Chapter Text
It all happens so fast. One moment he's there with the Fantastic Four, dodging an energy blast from a Doombot after wresting it off of the Human Torch; the next there's a flash of light and he's on his back in a frozen wasteland.
For a solid minute Peter thinks that maybe he's just gotten his brain rattled—that maybe this is all in his imagination and he's actually embarrassing himself by stumbling around trying to brush illusory snow off of him in the streets of Manhattan, but once the cold really starts to set in, like prickling little bites against his skin, he has to accept that maybe he's not in proverbial Kansas anymore.
So where exactly has he ended up? Everywhere he looks there's snow and not much else; if he'd been playing GeoGuessr he'd have thrown in the towel immediately. He doesn't even have the sun to go by; the sky is heavily overcast and the wind is beating down on him so bad he can't tell if it's actually snowing or if it's just blowing all the existing snow into his masked face.
A sweaty spandex suit has to be just about the worst thing he could be wearing in this situation (other than a fully wet one, of course) and Peter's propensity for running cold even on a normal day certainly won't be of help. He needs to find some form of shelter.
—
Turns out there's a cliff not too far from him; a natural alcove about a quarter mile away. Although after trudging through the snow to get there it turns out that while it provides some cover from the elements, the wind is coming from the open side. So…that's great. Just great.
And while the Fantastic Four were there to see him get teleported away from New York, it's not like they can magically pull him back from wherever he's gone. The one bright spot is he's got one of their locators in the emblem on his chest, which means they should be able to see where he is once they're done kicking several hundred shiny Doombutts.
He only hopes he's not frozen solid by the time they're able to get to him.
His valiant attempt to make a wall to keep some of the wind out goes sideways (or, all over the place) when the snow he wants to build with turns out to not be malleable at all (too cold, idiot, the smarter but also meaner part of his brain informs him), and then he's wet-handed as well as wet-footed and at an even bigger risk of losing extremities.
So that's also really swell.
In the end he webs himself up inside a big cocoon to insulate himself; suspends it between the roof and ground with strands of webbing so he's at least not in contact with any frozen surfaces. It takes a ton of web fluid to make it even a little windproof, and his numb fingers ache and struggle to even press down the trigger for his shooter for that long, but it's worth it when he doesn't have to have that chill beating down against him at every moment. It's still cold, but he feels less like a candle about to be snuffed out at least. He lays his wet gloves on top; the bright red fabric shines like a beacon against a landscape of gray and white.
His heart seems to be working double time to pump blood through his body, every pulsing beat coming like a wave of pressure through his body, aching as it reaches as far as the tips of his ears. Something is making him grow dizzy; maybe it's the cold, or maybe it's the constant wind—he doesn't know. It's probably not a panic attack; he's too clear-minded for that. Although his mind can't stop repeating the science of freezing, as if clinically acknowledging the process will make it take longer.
Tiny pinpricks of red dot the backs of his hands; the dry cold tightening the skin as water evaporates; the blood has already frozen. The rest of his hands are probably next; extremities are always the first to go. He ends up hugging himself, wedging his fingers into his armpits and his toes into the bends of his knees, and tries hard not to think too much about how spiders die with their limbs curled inwards.
The wind starts to bear down harder, piercing past the webbing and his costume directly into his skin, and Peter wants nothing more than to skip past the harrowing wait to see if maybe he gets to live past this day too. He'd love to go to sleep and wake up warm in bed in one of the Fantastic Four's ships, with a thick blanket enveloping him and a hot water bottle tucked under his feet—but he can't; sleeping means your body slows down, producing less heat, and that doesn't pair well with not freezing to death. Instead, when his eyelids start to feel heavy he pinches the skin around his armpits and tries to predict what the FF are doing back on home turf.
They saw him disappear; he knows they did. Johnny was right there in front of him, eyes going wide as that flash of light enveloped Peter. They're going to search for him, but they have to first finish beating back the Doombots, manage the immediate cleanup, and then get to one of their terminals to actually pinpoint his location—all that before they can even begin to move towards him. It's not gonna be fast.
And here's Peter, in thin clothes and the equivalent of a cheap sleeping bag. And he's what, in Siberia? Where it's cold enough that his legs are pulsing with pain at the same time that they're going numb. How long is he even going to make it?
Now that's a line of thought he really should not be entertaining. Nothing good can come from dwelling on his impending death.
…but maybe a couple of hours if he's lucky?
It's hard not to count the time as he sits there in the dark. Every effort made to think about other things is suddenly and out-of-nowhere interrupted by the realization that another five minutes probably passed while he was unaware. At one point, as the numbness really starts to set in, it becomes impossible not to have every thought interrupted by one Mississippi, two Mississippi, as he desperately tries to keep himself warm.
Shivering is a good thing, he knows. It forces your body to move and produce heat. It's a survival mechanism; it's necessary. It's still terrible when violent jerking of his cold-stiff muscles makes them cramp up in pain. Agony shoots through his jaw as his teeth chatter. It's fine; eventually he won't even be able to separate the pain in his muscles from the full-body ache of all his outer blood vessels contracting.
He's in the several dozens of minutes (but he's not counting them, he swears), when the wind suddenly gets even louder. He braces himself for another painful gust of wind to beat through the walls of his webbing, but nothing comes. Then, almost startlingly loud—
"Are you in there, Pete?"
Even through the cocoon Peter can feel the heat radiating off of the Human Torch's body, although it stops a moment later as he flames off.
Through the somewhat sluggish haze of his mind Peter's vaguely able to reason that he's never been happier to hear Johnny's voice than just now. Smiling hurts, but he still can't help the corners of his lips curling upwards.
Johnny comes closer, his voice more clear on the other side of the cocoon. "…Okay, I know you like the spider stuff, but this is just nasty."
Of course he hates the cocoon. Peter would laugh if he weren't so busy shivering.
"Peter? You're okay, right? Talk to me, bud." The cocoon shifts as Johnny begins to pull at it, a noise of frustration soon escaping him when it doesn't tear despite his efforts. "God, I hate this stupid webbing! I'm gonna burn it open, so stay back."
There's almost no room to maneuver inside the cocoon, so all Peter manages to do is push himself weakly away from the source of Johnny's voice. When the webbing begins to melt away it still almost singes him and he yelps.
"Oh thank god, you're still alive," Johnny says with relief, then apologetically adds, "Sorry, it's—speed is key here."
Hands reach for him through the opening of the cocoon and the moment he can feel the heat radiating from them, Peter wants nothing more than to feel them against his body forever. Oh, if he could crawl inside of Johnny's body right now, he would. He strains towards it, desperate for any solace to his cold limbs.
Johnny grabs onto him and hauls him out, but then abruptly stops. "Uh, Pete? Is this like a spider thing or is it a tongue-on-lightpole thing?" He tugs his hands back and Peter's body follows as if attached and oh yeah, that's definitely a spider thing.
"'M sorry," he mumbles as he wills himself into unsticking enough for Johnny to shift his grip.
Johnny's face lights up, in the figurative sense. "Hey, he speaks! I was worried you'd gone mute from the cold."
As soon as he says that, the wind comes crashing into the alcove again, leaving Johnny unaffected but making a violent shiver go through Peter's body. "Not q–quite." he stutters out, teeth clattering against each other. "G–getting there."
"Well, good thing I'm here. Let's get you warmed up." Johnny encloses Peter's hands within his own and exhales heated air onto them, instantly making them come alive with a horrible yet wonderfully prickling pain.
Johnny helps him into a sitting position at the opening of the cocoon, legs dangling outside so Peter doesn't have to have his feet touch the ground while Johnny works to reawaken his body.
"How are you feeling, Pete?" Johnny asks as his hands begin to graze over Peter's form, moving limbs and feeling out the cold of his skin, sending more heat into frozen bones.
"C–cold. Angry a–about the cold," Peter grits out. His hands are already beginning to lose the heat Johnny had breathed into them.
"You know you're allowed to get handsy with the human heating pad, right?" Johnny kneels beside his legs, ready to check Peter's lower half. "I don't mind."
Instantly, Peter folds himself over him, wrapping around Johnny's shoulder and half of his upper back like an overfriendly boa constrictor, relishing in the warmth blooming against his chest, and also in the small huff of exertion from Johnny as he almost topples over.
Johnny's hand curls around…something. Probably Peter's toes.
"Dude, your feet are freezing. What'd you do to them?"
"Snow."
"Well, doy."
Each of Johnny's words also come through as slight vibrations against Peter's chest, buzzing against it like life and levity made physical. Also, Peter's face is practically nuzzling into Johnny's armpit, but he doesn't care. He's too cold to feel shame right now; he can't even feel his feet.
"I'm gonna take your boots off, aight? Please tell me you've washed the suit recently and I'm not about to unleash a biological weapon of mass stinkage on myself."
Johnny's a nervous talker, same as Peter, and it's hard to decide whether to be annoyed or endeared by it. On principle he wants to say the first, but it's impossible to claim that the warmth in his chest is purely physical. He's just glad that he's not freezing to death alone in the snow, and somewhat glad that it's Johnny of all people that ended up coming for him.
His lids slip closed and he groans in discomfort as Johnny peels his cold boots off, the awful feeling of pain in a mostly numb limb reminiscent of when your foot is asleep and about to wake up.
"Hey, looks like all ten of your piggies are alive and oinking," Johnny says and immediately, Peter's eyes snap back open, alert with a mix of horror, disgust and indignity.
"N–never…never c–call them that again," he says with a shudder.
"Sorry, I forgot I need to be all sterile and stiff when I'm squeezin' a guy's toes." Even though Peter can't see his face, the eye roll is very apparent in Johnny's voice.
"Torch, if the last s–sentence I hear before my f–final curtain contains the word 'piggies,' I'm haunting you f–forever."
Johnny turns back up to look at him. "Come on, you're gonna be fine." He smiles as he says it but there's a faint waver to his voice. "I'm right here, dude—I'm fixing you."
"C–can't hear you over the sound of me going to sleep forever."
"Really funny," Johnny sneers. A moment later Peter hisses and draws his feet back as Johnny's hands pulse with uncomfortably high heat. "Crap! Are you okay?"
"T–terrible rescue operation. I'll be speaking to your m–manager once we're back," Peter says, because even in his state he can hear the slight panic in Johnny's voice; the fear that he's hurt him. He needs something to push that train of thought away or he'll stew in it.
"Wow, good thing I got all worried about you." Johnny looks away, towards the discarded gloves of his costume, then reaches out to poke the slightly too solid fabric. "Hey, your suit's going all frozen, dude." He grabs one of the iced-over gloves and shows it off to Peter. "Is it better to have nothing on or to have wet stuff on?"
"N–nothing, I think."
"Thanks, science man." Johnny unceremoniously tucks the gloves into his pocket, then the boots, and then gets right back to putting his hands on Peter.
—
It's weird. Peter doesn't think anyone's ever touched him this much in this short of a span of time, sans maybe that time at nine years old when he fell off his bike going down a hill and Aunt May went full mother hen on him for the rest of the day. Johnny's not too dissimilar; thoroughly working to heat Peter back up without a single complaint; a shade more nurturing than Peter's ever seen him.
He wants to make a joke about it, like asking Johnny if he even fusses this much over Frankie and Val, or if Peter's just special? But that might make him self-conscious and then Peter might have to contend with having certain parts of his body suddenly at risk of freezing over. So, he makes an effort to shut up, just making light conversation between shudders and responding to the occasional check-in, and eventually Johnny calms down enough to stop running his mouth as well.
And by the time Peter feels a little less like a human icicle, when his shivers have become less like full-body seizures and more like light shakes, Johnny takes the reins to get them back home.
"I went back for our ship pretty much the moment I saw you get magicked away," he says while burning a path through the snow so Peter can attempt to take a few careful steps on stiff legs. "You actually landed pretty close to us—well, you didn't land on a different planet, or even on the opposite side of the world, which is good because I did not have enough fuel to fly that far."
Peter grits his teeth as he stands for the first time in hours, making sure to keep himself plastered to Johnny's side for moral support, physical support, and warmth as he takes an unsteady step. "You're flying a ship with no fuel?"
"Almost no fuel. Didn't have time to resupply once I saw where you'd ended up."
"And where is that?"
Johnny brings them a few steps further, to where they can properly see their surroundings. "Greenland, dude." He's beaming with some flavor of annoying smile that Peter's too discombobulated to fully make out. "You're technically trespassing in their national park."
"Well…" Peter looks out at the mass of land before him, empty and almost entirely blinding white. Great to know he was committing a crime while freezing to death; it's important to stay on theme. "That sucks."
Johnny kneels down for him to climb on piggyback style. "Could have been worse. You could have ended up in the ocean."
Peter makes sure to only lightly stick to his body as he wraps his arms and legs fully around Johnny's torso. No need to freak him out more with the spider powers. "I'd have made a web raft."
"No way that stuff holds water."
"Yes way, it does." And it's true—the webbing can be waterproof, but the sheer amount of web fluid Peter would have to go through to layer it to that point would leave him so bankrupt he'd honestly rather drown.
Johnny gives him a sidelong glance over the shoulder. "Okay, so why not web yourself up some new boots?"
Oh. Yeah, Peter could do that. He should do that. Why had he not thought to do that?
"That's actually…a really good idea, Johnny," he admits.
"Yeah I'm full of them," Johnny replies and Peter could swear his temperature grows hotter in the same moment.
And as Johnny stops to let Peter spray some webbing around his soon-so-be-freezing feet, Peter can't help but feel unbelievably fond of him. Blame it on the rapid onset hypothermia. He redirects that feeling into something more manageable once he spots the iced-over tracks left by Johnny's flying.
"Nice skid marks—haven't you ever heard of 'leave no trace?'"
"I'm sorry, next time you get teleported halfway across the world I'll make sure to take my time getting there. I hear insects do really well with flash freezing."
"Good thing spiders are arachnids."
"Good thing I'm a nice enough guy not to dump you back into the snow right now. You're pretty heavy, you know?"
"You're not supposed to comment on a lady's weight," Peter replies automatically. Before Johnny can respond, he adds, "I think you're just not very strong."
"Not true," Johnny says, voice high and more than a little offended. "I work out."
Compulsively, Peter makes a noise of disbelief, then tightens his grip on Johnny's body in lieu of firing back. It draws a weird noise from Johnny—a weird mix of a hiss and sigh that he quickly disguises with a clearing of his throat.
It's kind of strange to be so close together like this with Johnny. Yeah, the two of them aren't exactly touch-shy; there's been more than a fair share of arms draped over shoulders, legs slung across laps during movie nights, and sitting with their arms pressed together. It's easy, and even when he's not freezing to death, Peter loves to take advantage of that high body temperature Johnny always has, but what they do is always a little put-on. Slapping and shoving and messing about because that's what they do.
Holding on to Johnny like this—maximizing contact by laying his arms down along his chest, to the point where Peter can feel the steady beat of his heart—it's clinical; it's functional; it's the logical thing to do in this situation, but the contrast of their usual antics makes it feel much more intimate than it should. More sincere, almost.
For a long time he doesn't understand why that would be; why he feels so exposed even without the wind beating down on his cold body. Then, as Johnny inches his way down a steep hill, releasing Peter's legs so he can keep his arms out for balance, it hits him: those half-joking casual touches are what he does with his friends, and nothing more. Anything more earnest is reserved for family and lovers.
And he and Johnny are a lot of things, but last Peter checked they were not lovers. Still, he doesn't want to shy away from this new type of contact. Again, it's probably due to the severity of their situation, but who knows? Maybe Johnny is helping him let his hair down. Or maybe it's something else.
Trying to ignore how that little thought is ringing through his head, as Johnny finally gets back on level ground and grabs onto his legs again, Peter instead asks, "Hey, why aren't you flying?"
"'Cause I'm kinda tapped out."
"Wow. Weaksauce."
"Hey, some of us have been keeping Doom back all day. And others get magic zapped right after joining the fight—" Johnny stumbles over a block of ice and instinctively tightens his grip on Peter's ankles; Peter tries to ignore the surge of warmth that shoots through his body in response. "Anyway, I figure it's best to keep my flame on low until rescue comes."
"Aren't you the rescue?"
"Well yeah, but the ship—again, we hadn't resupplied before the Doombot invasion started. But Sue's gonna come as soon as things have settled down back home, and I'm here to keep you alive 'til then. And the ship…well, it might be slightly chilly, but you've got me, so it's fine. You'll be snug as an arachno-bug."
Johnny stops for a moment to not-so-subtly catch his breath, before exhaling in a huff and pressing his arms closer to his chest, giving Peter's legs an affirming squeeze as he begins to move again.
It's…distracting. Peter has nothing to be distracted from, but it's distracting nonetheless.
"How long?" he asks, hoping Johnny doesn't notice the weird strain in his voice.
"You went poof right before Reed could set off his EMP thingy, so unless something more has happened—"
"I meant until we get to the ship."
"What, having your own personal space heater isn't good enough for you? Probably another 20 minutes? Autopilot landed the ship right by the coast."
Peter hums and maybe, by some definition of the word, pouts a little. "My back's getting cold."
"Well, it's not like you can carry me," Johnny says with a clear grin in his voice. "You're such a frail little thing right now."
For that comment, Peter tightens his legs around Johnny's chest, squeezing around his ribs until Johnny cries uncle.
—
Turns out the autopilot didn't land on the coast. In fact, at some point land ends and the coast instead connects to a large section of ice, stretching far off into the distance. Johnny hoots in excitement as the wind begins to die down and snow stops obstructing their vision, when they're finally able to spot the ship standing idle several hundred feet out.
Peter can't wait to get inside simply because he'd like to avoid having any other intimacy-induced revelations about Johnny Storm if he can help it.
After taking four steps on the ice and almost falling over, Johnny seems less happy to see it.
"Ugh, why'd that stupid thing land so far out," he grumbles. "Sit tight and I'll bring it closer."
He puts Peter down and thankfully turns away so quickly that he doesn't notice Peter's legs wobbling like a newborn calf's as he's forced to stretch them out and use them without any support.
While he's grateful that Johnny's looking to get him inside as quickly as possible, Peter still mopes at losing that source of heat, resigning to stand curled in on himself, cold and grumpy as he watches Johnny rush for the ship.
Then his spider-sense blares and his eyes go wide in horror.
"Johnny, don't—!"
He gets no further before the ground gives way under Johnny's feet and he disappears through the ice.