’s breath gasps and his hand flutters to cup Peter’s cheek for a fraction of a second, “—not tonight, okay? Maybe some other time.”

Peter pretends he doesn’t know what maybe some other time means. Pretends his heart isn’t sitting tin-can crumbled in the pit of his stomach. 

Gives Johnny a dry, broken grin, then shoves his shoulder. “Get home, Johnny.” 

Johnny takes a step back, then another. He nods, softened curls bobbing against his forehead, chewing his lip. 

In all the time Peter has known him, he’s never seen Johnny chew his lip. 

“Text me when you get there?” Peter says, voice breaking. Why is he shattered? A glass bottle underfoot.

“Of course,” Johnny says, and Peter hopes he isn’t imagining how rough it sounds.

Then, without another word, Johnny turns on his heel and goes, shoving his hands into his pockets as he walks. 

Peter stands under the flickering streetlight and wonders what the hell just happened. 

—

Peter does not take Gwen dancing. She comes over, takes one look at him, and pushes him down onto the couch, where she gives him the most mind-blowing no-strings-attached pity handjob he’s ever had. 

When he moves to reciprocate, she stops him and says, “I think if you try to do that, you’ll break a hip. You look fucking frail, Peter. My dead grandma’s bones have more life in them than you.”

“Thanks,” he says.

She presses him down flat, drops her head on his chest, and lays on top of him until her gentle weight and warmth take him out. 

He sleeps for sixteen hours straight. She gets up and leaves and it doesn’t wake him up. A thunderstorm passes over the city and it doesn’t wake him up.

What wakes him up is a text from Johnny, sent after five-thirty in the evening on Sunday. Peter groans as he lifts up his phone, wincing against the bright light of the screen. The preview of the text says, “NESSIE THE LOCH NESS MONSTER HAS BEEN CAPTURED BY CHINESE GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS AND IS BEING KEPT…”

Peter snorts and drops his phone on his chest. He buries his face in his hands.

He’s so fucked.

—

Monday is long. He doesn’t see Johnny once. He spends the day in a fugue and smokes three cigarettes during his lunch break. The second half of his shift is, somehow, worse than the first. He burns three separate batches of challa. He smells like overcooked egg wash.

When he opens the door to his apartment upon arriving home, his couch is occupied.

“You look like shit, Tiger,” MJ says. 

Gwen must’ve sent her. 

Peter hangs his clattering keys on the hook by the door, steps out of his shoes, shrugs his jacket onto the floor, and continues walking until he reaches the arm of his couch, which he dives forward over so that he lands face down across the cushions with his chest over MJ’s lap. 

“Hi,” he says miserably. 

MJ drops a hand on his back and scritches her nails over the thick wool of his sweater. “What’s on your mind, kid?” she says. “You’re so down in the dumps you’ve passed the dumps and hurtled face first into the gutter.”

“I am in the gutter. I’m in the sewer. I’m a swamp rat. Rolling around in all the shit in the city.”

“Aw, Petey.”

“I’m a bonafide mess, MJ. I’m so tired all the time, and work is kicking my ass, and I just want to cry.”

“Cry, then.”

“I can’t,” Peter whines. “Doesn’t work. It’s like my body is completely dry of tears.”

“Well,” says MJ, and Peter can hear her smirk even if he can’t see it, “I can think of about a dozen ways to rehydrate ya.”

“Are they all shots?”

“You know me so well.”

“But it’s a Monday night.”

“Did anything as frivolous as time ever stop me?”

Well, no.

So he lets MJ comb his hair all nice and choose an outfit that makes him look less like a schmuck. It’s weird, being all domestic with her, after all of everything that unfolded between them: Peter’s work obsession, his complete lack of ability or willingness to take care of himself, his boneheaded stupidity when it comes to anything that isn’t smartness. 

It’s weird, but it’s nice.

MJ drinks him under a goddamn table. He’s absolutely fucking smacked. 

They’re in a booth at a diner shoving disco fries in their mouths and Peter has literal tears on his face. Mary Jane is a sick bitch with her methods, but she sure does know how to fix him.

“It’s not that we’re not talking anymore, because we are,” Peter says, breaths heaving, stuffing a bouquet of fries into the side of his cheek. “We texted this weekend, after. It just feels weird, now, like he doesn’t wanna be near me.”

“Peter,” MJ says, pressing her thumb and forefinger into her eyes. “Do you know what I think?”

“No,” he says. “What do you think?”

She says, “I think you need a good fuck. I do. I think that if you and Johnny make hot, delicious love, this weirdness will go away. Weirdness is just undefined horniness more often than you might think.”

“In what world is that a reality?” Peter wails around his fries. “Mary Jane, Mary Jane. Mary Jane. If I—” Peter leans closer and whispers, “—sleep with him,” he returns to full volume, “I will fall in love with him.”

MJ raises her eyebrows. “Did you fall in love with me because of my juicy puss, Pete?”

“It didn’t hurt!”

MJ drops her face in her hands but her back bounces with laughter. 

“MJ,” Peter whines, wiping his face on his sleeves. “MJ, take me seriously. MJ! I’m having a crisis!”

“I thought you knew you were bi, baby,” she says, peeking out over her fingers. Even her eyes are laughing.

“No, that’s not the crisis,” Peter says, frowning. He shoves more fries in his mouth. God, disco fries slap. Maybe they’re the only good thing to come out of New Jersey, along with Bruce Springsteen. “The crisis is that it’s Johnny Storm, who I work with, that I want to fuck absolutely senseless.”

MJ rolls her eyes. “That’s even better. Do it in a supply closet or something. You don’t even need to leave the premises.”

“No no no,” Peter whines, tears flowing again. “MJ. Mary Jane, I cannot.”

“Why?” she demands. Her eyes are like little twin flames. “Because, in your fucked up brain, all you can do is work? That’s all you're good for? When you’re not working, you’re not worth shit? Because that is so fucked, Peter. And it’s the reason we didn’t work out.” She softens a degree. “I don’t want to see that happen to you with anyone else, okay?”

Peter, who has been steadily shoving fry after fry into his mouth as she talks, stops. He nods. He then continues with the fries.

She sighs and shakes her head, that mane of red hair dancing behind her. 

“You’re so pretty and smart, Mary Jane,” Peter says, sniffling. “Thank you for helping me. You’re so nice to me.”

“I’m not nice to you,” she says. “Harry is nice to you. I kick you in the ass to get you back on track.”

“I think that’s nice,” Peter says firmly. “Even if you gotta be mean to do it.”

She stares at him hard for a moment before grabbing his not-fry-eating hand and pressing a kiss to his palm. “You’ve always got me, Pete,” she says. “You know that?”

Peter nods, a tear dripping down the bridge of his nose.

She sighs and reaches over their fries to wipe it away with her sleeve. “You’re a mess, Tiger. But we’ll clean you up, okay? We always do.”

And, for once, it really feels like it. Right down to Peter’s belly. He wants to believe it. They do love him. He isn’t the fifth wheel. He isn’t.

Maybe if he says it enough times, he’ll believe it.

—

Peter pulls himself into work the next morning feeling like he’s been kicked between the eyes. He couldn’t even drink coffee after waking up for the nausea from his hangover. He’d brought a plastic shopping bag with him onto the train and unrepentantly held it under his chin for the entire hour commute just in case a mouthful of bile and gravy were to decide to make a reappearance. 

He’s wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap as he makes his way to his station, slippers scuffing against the linoleum. He’s out for the count. It’s ten-thirty in the morning and he’s so late and he’s dying. 

“You look like you got mouth-fucked by Satan,” says Bucky.

Peter pauses beside his station. He lowers his sunglasses a fraction.

Bucky swears. “Are you sure you’re alive?”

“Questionable,” Peter croaks, then freezes. He hoists a single finger into the air and thrusts his chin over the plastic bag, throat bobbing. When the wave of nausea slips away, he lowers the bag. 

He continues the shuffle to his station.

Everyone in the kitchen keeps their noise levels gloriously low. Maybe they do respect him. God, that’s nice. If only respect could make his hangover disappear.

Like an angel sent from heaven above, gracious and forgiving and kind and sexy, Johnny appears at Peter’s station, a mug held between his hands.

“Hair of the God,” Johnny says. 

“The dog?” Peter corrects, snagging the mug and almost smashing his teeth in haste to chug some down. 

“I don’t care whose hair you’re drinking; hair is hair,” Johnny says, waving a hand as Peter sputters. The mug is full of straight whiskey. 

Peter puts it down hard and raises the plastic bag beneath his chin. He hoists his finger again. It’s trembling this time.

“Sweet mother of fuck,” says Johnny. “What did you drink last night? A bleach bellini?”

“Something with a snake in it, I dunno,” Peter wavers. “Followed up by a plate and a half of disco fries.”

“Do you need to go home? You look like you need to go home. Or maybe to the hospital to get your stomach pumped,” Johnny says. 

The wave of nausea passes, blessedly incident-free, and Peter turns towards Johnny. 

His heart leaps into his mouth. 

Johnny’s all wide-eyed and concerned. Even through Peter’s sunglasses he can see the pink tinge to his cheeks.

“I’m okay,” Peter says. Staring at Johnny is like drinking the fucking elixir of life or something. He could bench press a cow. A big cow.

He spoke too soon. 

He hoists the bag back into the ready position as he gags. Nothing comes up, but the movement makes his head pound, and his throat aches and his stomach keeps turning and his entire body is still shaking like a leaf. His knees are gonna knock out from under him.

Johnny stares at him earnestly. God, Peter asked Johnny to come upstairs and Johnny is still a fucking prince. Peter is scum. Scum from the tin bathtub a homeless man is bathing in for the first time in two months. 

“Come to my station,” Johnny says quietly. “Take a nap. I’ll pretend you’re, like, giving me feedback on a recipe. No one will narc.”

Is Peter going to accept this kindness?

Yeah. Because he’s not only scummy, but also greedy. And still very possibly going to yack all over the test kitchen. 

“What are you cooking?” Peter croaks. If it’s something that stinks, he is certain his stomach will find something to send flying out his mouth. His liver, blackened and shriveled, saying You did this, Peter. You did this to me. Like a fucking Veggie Tales lesson.

“I’m trying to do a fancy version of those Stroopwafel things.”

“Oh, perfect,” says Peter. Those are mild. He can stomach that. “Lead the way, sir Johnny.”

Johnny does, striding forward with all his usual jazz, and, really, fuck jazz right now, but Peter still follows. At a reasonable, grandma-like pace. 

He all but collapses onto a stool at the corner of Johnny’s station, brain pounding the way a jellyfish moves. He drops his chin on his folded arms and watches through the lenses of his sunglasses as Johnny works, all lithe muscle and careful hands. He hums while he mixes. Peter had never noticed that about Johnny before—he’s always making noise. The whole time. It’s quiet noise, idle noise, just meant to fill the quiet, but it’s all Johnny. 

Peter, against his better judgement, lets his eyes close. He falls asleep to the lullaby of Space Oddity low and sweet in Johnny’s throat. 

He’s out for hours. He can tell by the stiffness in his back when he wakes up. 

He groans and lifts his head slowly. The nausea has ebbed, but his brain is still jamming to screamo or something. He reaches into his pocket for his regular glasses and trades them for his sunnies, wincing against the abrupt change in brightness. He forgot how white the kitchen is. Just, physically, so white. Tiles everywhere, and the silver skyline outside the windows, and everything is shiny and clean. Oh, ow.

Slowly, his vision comes back into focus and the pounding in his head abates.

The first thing he notices is a distinct lack of Johnny.

He’s got his bowls set up. Resting batter, Peter guesses, since there’s plastic wrap pressed onto the tops. Dirty spoons, spatulas, and a mini waffle iron. 

Peter squints at it.

“Hey, Nat?” Peter croaks.

She looks up from the eggs she is in the process of frantically beating. Her biceps, what the hell? She keeps whisking at hyperspeed as she cracks a smirk and says, “Ah, he lives. What’s up, radnoy?”  

“Was Johnny trying to make Stroopwafels in a waffle iron?”

Nat grins wider. “Yup. He’s all face—not much up there.”

“Hey,” Peter says indignantly. “He’s very smart. Just not in the—typical way—the emotions, he knows—anyway, it’s a good start. Does he know we have a Pizzelle press?”

“Nah, we don’t have that anymore. Remember that intern, America?”

“Yeah?”

“She broke it.”

Peter’s mouth falls open. “How?”

“She hit Clint with it for not trusting that other intern, Kate, who worked in sound, to edit one of Steve and Bucky’s old fashioned bake videos.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. She broke cast iron.” Nat sighs dreamily. She checks the consistency of her eggs by lifting her whisk. Unsatisfied, she keeps mixing. “She was so cool.”

Peter squints, feeling his head start pounding again. He massages his temples as he says, “How broken is it? Do we still have the pieces?”

“I mean, probably. You know Tony has a hoarding problem.”

“He gets attached to inanimate objects very easily, they’re most of his friends,” Peter says mindlessly as he shoves himself off the stool, gripping the counter for support. 

He makes his way to the storage closet as Nat calls, “Pickles, Peter, they’ll fix you right up.”

He ignores that helpful advice in favor of scoping the area. After digging through two boxes of what really is useless junk, Tony, you gotta start throwing shit away, Peter finds just the severed head of the Pizzelle press.

“Oh my God,” he says. It’s weirdly macabre. 

He combs the closet for something else he can use, and decides on the handle of a metal rake standing in the corner from that time Bucky dropped four pounds of dry linguine on the floor and people started tripping on it. (They’d used the dirty pasta for an arts and crafts day. Peter still has some macaroni art shoved in his work tote.)

He sits down on the linoleum, sticks the head of the rake between his feet, and yanks the handle until he gets it to pop off. Between the thick layer of dust on the floor, his compromised state of health, and the exertion of ripping the rake in two, he’s wheezing by the time he makes it back to Johnny’s station. He digs through his bag, head pounding so enormously that he can hardly see. When he finds his inhaler, he nearly whoops with relief. 

He takes his two puffs, and then he takes a third because he’s A Rebel. And also because he’s pretty sure if he starts wheezing again he’ll hurtle straight into panic mode, or cry, or something wildly embarrassing.

“Jesus,” Nat comments from her station once Peter is breathing again. Sweet, sweet albuterol. It makes Peter burp like a sonuvabitch after he takes it, but he’ll accept that trade, considering he can breathe now.

“I’m fine,” he rasps.

Nat stares at him. “I’ll find Storm,” she says.

“No,” Peter protests, but then his head gives an especially violent pound, so he closes his mouth.

“And pickles,” Nat says. “I’ll find your boy toy and some pickles. Good ones. None of that bread and butter shit.” She slips into an exaggerated version of the accent that plays around the edge of her words and says, “In mother Rossiya we drink vodka, and eat sour pickle, and enjoy borscht. And suck lemons from wedge like candy. We become big and strong, with blood like snow and muscle like mountain.”

She checks his hip with her own when she sashays past him, and shoots him a wink before going through the door.

Nat frightens him down to his bones, but he sometimes thinks of her like family. A cousin he only sees twice a year but really likes, or something.

While she’s gone, Peter scrapes the dregs of himself off the stool and goes to find the powertools. He takes the electric screwdriver and attaches the rake handle to the Pizzelle press with a little elbow grease. He’s just started wiping down the head of the press when Nat comes around the corner, Johnny in tow and a jar of pickles under her free arm.

“Are you okay?” Johnny says urgently. “Natasha said you’re dying.” A moment. “You don’t look that much like you’re dying.”

“I just watched him have an asthma attack and then get right back to work,” Nat says, dropping Johnny and the pickle jar at his station before returning to her own.

“You had an asthma attack?” Johnny says, eyes wide and wounded. “Peter. Sit down. How do I fix asthma?”

“I made this for you,” Peter says, ignoring that valiant display of utterly unwarranted loyalty and brandishing his very long handmade Stroopwafel iron.

Johnny blinks, maneuvering himself so he can see it properly. When he understands what it is, he seems to light up from the inside out.

“You made this? By yourself?” Johnny says. He takes it from Peter’s hands. “For me?”

“I did. With a lot of effort. I channeled your can-do energy.”

“It’s the best thing I’ve seen all week!” Johnny gushes, twisting the handle.

“It’s Tuesday, but thanks,” says Peter. He opens the pickle jar and removes one. It’s sour as a motherfucker but he chews it because he trusts Natasha’s weird advice.

“And you made it while you feel like garbage. So impressive.”

“I never said I feel like garbage.”

“Well, you look like shit, so it’s not hard to assume.”

“Wow, thanks, Jay. Who stuck that rainbow up your ass.”

“It’s all natural, baby,” Johnny says. He then squeezes Peter’s nose gratefully—and how is a nose squeeze grateful, one might ask? Peter doesn’t know, but it is anyhow—and continues pattering around, uncovering his rested batter.

“Get bent, Johnny,” Peter says, but he can’t help the laugh that slips out. Hungover and post asthma-attack. He laughs hungover with wheezy lungs, which is a fucking miracle, because Peter hardly even laughs when he’s in a good mood, and here’s Johnny taking him there with hardly any effort. 

It feels especially nice, considering how tense things have been in the days since Hope’s wedding reception. This feels like putting a brick down on the right path. 

Johnny turns back toward him, waving his new device like a wand. “I feel like a badass fairy. You want a Stroopwafel? You can have one. Nat, you want? You get a Stroopwafel! You get a Stroopwafel! Stroopwafels for everyone!”

“Does Oprah know you’re coming for her brand?”

“Let me live. Hey, can you take a picture of me with this big boy for Instagram? I’ll tag you on it.”

“Have mercy,” Peter says, but he holds his pickle between his teeth and takes pictures of Johnny grinning and brandishing his press, because that smile, more than any other, must be immortalized. And if no one else is working to do so, by God Peter will.

—

Friday, April 24

js. (9:00pm)

hey p, you busy tonight? :D

pp. (9:02pm)

got no plans! what’s up

js. (9:03pm)

wanna come over and watch a movie?

js. (9:03pm)

i’ve got all of the indiana jones series on dvd

pp. (9:04pm)

isn’t it on netflix?

js. (9:04pm)

and where is the flavor in that?? the 

nostalgia™??

pp. (9:06pm)

i guess i’ll be there?? For the memes?

pp. (9:06pm)

mems**

pp. (9:06pm)

and the memes tbh

pp. (9:06pm)

You still on 42nd and maddy ave?

js. (9:07pm)

yessir >:-)

js. (9:07pm)

bring snacks omg

pp. (9:10pm)

i’ll bring mcnuggets

js. (9:11pm)

i worship you, peter parker.

—

The Baxter Building is a fucking monolith. 

Peter knows this—he’s been here— so he doesn’t know why it surprises him to see it this time.

He rides the elevator all the way up, and when it opens, Johnny’s waiting in the big chrome open concept living-room-kitchen-dining-room hybrid, all edges and white leather and silver lamps. 

For some reason, it feels weird. Dichotomous. 

Peter never pictures Johnny in silver. He’s far too warm, too soft.

Johnny’s wearing pajamas. He’s rumpled, and his hair is loose. His shirt has a pinprick hole in it, over his belly. He’s wearing yoga leggings. 

Peter is Tantalus. 

Peter holds out the McDonald’s bag.

Johnny grins and takes it, dropping it on the kitchen counter. 

“Was the subway ride okay?” Johnny asks, opening cabinets and pulling out a pair of plates.

“Hm? Oh, yeah. There was this weird puddle of green stuff sliding around the car, but that’s not particularly out of the ordinary.”

“I guess it isn’t,” Johnny says, tossing a mindless smile over his shoulder. He’s so fucking full of smiles. Peter’s heart is pounding. He might puke. For some reason it’s really hitting him that he’s in Johnny’s house.  

Last time he was here, he was with Nat, Bucky, and Steve. Maybe that’s why. That must be why. Just social anxiety. Peter’s got it to the gills. 

“Johnny?” comes a call from another room. 

“Sue?” he calls back, dropping the McNugget boxes onto the plates. Fine dining. 

The body from which the call came is, upon first glance, literally Tinker Bell. This terrifies Peter because, in his experience, the most delicate-looking girls are the ones who would gladly rip his balls off and blend them into a smoothie. 

“I just wanted to come introduce myself,” says Sue, who Peter knows is Johnny’s older sister—the one who all but raised him herself—though he hasn’t yet met her on his few trips here. 

“I’ve heard lots about you,” Peter says, a nervous grin jumping to his lips. Absurdly, meeting Sue makes him feel like he’s meeting more of Johnny—knowing him even better yet. And that makes his heart twist and leap like a prima ballerina. “All—of course, all good things, of course.” Peter is going to choke himself with a chicken nugget. “I’m Peter, uh, in case—in case Johnny didn’t tell you who—”

“Who you are,” Sue interrupts graciously, taking Peter’s hand between her tiny ones. She’s warm, like Johnny. They have the same smile. But where Johnny is unrepentantly sunflower yellow, she’s got more of a silvery sheen: her hair is impossibly whiter blond than Johnny’s, and her skin almost pearlescent. “Nah, Johnny doesn’t shut up about you. He watches your videos for hours on the big screen in there—”

“And that’s enough from Sue!” Johnny says, pushing forward with their plates of nuggets in his hands, shoving Peter and Sue away from each other by walking directly between them. 

She laughs and Peter can’t help but smile as well, feeling a blush roll over his ears. 

“It was lovely to briefly make your acquaintance, Peter,” she says genuinely. “I hope next time I’ll get to know you a little better,” she adds, rolling her eyes at Johnny, who has descended upon the couch with pink cheeks and a pout. 

“Yeah—yeah, sure, definitely,” Peter says. “I’ll, uh—”

“Go over there,” Sue says through a laugh. “He’ll never stop moping until you do.”

Peter gives her a last smile and then goes, dropping his dead weight onto the couch, close enough to Johnny that their sides press as Peter settles. 

Johnny seems to relax a fraction. 

He still clears his throat twice before he speaks. “Ready to go?”

“Indy marathon, whoop whoop,” Peter says, spinning his fingers like imaginary noisemakers. 

Johnny starts the movie and hands off their plates of nuggets. He’s arranged the little plastic sauce cups around the rims of the dishes. It’s so strangely endearing that Peter is certain he’s going to explode, or maybe cry. 

He doesn’t. What he does is sit against Johnny, their arms pressed shoulder to elbow, for two movies, until he knocks out asleep in the middle of the third. 

When he wakes up, he’s drooling on Johnny’s shoulder and Johnny's cheek is on top of his head. 

Immediately a wave of panic overtakes him. 

He slips out from under Johnny’s arms and replaces his form with a throw pillow. Johnny tugs it close to his chest and tips deeper into the cushions in sleep. 

Peter slips on his torn up skate sneakers, buttons up his jacket, and rides the elevator the long way back to the ground floor. 

He smacks his head against the metal wall the whole way down. 

—

One movie night grows into a weekly event. 

Fridays, they go to one of their places, and they feast on junk food while watching something nostalgic and kitschy. Back To The Future. Ferris Bueller. 

Ratatouille is a particular hit. 

They sit with no personal space to spare. Sometimes Johnny’s arm finds its way around Peter’s shoulders. Sometimes Peter’s head droops onto Johnny’s chest. 

The unspoken agreement underlying it is that the host wakes up alone the next morning. 

Peter doesn’t know what it means. 

All he knows is, in his mind, Friday nights seem to take on a peculiar golden glow against the stainless steel grey of the rest of his week. 

—

“Hey, Jay?” Peter yells. 

“I’m in the middle of filming, doofus,” Johnny hollers back. 

“Do I have to temper chocolate for Twix, do you think?”

A moment. “You can’t ask me if God is real and expect me to answer it from across the room.”

Johnny lumbers to Peter’s station, hands white with flour, a smudge of what looks like egg yolk on his cheek. 

“The hell are you making?” Peter says. 

Johnny pouts. “Oreos. With your recipe.”

“With my recipe? I’m honored.”

“You should be.”

“Tempered chocolate,” Ned prompts from in front of them. 

“Right,” says Johnny. “Well, Twix are always a little melty, aren’t they? Like, they’re always stuck to the wrapper.”

“Soft chocolate,” Peter agrees. “It doesn’t seem tempered. But if I ask Tony, he’ll tell me to temper it and then I’ll have a breakdown. I don’t want to temper it. Do I have to temper it?”

Johnny taps his chin, catching flour there. “Is that the only thing that would make it gourmet?”

“I made a fancy bourbon caramel,” Peter says, “to go with the fancy milk chocolate I just made and then didn’t temper. And the little biscuit part took me ages. I used your Pizzelle press.”

“I can see that,” Johnny says, looking to the sink, where the mile-long handle juts straight into the air. 

“Do I have to temper it?” Peter whines, looking up at Johnny beseechingly. He pouts a little. 

Johnny softens. “Don’t bother. Say it’s, like, an authentic take upon the classic Twix.”

Peter slumps over the counter. “Mazel tov, everyone. But especially me. Thanks, Jay, you may return to your station.”

Johnny says goodbye to the camera before he goes. 

Peter looks up and makes direct eye contact with Ned, who’s giving him a massive thumbs up and wagging his eyebrows. 

Peter lets his forehead press into the countertop and groans in deep and utter anguish. 

—

Harry and Gwen take Peter to a fancy cafe where they drink red wine out of teacups and listen to classical music. 

MJ and Flash take Peter to a sports bar.

Harry smokes on Peter’s balcony. Flash clogs his toilet. MJ makes a face mask using Peter’s bananas. Gwen makes his bed, humming all the while.

For some reason, Peter feels exhausted.

—

Peter’s having another asthma attack in the storage room. It hasn’t even been a week since the last one, which he thinks is pretty fucking rude.

He’s on the floor, wheezing into the cotton of his shirt, inhaler in his shaking hand, when the door opens and Tony walks through.

“What the fuck are you doing,” Tony says.

Peter wheezes pointedly in response.

“Oh, that. Shit,” Tony says. “Come on. Into the freezer with you.” Tony wrenches Peter to his feet, slinging an arm under his shoulders to keep him upright. “Did you puff puff yet?”

Peter coughs again, his stomach sucking inward with his desperate fit for air. His head feels like a suckerpunch. He’s probably gonna faint, which will be embarrassing. 

“Okay, I don't care if you puffed already, you’re puffing again,” Tony says urgently, stopping them before they reach the door and bringing the inhaler to Peter’s mouth. They take a synchronized practice breath—Tony’s almost as uneven as Peter’s—before Tony sprays the albuterol. 

Peter sucks a breath in and holds it as long as he can, though he feels like he’s shaking apart at the seams. 

“You’re fine, you’re okay,” Tony keeps saying. Tony is like Ben was: they shit a colossal brick every time Peter is hurt. May isn’t like this. May is cool as a cucumber. She just gets mad later. 

Peter wraps his hand around Tony’s on the inhaler and makes him press the depressor again. He does the same thing, holding his breath until he can’t, and he finds that his next try for air is easier. 

“Fuck,” he croaks, pressing his free hand onto his chest. 

His knees give out and Tony lowers him to the ground slowly, leaning both of their backs against the wall. 

“We didn’t even make it to the freezer,” Tony says. 

“What was the plan there?” Peter says hoarsely. 

“Doesn’t cold air help you breathe?”

“No—no. Not even a little.”

“Ah. I probably should’ve known that.”

“Probably. Hey, you’ve really gotta get someone to dust this storage closet.”

“Will do. I’ll put it on my list of idle tasks for Steve to do because he’s big and strong.”

“You just like watching him work.”

“Can you blame me? He’s a specimen.”

Peter lets out a wheezy huff of a laugh and leans into Tony’s side. 

“You’re good, kid,” Tony says softly. 

From the angle of his ear on Tony’s shoulder, Peter can hear Tony’s heart tripping and stuttering. It’s always done that, as long as Peter has known him, but sometimes it worries Peter. Mostly because he thinks he’s lost enough in his life, and Tony kicking the bucket might actually break him for good.

“Hey, is your heart doing—” Peter starts just as Tony says, “Speaking of specimens—” 

They both cut off.

“You go,” Peter says quickly, grateful that his attempt to have a Feelings Talk has been thwarted. 

Tony flicks his brows up, but obliges, a mischievous smile popping up on his lips. 

“You and Storm, huh?”

Peter regrets everything. 

He starts trying to stand, to physically wrench himself out of this situation before he grabs a baking sheet and decapitates himself with it. 

“Hey, hey, no you don’t,” says Tony, holding him down by the wrists. “No moving. Your lungs are tweaking, kid.” 

“They are tweaking. So is my brain.”

“Because you’re in looove?” Tony sings.

Peter screams delicately.

Tony sighs, moving his arms from Peter’s wrists to wrap around Peter’s shoulders, like someone much younger than his years. Tony’s cheek squishes against Peter’s chest. “I can’t believe you’re all grown up and—adult-y. That’s so weird. You’re not supposed to have crushes. You’re supposed to eat two boxes of mac and cheese on my couch and then play Mario Kart until the cows come home.”

“I dated Mary Jane for a whole year and you didn’t freak out like this,” Peter says, stretching his back within Tony’s hold to try and shift the weight on his lungs. 

“Well, yeah, but that was—”

“Because she was a girl?” Peter says hotly.

Tony pulls away with his hands raised as if he’s surrendering. “Not at all, kid. You know I’m all about free love and—butt stuff—”

“Stop right now.”

“But you just—you look at him differently,” says Tony. “And he looks at you differently than MJ ever did.” Tony sighs. “You know I like Mary Jane. She’s cool and scary and badass. But she never—” Tony runs his knuckles through his beard. “No offense, but you need to be, like, adored. I’ve noticed that about you over the past ten years. You require a certain level of affection, and it’s enormous. Constant, obvious adoration.”

Peter thinks he should be offended by that, but, frankly, constant affection sounds excellent.

“Johnny looks at you like that,” Tony says slowly, as if Peter isn’t understanding.

“No he doesn’t,” Peter scoffs. “Johnny has made it clear that he absolutely doesn’t. I, on the other hand, look at him like that—like I want to jump his bones—because I’m a fool.”

“You look at him like you want to have his babies,” Tony deadpans. “And then raise them. Alongside him. In a cottage on the coast with a patch of lavender growing under your windows and a cat that chews up the legs of your dining table.”

“I look at him like he’s a respectable man with talents and assets!”

“The talents and assets include: biceps and booty.”

“I cannot believe we’re having this conversation right now.”

“Me neither, frankly.”

“I think this crossed a line.”

“I didn’t think we had lines.”

Peter pauses. “Actually, you’re right. There were no lines. I’m making one now. It’s that one. No talking about people I’m dee-tee-eff.”

Tony meets Peter’s eyes and they stare at each other for a long second before the both of them burst into laughter.

Peter softly headbutts Tony’s shoulder. Tony pulls him closer.

No lines. It’s better that way.

—

Friday, May 1

pp. (7:36pm)

if i bring mcdonalds apple pies can i

come now?

js. (7:37pm)

absolUTELY

js. (7:37pm)

are we allowed to like those, as 

Professional Chefs

pp. (7:38pm)

yes

js. (7:40pm)

it sounds illegal for us to eat so much

mcdonalds when we could just,,, cook

pp. (7:42pm)

why would we do that tho

pp. (7:42pm)

we do that for a living, no cooking

off premises, that’s a federal offense

pp. (7:42pm)

ba has rights to everything we make by hand

pp. (7:42pm)

i’m only exaggerating a lil

js. (7:43pm)

our Plight while working 4 the machine

pp. (7:45pm)

i’m omw to macky’s

js. (7:50pm)

mMMmMm mAcKy’S

pp. (7:52pm)

i changed my mind im not coming

js. (7:53pm)

:-(

pp. (7:55pm)

im kidding im kidding

pp. (7:55pm)

as if i’d pussy out on harry potter weekend

js. (7:55pm)

:D

js. (7:55pm)

accio nuggies

pp. (7:59pm)

(∩ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)⊃━☆ﾟ. *

—

Peter walks into the pantry and finds Johnny standing in the middle, mini blow torch in hand, finger near the sputtering flame. 

“Hey, Torchie,” Peter says. 

Johnny looks up and his shoulders relax. “Oh, thank God, Peter. Come here and tell me if this feels hot.”

“Are you asking me to burn my hand for you?”

Johnny blinks. “Yeah.”

Peter stares for a moment, then shrugs. “Yeah, okay.”

Peter lets Johnny bring the torch close to his skin and pull it away in increments, muttering gibberish under his breath all the while. 

“Ow, ouchies,” he says when it burns the center of his palm.

“Sorry, sorry!” says Johnny, pressing his thumb over the spot as if to soothe it. 

Peter squints at Johnny’s face to try and distract himself from the pain. Johnny’s got this ski slope nose and this delicate brow bone and even the bow of his lips is, like, graceful. He’s so symmetrical, too. The only thing out of balance on his whole face is that one eyebrow of his—the one that’s always climbing up his forehead in incredulity. It’s a little higher up than the other, naturally. It’s not that noticeable, but it’s ridiculously endearing, for some reason. 

This is Peter’s photography mind talking, of course. It’s the science of composition.

“You know,” Johnny says, startling Peter out of his reverie, “someone made a Youtube edit of every time you shout for me to help you on camera during one of your videos.”

Peter, weirdly, loves that. But, because he’s fairly certain he’s not allowed to love that, he wrinkles his nose and says, “Ah. Really?”

Johnny nods, hair flopping onto his forehead. He tests the blow torch again, a little further from Peter’s palm, decidedly not meeting his eyes. “It’s called Peter and Johnny Being Chaotic in Gourmet Makes for Twelve Minutes Straight.”

“Twelve minutes?? There’s that much content of us?”

“There’s probably more, but we’re less chaotic in the other clips.”

“Holy shit. Maybe you should just be a fucking—permanent special guest or something.”

“Gourmet Makes with Peter Parker, occasionally featuring Johnny Storm.”

“Has a nice ring to it.”

Johnny hums. They fall into silence.

Then, “I’ve got the link, if you want to watch it.”

“Hm?”

“The chaotic duo video.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah. Send it to me.”

“Cool.” Johnny flicks off the torch and steps back, dropping Peter’s vaguely tingling hand.

“Did you, uh,” Peter gestures at the torch, “figure out what you needed?”

“Oh, yeah. Just needed to know how close I have to hold it to caramelize this weird avocado creme brulee Tony is having me make.”

Peter shoves his hands into his pockets with a huff of a laugh. “Yeah, he’s on a weird avocado kick. He gave me a radioactively green cupcake yesterday, told me it was matcha. It wasn’t. It was avocado.”

“Was it any good?”

“Fuck no.”

Johnny snorts. “Yeah. Tony has a tendency to… get in over his head. Big ideas, hard to ground them.”

“Yeah,” says Peter. He doesn’t know why this is so paralyzingly awkward. He has never felt this awkward around Johnny, even when he does his weird Johnny things like burning Peter’s hand to test his torch on something that isn’t food he’s prepared.

The pit of his stomach writhes and rolls.

“I’m, uh—” Peter points over his shoulder. “Gotta get back to my Doritos.”

Johnny shoves his fingers into his back pocket. 

Peter would literally sell his soul to be that hand. 

“I’ll see you later then,” says Johnny.

“Let me know how the avocado creme brulee goes?”

“Sure,” says Johnny. Peter doesn’t think he’s imagining the pink blush on his cheeks.

Peter gives him a last grin and walks out of the closet.

Nat is waiting with her arms crossed outside the door. He stops short to keep from bumping into her.

“Fuck,” says Peter. 

“That was absolutely painful,” Nat tells him.

Peter drops his head into his hands, groaning. “I know. I know.”

“You’re a grown fucking man. Just tell him.”

“Mind your own business, Nat.”

“As if I could ever.”

“You couldn’t,” he says, squeezing her shoulder as he pushes past her. 

He’s returned to his station before he realizes he’d never gotten the dehydrated cheese he’d gone to the pantry for in the first place.

—

It’s after hours. Outside the windows, Manhattan is drenched in silvery blue night, stark and unrepentant against the cloud-brushing spires, golden windows along the faces of every building floating in the dark like fireflies dancing. 

Peter has never seen fireflies. He thinks they must look like this, though. Maybe even better. Not a proof of life, but an exhibition of it. Vitality swirling like pollen on the wind. Proving beyond repose that, even in the dark, light can be found. That no night is as empty as it seems. 

Peter is recipe testing. Not for an episode, which feels nice. He’s been wanting a good Florentine recipe for a while, and Flash’s birthday is coming up. He thinks Flash will like something fancy and thoughtful. He may seem like a rockhead but he’s actually sort of sweet. 

MJ, Gwen, Harry, and Peter have been planning a little get together. At Harry’s place, since it’s the nicest, on a weekend when his dad is out of town. They’re going to dress real fancy—jewelry and neckties and button-up shirts, makeup and hair and the whole nine yards, like a couple of fat cats on holiday—and drink nice booze and take pictures. All four of them are working on presents for him. Meaningful shit. 

Amaretto Florentines are Peter’s plan. 

He’s pulsed the almonds and mixed them with the dry ingredients. He’s got a pot with sugar, cream, honey, and butter going on the stove, gently cooking. He’ll add the vanilla and combine it with the dries before letting it cool. 

Then they’ll cook. And Peter will have a few minutes of silence.

That’s the plan.

Peter’s plans never come to pass.

This time, he doesn’t think he minds.

Johnny is sitting cross-legged on the end of Peter’s station, his chin in his hands, telling some ridiculous story about how he and Sue caused a small-scale fire in the Intrepid museum when they were kids. 

Peter is at the other end of his station, facing Johnny, hands on the countertop. His mouth is dropped open in utter shock.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Peter says. “You started a fire with a battery and gum wrapper? In public? Your brain told you to do that and you did it?”

“And then panicked and dropped it in a trash can,” Johnny affirms. “Boom.”

“That is hilarious. Did you guys not think? At all?”

“We were, like, ten and fifteen. What were we supposed to do?”

“Stomp it out!”

“We didn’t think that far ahead!”

“Oh my God, this is brilliant. I’m so glad you did that, I am. I really am. Just—the picture in my mind of this whole event is so perfect, I don’t even want you to tell me more of the story because I’m afraid it’ll ruin what I’m seeing, mentally, which is utter perfection.”

Johnny, cheeks pink, just grins at Peter for a moment. Then, cocking his head to the side, his expression changes. “Pete,” he says. “Is something burning?”

“Ah, shit,” Peter says.

He jams on a pair of oven mitts and pulls out the tray of Florentines, burned black and ashy all the way through, falling to pieces on the tray. Smoke pours off of them in a thick curtain and Peter chokes as he bats at it, Johnny cackling behind him. 

Peter drops the tray heavily on the stovetop just as the fire alarm starts to blare.

“Crap! Oh, crap, oh man,” says Peter, hopping onto the countertop to bat the smoke away from the alarms before—

The sprinklers go off. 

Cold water pours down from the ceiling in droves. Peter feels his hair plaster against his forehead, the lenses of his glasses coat in a film of water. His sweater starts to soak through, and, as the countertop floods, the insides of his sneakers grow soggy.

He looks over at Johnny and nearly chokes.

Johnny’s smiling, all wide and unmarred, and Peter can’t look away. He can’t. 

He can’t help it. He walks along the length of the countertop and sits himself right in front of Johnny, mirroring his position. Their crossed knees press together.

And Johnny keeps looking at Peter, all pink-cheeked intention, with those brilliant bluebell eyes. 

Wet, his eyelashes are darker. They’re so long they tangle together, criss-cross. Little dewdrops sit on them. Peter wants to wipe each one away with his thumb. Make a wish for each lash, so all his luck would come from Johnny. Gilded and proud and beautiful.

Peter freezes, because, oh.

Oh. 

It’s nothing like he had expected. 

He was sure that he wanted Johnny because of his inhuman attractiveness—and he is stunning, with that sharp nose and that puff of white blond hair like cotton candy curls and his stretch of soft golden skin—but Peter thought it stopped there. Surface level. Just wanting to bag a sexy beast. 

Peter is such an idiot. 

Because this. It floods him and he paddles for the surface, but it tugs him under. And under. And under. 

Peter looks at Johnny and wants him to keep the bed warm while he gets up to take a groggy piss at three in the morning. He wants Johnny to fry turkey sausage and eggs and tomatoes in his cigarette box of a kitchen while it storms outside and Peter boils bagel dough. He wants Johnny to coo when he nicks his jaw while shaving, press an unnecessary bandaid over the spot, kiss it better. He wants Johnny to shout at him for forgetting anniversaries, for losing his keys for the eighth time, for forgetting to eat until he bruises his knees fainting from it. He wants Johnny to poke at his bedhead and laugh, run a finger over the bump on his nose, say his socks smell like onions. He wants Johnny to kiss him in the shower, and on the elevator ride to his floor, and on the sidewalk when it’s blisteringly hot and the city stinks. He wants Johnny to look at him and feel a tide rising in his stomach, a heat rising in his cheeks. He wants Johnny to see him at dusk, skin tinged lavender, and at daybreak, hair reddish in the sun, and under the stars, silvery and mysterious. He wants Johnny to flick his ear, and kick his shin, and grab his finger and squeeze it, and he wants Johnny to mean it. 

Mostly, he just wants Johnny. 

And that terrifies him. 

He swallows, throat bobbing. 

He slides off the counter. 

He keeps his back to Johnny as he says, “We should, uh, we should. We should figure out how to fix this.”

“Mops,” Johnny says. 

“Mops,” Peter agrees, running his hands over his hair and squeezing out the ends. “I’ll go—”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Peter all but runs towards the supply closet.

The second the door closes behind him, Peter buries his face in his hands and screams.

—

Everything sucks. 

—

Peter walks past Johnny as he films a pork chop recipe. He doesn’t mean to, but Johnny’s station is right by the best microwave. So.

What he hears is Johnny saying, “Put a little honey and some rosemary on that bad boy and what happens next will smack your balls into next Tuesday.”

Peter nearly swallows his tongue.

—

Johnny is literally ruining Peter’s life. He’s taking a big, stinky shit on the national monument that is Peter’s sanity, completely without regret. 

Peter can’t do anything without thinking of Johnny—of his stupid chiseled face, or his stupid chiseled abs through his wet shirt, or the stupid chiseled muscles of his thighs and what they might look like clenched on either side of Peter’s head. 

He can’t even listen to Harry Styles anymore. Golden? Shine? They’re Johnny, from the tips of his fluffy curls in the sunlight to the delicate tan of his arms as they poke out of the ends of his sleeves. Watermelon Sugar? Peter wants to lick watermelon and sugar off of Johnny’s naked body. 

But it’s not just that. Because Peter also wants that fucking Sunfower Vol. 6 tender moment of kissing him in the kitchen, and To Be So Lonely feels like a personal affront, and he would—he would—walk through fucking fire to show Johnny how much he cares for him.

Johnny is everything, and Peter wants to hold that between his hands just once.

—

Saturday, May 23

pp. (12:33am)

u busy?

js. (12:34am)

uh

pp. (12:34am)

do you wanna plz come over and watch 

avatar w me

js. (12:35am)

p, are u okay?

pp. (12:36am)

can u be a fucking man and come watch 

avatar w me

js. (12:42am)

jfc i’m omw

—

It is not a movie night. This does not matter. 

They watch eight episodes of Avatar on Peter’s couch while eating slightly burnt microwave popcorn right out of the bag. Johnny looks sweet and soft with sleep in sweatpants that he’s tucked into his socks at the ankle. Johnny’s got a leg tossed between Peter’s, and it’s heavy and warm on top of Peter’s skinny thigh. 

Peter wonders if it’s twisted to feel like this is a glimpse of Elysium.

—

“Did you ever watch that video of us?” Johnny says randomly one afternoon, right before June hits and the city starts to fester.

The two of them are leaning their elbows on that long stretch of counter against the wall of windows to the right of their stations. Manhattan spreads out around them, glorious against this early sunset. Like some sort of abstract painting, jaunty angles and slivers of glass slapdash against each other, painted orange and pink and yellow like paint water spilled across the horizon. 

“No,” Peter says, startled. “I forgot.”

“Oh,” Johnny says.

They’re silent for a moment.

“Do you want to watch it now?” says Johnny.

Peter looks over at him, frowning. “Sure, if you want.”

Johnny stares back for a long moment before nodding. “Okay,” he says. He nods. “Okay.”

He pulls out his phone and queues up the video. 

Peter is wildly confused. 

Johnny stands his phone against the windows as the video starts. 

Johnny and Peter are behind Peter’s station. 

Johnny is holding a Twizzler in one hand, talking animatedly with the other.

“It’s gotta be hollow,” he says, “it’s gotta be hollow—”

“Everyone keeps saying that,” video Peter sighs. 

“Well, helloooo,” says Johnny. “You’re eating pizza, you got a can of coke, you got a Twizzler—” he brings it to his lips and pretends to slurp through it, “—you got a straw, you never did that?”  

The camera pulls back to include Peter in the shot.

Peter’s stomach sinks. He’s not confused anymore.

In the video, he is staring up at Johnny like he’s never seen anything better. Wide eyed and soft and fond as anything. He’s so obvious. God. He’s so obvious. 

The clip jumps.

Johnny in the video has just broken a wire cooling rack and is using power tools to manipulate it into something Peter can use to extrude Cheetos through.

Peter is staring at Johnny like the Messiah as he says, “This might kill Tony Stark.”

A cut.

Johnny during a drink-making video, saying, “The problem with me and piña coladas is I’m like a little kid—I think it’s just a slushee. I drink four of them in fifteen minutes and I’m hungover in half an hour!” And Peter isn’t even standing next to him. Peter is two stations in the distance, in the middle of stirring something on the stove, but Peter still manages to look over his shoulder and stare at Johnny with unhidden keen incredulity, like Johnny’s a whole journal worth of nearly incoherent scrawls and Peter wants to riddle out every curl of every one. 

A cut.

Peter holding a bouquet of plastic straws, saying, “Johnny, Jay, help me. I need something to plug the ends of these.”

The camera whirls to capture Johnny in the doorway, wearing a bright red windbreaker and holding an iced coffee, sunglasses perched on top of his baseball cap, saying, “You’ve gotta make a little squash plug. Or a potato plug.”

The camera goes back to Peter, whose mouth is gaping. Over the course of a few seconds, he starts to laugh quietly, his confusion turning into a bright grin, and he says, dubiously, “That’s a good idea.”

Peter has never seen himself smile like that. 

Peter is fully laughing in the clip. “Thanks, Johnny!”

“Yeah!”

It clicks for Peter that this is an intervention. Johnny is calling him out. 

Peter is going to puke.

He’s about to pause the video when the clip changes.

It’s Peter saying, “I want you to know I can accept zero criticism right now,” and Johnny taking him by the chin and saying, “I’ve got none, homeslice,” like it’s the most meaningful, cherishing thing ever to leave a pair of lips. 

Peter freezes.

The clip changes. 

Johnny during his Stroopwafel video, closing the press over the stove, the batter bubbling out of the edges. 

Peter snorts in the video. 

The shot changes to Johnny holding his Frankenstein Pizzelle press open, the cookie utterly burned inside.

Peter is at his shoulder, wheezing with laughter and still hungover behind his glasses. He’s hitting the table with his fist, practically incoherent. 

Johnny goes, “Looks good, right?” But he isn’t staring at the batter. He’s staring at Peter, and his eyes are wide and fond and soft. 

Peter feels his stomach turning. He’s confused again. Utterly confused. All the little Spongebobs in his brain are frantic, overturning filing cabinets and setting things on fire.

The clip changes. 

It’s Peter saying, “My expectations were low, but holy fuck,” as he pulls at a gloopy mess in a pot and Johnny is at his shoulder but he isn’t looking at the failed recipe. 

He’s looking at Peter. 

Peter’s stomach swells. 

The clip changes. 

Johnny, staring intently at Peter, “So it’s twenty sides a second?”

“Twenty seconds a side?” Peter corrects, not even looking at Johnny. How didn’t he feel that stare on his skin? Like the sun on the first hot day of May, baking under it and unable to stop smiling for the relief of it?

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” says Johnny idly, lips slightly parted, watching Peter’s profile.

The clip changes.

Johnny trying one of Peter’s bakes, but he can’t look at Peter. He’s scratching his head. “They kinda taste like dog treats. Like Milk Bones?”

Peter, in the video, wheezes, but he doesn’t rip his eyes away from Johnny. It’s like Johnny is the angel come down to visit and Peter is some lowly asshole pissing on the side of the street the angel is walking on.

“Why have you tasted those?” Peter asks Johnny. 

“Who hasn’t tasted those? I used to watch my friend’s dog and just—” he mimes sneaking a bite.

“Never have I ever,” says Peter.

Clint, from behind the camera, says, “Peter, we’ve all done it. You’re the weird one.”

Video Peter’s mouth drops wide open and Johnny looks at him like he loves him.

The clip changes. 

Johnny, trying something Peter has made: “Ohh, yeah! That’s it, baby. So good. Best one yet.”

Peter, staring at Johnny, “Yeah, I thought so. I thought you’d like that one.”

“For sure! Oh, that’s rad. Good job, Petey. Full send it.”

The clip changes.

Peter says, “Hey, Johnny?”

Another clip. “Jay?”

Another clip. “Johnny? You busy?”

Another. “Come here, Johnny!”

“Johnny? Johnny Storm, I need you.”

“Johnny, come fix.”

“Johnny, I need your moral support.”

“Jay? My best friend. Can you break this hand mixer and make me an electric cookie cutter with the motor, do you think?”

“Johnny?”

“Jay, you’re brilliant. You’re entirely fucking brilliant.”

A cut. 

Peter saying, “I want you to taste this, but before you do, I want you to know it’s wrong. It’s so wrong. It’s just—I want you to know.”

And Johnny is staring at Peter with such open affection that Peter is going to be sick. He’s shaking from head to toe.

Peter, in the video, tries a bite of whatever he was making. He sours immediately, petulant and rude the way he always gets when he’s tired. “Oh, God, never mind. It’s so soft. Fucking hell. You know what? Go. Get out of here.”

And Johnny laughs in the clip like Peter, even at his worst, is painfully lovely.

That look on Johnny’s face. Peter knows it, because it’s lived on Peter’s face for longer than he even knew.

Peter can’t take it any longer. He reaches out and pauses the video before turning to Johnny. 

“Johnny,” he says.

“You told me once to think before I speak,” says Johnny. “I’ve been thinking too much and—not speaking nearly enough. Not speaking at all. I think we both have.”

“For real?” says Peter.

“Yeah,” says Johnny. 

Peter thinks Johnny’s eyes are shining. Peter thinks Johnny’s beautiful as he blushes. Peter thinks Johnny’s biting his lip again.

Peter stops thinking and grabs Johnny’s chin in his hand. Peter stops thinking and kisses Johnny Storm right on the mouth.

Immediately, Peter wants to weep. Johnny’s lips fit against his, pressing gently, all cherry chapstick sticky and sweet. Peter breathes through his nose and moves his lips. Johnny follows, and it grows quicker, slicker, like they’re chasing a relief they’ve been denying themselves for far too long. God, they have been, haven't they? Denying themselves this? 

Peter’s hand finds Johnny’s waist and squeezes, pulling them closer together. Johnny loops his arms behind Peter’s neck. With a thrill in his stomach, Peter tugs Johnny’s lip between his teeth, pulling a delicious whine from Johnny’s chest. 

Johnny’s hands knit in Peter’s hair and yank gently at the ends before he pulls away. 

When Peter manages to open his eyes, the smile on Johnny’s face is so stunning that a keen pulls itself out of his belly. Peter pushes right back up against him, all but smacking their heads in his rush to join their lips. 

Johnny laughs into his mouth, full-bodied and boisterous. 

Peter hums against Johnny, wrapping his arms all the way around him. He separates their lips. He’s smiling too hard to keep kissing.

Johnny looks at him the way he did in the video. Real and raw and Peter loves him. 

Peter’s breath wooshes out of his chest, but Johnny catches it for him. Johnny’s been catching him for an awfully long time, he thinks. It’s about time he repays the favor. 

He kisses him again, and again, and again. 

“But what about when you didn’t want to—mmph—that night, when you—ah—didn’t want me?” Peter mumbles into Johnny’s mouth.

“Stop thinking,” Johnny says, but then he pulls away. He takes Peter’s jaw in his hands, so they’re staring directly into each other’s eyes. “We were drunk, Peter. That’s why I didn’t go up with you. I thought you were just drunk and horny.”

“I was drunk and horny,” Peter admits, “but I was also very much wanting you. Just you. Always you. For—a very long time, you.”

Johnny makes a wretched sound. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t think you wanted me back!”

“God, Peter,” Johnny says desperately. “Peter. I’ve wanted you for as long as I can remember. In any way you’d let me have you. You, Peter. Is that so hard for you to believe?”

“Yes!!”

Johnny kisses him. “I want you,” he says. “I want you. I want you.”

“Really?” Peter says brokenly.

“With everything I’ve got,” Johnny whispers. “Every bit of me.”

“Okay, cool,” Peter says, voice cracking. “That’s really—cool, awesome. That’s bitching.”

“Super bitching,” Johnny says, wet-eyed and smiling wide enough to make his forehead crinkle a little. 

Peter tugs on the neck of Johnny’s shirt. Tugs again. Laughs a little, disbelieving, and then kisses him good enough to make up for all the kisses they’d missed.

—

June hits with the force of a fucking meteor, all brutal heat and smelly sweat and sewer stink. 

Peter doesn’t even mind. The ivy on the face of his building shines in the sunlight. Harry and Flash grow darkly tan from hours laying languid in Prospect Park. Johnny glows, even—especially—when the skin over his nose sunburns bright pink. 

Peter feels like he’s been smacked by the beauty around him. It’s so intense it’s overwhelming. The whole fucking world is brighter, he’s calmer, he’s happier, he’s at peace. All of this, like Johnny kissing him has just improved the whole frickin’ universe. 

He fills another SD card with sunrises and sunsets and Harry on the balcony; with MJ finally kissing Gwen—and that explains how much time they’d been spending together, which makes Peter feel like a real dumbass—and dancing, all hair and hips and bright white smiles; with Flash and Liz grinning arm in arm, the shades of their summer skin both so smooth and warm and complementary that it makes something in the pit of Peter’s stomach stir. 

He’s taking pictures of fucking birds now. Butterflies. He was never that guy. 

It feels amazing to be. 

—

After hours has become their time. Alone in this building that scrapes through the sky like an icing spatula spreading frosting—a spot missed. They make their own sweetness, here, between each other’s arms. Steady-handed and clever.

Johnny is making a cake. Peter is bothering him.

“Do you think my cooking is what made you like me?”

“No,” says Johnny. “It was your ass in those cute little joggers you wear when you come into work stoned hoping no one can tell.”

“Oh. So you would’ve fallen for me anywhere? Any time? You think? It’s just me? Not the situation?”

“Yes, Peter. I do think that. As long as you had those joggers in this hypothetical alternate universe too.”

Johnny’s not even annoyed. Peter is astounded. Johnny has endless patience for him. Wow, wow, wow.

“Okay, but what if we didn’t even, like, work together at all?” Peter says. “What if we met somewhere in the outside world—which, gross—or in some alternate universe where we were, like, police officers, or professional surfers, or superheroes or something?” 

Johnny grins with the right half of his face, nose and eye scrunching. “Jeremy Bearimy, baby.”

Peter melts, but only a little. “Was that another Good Place reference?”

“Hell yeah it was.”

“You’re such a yutz.”

Johnny whips the spatula forward faster than Peter can move away. A glob of whipped cream smears across his cheek. 

Peter frowns. 

“Aw, don’t do that,” says Johnny. “No, stop—Pete, don’t make that face, I can’t take that face, don’t be—ah, geez. Alright. Come here. I’ll fix it.”

Peter comes closer. Johnny lifts a paper towel and wipes the cream off Peter’s cheek.

Peter closes his eyes and purses his lips exaggeratedly.

Johnny snorts but obliges, kissing him gently. He pulls away too quickly.

Peter opens his eyes. “Hey, what the hell was that? Come back here.”

Johnny smiles coyly. “I’m in the middle of a bake, chef. I can’t get distracted or I’ll forget something.”

“You think this is distracting?” Peter scoffs. “I think I can do better than that. Get over here, you sexy beast.”

Johnny bursts into laughter but drops the dirty towel and comes, letting Peter drag him in by the front of his apron. Their lips slide into place like they’ve been practicing for years—like they were born and bred for only this. One of Peter’s hands slips up to cup Johnny’s cheek as Johnny presses Peter’s back into the countertop, one of Peter’s thighs nudging between Johnny’s. This feels like dancing, too. Like finding a rhythm that works. Like the screaming trill of horns and a slamming bass line and a scat solo to the beat of Peter’s urgent pulse. 

The kiss grows into something enormous and all-encompassing, Peter sucking at Johnny’s lower lip, biting and soothing the sting with his tongue, and Johnny makes a breathless sound that stirs something deep within Peter. He slides his hands into Johnny’s back pockets and presses them tighter against each other, finding friction. 

Johnny’s breath puffs between them, sweet from the cream they’d sampled, and it’s not enough. Peter clumsily maneuvers himself until he’s sitting on the counter, so he can wrap his legs around Johnny’s waist, so he can drag his teeth along Johnny’s jaw, suck at his neck, bite at the soft ball of his earlobe, Johnny’s little hoop earring cold against his lips. 

“Hi,” he breathes in Johnny’s ear, and Johnny groans, needy and growing desperate. “Hey, baby.” He presses kisses along the shell of the ear, listens to Johnny’s breaths grow uneven. “Yeah, you like that?”

“Fuck you,” Johnny huffs. “Kiss me.”

Peter happily obliges, all teeth and tongue and a messy battle for dominance. Johnny is always graceful, except when they kiss. It makes Peter a little crazy, knowing it’s him that makes Johnny tremble, cling, want.

Johnny’s palms slip along the outsides of Peter’s thighs, up to hold his waist, and the kiss grows slower naturally. Shrinks into little pecks, sweet and almost shy, the pair of them swallowing down smiles. 

Johnny pulls back enough for Peter to look at him, all blown pupils and swollen red lips. 

Peter smiles dopily. “Distracting enough?”

Johnny groans and shoves Peter’s face away, Peter breaking into a laugh as he does. 

“Hey,” Peter says, watching Johnny go check on his cake in the oven. 

Johnny peers over his shoulder, all eyelashes and delicately quirked eyebrows. How he goes from fucking flirty and assured to pliant in Peter’s arms is a myth that never fails to take Peter’s breath away.

“I love you,” Peter says. “I think I have for, like. A really, really long time.”

Johnny ignores his cakes in favor of hustling over and grabbing Peter in his arms, pressing a smattering of sweet kisses across his cheeks, his forehead, his nose, as Peter laughs and squirms.

“Jay—Johnny, Johnny—”

“I fucking adore you,” Johnny breathes, kissing Peter hard. “I love you so much it makes me sick to my stomach, Peter.”

Peter takes Johnny’s face between his hands—which have begun to tremble just slightly, though he doesn’t know why. He strokes his thumbs over Johnny’s cheekbones and grins at him, biting his lip, eyes stinging.

“Cool,” he croaks. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Johnny laughs aloud, leaning forward to press his face into the junction of Peter’s neck and shoulder. He kisses there again and again and Peter lets the tears spill over, so happy that it fills his chest and closes his throat. 

He feels eternal. It’s a new feeling—one he never thought he’d care for.

But to spend forever in Johnny’s arms? 

God, let him be Patroclus yearning for that golden boy. He’d die a hundred deaths, a hundred terrible ways, if it meant he could be carved of marble to be held in Johnny’s grip until they wore away to dust.

—

“Nat, Jesus, use goggles if you’re cutting wood at your station! Splinters! Danger! Oh, Barnes, that looks sexy, is that tres leches? Nice, nice. Steve! Hey, man. Clean your station before someone gets fuckin’ salmonella. Okay.”

“Kitchen Gestapo, coming through,” Johnny says breezily, swishing his hips as he struts towards the freezer in the back room.

“I am not the kitchen Gestapo!” Peter protests.

“As someone who got an undergrad in History with a focus on the second World War, I think I can claim you’re the kitchen Gestapo,” Steve mutters from his station, where he’s pulled on a pair of bright pink rubber gloves and started wiping the countertop.

“Scary policeman,” Nat agrees in her jokingly exaggerated accent.

“You can have a piece of my tres leches, Pete. I appreciate your strict nature. It makes us a better squadron. We can’t be lawless fucks roaming the kitchen like we’re in the goddamn wilderness in our breeches.”

“Bucky, I understood maybe three of those words, and they were tres leches, Pete.”

Peter goes and gets a plate. It’s fucking delightful. Peter reaches out and squeezes Bucky’s not-empty shoulder in appreciation. 

Bucky grins proudly. 

Peter returns to his station with his cake in hand. His camera crew is just about finished setting up. He’s got about twenty boxes of Cookie Crisp cereal in front of him and a salad bowl full of the stuff floating in almond milk. 

Johnny comes back into the kitchen with his arms straining around the dehydrator, yelling that he’s making fruit leather because he accidentally ordered too many fresh mangoes. He catches Peter’s eye and winks, his smile brilliant and cheeks peachy.

“Peter, go ahead,” says Clint.

Peter turns to face the cameras. 

“Hey everyone, I’m Peter, and today I’m in the BA Test Kitchen to make gourmet Cookie Crisp cereal.”

“How do you feel about your prospects?” Ned prompts.

“I’m glad you asked,” Peter says, grinning at the camera crew in front of him, staring straight into the lens. “Today I’m trying a new strategy: radical confidence.”

—

Peter brings MJ dancing. He brings Gwen dancing. He dances with Harry and Flash and they’re all laughing and they’re all a little high but Peter thinks the difference—the crazy, insane feeling in his chest—is that he’s realized how much they mean to him. How much he means to them. How he didn’t comprehend it earlier, he doesn’t know. But he’s got these four brilliant, wonderful people in his life, and he’s going to treasure his every last moment with him. 

Peter never fears they’ll leave him any more. He knows his place. He fits right in it. 

—

Their audiences notice the difference almost immediately. 

Peter looks so happy!! the comments profess. 

johnny is literally glowing this week….

Did you see the eyes they gave each other?? dtf or what

they’re literally married stop it

peter has never been so calm in one of these videos??? i love him im so happy he seems so happy omg!!!

Johnny kills all the questions with one Instagram post. 

Peter, face-up and spread flat as Johnny sits on his hips. Peter’s chest is bare, his glasses off, his hair soft and loose. Johnny’s hand pokes out of the bottom of the screen, pressing a strawberry towards Peter’s face as Peter, laughing, turns away from it. His lips are pink with juice.

The response is utter insanity. Peter, reading the comments in awe with Johnny tucked into his side, thinks he feels grateful. Peter thinks it’s like drinking a smoothie made of pure sunlight. Peter thinks he’s never been so entirely loved, so complete.

Peter stops thinking and grabs Johnny by the chin, pressing their lips together in a kiss that tastes like berries and maybe a bit like peace. 

—

“Everything is wonderful and I am content down to the very pits of my soul,” Peter announces as he throws May’s door open, arms held above his head, grinning serenely with his face tilted back.

“Hello, Peter,” May says dryly from where she’s sat on the couch.

“I have to tell you something very important, May. I am a new man.”

“Are you?” she says. She pats the cushion beside her. “Come sit. I made extra coffee.”

Peter frowns as he toes his sneakers off. “How’d you know I was coming?”

“Oh, I’ve got a sixth sense for you, Peter Parker. I always have.”

Peter grins and hurries to the couch, pressing a loud kiss on May’s cheek and saying, “Hi, I missed you,” before heading into the kitchen to grab his favorite mug and fill it with May’s extra strong espresso.

He joins her on the couch.

“I’ve got a really great boyfriend,” Peter says immediately, the thought of Johnny making his chest swell and his cheeks apple. God, he’s got it so bad. He’s absolutely disgusting.

May smiles at him. “I know, honey. I have an Instagram.”

Peter frowns. “Oh, shit.”

May keeps smiling. “I’m not mad. You can let me know whenever you want.”

“I honestly haven’t even officially told MJ yet,” Peter says. “Which she’s gonna kick my ass for.”

“Wear butt padding. She looks like she’s got strong thighs.”

“And sharp knees,” Peter adds, sipping at his coffee. Hot and strong as piss. Peter can see coffee grounds clinging to the side of the ceramic. Not even coffee—May can’t even make coffee right. He loves her so much it hurts.

“So tell me about him,” May says.

Peter looks at her.

“I assume that’s why you came. To gush.”

“Oh, man, can I ever gush,” Peter says. “He’s innovative and sarcastic but he’s so, so sweet, May. He’s an amazing chef, and he’s so hard-working and helpful.” Peter moons into his coffee. “He keeps—crafting me tools from scratch to make my recipe tests easier. I don’t even ask anymore. He just does it. And he’s funny. He’s fun when we go out, but he also watches nerdy TV shows and, like, makes pop culture references all the time. Which I usually think is annoying, but never from him.”

“And he’s got a nice tush.” Smirking conspiratorially, May says, “I stalked his Instagram. Watched a few of his videos, too.”

“Oh my God.”

“I bet Tony did worse.”

“He showed up at my apartment and gave me a gift basket full of condoms, sex toys, and experimental lube. There is no worse than Tony.”

May laughs, her head falling back. “God. I told him to go with the mini muffins, but he’ll never listen to me.”

Peter looks at her, betrayed. “You knew and didn’t warn me?”

“No way,” says May. “You're gonna date a boy without telling us, we get to do whatever we want to let you know that we know.” May nods sagely. “We always know.”

Peter hums.

They sip their coffee.

“Johnny didn’t fix my life,” Peter blurts to her.

May laughs out loud. She laughs so easily. Peter wants to be like that. “Peter, I love you, but you can be really blind sometimes.”

“Hey!” Peter says. “My prescription is fine. He did not fix my life.”

May reaches a hand out and takes Peter’s. “He didn’t. Of course he didn’t,” she says firmly. “He made you realize you’re worth enough to warrant fixing it yourself.”

And if that doesn’t make Peter tear up, nothing else will. 

“Oh, come here you big baby,” May says, holding her arms out. 

Peter puts his mug on the coffee table and crawls across the couch to drop himself in May’s embrace. She still smells like her hippie dippie essential oils, even though her long hair is all streaked with grey now. Her chest has got a pacemaker stuck in it, but her heart keeps good time. Her fingernails are always painted. Today they’re bright orange.

Orange has always been Peter’s favorite color. 

“Aunt May, I love you,” Peter says thickly, pressing his face into her neck.

“Oh, baby. I know you do. More than anyone, right?”

“More than everyone.”

She begins to card her fingers through Peter’s hair. “I hope you’re not feeling guilty that it took you so long to understand how much good you’ve had all along.”

Peter sighs. “It’s like a frickin’ Disney movie. The clouds parted and birds started singing my ears off. But, like—I know I had good stuff in my life before Johnny. Great stuff. You, and my other friends. My whole team. My job. I appreciate it all so much.” Peter frowns into May’s skin. “Tony said this thing to me a few weeks ago: that I need to be adored all the time. I keep thinking about it.”

“Hmm,” says May. “As the one who raised you, I can say he’s half-right.” She twirls one of Peter’s curls around her finger. “You were always Mister Tough Guy, Mister I’ll Do It Myself. But after you tried and tried and tried, you would come running to Ben or me and make us hold you for ages. Hours. Didn’t matter what we were doing. I was studying for my NCLEX and you would sit on my lap while I highlighted my books. Ben would cook and you’d hang onto his back.”

“I remember that,” Peter says softly, suddenly accosted by the memory of Ben’s big shoulders and bigger laugh, the sound of pancakes sizzling and the understanding that, to show love, you cooked; that food on a plate was the same as reaching into your chest and handing over your heart.

“I think you burnt yourself out, Tough Guy,” May says. “You knew you had your friends, and you knew you had me, but you didn’t come to us to help you take a load off. You didn’t let yourself recharge.”

“But I did,” Peter protests. “I went dancing with MJ and hung out with Harry and Gwen and went to a few movies with Flash—”

“But that’s not what you need to feel better, Peter,” May says. She tightens her arms around him and presses a kiss to his head. “Those are all things your friends like—that’s how they recharge. But not you. You need straight-up lovin’. You weren’t getting that from your friends, I bet. Hours of feeling someone right there against you.”

Peter lets that sink in. “So I’m like one of those fish that bites their boyfriend and then mutates into one combined super fish.”

May snorts, her chest bouncing under Peter, and he grins, leaning more heavily against her. Maybe she has a point. He feels great right now, in her arms. 

“You do need to feel adored,” May says to him, “but adored, for you, means held, baby. It means feeling your people at your back, pulling you up, helping you along. And if Johnny is giving that to you—that last piece in the puzzle that makes you feel this happy—God. I’m so happy for you. Non potrei essere più felice.”

Peter lifts his head from May’s chest to smile at her.

She wipes the wetness from his cheeks with her thumb, the same way she always has. 

“I adore you,” he tells her. “In case you couldn’t tell without me saying it.”

She looks at him something tender. “I know, baby,” she says. She bumps their noses together and Peter wrinkles his. “A mother always knows by looking in her kid’s beady little eyes.”

Peter opens his eyes as wide as he can and stares at her intently.

May laughs and pushes his head back down onto her chest. “I know by looking in your eyes that you’re a doofus,” May says, stroking his hair again. “And that you’ll always be my stubborn little boychik. I know that you’re smart, and kind, and so loving.” May cradles his head between her arms. “And I’m so glad you’re letting yourself feel loved back. You deserve it.”

Peter closes his eyes and breathes, letting May hold him. He doesn’t know how he could ever not notice this. From May; from his friends; from the world. It’s as obvious as the sun glaring in late July and just as warm on his back.

He thinks hating himself for being blind to it would be a waste of time.

Instead, he swears to take Johnny by the face and kiss him senseless; to thank him until his tongue wears to nothing; to love him properly, to show Johnny just how much he lightens Peter’s days—the way that one sunspot opened Peter’s eyes to a galaxy of stars that have always been blinking above him, unnoticed.

Wryly, Peter thinks he can’t be blamed for not noticing stars. He’s a city boy with city eyes, and the city sky is so black. 

But Johnny. 

Oh, Johnny burns bright enough to throw the whole universe into speckled, stunning relief.

—

There is something about the light coming through the windows of their brownstone on a Saturday morning. Something sticky, sweet, and dreamlike. It catches dust, sets it alight, embers floating trapped in time. The amber that sealed mosquitoes and gets jammed into gold-banded rings. 

It makes everything seem brilliant, Peter thinks, holding a hand up, catching the sunrise in the dip between his thumb and forefinger. Holding it like an egg in a cup, all runny yolk, all the best part. 

Johnny presses against his back, hooks his chin over Peter’s shoulder. 

“What’cha looking at?” he whispers. 

“Mm. Nothing,” Peter says. He turns, trying to catch Johnny's eye. 

Dandelion head to bare shoulders and over the graceful curve of his calf, he looks aflame. Sun-speckled and fierce and so, so bright. Lovely. Destructive. Enamoring. 

Peter lifts a hand and brushes it along the skin of Johnny’s chest. Sunlight hits his fingers, turns them orange, pellucid, the skin of an August peach still clinging to the tree. 

Brilliant, he thinks, satisfied. 

He tumbles forward wholeheartedly into the burn of it.