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In May, there was something of a kerfuffle involving the Fantastic Four—or rather, Reed and Sue, because Johnny was at school, and Ben was visiting a friend in frickin’ Ithaca—and some of the so-called Defenders. It was cleared up quick enough, but Luke and Jessica—he got to call them by their first names now, how cool was that?—had enough experience with cops and the law to get some attorneys involved before anyone started talking, and definitely before they—Luke and Jessica—started asking Reed to pay out for damages incurred.
Who knew a PI’s camera could be so expensive?
Johnny spends a lot of time hanging around the Baxter Building. His friend count is… low, to put it bluntly, so he’s there when Jessica’s lawyer—Murdock—and Luke’s—Nelson—come by. They have a teenager with them, maybe a year older than Johnny himself, who mostly takes notes and hands things to people. Sometimes he whispers to Murdock about something Reed’s guys are doing, probably because of the whole blind thing. At one point, for reasons that probably have something to do with lawyer privacy stuff, the teenager has to leave the room, along with one of Reed’s assistants, and the Baxter paralegals.
Johnny’s bored. Sue him.
“You want a soda?”
The guy looks up from his phone, like he’s surprised to be addressed at all. He even looks around for someone else Johnny might be addressing. Then, “Um, yeah. You guys got, uh, like a vending machine? Or something?”
They do. The guy gets a can of iced tea. Johnny files that away for possible future use.
“So, I’m Johnny,” he introduces. “My older sister is the blonde in there, Sue Storm.”
He gives the guy a moment to process that, yes, the black guy in front of him and the blonde white lady in the other room are siblings, and follows up with, “You?”
“Peter Parker,” he says. “I’m Mr. Murdock’s intern.”
“You’re going into legal?” Johnny asks. He’s putting a lot of effort into sounding interested. So much effort. Look at all the effort he’s making here.
“Uh, no, actually, I’m aiming for engineering,” Peter says, “but I hit a bit of a rough patch, and Mr. Murdock was really nice about it and just… made a whole intern position for me? Mostly I do secretary stuff, and some web design, fix the printer, uh…”
He trails off, looking uncomfortable.
Johnny knows how to fix this.
“You wanna go up to the roof?”
--
Peter is a lot more relaxed about the height than Johnny imagines most people would be. He hasn’t exactly brought anyone else up here. Sue doesn’t count.
“It’s been a while since I got to be up this high,” Peter explains, leaning against one of the big ventilation box doohickeys, even though Johnny didn’t ask, because that would be rude, and he’s really trying to do better on the whole ‘friends’ front these days.
Also, Sue would lecture him about learning how to behave so he can make a good first impression, again, and he really doesn’t need more reminders about how much she’s been worrying about him being back to having no social life because all his so-called friends were—
Nope. Cut that. Not helpful!
Johnny is cool he is suave he is chill and a superhero and rich and a badass. He just… had to talk to this Peter guy like a normal person. Talking about being up high. That was a normal person conversation.
“Empire State Building?” he guesses.
“Stark Tower, back when it was, you know, still Stark’s,” Peter says. “I was… sixteen? Not a lot younger than I am, but it was a while ago, ‘cause… you know. Blip.”
“You got dusted?” Johnny asks, not entirely able to stop himself.
“Yeah,” Peter says. He looks uncomfortable, way more than most people who got to skip the five years. “You?”
“Nah, but my parents did,” Johnny explains. It doesn’t really hurt to talk about, now that they’re back. It’s just… weird. “I was ten, but Sue was already seventeen, which was close enough to being an adult that a judge gave her access to our parents’ accounts and, like… custody of me? But with emancipation? I dunno, the main thing I was aiming at with that was that it feels like she raised me more than Mom ‘n’ Dad did.”
Peter looks at him sideways, and the back out at the horizon, which is really just the cityscape, even from this high up. He takes a long sip of his iced tea, and then offers, “I was raised by my Aunt May. She, uh, she wasn’t my mom, technically, but she… basically was, anyway? I can remember my Uncle Ben—he died when I was thirteen—but I can’t even remember my parents. May was… she was everything to me. Only family I really had. So I get it, kind of.”
‘Was.’
Johnny… really doesn’t want to touch that.
“Did she do engineering, too?” That’s a neutral enough comment to make on that whole situation, right?
“She was a nurse, emergency room.” Peter smiles, and his eyes look wet, and Johnny would love to backpedal out of this entire conversation. At least Peter’s just looking out at the city instead of at Johnny. He’s, like… wistful. “She ran a food pantry? Like, as a volunteer? She was such an amazing person.”
“She, uh, sounds like it,” Johnny offers. He has no idea what to do with this conversation. Is this normal first-meeting stuff? Maybe it’s recent enough to be on his mind all the time. Grief does weird things to people’s brains. He remembers that coming up a lot in school, after the Blip first happened. Maybe he can just keep on the ‘family occupations’ topic and hope he doesn’t hit more trigger topics. “I don’t really… I mean, my dad’s a physicist. Sue does biophysics. Mom… isn’t really around, much, but Reed—you met him, Sue’s fiancé—he’s in aerospace engineering and astrophysics.”
He doesn’t know where to take that.
Peter takes pity, or maybe he’s actually interested. “Did they meet during the Blip?”
“Um, yeah, they shared some uni classes, sort of; he was the TA, and they started dating as soon as it wasn’t going to get them any flak from admin,” Johnny says, relieved that he can actually keep going. They already got kinda deep with the whole aunt thing, and both of them about the parents; maybe he should get kinda deep in response? That’s a thing, right, reciprocation in conversation? “Sue and Dad are really pressing down on me about doing college, but I still don’t really know what I want to do.”
That’s not even that deep. Dammit, Johnny. Be cool.
“I mean, isn’t that the case for most people our age?” Peter asks. “You’ve got time.”
“Well, yeah, but Sue and Dad and Reed all knew what they wanted to do, at least in general. I don’t even know if I want to go STEM, and that’s, like, a super wide category.” Johnny’s pretty sure he’d be good at it. He’s great at math, and Reed has him assist with ‘hand me the wrench’ duties enough that he’s picked up a lot just from the impromptu lectures that he sometimes gets.
But does he want to? Unclear.
“Take a gap year?” Peter suggests, startling him out of his thoughts. “Your family’s pretty rich, and you can afford it. Take up some hobbies, do some odd jobs, grab a weird internship that nobody else wants because the hours are too demanding or the topic is too weird for a full-time student; that’s how Dr. Darcy Lewis got into Astro, you know? Do some, I dunno… male modeling? You could pull off ‘Gap catalogue for the college prep,’ probably.”
“Gap?” Johnny protests, absolutely aghast. “Wow. I don’t know if I should feel flattered that you think I could model, or insulted that you think I’m plain-bread boring enough for Gap.”
“Sometimes you need a cool plate to distract people from how boring the food is,” Peter says. He’s definitely teasing. Maybe. “Interesting person? Boring clothes.”
“You’re mentally putting me in khakis,” Johnny whines. “We just met. What could I have possibly done to annoy you so quickly that you’d put me in khaki?”
Peter grins, and hides his smile behind a sip of his iced tea.
--
“You know,” a voice says from right above him, “You’ll catch a cold, up here in this wind.”
Johnny does not shriek and whirl. He does jump a bit. He looks up, and freaks a bit. Just internally. It’s fine.
It’s Spidey. That’s Spidey. Be cool, Johnny, be frickin’ cool.
“It’s June,” Jonny says. “And any cold I catch just burns right out.”
Nailed it.
“Way to throw a man’s banter game,” Spidey complains, dropping and flipping to land beside him. “And here I was, thinking to network among the youngsters in our field of work.”
“Networking?” Johnny asks, trying to get past the holy smokes it’s Spider-man that his brain is running on repeat. “Wait, youngsters? I remember early video footage of you; you were gone for the Blip, you can’t be much older than me.”
Johnny does not say anything about how he had been a massive Spidey fan from eight to ten, cried when he found out his favorite superhero was gone the same way his parents were, and over the moon delighted when the first footage of Spidey swinging around the city again was up on the ‘net. Sure, there were more important things, like his parents, but still! Spidey!
He’s maybe kinda been hoping to run into this one specific hero since he got his powers.
“Depends on how you measure,” Spidey says, “but yeah, uh, I’m what most would call a ‘youngster.’ I’ve just also been doing this since I was a lot younger than most heroes start.”
“That’s still only, like, three and a half years,” Johnny points out.
“Still three years and two months longer than you,” Spidey argues, which is so actually childish that Johnny shoves him for it, even if he’s a little giddy inside that Spidey’s been following Johnny’s own burgeoning hero career. Spidey barely moves, and just keeps right on talking. “But no, seriously: you, me, new Hawkeye, let’s grab some burgers and set up some burner phones or something. It can be like a little club. I’ll make stickers. We can put them on the burner phones.”
That sounds like a blast. “Why?”
“Uh, I mean, I don’t really need to check in and see if you two have semi-responsible adults on your side. She’s got older Hawkeye, you, you’ve got the rest of your team. You’re good on that one.” Spidey rubs furiously at the back of his head for a moment, like he can’t quite scratch through the fabric of his mask. “You’ve got your emergency adults.”
“Did you reach out to her yet?”
“I think she’s in Cali or something for the week,” Spidey admits. “So I figured I’d just hit you up about the whole ‘burgers and burners’ thing when I saw you today.”
Johnny can do burner phones. “I can do burner phones.”
“I was going to get them myself, just ‘cause I’ve got the only secret identity and, given how much my life got fucked over the last time that information leaked, I’m pretty keen on keeping it that way. You can spot me the cash, though. If you wanna do that, man, I’m down. You and Hawkeye are rolling in money, and me, well, kinda skint.”
Johnny’s curious despite himself. “Wait, don’t you get, like… Avengers money?”
“Nnnnnope,” Spidey responds, popping the P. “Your friendly neighborhood web-slinging wallcrawler is gainfully employed at an hourly wage that just barely manages to cover the rent on a studio.”
Johnny has no idea how to respond to that.
“Don’t freak, I’m fine,” Spidey says, waving at him in dismissal. “Just, you know, I’ll probably be slapping you rich kids with the bill whenever we do burgers.”
Okay. Johnny can, yeah. Okay. Johnny can cover burgers.
“Do you know her?” Spidey asks, seemingly apropos of nothing.
“…Hawkeye?” Johnny guesses.
“Yeah, did your rich kid circles overlap or something?”
Sort of. Barely. Johnny’s ‘rich kid circle’ was 90% academics who lucked out with a patent or documentary deal. The Bishops were capitalism rich, some kind of security firm, and real estate. “We met a few times, but only at stuff like charity galas.”
“Bummer,” Spidey decides. “Well, I’ll find you once I have the burners. See ya!”
“Wait—!”
He’s gone.
--
On visit number three from Nelson and Murdock, Johnny manages to score Peter Parker’s phone number.
Nice.
This is an accomplishment, because according to the Adult Gossip that he definitely shouldn’t have been listening in on, Peter doesn’t have a whole lot of friends either. Johnny figures it’s for pretty different reasons—Peter probably didn’t lose all of his closest friends to the realization that they were just using him for the money, fame, and popularity that came with knowing a superhero with a trust fund running on eight digits—but still!
Johnny was maybe a bit relieved to know people his own age, even just one legal intern who sometimes looked like he found Johnny the cute and young kind of endearing, without having to hide behind the anonymity of a social media account that didn’t require anything more personal than an email address.
Peter is not entirely friendless, Johnny learns. He’s sort-of friends with some kids their age that he met at a donut shop, and he’s friendly enough with some of Mr. Nelson’s younger cousins. They’re mostly younger than Peter by at least a few years, and it is in explaining this connection that Johnny finds out Peter is Jewish.
“Oh, neat,” he says, and then scrambles for something to add, because ‘neat’ just makes him sound like a nerd from a vintage comic or something. “So’s Ben.”
Peter stares at him, and blinks.
“Ben Grimm? The Thing?” Johnny tries. He’s about to continue with ‘you know, the guy covered in rocky bits,’ but understanding lights Peter’s face.
“Oh,” he says, “cool. It’s nice to know there’s more Jewish heroes than just Spidey, I guess.”
Record scratch. What?
“Spidey’s Jewish?”
Peter looks at him, just as blank as before. “Yeah? He patrols on Christmas, but always skips on Passover unless the emergency is world-ending, and he’s from Forest Hills… there are entire TikTok channels devoted to footage of him showing up at someone’s bar or bat mitzvah to say Mazel Tov, that sort of stuff. Like… none of it’s more than circumstantial, I guess, but everyone in Queens knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who asked Spidey if he was Jewish and got an answer.”
Johnny had known precisely none of that information. He was a failure as a Spidey fan, clearly. “Huh. I guess I’ll tell Ben and see if he wants to say hi? Set up some kind of Jewish heroes network? That sounds like a thing, right? I’ve met Spidey, and he mentioned networking. Maybe he’d be interested.”
“You’ve met Spidey?” Peter asks. He sounds doubtful.
“Hey, I’m a hero too,” Johnny argues, though he pushes a bit of a pout into it; he is rewarded by a snrk of a laugh from Peter. “Sometimes people talk. I’ve been doing things. I barely set things on fire without meaning to anymore, even!”
Peter laughs.
“I,” Johnny asserts, drawing himself up to stand like Captain America, because Spidey may be cool but Sam Wilson is basically the coolest shit ever, “am a certified hero person, and have been doing certified hero activities.”
“Yeah, for about the last five minutes, maybe,” Peter mocks. He’s grinning, though, so it’s probably just friendly teasing. Johnny hopes it is. He likes it. “So, uh, what’s he… like? In person?”
Johnny considers this. “Kinda acts like he knows everything.”
“In—in general? Or, like, pointed? At you.”
“Honestly, no idea,” Johnny admits. “The mask makes it kinda hard to tell.”
Peter makes a ‘well, nuthin’ doin’’ sort of face and shrugs. “So, not as cool as you hoped.”
“Not as cool as me,” Johnny corrects. “But then, nobody’s as cool as me.”
“Doubt.”
“Hurtful!”
Peter grins. “Luke Cage is three floors down and he—he, alone, is twice as cool as you. I’ve met the guy enough to know that he is, j’st—effortlessly the coolest guy in the room, at all times.”
There’s no response to that. Luke Cage is effortlessly cooler than almost everyone ever, including Johnny himself. He takes a swig of his soda, and maybe pouts a little. Peter grins.
“Okay, fine,” Johnny huffs. “Topic change. Let’s talk girls.”
“‘Let’s talk girls,’ what are we, twelve?” Peter asks. He gestures with his iced tea. “You can just say ‘are you seeing anyone’ or ‘have you gone on any cute dates lately’ or something. ‘Let’s talk girls’ is either overly serious middle schoolers or we’ve been transported back to the 1960s. Have we been transported to the 1960s?”
“No.”
“Are we middle schoolers?”
“I am going to fight you.”
“I rest my case, your honor.”
“Of course, counselor,” Johnny mocks. Peter snickers at him. Johnny groans and flops back against the roof wall. He’s not supposed to, sure, but unlike most people, he can survive a fall by just flying off. “You’re killing me, Pete.”
“Ew, no, just Peter, thanks.” He mimes gagging. “Ugh, Pete. Makes me sound like somebody’s accountant friend getting invited to watch The Big Game at the nearest sports bar.”
“Which game?”
“I dunno, I don’t sports.”
Johnny laughs. “Okay, okay, but like. Back to the question: girls? Or, uh, boys? I don’t want to assume.”
“I’m, uh, sort of dating that girl from the donut shop,” Peter admits. “We kind of had a fight? Or, not a fight, but—she figured out a thing. I told her she was right, but she could tell I was still keeping something back, so I told her that too, and she was mad at me for a few weeks about that part ‘cause it was… a long time that I didn’t… yeah. Anyway. We’re talking again but I’m not sure we’re dating again.”
Complicated. Not really something he wants to touch with a ten foot pole. Can he save this with a cartoon reference?
“…that’s rough, buddy.”
Peter chokes on his iced tea.
--
They text. They chat. It’s a lot. Johnny’s pretty sure Peter isn’t using him, either, even if he’s… maybe a little condescending?
Johnny’s only a year younger than him. It’s not fair that this makes Peter see him as some kid. Can’t they just be friends without Peter reminding him he’s still in high school every little bit?
“You could have graduated early if you wanted,” Peter points out. His mouth is stuffed with fries. Johnny had covered the tab, but that’s pretty much the only sort of thing Peter lets him pay for.
It’s almost like a date, except Peter and his girlfriend are definitely dating again, so it’s not.
Johnny kind of wishes it was.
(He told Sue he was pretty sure he liked boys, and definitely sure he liked Peter.)
(She had looked very confused, and asked if he had thought she had missed it. “That closet door was wide open, did you not… mean to make it obvious you liked him?”)
(Apparently, Sue had figured out Johnny wasn’t straight before Johnny had.)
“Not really,” Johnny says. “I had a rough freshman year, and early sophomore, when Sue wasn’t home as much? It just… kinda sucked all around. Failed a few classes.”
“Ah, yeah, that’s gotta blow,” Peter says, kicking Johnny’s ankle under the table. Johnny kicks him back. “You already know I had to drop out, so I feel that.”
“Yeah,” Johnny says. “But it’s, like, whatever. I just wish I could switch schools since everyone’s just…”
“Really bad about the famous thing?” Peter finishes for him, with a wry grin.
“Ugh, yeah,” Johnny groans, dropping his face into his hands. “It sounds so stupid, but yeah, fame sucks.”
“There, there,” Peter says through a laugh, patting him on the shoulder. “Fame can be plenty terrible, I’m sure. Heck knows how many child stars got their lives ruined by the stress of paparazzi, right?”
This is true.
“How’s the GED coming?” Johnny asks.
“Oh, should be next week,” Peter says. He swipes his fry through Johnny’s milkshake. Johnny is, to his own great shame, too slow (and unwilling) to stop him. “I’m not too worried. Just need to figure out some plans for the actual college bit, but once I have the results, I can justify the gap, especially with the internship to fill it a bit. I’ll start applying to community colleges over the summer and see if I can grab a spot anywhere.”
That’s good and all, but… “Tuition?”
Peter grimaces. “If I’m lucky, I can swing a partial scholarship with a solid SAT score. If not, I can take out a loan or defer a few semesters to build up some funds. Local tends to have way lower tuition, and it’s not like I need to worry about housing when I’ve already got my own place.”
“I could—”
“Nope! You are not paying my tuition,” Peter immediately says, jabbing the air with a fry. A dollop of milkshake flies off the end and lands on Johnny’s nose. “You, rich boy, can keep your money to yourself.”
Johnny rolls his eyes. “You’re like the only person that doesn’t try to angle into getting me to pay for big stuff, you just let me pay for lunch or whatever.”
“Shoo, shoo, I have fallen for the rich patron thing before and I am not letting myself into that trap again,” Peter says. “I ended up on trial for murder last time.”
“…what.”
“I was framed and acquitted, it’s how I met Matt,” Peter says, which is the weirdest possible response, but okay. “It’s long and stupid and complicated. The point is, I’m not getting wrapped up in rich people patronage nonsense again.”
“I’m not going to frame you for murder?” Johnny offers.
“Neither did the last guy,” Peter says frankly. “It was one of his many enemies.”
Johnny would love to know what the heck this is about. “Yeah?”
“You’re not getting more out of me, dude,” Peter says, leaning in and almost whispering. “I’ve already said too much.”
Johnny can’t help but snicker.
--
“So, you’re Johnny Storm, huh?”
This is the most unimpressed girl Johnny has ever met. She doesn’t even seem to care about Sue, and Sue is like… cooler and more famous and smarter than even Johnny is.
“MJ…” Peter mumbles, hands on his face. “Could you just… this one time…”
“Nah,” she says, kicking out a chair and dropping into it. “So, Storm. You’re the guy Peter keeps texting?”
Why is Johnny scared? He’s the human torch. He is totally not scared. He has nothing to be scared of from a random girl that’s barely any older than— “Yep, sure am.”
“Cute,” she says. “Go on, sit down. We’re just having pho.”
Johnny was invited. He has every right to be here. Sue pats him on the shoulder and goes to order some food for herself to take back to Reed in the lab.
“Uh, so you’re the girlfriend?” Johnny asks. “I mean, you’re MJ?”
Peter is doing some kind of full-body wince. It would be impressive if it weren’t for the fact that Johnny’s the one being so embarrassing that it’s justified.
“Yeah, I’m MJ,” she says. He feels judged. “Order some pho. Or, you know, whatever.”
Johnny has no idea what’s going on. He just wanted to meet some of Peter’s friends. Why is Peter’s girlfriend actually making him feel like he’s supposed to be scared? What is he even scared of?
…her noticing Johnny has a massive crush on her boyfriend, probably.
“So, what colleges are you looking at?” she asks, and suddenly they’re in familiar territory.
“Uh, CalTech and MIT are at the top,” he says. “Reed went to Cali and MIT, and he and Sue met at Harvard but that one feels like a bad fit, for me. Honestly not sure if I want to do STEM, though.”
“I’m starting MIT in the fall,” she tells him. “So’s Ned. Peter probably would be too, if his life hadn’t gone pear-shaped.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” Peter says, but he seems… happy? Johnny is starting to get very confused about what their relationship looks like.
They bump shoulders when Peter grabs a bite from her bowl. It’s stupidly cute. She grumps about it, but…
Johnny feels awkward and uncomfortable.
They keep talking about college plans. Sue is long gone, and Johnny is trying so hard to stay cool about everything. They talk about engine models. They talk about astrophysics.
Peter excuses himself to go to the bathroom.
The second he’s gone, MJ fixes him with a glare that eats at his very soul, and says, “you have a crush on my boyfriend.”
It’s not a question. “Yes, but I respect your relationship and, honestly, you scare the crap out of me for reasons I can’t figure out.”
“Cool,” she says, with a slight nod. “Always wanted that kind of power. Anyway, just wanted to be sure.”
That’s it?
He stares at her.
She takes a bite of her food.
Johnny has no idea what’s going on.
He eats some of his own food, and waits for Peter to come back so things start making sense again.
Peter does, in fact, come back. He looks between the two of them, and asks, “MJ, what did you say to him?”
“Sit down, nerd.”
Peter sits. He looks at Johnny, and then MJ, and then Johnny again, and says, “okay. I’m worried.”
MJ rolls her eyes. “I asked him if he had a crush on you, now he’s scared of me.”
Peter looks at her for a few long, awkward moments, and then puts his face in his hands. Johnny continues to be lost. He takes a bite of his pho to make a token attempt at hiding this.
“The reason I asked is because, one, Peter likes you back,” MJ says, and what, “and two, we were aiming to do an open relationship while I’m off in Boston. Congrats, you two talk, I’m going to go pay for my food and wait outside.”
Peter’s face is red as he stares in betrayal at his girlfriend.
Johnny’s face feels so warm and blushy that he’s about ready to burst into flames.
(Which he does.)
(It’s only his head, at least.)