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Peter Parker had answered phone calls in worse positions before.
Not many that he could name, but still he's certain there were some.
He was currently plastered flat to the hood of a black sedan currently doing fifty through Midtown, his boots skidding for purchase against the shitty waxed metal, one hand stuck to the windshield frame, the other trying to keep a guy in the passenger seat from taking another shot at him with what looked, insultingly, like a tire iron.
Peter had just webbed the back tire of the getaway van, puttering it to a stop in time for the following police cars, when the sedan he was on swerved hard. Ow.
Then his phone started ringing.
And for one sane second he ignored it.
But the ringing continued, and he fumbled the phone out of his suit. The caller ID flashed bright through his mask:
Mikey ❤️
Peter shut his eyes.
“Oh, right, right,” he muttered.
The car veered left with the horns blaring. The guy inside yelled something obscene. Peter raised one finger up to hush him, and, because he lost his mind, answered answered his phone.
“Hi,” he said at once, breathless. “Yes. Hi.”
Mikey sounded warm, sleepy, and faintly amused, like he’d been smiling before Peter even picked up. “So you alive?”
Peter ducked as the sedan clipped a mailbox. “Working on it.”
“You didn’t catch me last night,” MJ said. “You still coming 'round?”
Peter winced. Right. Date. Cafe. He checked his watch: Thirty-five— thirty-six minutes ago.
“Yeah, yes,” he said quickly, bracing as the car jerked beneath him. “Of course. Sorry. I just got into some traffic. I’ll be there soon!"
MJ was quiet for a beat.
“How long?”
Peter glanced up, tracking street signs through the blur. “Uh— First and Broadway, second and Broadway, third and Broadway—” the sedan fishtailed and Peter slapped a web to a streetlight to keep from getting pitched into traffic, “—five minutes. Ten tops.”
On the other end of the line, MJ hummed, low, fond, and totally not believing his ass.
Peter could picture him exactly: crisp gray sweatshirt, bunched up at the elbows, one bent on the cafe table. Mikey's probably rubbing his autumn scruff that he swears he won't completely shave til he finishes his thesis. 'You won't see a baby face til spring, Petey.' Peter can see his long fingers on the phone tucked to his ear, looking out the window with that calm and easy look of his.
“It’s cool,” MJ said through the line. “I’ll come to you, baby.”
Peter’s grip softened before he could help it. A warm feeling spread through his chest and his heart flipped several times like an Olympic athlete going for gold.
“No, no,” he said, and despite the car and the tire iron currently trying to remove his kneecaps, his voice dropped into something gentler. “I’ll be right there. Promise!”
“Aight.”
“I mean it.”
“Okay.”
Another horn blast. Peter shot a web into the passenger-side mirror and yanked. The tire iron guy yelped.
“I really am almost there,” Peter said.
MJ laughed under his breath. “Boy, I know. Go handle your little traffic.”
Then he hung up.
Peter stared at the disconnected call for half a second, then jammed the phone back into his suit.
“Okay,” he told the jackasses in the sedan. “Let’s wrap this up.”
MJ put his phone face-down on the cafe table and looked out the window.
Traffic, Peter had said.
Sure.
He huffed once through his nose and tipped back in his chair. The coffee in front of him had gone from hot to warm to don't even bother drinking that shit. Outside, Broadway kept moving in its usual ugly, impatient way.
Five minutes, ten tops.
“Mm,” MJ muttered to himself, unconvinced.
He should’ve known better than to trust Peter’s sense of time when his boyfriend got that particular voice on him— all quick and earnest and trying not to sound guilty. It was very cute. It was also totally bullshit.
MJ drummed two fingers once on the table, then stopped. He caught himself smiling, annoyed at it, and leaned his cheek into his fist instead.
Late as hell, he thought.
And still, against better judgment, his body had already settled into waiting for him. Listening for the door. For that sheepish little “hi” Peter always did when he knew he’d pushed it.
MJ clicked his tongue softly and reached for his coffee anyway.
The explosion hit before the cup touched his mouth, flinging the mug against the wall, shattering to several pieces.
The whole front of the cafe bucked with a sound so huge, Michael thought he was riding a bull. The windows blew outwards. Glass burst across the room. The floor jumped under MJ’s chair hard enough to throw him sideways with it.
For one bright, impossible second everything went white.
Then heat.
A woman screamed.
Somebody shouted, “Gas—!”
The air changed all at once. Smoke and dust and that sharp chemical reek — ugh, it was putrid — was all coming from the walls. Fire licked up one side of the room. A man stumbled into the aisle with blood all down one sleeve, staring around like he couldn’t understand what he was seeing.
“Shit,” MJ said, already on his feet.
People were running, blindly and very stupid.
“Everybody move!” MJ barked, voice cracking. “Move your ass.”
A few listened. Not enough.
Flames climbed the curtains near the side window in a hungry rush. Smoke was already pouring thicker across the ceiling.
MJ’s heart kicked hard once against his ribs. He turned and bolted for the bathroom.
He hit the bathroom door hard enough to make it slam open against the wall behind it. Empty. Good. He shoved himself inside, kicked the door shut, and for the briefest second stood there in the flickering flourescent lighting, chest heaving.
The fire in him started to spark. Heat ran hot under his skin.
MJ braced both hands on the sink.
“Alright,” he muttered to his reflection, smoke already slipping under the crack of the door. “Let’s go.”
Then he flamed on.
Heat tore through him in a clean, familiar rush. Skin to gold. Gold to white at the center. Fire spilling off his shoulders, his arms, his face. The mirror flashed bright enough to blind and then went black at the edges. The room around him shrank from the temperature with a sharp metallic groan.
By the time he kicked back out through the bathroom door, Michael Watson was gone.
The Human Torch hit the room like a live wire.
People looked up and screamed again, but this time it was more "OMG! It's the Human Torch!"
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, already grabbing the frozen girl by the waist and hauling her up against his side. “Save it for later.”
He shot upward in a streak through the broken front of the café, heat curling around him, and landed outside long enough to set her down clear of the wreckage. She nearly collapsed on the sidewalk. Somebody caught her.
Torch didn’t really have the time to wait and see who.
He was back inside in an instant.
The man near the back had gone down to one knee with his friend half over him. Torch hooked one under each arm, flame flaring high around his body but controlled, tight, pulling the worst of the heat away from them as he blasted back toward the street.
One trip.
Two.
Three.
A woman from behind the counter, coughing so hard she could barely stand.
A delivery guy with burns all across one hand.
The old man from the window table who kept trying to say he could walk when he very obviously could not.
Torch took them out one by one, jaw locked tight, ears ringing with every sob and shout and coughing fit. Every time he crossed the threshold the fire had grown.
It was definitely a gas leak. A bad one.
He dropped another civilian into waiting arms outside and whirled back toward the front with both hands up, sucking in a stream of controlled flame from the worst of the blaze to push it back from the neighboring building before it could catch.
“Back up!” he shouted at the idiots edging too close with their phones out. “You motherfuckers tryna to die for a video?”
That got them moving.
He scanned fast.
Front room. Cleared.
Left side. Cleared.
Back hall. Maybe?
Torch narrowed his eyes against the smoke.
Had he gotten everybody?
He ran the count again in his head. What could he remember from before the blast? Damn, he knew he should always scan his surroundings when entering a building. Think! The table placements from before the blast. The guy at the register. Two girls by the window. The old man. The couple in the corner. The mother and kid by the pastry case.
Was there anyone else?
Two blocks later, the driver hit a delivery truck, the sedan spun, and Peter webbed all three occupants to the inside before they could crawl out.
By the time he got clear, contacted the authorities, and swung away, he was grinning despite himself.
That lasted exactly one second until he rounded the last building on Broadway and saw fire.
And holy fuck that was huge.
The cafe was gone in one blooming, roaring wall of orange. Windows blown out. Front half blackened. People yelling on the sidewalk while smoke poured up into the afternoon sky. It had the unmistakable violence of a gas explosion.
Peter’s heart dropped so hard it hurt.
No.
No, no, no.
He landed hard in the middle of the street, nearly took out a taxi, and turned in one frantic circle.
Where was MJ?
People were stumbling away from the front. Coughing. Covered in dust and ash. A woman sobbing into both hands. A man with blood running down his temple.
But no Mikey. He couldn’t see him.
Peter tried to push away the dread that’s filling up like sand in his chest, but his thoughts are hitting him so fast, his vision tunneled.
Then something streaked past overhead in a blast of gold.
The Human Torch.
The Torch came down through the smoke with a woman tucked against his chest, dropped her carefully to paramedics, and shot straight back into the building before the soles of his boots had even cooled.
For one wild, furious second Peter just stood there, caught between hope and terror.
Then the Torch burst back out with two more people hanging off him, flames running bright along his body. He set them down, whirled, and threw both hands toward the front of the cafe. Fire bent back from the neighboring building in a long bright shove.
Peter launched forward.
“Let me help you evacuate everyone!”
The Torch didn’t even turn. “Already got all the civvies out, guy. Now get outta my way. I’m tryna put this shit out.”
Peter’s pulse was hammering so hard he could barely hear himself think. “Are you absolutely sure?”
That got the Torch’s attention. He twisted in the air, affronted. “What?”
“I heard someone was looking for a young man—”
“Man, what the hell are you talking about?”
Peter shot a web on instinct, fast and sharp, snagging the Torch across one blazing wrist just to make him look at him. “Are you sure you got everyone?!”
The Torch stared at the web on his arm in pure outrage.
“Wha—”
Peter had already ripped his phone free, while Torch was occupied with the sticky web.
He hit Mikey’s contact.
And over the roar of the fire, over the sirens, over people shouting— a musical ringtone. It was tinny and muffled, but to Peter it was damned familiar.
"I'm holding out for a hero till the end of the night—!"
He went still.
The sound was coming from inside the burning cafe.
Torch froze too.
For a split second neither of them moved.
Then the Torch swore. He muttered, “Shit. I left my phone in there—” Did Peter see the fire? Hopefully, the motherfucker isn't panicking and is still slowly making his way here.
But little did Michael know Peter was very much right beside him and very much panicking. All Peter heard was Mikey’s ringtone inside a burning building.
“Someone’s still in there,” he said.
Then Spiderman was moving.
He shot a web through the shattered front window and swung in through smoke and heat before the Torch could grab him.
Behind him, faint through the crackle and the blast of flame, he heard faintly:
“Are you stupid? Spidey— no, Spiderman, just— man, what the fuck!”
Inside, everything was red and black and screaming.
The explosion had gutted the front room. Tables blown apart. Ceiling fan down. Glass everywhere. The air had that hot chemical thickness that clawed at the back of his throat even through the mask.
“Anybody in here!” Peter shouted.
No answer.
The ringtone was still going somewhere deeper in.
Peter vaulted a fallen beam and followed it toward the back hall. The floor groaned under him. Heat licked at his suit. He pushed harder.
A crash sounded behind him and then the Torch came in through the side wall in a burst of flame.
“You're dumb as hell,” he snapped, landing hard. “You came in here for a damn phone?”
Peter whipped around, breathing hard. “There's someone in here.”
"Y'know, in the event of an emergency, smart people leave their belongings in the burning building—"
Then part of the kitchen ceiling collapsed.
Both of them moved at once.
Under the wreckage, somewhere beyond the service counter, someone screamed.
Someone was here.
Peter vaulted the counter. They found a cafe worker pinned under a steel support beam, one leg trapped under splintered timber and twisted metal.
“Oh, God,” the guy choked when he saw Peter. “Please—”
“We got you,” Peter said at once.
The Torch was already on the other side of the beam, heat pouring off him in hard waves. “Don’t try cutting the middle,” Peter said, dropping into a crouch. “If you weaken the load-bearing point, the whole thing comes down.”
Torch shot him a look through the flames. “Yeah, I know that.”
Peter blinked. “Right. Good. Great.”
Together, without even thinking about it, they fell into rhythm.
Peter webbed the beam at two points overhead and braced it with both arms.
Torch crouched low, flames narrowing white-hot at his fingertips, cutting clean through the splintered wood pinning the man’s leg without touching him.
“Okay,” Peter gritted out. “On three.”
“Three."
Peter huffed, annoyed despite himself, and heaved.
The beam rose.
Torch dragged the civilian free.
Then everything above them shrieked.
A pipe burst overhead with a violent metallic pop and suddenly white suppressant foam blasted into the room in choking torrents. It came down thick and wet and relentless, swallowing flame, clogging the air, turning the whole kitchen into a snowy la la land.
The Torch staggered.
His fire cut low.
Peter turned sharply.
Flame guttered off one arm. Then his shoulder. Then the left side of his face.
There was plenty flame left, but there was just enough missing.
Enough for Peter to see dark skin slick with sweat and soot. Enough to see the line of a cheekbone he had kissed not two days ago. Enough to see a mouth he knew in the dark.
Peter stopped breathing. There was no way. It couldn't be—
“Mikey?”
The Torch looked up.
Half his face was still lit gold. Half of it wasn’t. His eyes went wide first, then narrowed.
“Peter?” he said hoarsely. “Damn, man, what the fuck?”
The beam overhead cracked.
Peter moved without a second's hesitation.
He lunged, shot a web to the split support, planted both feet, and hauled the collapsing beam back an inch—just enough.
MJ, because of course it was MJ, because of course it had always been MJ, cursed under his breath and tried to flame up again. The suppressant hit him harder, sputtering the fire along his chest and hands.
“Don’t,” Peter snapped. “You’ll burn yourself out.”
MJ stared at him. “You talkin' to me in that spider suit is still crazy as fuck. I don't burn, baby.”
Peter would have laughed if he wasn't in severe need of a shock blanket.
Instead he grabbed MJ by the waist and hauled him bodily clear as the beam slammed down where he’d been pinned.
The civilian was sobbing. Peter webbed him up in a quick harness around the chest.
“You take him,” Peter said.
MJ pushed himself up on one elbow, dazed but angry on principle. “I'm taking orders from you now—?”
A backdraft punched through the far wall with a roar.
Peter threw himself over MJ on instinct.
Fire hit them hard enough to shove them both across the floor. There was a crack above them. MJ flipped them over.
For one terrible second Peter felt MJ’s body flare over his, heat rushing back violently, shielding him from the worst of it.
Then MJ snarled, “Move,” and blasted flame forward in a concentrated arc that blew open the rear emergency exit in one screaming shower of sparks.
Cold daylight cut through the smoke.
Peter didn’t waste it.
He slung the civilian in a webline and yanked him clean through the open route and out onto the alley pavement where paramedics could get him.
Behind him, MJ got to his feet, swaying, flames guttering back stronger now that the suppressant was thinning.
“You good?” Peter shouted.
MJ coughed once. “Bruh.”
Then the floor gave out under Peter.
It happened fast. One second solid ground, the next a cracking scream of tile and subfloor and then open air.
Peter dropped shoulder-first into the basement.
He hit hard enough to white out.
When he came back, everything hurt.
One leg was pinned under a bent steel shelf. His right web-shooter had cracked on impact.
He tried to move and pain shot bright up his side.
“Great,” he rasped. “Perfect. Awesome, even.”
Above him, through smoke and flame, he saw gold.
MJ had reached the hole in the floor.
Peter wanted to shout for him to stay up there.
He wanted to say: contain the fire, go help everyone else, be the hero, I’ll figure it out.
Instead what came out was a weak laugh.
“You came.”
MJ looked down at him through the smoke, face dirty, furious— and scared in a way Peter had never seen.
“Nigga, don't you dare spin what just happened, this all started because I was the one waiting for you,” he shouted back, voice cracking around the edges.
Then he jumped.
He came down in a streak of fire and hit the basement floor hard, one knee bent, both hands bright. The heat of him shoved the smoke back for one blessed second.
Peter stared.
“Hi,” he said faintly.
MJ pointed at him. “Do not start.”
“Fair.”
MJ knelt by the steel shelf and got both hands under it. “On three.”
Peter blinked up at him. “I thought you didn't—”
MJ heaved. “Shut up and pull your leg, Peter.”
He yanked his leg free with a gasp. MJ caught him before he tipped sideways, one hot arm locking around his back.
Above them, the hole in the floor widened. Fire licked down the walls.
“Can you fly us out?” Peter coughed.
MJ looked up. Judged the angle. The fire. The weight.
“Yeah,” he said. Then, after half a beat: “You trusting me?”
Peter looked at him.
He looked the soot and dimples across MJ's cheek and at the ridiculous fact that the man Peter had been dating for months apparently is also a fucking superhero.
“With my life,” Peter said. What even is his life?
MJ stared at him a second too long.
Then he rolled his eyes whenever Peter was inconveniently sincere (sappy as hell).
“Alright,” he muttered. “Web us together.”
Peter’s hands shook a little as he shot a line around both of them, cinching them chest to chest.
“Little closer,” MJ said.
Peter raised a brow. “You flirting with me?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Then MJ flamed, and with a roar, they shot straight up.
They blasted through the collapsing hole, through smoke and fire and splintered beams, through the ruined roof in an explosion of sparks and golden light.
For one insane second they were above it all. Peter had to admit, with Midtown spread out beneath them, flying was freaking awesome.
Then MJ angled them hard and brought them down on the rooftop of the building next door.
Yeah, they landed pretty badly, half stumbling, half falling.
Peter ripped off his mask and sucked in a lungful of cold air that hurt all the way down.
MJ dropped beside him, one hand braced to the side railings, still faintly glowing at the edges.
For a while neither of them said anything.
Below, people were shouting. Firefighters swarmed the cafe.
Peter looked over.
MJ was looking back.
Same eyes. Same mouth. Same man. Just with the added problem of apparently being on fire sometimes.
Peter coughed once and wiped soot from his face. “So,” he said. “You’re the Human Torch.”
MJ leaned back on the rooftop railing. “And you’re Spider-Man.”
Peter let out a short laugh, maybe slightly hysterical. “Wow. We are embarrassingly bad at this.”
MJ snorted. “Speak for yourself. I had this handled till your ass heard Bonnie Tyler and lost your damn mind.”
Peter turned to him, offended. “I knew it was your phone in there. That's your ringtone for me.”
“Yeah.” MJ shrugged. “And look how right I was.”
Peter opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again. “I heard your phone in a burning building.”
“And you went in for it. What the fuck, Peter?”
“I went in for you.”
That quieted them both.
Peter swallowed. “I thought you were still in there.”
“Hey,” MJ said.
“I really thought—”
“I know, Peter. Peter.”
Peter looked down at his hands. They were still shaking a little.
MJ saw it. He reached over and put one warm hand over Peter’s fist.
Peter turned his hand and held on. And they stayed like that for a while.
Then Peter, because some part of him was always going to be Peter even with the suit, said, “So… are we breaking up?”
MJ looked at him at the man in front of him, who was covered in soot, hair a mess, and mask hanging around his neck. He was earnest as a kicked dog and somehow still making jokes on the heels of near death.
His mouth twitched.
“You ran into a burning building for me,” MJ said. “Unfortunately, that’s the hottest thing anybody’s ever done for me.”
Peter dug out a shit-eating smirk. "Oh?"
“Next time,” MJ said, “don’t be late for a date, Spider-Man.”
“Next time?” Peter asked, quieter now. “There’s gonna be a next time?”
Peter’s eyes dropped to his mouth.
Michael noticed. Of course he noticed.
MJ grabbed the front of his suit and hauled him forward.
“Yeah,” he said.
Then he kissed him.
When they finally broke apart, Peter rested his forehead against MJ’s and laughed softly.
"You're Mr. Giggleshits today, man," MJ sighed.
“You know,” Peter murmured, “this explains a lot.”
MJ’s hand stayed fisted in his suit. “Like what?”
“Like why you’re always so warm.”
MJ rolled his eyes. “Shut up.”
“And the incredible upper body strength.”
“Peter.”
“And the fact that you never seem cold.”
MJ kissed him again just to stop him talking.
It worked for maybe three seconds.
When they drew apart, Peter was smiling against his mouth.
Then, because he could not help himself, he said, “So do I get to change your contact name now, or—”
MJ groaned. “Do not start the corny superhero shit now.”
Peter’s grin widened. “Flameboy?”
“I will throw you off this roof.”
“Sunshine?”
“I mean it.”
“My Hot—”
MJ shoved at his shoulder. Peter laughed, caught his wrist, and tugged him back in before he could fully pull away.
Below them, the sirens wailed continuously.
And above them, the smoke thinned into the evening.
The city would catch up soon. It always did. But for now, in their calm empty sky, none of that mattered. Their smiles were immovable, like they had been carved from stone. And on the rooftop, soot-streaked and grinning like idiots, Spider-Man and the Human Torch kissed again, and for that moment, they were somewhere the city could not follow.