Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nothing would ever convince Johnny that the aliens hadn’t planned their invasion specifically to inconvenience him.

To begin with, the first wave of their invasion had been timed to interrupt his weekly mani-pedi. Come on. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

His appointment was at precisely the same time every week. Had been for years. The aliens must have known. They’d done it so he wouldn’t be as hot as usual, hadn’t they? Unravel the war effort from within by lowering the morale of all of the other heroes he had to fight alongside. Johnny knew for a fact that his hotness was totally inspiring to everyone, no matter what they all said to his face, repeatedly and loudly.

Then there was the fact that the aliens—who Reed would later figure out, by poring over their encrypted transmissions, were called the Krotrakka—had unforgivably decided to invade right at the beginning of July, Johnny’s favorite month. Coincidence? Johnny didn’t think so.

The worst part of it all was that he hadn’t even had time to finish his mani-pedi, so approximately three of the fingernails of his left hand had been left untrimmed.

It had proved extremely difficult to talk his manicurist into finishing when there was a whole fleet of alien ships in the skies above New York, firing unprovoked. She’d mostly just run away screaming at the top of her lungs, like everyone else in the beauty salon.

Johnny supposed he couldn’t really blame her. Most civilians weren’t as accustomed to aliens as he was. He’d found that after he’d dated a few of them and they hadn’t called him back ever, the fascination had really started to wear off.

The Krotrakka themselves appeared on the streets below Johnny as unexpectedly as their ships had in the skies above him. Some were tall, imposing, with jagged, sickly-white limbs that climbed into the sky, others smaller but sporting razor-sharp claws that tore through flesh as easily as a knife and thick, thick hides that were nearly impenetrable.

Johnny took down as many as he could and swept civilians out of the way of falling debris and blindingly bright alien death rays, but it didn’t do much good. Hundreds if not thousands of people died before New York was successfully evacuated of all civilians.

Plus, he never got to finish his mani-pedi. Hell, a month passed by and he hadn’t had a single one since the day the invasion began.

Johnny’s life was so trying at times. No one ever appreciated how difficult it was to maintain his standard levels of hotness. It took work. How on earth was he supposed to look hot when there were no active beauty salons he could go to? It didn’t just happen by itself, people.

He made the mistake of asking Reed one day if he could have an emergency beautician flown in by the army. In response, Reed gave him a look that was very much unamused and perhaps even a trifle—no, make that very—annoyed, and Johnny knew what it meant well enough to give up asking entirely. He probably shouldn’t have asked in the middle of battle, but, in his defense, it had been a real emergency. Johnny, horrifyingly, had broken one of his nails. 

The worst part of it all was knowing that he could potentially die in battle at any moment and that he might have to do so with terrible nails, hair that hadn’t been trimmed in a month, and an unwaxed chest. He could see the funeral now. “Wow, he really let himself go,” people would say, and Johnny, tragically, wouldn’t even be alive to defend himself.

The next few weeks were somehow even more hellish than that. The New Avengers, the Mighty Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and every other team that could be scrambled together across the globe were all that stood between the Krotrakka and certain world domination.

Hero after hero fell before the Krotrakka. Some were untrained and untested, but they had wanted to help stem the tide of the alien invasion, and they paid the price.

Reed did his best to hide it, but Johnny knew him well enough to be able to tell that the invasion wasn’t going all that well for Earth. The humans were beginning to grow desperate. Reed, Tony, and Luke had been trying their best to capture one of the Krotrakka’s wormhole generators, but they were too heavily defended, and without one of them, the heroes’ defense plans weren’t viable.

But this was Reed. There was no doubt in Johnny’s mind that Reed would find some way to save them all. He always did.

If Reed could defeat Galactus, there was no way he was going to have his ass handed to him by these loser aliens no one had ever even heard of. That Johnny was sure of.

Johnny was more focused on worrying about the fact that he still hadn’t gotten to a beautician, even though he’d somehow managed to break four other nails as the weeks passed by. His hands looked hideous. He could hardly even stand to look at them.

It was all so depressing. Not at all the way Johnny had planned on spending his July. He’d wanted to be on a nice beach somewhere. Maybe he could’ve talked Pete into joining him.

Johnny knew, thanks to all of those joint FF-Parker family vacations, that Peter looked great in swim trunks…with water dripping down all of that tan, muscled skin...like something out of Baywatch.

Man, but that had been a good show. Maybe Johnny could talk Peter into reenacting some of his favorite scenes someday. Probably not, but a guy could dream, right?

His Baywatch Peter fantasy quickly became his go-to when he was bored on guard duty. Made his mouth water every time. Given that Johnny was going through a bit of a dry spell thanks to the incredibly inconvenient invasion, it didn’t take long for his fantasy to start ending with hot beach make-outs and vigorous beach sex.

The fantasy went something like this:

Fantasy Johnny would be floating around in the ocean in a form-fitting and very flattering set of swim trunks that clung to all the right places—the way that actual swim trunks never did—when he’d spot a very hot, buff lifeguard jogging down the beach, doing his rounds—fantasy Peter, of course.

Did lifeguards do rounds? Johnny didn’t know or care. This was his fantasy, after all, and in his fantasy, they did rounds. While running. In slow motion.

Johnny would sometimes pretend to drown to get fantasy Peter’s attention, sometimes actually drown, because it was hard paying attention to the swimming when there was someone that hot around.

Someone on the beach would notice fantasy Johnny floundering and shout, “Hey, there’s a really hot guy drowning out there! He is super hot, people! Like, we’re talking hottest guy I’ve ever seen! We have to save him for humanity’s sake! Think of the gene pool!”

Thank you, fantasy science lady. See? She gets it. Why couldn’t actual people be more like that lady? Johnny wondered that a lot.

Very Hot Lifeguard Peter would swim out purposefully and rescue Johnny. Sweep him up in strong arms that were bulging with muscles and pull him back to shore. They were important, those muscles.

Fantasy Peter would lay Johnny out on the sun-warmed beach—Johnny would look totally sexy, of course, even when soaking wet and half dead—and do CPR, the sexy kind that involved kissing, and his mouth would taste like the sea and those stupid cherry pies he liked eating so much. That’s what Johnny liked to imagine, anyways.

“Come on!” fantasy Peter would shout despairingly as he pressed his hands down on Johnny’s chest, over and over. “You’re too sexy to die and you know it!”

That was Johnny’s cue. He would come back to life without coughing up seawater because it wasn’t very sexy. Maybe there’d be a tiny trickle, just for realism’s sake, but that was it.

He’d just open his eyes, grin rakishly, say, “Did someone just say ‘sexy’?” and then pull fantasy Peter into a passionate kiss, much to the delight of the crowd around them.

Crowds were always suckers for true love, because in Johnny’s fantasy, that’s what it was.

“Wow,” fantasy Peter would sigh when Johnny finally stopped the kissing long enough to catch his breath, and then he’d grin in a handsome, devil-may-care way that made Johnny’s heart race, and why couldn’t the real Peter ever smile at him like that? Not fair, real Peter.

This next bit was Johnny’s favorite, because the real Peter had never admitted that he thought Johnny was hot and, honestly, would it kill him to say it just once? They both knew Johnny was totally hot, because everyone knew that. What was the point in pretending he wasn’t?

“I couldn’t let someone as sexy as you die, now could I?” fantasy Peter would say. “You’re really sexy, by the way.”

“No,” Johnny would agree, feeling triumphant and vindicated. “You really, really couldn’t, and yeah, I totally am, aren’t I? I knew you thought that.”

Fantasy Peter, taken aback because this version was a complete stranger, would say, “What?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Johnny’d say quickly. He’d slip back into the role of fantasy Johnny, give Peter an absolutely smoldering look, and say, “How about you show me just how sexy you think I am?” and Peter would.

That was the nice thing about fantasy Peter. He always did whatever Johnny wanted, unlike the real one, who was temperamental, stuck-up, and downright contrary sometimes. The real one would definitely never kiss Johnny, even if he asked nicely.

And then the cheering but ultimately inconvenient crowd would magically vanish and so would all of fantasy Johnny and Peter’s clothes, in one fell stroke. Then they would have hot, hot beach sex, all skin and sand and sun, accompanied only by the rhythmic sounds of the waves.

Sometimes there’d be an odd seagull or two screeching unpleasantly in the distance, but not often, because Johnny thought it totally spoiled the mood.

This was a fantasy, so in this version, sand didn’t get everywhere, the way it had every time Johnny’d tried to have actual beach sex, which, it turned out, was actually much less pleasant than it sounded.

Beach sex, for the record, was on Johnny’s List of Very Disappointing Things. Somewhere below oysters but above caviar.

He’d held on to his hopes that he’d manage to get Peter to a beach before summer ended and maybe even get to reenact parts of the Baywatch fantasy for a long, long time. If Johnny started drowning, Peter’d pull him out, right? They were buddies. It could happen.

But, sadly, no part of it had happened at all. Instead, Peter had spent most of the month covered head to toe in his Spidey-suit and being shot at by hideous aliens. It had been so disappointing for so many reasons.

Matters, somehow, got worse for Johnny, even though he hadn’t thought it was possible. It all started when Reed and Luke led the FF and the New Avengers over to the ruins of Times Square, where there had been reports of some kind of massive structure being built.

A battle had quickly broken out between the Krotrakka troops and the heroes of Earth, which had culminated in the Krotrakka flicking on their machine, which turned out to be a wormhole generator that was about twenty times the size of any with which Johnny’d ever seen them.

Johnny got so swept up in taking out the Krotrakka nearest him—he had a lot of pent-up anger and resentment towards them to work out—that he didn’t register Reed's order to pull back, and that’s how he ended up getting separated from everyone else and caught helplessly in the wormhole’s gravitational pull. Or whatever it was.

It didn’t…look like any wormhole Johnny’d ever seen.

All Johnny knew was that it was growing and he couldn’t get away, no matter how hard he tried.

He was beginning to lose hope until he heard someone shout, “Johnny, hang on!” over the roar of the air getting sucked into the wormhole beneath him.

When he looked up, he saw Peter swinging towards him, weaving gracefully through all of the debris that was careening through the air. Watching Peter move like that…it stole Johnny’s breath away sometimes.

When Peter got close enough, he reached out desperately and shouted at Johnny to take his hand. Johnny’s fire was hardly even burning anymore, all but quenched by the churning winds that surrounded him. He was so close to falling in, and they both knew it.

The tips of Johnny’s fingers grazed Peter’s, but it was useless. The anomaly lurched wider, and Johnny slipped far beyond Peter’s grasp, and that was when he knew it was over.

He kept his eyes fixed on Peter’s mask. At least the last thing he’d ever get to see would be Peter. That wasn’t so bad. He wished he could see Peter's face one last time, but this would have to do.

The moment Johnny crossed the event horizon into the anomaly, it was like everything began to move in slow motion. Even months later, Johnny could still remember it in excruciating detail.

Johnny could see Peter’s lips moving beneath the mask, but he couldn’t quite make out what he was shouting over the deafening roar of the winds swirling around him. He thought it might be, “Please, god, no!”

Johnny wanted to tell him everything was going to be okay, but he couldn’t, because that was when he fell into the anomaly and was swept away to god knows where. He couldn’t really remember what happened after that all that well.

Next thing he knew, he was shooting out of the wormhole and landing in an undignified heap on the floor.

He leaped to his feet immediately on the off chance there was someone watching or, worse yet, recording him. The very last thing he needed was more videos on YouTube making fun of him.

Wherever he’d ended up, it was pitch-black. A murky darkness so thick it was like a living, breathing entity of its own enveloped him. The only pale glimmers of light were those that emanated from the yellow ring of the wormhole, and they didn’t illuminate much.

There was a strange sort of black stone, so dark that it felt, disconcertingly, like he was staring into a lightless void, that stretched out beneath his dizzy feet. It was shot through with veins of a muted red stone that seemed to almost glow when struck by the shimmering light from the wormhole.

Ringed around the wormhole’s opening, in a nearly perfectly concentric half-moon shape, were bits of debris that had been sucked in along with Johnny—bricks and wrecked billboards and long-abandoned cars.

Wormholes always left Johnny feeling disoriented, his head pounding, so it took him a few seconds of stumbling around blearily to find the opening once more.

Of course, it was just his luck that the precise moment he did, someone else flew out of the wormhole and knocked him right back off his feet and onto the cold black stone, wedged awkwardly between a billboard for Coca-Cola and the rear fender of a Honda Accord.

Everyone always copied Johnny. It was a curse. He went through a wormhole, and everyone else followed. He’d complained about it many times to everyone who would listen, not that they usually paid him much attention.

It was so difficult to maintain your dignity when you were a superhero, Johnny thought gloomily as he stared up into the darkness, pinned helplessly to the floor by whoever had fallen on top of him. You always ended up covered in goo (Johnny minded that a lot) or naked in front of hundreds of people (Johnny minded that less) or being forced to listen to the very tedious lectures of Reed and Sue on everything you did wrong (Johnny minded those most).

The mystery person on top of Johnny stirred, groaned, and lifted his head, which was when a dazed Johnny—he was convinced he might have a concussion—realized belatedly that it was Peter. His mask had partially been torn off, and Johnny could see his right eye, most of his charred forehead, and a shock of characteristic brown curls.

In any other situation, Johnny would have very much enjoyed having Peter on top of him and maybe even made a risqué joke or two, but time, sadly, was of the essence. The wormhole could close at any moment, and they had a very important battle to fight back home.

Dammit. Johnny just wanted Peter to kiss him. Was it really too much to ask after years of selflessly saving the planet? Johnny deserved that much, universe.

Really he deserved all of the hot guys, gals, aliens, and so on kissing him that he wanted, and he only wanted Peter. He was being reasonable, universe, and yet you still couldn’t come through for him, could you?

Johnny found the universe very disappointing. He ranked it right near the top of his list of the most disappointing things he’d ever come across. Somewhere near The Matrix sequels and that pair of skinny jeans that had made him look anything but.

He’d been trying his best to make the kissing happen for years now, but Peter’s reactions to his flirting tended to veer from “There’s a time and a place, Torchy” to “What the hell is wrong with you?”

The latter comment had been made after Johnny’d made the mistake of trying to serenade Peter at 4 a.m. from the filthy alley beneath Peter’s bedroom window. Johnny had been extremely drunk at the time, and, very irresponsibly, neither Ben nor Wyatt had been there to stop him.

In drunk Johnny’s defense, serenades were very romantic. Peter clearly wasn’t a romantic at heart, and neither were his neighbors.

It was okay. Johnny could deal with that. He’d just have to be romantic for both of them. The neighbors, however, could all go to hell, especially the wrinkly old man who’d tipped a gallon of orange soda on Johnny’s head to shut him up. Get a facelift, dude.

Even Johnny’s most intricate and devious plans to get Peter to kiss him failed.

Strategically-placed mistletoe last Christmas had resulted in nothing more than an awkward peck on the cheek from Peter that, worse yet, Ben, Reed, and Sue, those heels, had laughed about for days. Also an embarrassing photo or twelve. Thanks a lot, New Avengers. Johnny was making sure they didn’t get invited to the FF’s Christmas party this year. He’d just “accidentally” lose (in other words, secretly burn) their invitations.

Peter’d misinterpreted the barrage of flowers Johnny’d sent him last Valentine’s Day as an extremely irritating prank. Johnny, admittedly, had maybe overdone it with the flowers. He should’ve remembered how pathetically small Peter's apartment was and sent twenty-five bouquets instead of a hundred. Ah, well. Next year.

It was a pity, really. If Peter ever gave him the chance to kiss him, Johnny knew he could knock his socks right off. The ideal situation, really, since Johnny was a very talented kisser who was mostly opposed to socks.

Well, when someone (Peter) was so dead-set on making terrible choices (not kissing Johnny, wearing awful socks), there really wasn’t anything Johnny could do about it. He supposed he could burn the socks off of Peter’s feet if he had to, but it would definitely lower the chances of getting kissed. Peter always got so tetchy when Johnny burned his ugly clothes off. Was a thank you really so difficult? Johnny was totally just looking out for his buddy by not letting him make terrible fashion choices he’d only regret later.

Thank god Peter wasn’t currently wearing anything that left his socks visible.

Johnny shoved futilely at Peter’s shoulders. “Get off me!” he shouted ill-temperedly. Peter was as heavy as a pile of bricks. Luckily he was much more attractive than bricks if you squinted in exactly the right way and imagined an entirely different haircut.

“Whoops, sorry,” Peter said sheepishly and rolled off. He sat up and cradled his throbbing head in his arms. “Oy,” he groaned, “my poor head!”

Yeah, Johnny thought sympathetically, travel through wormholes without a spaceship to protect you was rough.

With a herculean effort, Johnny struggled back onto his feet just in time to see the wormhole flicker shut. Not fair. He’d gotten up for nothing.

“Dammit!” he shouted at Peter. “Look what you did! The wormhole’s closed! We’re stuck here now!”

“What?!” Peter hollered. Johnny heard him get to his feet, but it was so dark without the light of the wormhole that it was impossible to see much of anything. Johnny lit up his left hand in time to see the stricken, worried look on Peter’s face. “No. No, no, no, no, no! We’ve gotta get back! The fight wasn’t over yet!”

“I know,” Johnny yelled, frustrated. “Don’t you think I know that?”

“But the—”

“Wormhole wasn’t closed yet on the other end? I know. They’ll never get it closed without me.”

“I think you’re confusing yourself with your brother-in-law.”

“He needs me,” Johnny sniffed. “They all do. We’re a team.”

“Man, I was supposed to go see Aunt May tomorrow,” Peter said despairingly. “I hope she doesn’t worry too much.”

“I know what you mean. We were all gonna go see the kids on New Attilan. Now Sue’ll probably be too freaked out to go.”

“Yeah,” Peter said, voice pitched a little too high to be convincing. “That’s probably why she won’t make it.”

Johnny’s eyes narrowed. He knew Peter far too well to be fooled by any of his lies, which he was awful at and always had been. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing, man,” Peter said quickly, shaking his head. “Really. It’s nothing.”

He was lying. He was so bad at lying. Johnny could always tell. “Pete. I’m not stupid, and I know you. Spill it.”

Peter shut his eyes, clenched his jaw, and shook his head a few times as though he was steeling himself. “Okay. It’s just the wormhole anomaly was…not like the ones the Krotrakka usually travel through. This one was growing. Fast. Like it was weaponized…somehow.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said. He’d definitely noticed that this one had been drawing in everything around it, seeing as how he was one of the things. “So?”

“So if Reed, Tony, Bruce, and the other scientists don’t figure out a way to stop it—fast—that thing could suck in all of New York.” He took in Johnny’s stricken face, and, in a softer voice, added, “Buddy…it could suck in the whole planet.”

Johnny felt sick. Here he was, stuck god knows where, and his whole planet was maybe on the verge of being destroyed. He shouldn’t be here. He should be back on Earth, in the thick of the battle, shoulder to shoulder with his family where he belonged. “We have to get back,” he said desperately. “You’re the brains. How do we get back? Tell me what to do.”

Peter looked up and around. It was fairly impossible to see anything with such dim light. “We should figure out where we are first, don’t you think? I mean, who knows? Maybe we got really lucky and we’re still on Earth.”

Johnny didn’t know about that. That stone had looked nothing like anything he’d ever seen on Earth, and he’d been everywhere.

“Okay, so I can’t see anything,” Peter said, frowning at the thick darkness. “How about some more light, firefly?”

Johnny made the light emanating from his left hand brighter, which illuminated the cavernous room they were in enough to let Johnny see that it was immense. There were pillars laced evenly throughout every few yards as far as they could see.

The arched ceiling, which had been carved into the same sort of strange glowing red and lightless black stone as the floor, towered over them, and even after Johnny flamed on completely to increase the strength of his flames, he still couldn’t quite manage to glimpse the other side of the room. There was only a black nothingness, stretching out to infinity.

There could be anything lurking in that darkness, watching them even now. Johnny grew tense and alert now that his focus had shifted away from getting back home and to surviving wherever the hell he was.

Knowing Johnny’s luck, there was probably a monster. One that would try to eat him and Peter for breakfast. Johnny was far too hot and beloved to end up monster food here, where no one would ever know what had happened to him or how heroically he’d died. He wouldn’t even get to have the enormous funeral, with hordes of hot men and women wailing over his grave, of which he had always dreamed.

The air around them was cold and stale. Johnny had the impression that they were deep, deep, deep underground. Perhaps miles. There could be anything down here. Johnny knew all too well what terrors lurked beneath Earth’s surface. This place could be just as dangerous.

Peter whirled around as he took in their surroundings. His eyes shone from wonder, curiosity, and what was perhaps even joy, which made his face look achingly beautiful. The hope of seeing precisely that expression was precisely why Johnny invited Peter on the FF’s space trips whenever he could.

“Whoa,” Peter said, amazed. “This place is totally cool! But, yeah, it’s definitely not Earth.”

Johnny was impressed too, he had to admit, but he wasn’t about to let Peter know that. Johnny liked to feign an air of indifference when he was in space with Peter, just to emphasize how accustomed he was to this, and how much cooler his life was than Peter’s, because it was. “’s okay,” he said with a shrug. “It’s just a room.”

“Yeah,” Peter said, grinning joyously, eyes alight, “but it’s an alien room.”

Johnny smiled at Peter then, in a way that was probably much too fond and much too transparent about his feelings, judging by the way Peter’s grin faltered into a puzzled frown when he caught sight of it.

Johnny quickly wiped it away and hoped he hadn’t let too much of what he felt show on his face. “So what do we do, then?” he said, trying his best to sound businesslike. “Should we wait here to see if Reed can get it open again, or should we take off and try to find our own way back?”

Peter’s frown deepened. “Yeah,” he hedged. “It’s just...I don’t think Reed’s gonna want to risk reopening that wormhole.”

“Why the hell not?” Johnny asked wearily. He heroically resisted the urge to face palm. This was turning into a complete and utter trainwreck. “I’m sure he could figure out how to do it. It’s Reed. He’s never let me down. I’ve seen him do the impossible, especially when it’s his family on the line. And we’re both his family. For us, he’ll do it.”

Peter was shaking his head vigorously before Johnny had even finished talking. “No. Buddy, you aren’t getting it. If he turns it on, he couldn’t control it. He’d risking destroying Earth. Even for us, I don’t think he’d risk that. I know I wouldn’t want him to.”

Dammit. Johnny wouldn’t either. “Maybe he could just…figure out where it opened and come get us in a spaceship when he stops being so busy.”

Peter eyed their surroundings. “Hey. Does this look like all of the debris that got sucked in to you?”

Now that Johnny really looked, he had to admit that it didn’t. “No. Why?”

“That means that the wormhole’s mouth on this end wasn’t stable. It was opening in different places. I don’t think Reed’ll be able to figure out where it was we were dropped. And I, for one, don’t want to stick around here until he figures it out.”

“So you’re saying we need to get back on our own.”

Johnny took a second to hope that everyone on Earth would be okay without them and that his sister wouldn’t worry about him too much, but he knew she would.

Peter nodded, and Johnny groaned. “I think so. I think that’s the right call. I don’t know. Why are you asking me, space boy? You’ve been lost in space before. How’d you get back?”

Well, that was easy to answer. “Reed always got us back.”

“How’d he do it?”

Johnny was at a bit of a loss. “Um. I dunno? I never paid attention.”

“You never paid attention,” Peter repeated disapprovingly. He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “Well, isn’t that just great.”

“I didn’t need to! Reed always figured everything out! That’s what he’s there for! I just set things on fire when he tells me to. He’s the brains!”

“Yeah,” Peter shot back. “Obviously, because you don’t have any! It didn’t occur to you that you might get lost on your own someday and that you’d maybe have to figure out how to get back by yourself?”

“No!” Johnny said. “Why would I go to space without Reed or, I dunno, a map? I’m not dumb. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Except now we’re both stuck in space and neither of us know where we are or how to get back!”

This was getting them nowhere. Time to defuse. “Pete, relax. We’ll get back. We always get back. This isn’t a big deal.”

This was nothing new to Johnny. Well. Parts of it were new, but being lost in space? Been there, done that.

Johnny wasn’t worried about whether they’d get back because he knew they would. He was just worried about doing it quickly. He didn’t have months to spare this time.

“Except all the times you’ve been lost before, you’ve been with Reed. Do you see Reed here?”

“No,” Johnny said. He walked up to Peter, put his hands on his shoulders, and looked him square in the eyes. “But I do see the second smartest guy I know. I’m not worried, Pete, ‘cause I know you’ll get us back. So how about you take a deep breath, calm down, and start thinking about how you’re gonna get us out of this?”

“You can’t put that all on me!” Peter said. He was still panicking. Hard. “That’s not fair!”

Johnny sighed and rolled his eyes. He just needed to get Peter to focus. “Can we build a wormhole thing?”

Peter started to pace. “In a cave with no tools or equipment? No, we can’t build a wormhole generator! And even if we did, we’d need to know where Earth was to tell it where to open, and we don’t. I can’t work magic, Johnny! I’m not Reed! You can’t expect me to be Reed.”

“I know you aren’t Reed. You’re you, and that’s why I know you’re gonna get us back. C’mon, buddy. We’ve been in worse spots. Think. How do we get home?”

Peter’s eyes skimmed across the wall behind Johnny. He frowned and walked over, as he tugged off one of his gloves and tore off what was left of his mask. He started running his fingertips lightly against the wall.

Johnny smothered a fond smile. There he went. Being a giant nerd. Their problems would be solved in no time.

“You know,” Peter said distractedly, “it looks like this place was carved in here. This is too smooth to be natural. Meaning that there must be intelligent life on this planet.” He turned and gave Johnny an excited grin. “That’s it! Maybe they’ve got a way of contacting Earth. Maybe they even know where it is. Maybe they've got spaceships."

Johnny grinned back. He’d known Peter could do it, if he just calmed down enough to think. “So we just have to find someone and ask, and we’ll be home in no time.”

Peter snorted. “I don’t think it’s gonna be that easy, pal. When is it ever that easy?”

“Good point,” Johnny said ruefully.

Johnny had no idea how long they walked through the seemingly endless darkness before they found what they hoped was a way out. It was, at first, a narrow tunnel that didn’t give them much room for movement—Johnny had to duck his head to avoid bumping it against the ceiling since it was a good foot too short for him. But it was definitely moving upwards, so it likely was leading them out.

Eventually, the tunnel led them to a thin ribbon of a path that wound alongside a steep, rocky cliff face and overlooked a bottomless chasm.

“What the hell is this,” Peter hissed, as he peered down into the chasm, “the Mines of Moria? I take it back. This place is not awesome. Torchy, buddy, if I fall in, I want you to come get me right away.”

Johnny slung an arm across Peter’s shoulders and squeezed. “Don’t worry, bug brain,” he said reassuringly. “I won’t let you go splat. I mean, I might wait a few minutes before I catch you, just because you make hilarious faces when you fall.”

“As long as you catch me before I hit anything, we’re good.”

Johnny led the way through the dark, his fiery hand raised above his head like a torch, while Peter trailed behind him.

Johnny kept expecting someone—guards or something—to show up and chase them out, probably with blasters, but there was nothing other than an eerie, unsettling silence.

“Is it just me or is this place really spooky?” Johnny ventured.

His voice echoed in the darkness. It felt wrong somehow, talking in this place, so he realized that he’d instinctively lowered his voice.

“Oh, it isn’t just you,” Peter whispered. “Johnny…I think there’s someone’s following us.”

“What, is your Spidey sense tingling or something?”

Johnny was still a little bit convinced that half the time Peter claimed it was going off, he was just making it up to mess with Johnny.

Peter nodded. “I think there’s something…watching us...” A distant look crept into his eyes. “…something very, very old. I can feel it.”

Johnny’s heart nearly stopped. He rounded on Peter, whose eyes were glinting strangely in the dark. There was something about Peter, all of a sudden, that Johnny found unnerving, and that was unsettling in and of itself.

For a long, long time now, Johnny had assumed that he knew Peter, through and through, infinitely better than even he knew himself, but every now and then would come a reminder that there was more to him than even Johnny had glimpsed.

“You’re just trying to creep me out, aren’t you? This is you messing with me? It’s not gonna work, webs-for-brains.”

Peter shook his head. “Sorry, dude, but no. My Spidey sense is…I don’t know what’s going on with it. But it’s telling me something’s off.”

Well, that settled it. Johnny wasn’t just going to sit around and get ambushed or something like a loser. Johnny favored the direct approach.

He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey!” he bellowed into the darkness. “If anybody’s following us, how about you show your face instead of just creeping around in the dark like a—a creep!”

Peter was guffawing behind him. “Oh, man. You really need to work on your tough guy talk.” He clapped a hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, buddy. We’ll practice later.”

“Bite me,” Johnny hissed, too busy to formulate a wittier reply, not that he couldn’t have if he’d wanted to.

He was watching the darkness around them tensely, ears straining to detect the slightest hint of movement.

When the sign came, it turned out he really didn’t have to focus so hard, dammit. Johnny hated working too hard on anything. Just work as hard as you have to in order to get by, that was his motto.

There was a fiery roar from the chasm beneath their feet. Literally fiery. If Johnny hadn’t flamed on, flown in front of him, and absorbed the heat, Peter would have been a roasted spider.

“What the hell was that?” Peter shouted frantically. Johnny glanced back and found that he’d sprung up onto the wall behind him and was gaping down at the abyss.

“I dunno,” Johnny shouted, “but I’m sure as hell not sticking around to find out!” He flew up, extinguished the flame on his forearms, and held them out to Peter. “Grab on!”

Peter glanced up at Johnny and then down again at the darkness beneath their feet. Johnny could see the wheels in his head ticking away already, and he didn’t have to ask what he was thinking. Maybe they should fight the monster?

Please. Peter was just stupid enough to think that was a good idea. If traveling around through space and time and alternate dimensions and all had taught Johnny anything, it was that he should pick his battles. Some monsters you couldn’t defeat, and some there was no reason to fight. It didn’t seem like this monster was hurting anybody, because there was no one around to hurt. There was no point in fighting it, and if they did, he or Peter could get hurt, which would be very bad, out here without doctors or medical facilities.

“Pick your battles, Pete,” Johnny urged. “We have to get back to Earth and our families. Who’re all in danger. We don’t have time to be fighting space monsters!”

The rocks began to shake and tumble down around them. The chaos was accompanied by the sound of thunderous footsteps that were growing closer by the second.

That did it. Peter grabbed on to Johnny’s forearms, and Johnny flew away as fast as he could.

It was exhausting. If he ever started to think that maybe they were safe and stopped to rest, inevitably they’d hear distant roars and earth-shaking footsteps and be forced to set off again.

“Can’t you go any faster?” Peter shouted up at Johnny at one point.

“You try flying this fast for so long!” Johnny retorted. “Do you want to trade?”

“Not much room for web-slinging in these tunnels,” Peter pointed out.

Johnny grumbled something about Peter weighing more than Benjy. He probably didn’t, but it was definitely starting to feel like it.

“Aw, am I too heavy for you, buddy? You need to lift more weights.”

“No,” Johnny scoffed. “I really don’t. But you could really stand to lose some weight. For everyone’s sake, go on a diet when we get home.”

“Diet, shmiet,” Peter said uncaringly. “I don’t gain weight. Just muscle.”

“Sometimes I really hate you,” Johnny said bitterly, thinking about how hard he worked to keep slim and fit. The diets and the exercise and the personal trainers, and here was Peter, stuffing his face with hamburgers and hot dogs and donuts whenever he felt like it, and never gaining weight.

Peter grinned cheerfully up at Johnny. “Sometimes I hate you too, pal.”

Johnny had the fleeting desire to pull Peter up and kiss him, hard, but he shoved it down and away as quickly as it arose.

Why did Peter have to smile so much? It always made the not kissing him so much more difficult.

It took probably about an hour for them to reach an enormous red-and-black door, engraved with all kinds of writing and artwork that Johnny’d never seen before. Johnny set Peter down on the ground and started trying to melt through the door with a stream of his hottest fire. It seemed to have no effect at all.

“Why won’t this damn thing open?!” he shouted, frustrated.

His flame could burn through anything. This was a personal insult.

“How about you give me a shot, Flamebrain?” Peter said.

Oh, it would be just Johnny’s luck if Peter managed to open the door when Johnny couldn’t. Peter would get smug. Johnny hated it when Peter was smug. That was on his List of the Most Annoying Things in the Universe, sure to set everyone’s teeth on edge.

He sighed and moved aside, and gestured for Peter to walk up and take his best shot.

Peter strolled up casually. No, it was smug, the way he was walking. Definitely smug. Johnny wanted to shoot fire at Peter’s feet, but Peter would probably just waste a lot of time yelling at him if he did that.

Peter wedged his fingers in the narrow space between the door and the wall and started trying to haul the door open. It didn’t so much as budge.

“Oh, come on,” Johnny heckled. “Ben would’ve had that door open by now, you third-rate loser. Put your back into it!”

Peter stopped trying to force the door open long enough to give Johnny an absolutely murderous glare. Johnny was going to wake up webbed to the floor again, wasn’t he?

“Well,” Johnny said defensively, “he would have!”

“So why don’t you go get him, then?” Peter ground out as he strained to open the door.

“Well, I would if I could, old buddy, old pal,” Johnny sighed. “Ben’s great company when there are fire-breathing monsters chasing you. You don’t have to worry about him singeing his hair.”

“I wasn’t worried about singeing my hair.” Peter stopped. “Wait. Is my hair singed? Please tell me my hair’s not singed.”

Johnny knew he had to play this moment perfectly. He looked up at Peter’s hair, pretended to cringe a little, and said, “Uh, well, Pete. Buddy. It’s—I hate to tell you this, but…it’s mostly the eyebrows, really.”

Peter’s hair and eyebrows were completely fine. Johnny had sucked up all of the heat long before it had gotten anywhere near Peter. If Peter was stupid enough to believe that Johnny’d ever let a hair on his head get so much as singed, that was his own stupid fault.

“Oy,” Peter said, rolling his eyes. “That’s just great. Now I’m the hairless wonder. That was exactly what I needed to round out the month from hell.”

Well, it wasn’t like Johnny’s month had been going so great either, what with the lack of beauticians and the very inconvenient aliens and the threat of dying while unmanicured. Add to that the fact that he’d been deprived the chance of seeing Peter in swim trunks, and his month had been absolutely hellish.

There was an ear-shattering roar off in the tunnels below them, coming from somewhere much closer than Johnny was entirely comfortable with.

Johnny and Peter’s eyes met, both wide and not at all happy with their current predicament.

“Get the—” Johnny started.

“Door open,” Peter finished. “On it!”

Peter wedged his fingers back into the black stone and groaned and strained with the effort of pulling it open. The door began to shudder and splinter, but it still wasn’t moving.

The creature’s thunderous footsteps were growing closer and closer, and a blast of fire came rushing up towards them. Johnny rushed forward and absorbed it before it got near Peter.

“Pete,” he said urgently, eyes fixed warily on the tunnels behind them. “Any time now would be good!”

“I’m trying!” Peter grunted. “This door’s heavy!”

There was another stream of fire. Johnny needed to expel this heat and fast. “Pete! Do it now!”

“Johnny, I don’t know if I can do this!” Peter said hopelessly, muscles straining with effort.

“Peter Parker,” Johnny bellowed, because he was through being nice, “be a goddamn hero and open the goddamn door! Because if you don’t, we are going to die here in the middle of nowhere, and your aunt will never even know what happened to you!”

That did it. The prospect of Aunt May in any kind of pain, especially if it was because of him, was always a sore subject with Peter, and Johnny knew it was exactly the right button to push to get the reaction out of Peter that he needed.

Never let it be said that Johnny didn’t know how to play Peter Parker like a fiddle.

Peter took out all of his anger and frustration on the door, which didn’t stand a chance. It crumpled in his bare hands like a sheet of paper.

Johnny stumbled backward to avoid the debris from the collapsing door and wound up tripping onto the ground, which gave him the perfect vantage point to enjoy what came next.

When he looked up, Peter was standing there, chest-heaving, above the rubble of the door he’d destroyed, lit by the bright orange sunlight streaming through the opening behind him.

It was all kinds of hot. Unfortunately, Johnny didn’t have time to enjoy it. Why did Peter always do totally hot things when there wasn’t time for Johnny to do anything about it? It wasn’t fair.

Strike three million, universe. This is exactly why Johnny hates you.

“Let’s go!” Johnny said, as he flamed on and flew out the door above Peter. Peter caught his arms as he sped by in a blur of motion. Johnny flew up and up and up in the hopes that their pursuer wouldn’t be able to follow.

There was a terrifying roar beneath them as the monster that had been chasing them finally emerged into the sunlight.

“What the hell is that?” Johnny said, gawping at it. He’d never seen anything like it, and he had seen many strange things in his life.

It looked exactly like a dragon, if dragons were fluffy and resembled extremely large house cats with wings and the odd scale here and there. It had heart-stoppingly sharp teeth and claws. Enormous ones. The size of Johnny’s left arm, not the right one, which was .08 centimeters shorter than the left, according to Reed, who wouldn’t take it back, no matter how many times Johnny threatened to set him on fire.

It was a dark shade of garnet, save for the tips of its wings, which were a burnt orange, and its eyes, which were gold.

It was somehow cute and fluffy and scary and intimidating all at once. Johnny didn’t know whether to coo, take a picture, or scream.

“Hello,” the dragon-cat said. Johnny’s brain had a hard time processing its words because they sounded somewhere in between a roar, a purr, and spoken words. His universal translator must be on the fritz. “Why did you intrude into my home and wake me from my long slumber? Are you some of those foolish adventurers who fly through here every now and then and are always trying to steal my eggs? It’s not nice to steal other people’s children, you know. It’s even less nice to eat them, if that’s what you’re doing with them. I shall be very cross with you if you are.”

It said it all very politely and made no signs of taking off after them, despite its outstretched wings. Johnny had no idea what to make of it.

“What the hell are you doing, Hothead?” Peter shouted, twisting his neck to scowl up at Johnny. “Keep flying!”

Johnny ignored him and drifted closer instead. He was friends with plenty of people who looked terrifying on the outside but were actually very nice on the inside. Granted, this dragon-cat had chased them for an hour and tried to set them on fire, but Johnny was still willing to give it a chance.

“Um,” he told it. “It was an accident? There was a wormhole. We don’t really even know what planet we’re on. We’re…sorry for not knocking, or whatever. We didn’t know anyone lived there. My name is Johnny Storm and he’s, uh, Spider-Man. We come from really far away. A planet called Earth. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of it?”

Johnny didn’t know what point there was in not saying Peter’s real name—he wasn’t wearing a mask anymore, and it wasn’t like anyone around here had any clue who Peter Parker was.

“Are you really going to stop and have a nice little chat with the cat…dragon...thing that’s been chasing us for hours?” Peter asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Johnny hissed. “Now shut up, or I’ll drop you.” They were high up enough that it would definitely sting. Also, the dragon-cat might eat him, and Johnny’d like to hear him complain when he was cat food. Dragon food. Whatever.

“No,” the dragon-cat said. “I have not heard of your…Earth.” It pronounced the word carefully, as though it had never heard anything like it, and it came out sounding more like, “Eee-arth.” “It is a strange word, is it not?” It stretched out its front paws, dug its claws into the dirt, arched its back, and stretched, exactly like a cat. “I suppose I can’t blame you for being in my home. I shan’t eat you, then. It wouldn’t be fair, and there’s not much meat on your bones anyhow, although it is true that it has been many years since I have eaten anything other than rhaetar rocks.” It sat up and curled its spindly tail around itself. “May I ask, did I frighten you? I’ve been trying very hard to work on being frightening, but I haven’t had much practice. It’s been a great many years since I’ve had visitors, and it does get dull trying to frighten one’s own reflection.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said, nonplussed. This was certainly the politest dragon…cat he’d ever met. “That was—it was really scary. Kudos. We were practically peeing our pants there for a while. Right, Pete?”

There was a silent but very heated argument as Peter insisted that he wasn’t going to talk to the dragon-cat on principle, mostly because it had chased and seriously considered eating them, and Johnny threatened repeatedly to drop him.

Johnny and the fear of falling where the dragon-cat could get at him won.

“Yeah,” Peter said resentfully. “You were scary. I guess.”

“Pants?” the dragon-cat asked. It tilted its great big head to one side. “What are…pants?”

“They’re—” Johnny cast about for a way to explain pants to someone who had clearly never heard of them. “Oh, never mind. Not important. Could you maybe tell us where we could find a spaceship?”

“We need one that’ll take us far,” Peter added. “And that goes as fast as possible. We have a war to get back to.”

“I do not know if you will find any more on this planet. It was laid to waste many years ago by cruel invaders. There is not much left of what once was. It is a miracle I survived, and I fear I am the last of my kind, until, that is, my children are born, but that will be many long millennia from now.”

Playing a hunch, Johnny said, “These invaders…they wouldn’t be called the Krotrakka, by any chance, would they?”

The dragon-cat’s fur instantly stood on end. “Krotrakka!” it boomed. Its voice thundered through the desolate canyon. Peter and Johnny both flinched. “Yes, that was their name. They pillaged and plundered and took all that was bright and beautiful and good in this world, and left behind nothing but ashes.”

Johnny bit his lower lip. This didn’t sound promising. “Oh,” he said. “We’re…sorry.”

They all fell into a respectful silence for a moment, lost in their memories of all to which the Krotrakka had laid waste. Johnny’s thoughts wound forlornly to the small world from which he and Peter had been torn. He wondered glumly if it was still out there, glimmering in the darkness, and if his family yet lived.

“So…” Peter said, breaking the silence. “There’s nothing on this planet that can help us?”

“Yeah,” Johnny said. “Were there—did there used to be cities? Anywhere we could look for—for food or water? Maybe parts to build a spaceship? People we could ask for help?”

Between him and Peter they should be able to figure it out, right? God knows he’d helped Reed design enough FTL drives.

“There is no one else on this planet. I have searched long and hard and found no one. But you can look in the ruins of the once-great city of Raltashar. A wonder it once was, with twisting spires that climbed endlessly towards the sun, where now there is nothing. Fly for a day towards the setting suns, and you will reach what little is left.”

“And this planet—the people who lived here—they were spaceflight capable?”

The dragon-cat inclined its head. “Musicians and artists were they once. They grew and nurtured living spaceships as wondrous as their cities so they could travel and spread their joy throughout the universe. I do not know if any of their ships yet live. Search for this sign.” It drew the symbol of a strange sort of star in the sand with a claw the size of a house. “If you find any, tell them that the Lasat of the Canyon of Jetun sent you. I am known. They will help you.”

“Thanks,” Johnny said. “Good luck to you and your, uh, eggs. I hope they’re all healthy.”

The Lasat bowed its head in thanks. “Good luck to you as well, Johnny Storm. You and your friend will need it.”

Johnny and Peter watched in silence as it turned and slunk back into its cavern, which was followed by one hell of a blow-out argument between Peter and Johnny over Johnny’s recklessness.

“Don’t you ever stop to think about anything before you do it?” Peter shouted at one point, which was soon followed by Johnny listing every single stupid, reckless thing Peter had ever done in his life. That Johnny knew about, anyways.

Needless to say, there were a lot of them. Peter cut him off after about fifteen minutes, and Johnny hadn’t even gotten through half of them, which he made a point of telling Peter, much to Peter’s chagrin.

Chapter Text

As soon as Johnny was high enough aloft, he began to study their surroundings. They had indeed emerged into a canyon, which was composed of precisely the same unnaturally dark stone that they’d found in the cavern and tunnels below. Every now and then his eye would register glimmers of glowing crimson.

The sky was far removed from anything on Earth. There were three red-orange suns blazing away and twelve different moons scattered throughout the burnt-orange sky.

The air was harsh and dry and far hotter than was probably good for Peter. When Johnny glanced down, he could see sweat beginning to trickle down Peter’s forehead. He did his best to channel as much heat away from Peter as possible, but it was difficult to manage while he was flying and already focusing on diverting his own flames away from Peter.

The terrain they sped past was full of peculiar rock formations, the likes of which Johnny’d never come across. Three times Peter asked excitedly if they could stop and take a closer look at something, but Johnny scoffed and said no each time.

The vegetation, unfortunately, was scarce. There was practically nothing.

When they found a small trickle of a brook, they stopped to take a few gulps of water. Peter rinsed the charred burn marks and dirt off of his face, shot Johnny a dirty look when he realized his hair and eyebrows were not, in fact, burned off, and then they took off again.

Johnny flew and flew while the suns dipped closer and closer to the horizon until the sky behind them began to take on more somber hues, at which point Peter suggested they should perhaps stop and find somewhere to spend the night.

Johnny thought it was a good idea—he was getting exhausted, frankly, and could use some time to rest and recharge.

They settled into a cave Peter spotted on the side of a towering, snow-covered mountain. Peter gathered up dried out bushes and brambles to start a fire, while Johnny flew to the top of the mountain to fetch snow to drink and help cool Peter off.

It took him three tries to get the snow down the mountain without it melting in his hands. The temperature was tricky to get right. He told Peter, once Peter was done drinking it, that it had looked kind of weirdly yellow, come to think of it. Peter hurled a rock at a cackling Johnny’s head, but he missed.

They couldn’t find anything that looked even somewhat edible. Johnny pointed to something that looked somewhere between a cactus and a weeping willow, but Peter refused to try eating it.

“No. What if we die?” Peter pointed out. “It could be poisonous! I’d really like to get back to Earth without being poisoned to death, buddy.”

“What if we can’t find anything else to eat?” Johnny retorted. “We could starve to death!”

“Well, hey, if you want to risk eating that,” Peter said, clapping a hand against Johnny’s back, “you go right ahead, pal. But don’t blame me if you die. I’ll lie and tell your niece and nephew that you died fighting a giant monster and not from eating a plant I told you not to eat. I’m telling Reed, Sue, and Ben the truth, though. Death by plant.”

“I was actually thinking you could try it first. And if you aren’t dead by morning, I thought I’d risk a bite or two,” Johnny said.

He smiled winningly at Peter so he’d know Johnny was just kidding.

Peter gave him a look that said, very plainly, “Drop dead,” and walked into the cave with his armful of dried-out branches.

Johnny decided, in the end, that it was maybe smarter to follow Peter’s example and not eat the not-cactus.

He did, however, spend the next two hours complaining endlessly about how hungry he was and going through a wistful litany of all of his favorite meals, while his stomach rumbled and his mouth watered and Peter rolled his eyes, over and over.

Johnny couldn’t take the sound of Peter’s chattering teeth for one second longer.

He glanced over to where Peter was curled up and shivering on the cave floor a few feet away from him. The fire had died out long ago, and Peter hadn’t wanted to go out into the dark to collect more kindling. Too dangerous, he’d said. He could trip and fall into a ditch, and then where’d they be?

Johnny could just barely make out his silhouette against the silvery moonlight that streamed in through the cave’s opening, interrupted every now and then by the gentle descent of snowflakes.

They’d chosen a cave well below the snow line, but apparently, it wasn’t low enough, because it’d started snowing about an hour ago, and the cave had gradually gotten icier and icier.

He took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be easy. Peter was proud and stubborn and hated needing help from anyone, and he always had.

There was a reason he’d had the reputation of being a consummate loner in the superhero community for so many years.

“For god’s sake, Pete,” Johnny huffed, “roll over here and I’ll warm you up. At this rate, I’ll never get to sleep with the racket your teeth are making.”

“I’m okay,” Peter said stubbornly, hunching his shoulders down further. “Not even cold.”

He probably hadn’t meant for his teeth to chatter so loudly while he said it, Johnny was guessing.

“You’re freezing to death,” Johnny countered. “Don’t be stupid. It’s snowing outside. Get over here.”

“I can handle a little cold weather,” Peter said sharply. “It’s not a big deal. I go out web-slinging in the middle of blizzards in spandex. I can handle this.”

Johnny sighed. He hated it when Peter decided to be stubborn, which was pretty much always. “But you don’t have to, is what I’m saying. I don’t mind keeping you warm. It’s not a big deal, Pete. People do this sort of thing when they go camping all the time.”

Johnny suspected Peter had never been camping in his life, apart from that once with the FF, and that had been in fairly clement weather.

There was no use denying it. Peter was a city boy, through and through.

He wasn’t used to roughing it like Johnny was. Johnny had gone nearly a month without a manicure, after all, and that took real fortitude.

Peter was silent for a while, like he was thinking it over. “Nope,” he repeated firmly. “I’m fine.”

Johnny felt like strangling Peter. It wasn’t exactly an unfamiliar feeling. “Give me one good reason why not,” he said, frustrated.

“Wellllll, I haven’t wanted to mention it, buddy, but you really need a bath. I’m okay over here, upwind from you. It smells less."

Johnny bolted upright and glared, outraged, at Peter. “I DO NOT!”

He could swear that Peter’s shoulders were shaking, but he didn’t know if it was from the cold or laughter.

“Okay, if you say so. But I can smell you all the way over here, pal.”

Johnny’s jaw dropped open. Peter was the one who smelled. Peter. Not Johnny. Peter. “You’re the one who needs the bath! When was the last time you washed your Spidey suit?”

“When was the last time you washed your FF uniform?” Peter shot back.

Peter rolled over to peer at Johnny in the darkness. Johnny wasn’t sure, but he suspected that Peter was grinning.

How did he know that Johnny didn’t really wash his uniform all that often? Ben. Johnny bet it was Ben who told him. He was going to get that rat when he got back to Earth.

“I don’t need to, for your information,” Johnny said, crossing his arms, nose in the air. “My fire cleans it.”

“Riiiiight. You keep telling yourself that, buddy.”

“Well, it does!”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s it. I take my offer back.”

“Don’t kid yourself. I was never going to take you up on it anyways, Stinkmeister.”

“Well, fine. Freeze to death, then. See if I care. I was just trying to help.”

“And I appreciate it, but, really, I’m fine over here. Not cold at all.”

Johnny flopped back down against the cold dirt floor. Peter was going to be a popsicle tomorrow, wasn’t he?

Well, it didn’t matter, because Johnny didn’t care.

“Your nephew died because he was a stubborn ass,” he’d tell Aunt May when he got back to Earth. “I’m sorry, but there was nothing I could do about that. It was an incurable condition. He was probably just born like that. Let’s be honest, freezing to death just put him out of everyone else’s misery, especially mine.”

Yeah. That was exactly what he’d say to Peter’s aunt.

Peter, to his credit, stuck it out for another thirty minutes before he finally gave in.

Johnny, who’d already drifted off into a light slumber, was woken by the unexpected sensation of something icy cold pressing against his back and a freezing arm slipping around his waist.

“One word,” Peter, who was shivering uncontrollably, threatened, “and I’m going back to my side of the cave.”

Johnny couldn’t help rub it in. It was who he was, and he embraced it. “I knew it,” he whispered, keeping his tone light. “I knew you couldn’t resist me, Web-Head. It was bound to happen someday. I was just too hot to resist, wasn’t I? Admit it.” He sighed. “You want me for my body. It’s okay, everybody does.”

Peter snorted against the nape of Johnny’s neck. “Well, pretty boy, they definitely don’t want you for your brain or your personality.”

Johnny’s heart fluttered. Peter thought he was pretty! Finally, he admitted it. At least Johnny got to hear that before he maybe died on this godforsaken planet. “Same goes for you, friend. Except you’re not even half as pretty as I am.”

“Ten times as smart, though.”

“Maybe when it comes to science. The rest of the time you can be a real idiot.”

It was true, too. Peter was very gifted when it came to science—there was no point in denying that—but he was a complete disaster when it came to all of the things that really mattered. There was a reason his personal life was always in such disarray. For instance, it’d been five years now that Johnny’d been hitting on Peter, and Peter had yet to so much as notice.

“That is so not true,” Peter retorted.

Johnny craned his neck to give Peter a knowing look.

“What?” Peter said. “It’s not! I’m good at lots of stuff besides science.”

“Like? Name one, I dare you.”

Peter’s mouth worked as he tried to come up with something. “Singing in the shower?”

He smiled winningly. Johnny didn’t let himself get distracted by Peter’s smiles, though.

Johnny shut his eyes and shook his head. “Why am I friends with you,” he wondered. “Just why.”

“What’s wrong with singing in the shower? There’s nothing wrong with singing in the shower. It brightens my mornings.”

“Just. Stop talking.”

“Well, that doesn’t seem likely.”

Johnny decided that changing the subject might be prudent. “The temperature okay, or do you want me to warm up more?”

“Little warmer wouldn’t hurt.”

Johnny willed his body to warm up another couple of degrees. Peter groaned contentedly and the grip he had on Johnny tightened. “Sparky,” he said. “I think I love you.”

Johnny had to remind himself that Peter didn’t mean it, not really.

Then again, Johnny was sure that he’d had very risqué dreams that started like this. Okay, so maybe they were fantasies, now that he thought about it, and he and Peter were usually wearing significantly less clothing. But for real life, this wasn’t half bad. Probably the sexiest thing he and Peter had ever done together, which was a real shame, considering how sexy Johnny wanted to get.

Peter felt so good pressed against him like this, he thought, as he shut his eyes and melted back into Peter’s muscular chest.

Johnny could feel Peter’s body growing stiller and stiller as it warmed enough to stop trembling.

“Torchy,” Peter sighed, “I think you missed your true calling. You’d make a great bedwarmer. How much do you charge?”

One corner of Johnny’s mouth pulled upwards. “Why?” he said. “You thinking of hiring me? I wouldn’t mind spending all day in your bed waiting for you. Would clothing be optional?”

That was pretty unmistakable flirting, right? Peter couldn’t have missed that.

This maybe wasn’t the ideal situation to be hooking up with Peter for the first time, and Johnny didn’t think sex in a freezing, damp cave would actually even be all that sexy, but, hey, they were stuck on a deserted planet with no hope of rescue and no food. Johnny, for one, could use some comforting, the sexier the better.

Johnny held his breath and waited to see how Peter’d respond.

“What? What are you talking about? Of course you need clothes. You always need clothes. Rule to live by. Torchy, I know this might be news for you, but most people don’t like ending up naked on national television.”

Johnny bit back a disappointed sigh. The flirting had gone right over Peter’s head, hadn’t it? So much for steamy cave sex. “Once,” he protested. “That happened once! And it was international television, thank you very much. The whole world saw me naked. I got a lot of phone calls from celebrities looking for a hot date after that.”

It was true. His cell phone’d been ringing endlessly. Johnny’d never had so many dates in a single week before. It had, frankly, been completely exhausting to have everyone wanting a piece of him, except, of course, the one guy he really wanted.

“Once?” Peter said. “Oh, come on. It can’t have been once. I’ve seen you naked a lot more than once.”

“Lucky you,” Johnny said. He did tend to flame off naked around Peter, accidentally-on-purpose, it was true. “I normally stay flamed on when the nakedness happens. You can’t really see anything.”

“Hey, buddy?”

“Yeah?”

“I think you should stay flamed on all the time.”

“What? Why?”

“So no one has to look at that face.”

Johnny elbowed him viciously, right in the ribs. Johnny’s face was beautiful, Peter.

Peter didn’t even seem to feel it. He started to laugh. It was smug, that laughter.

Johnny was certain that, even if he searched throughout the entire universe, he’d never find anything more infuriating than Peter when he was being smug.

Johnny increased the heat of his body just enough to make Peter go, “Eeeeyow!” and spring back.

“What the hell was that?!” Peter asked indignantly.

Johnny rolled over and smirked at Peter. “I was teaching you a lesson. Next time you’re smug, one of your eyebrows gets singed off. You have been warned.”

Peter’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t. Torchy?”

The only thing Peter got in response were Johnny’s snickers.

“…would you?”

Peter sounded less sure that time.

Ha, ha. Served him right.

Johnny would definitely do it, for the record.

Johnny found that he was having some trouble falling asleep. Peter was holding him loosely, although he was still pressed against Johnny’s back. Johnny lay awake and listened to the soft sounds Peter made as he slept, back of his neck prickling at each of Peter’s moist breaths.

The trouble was that when Johnny closed his eyes, it was so easy to pretend that this was real. That things were this simple. That Peter was his, to sleep with this way every night, the way he’d been craving for so many years.

But when he opened his eyes, he was struck by the reality of his predicament, and something ugly clawed its way to life inside of his chest, climbed into his throat, and settled there, making it difficult to draw a free and unencumbered breath.

Johnny was desperately, agonizingly in love with a man, he was beginning to realize, he could never have, a man who had never and would never feel about Johnny the way Johnny longed for, and now he was trapped alone with him on a deserted planet with nowhere to hide and nowhere to run from his feelings.

This was all a terrible mistake.

Johnny must have managed to fall asleep at some point, because he woke the next morning to find that a certain two-faced, ungrateful bastard had webbed him to the goddamn floor.

“Peter!” he roared, struggling uselessly against the webs that had him pinned to the floor. “I am going to get you for this, you jackass!”

He could hear Peter cackling somewhere out in the too-bright sunlight spilling in through the cave’s opening.

“You’ll have to catch me first, Torchy,” Peter sang cheerfully. “Consider that payback for your little prank last night.”

Peter, grinning, poked his head down over the top of the cave’s opening, and burst into gales of laughter, no doubt at the furious glare on Johnny’s face.

Johnny’s body erupted in angry flames and melted the webbing away. He didn’t waste any time. He flew out of the cave’s opening and started tossing fireballs in Peter’s general direction, which Peter dodged nimbly as he clambered up the steep cliff face.

Exasperatingly, Johnny’s righteous fury only made Peter laugh harder, which only made Johnny ten times more furious. It was a vicious cycle, really.

“One of these days,” Johnny hollered, shaking an irate finger at Peter, “you are going to be toast, bug boy!”

He hurled a fireball right at that lousy jerk just to emphasize his point. It missed. Johnny always missed.

Peter turned around in front of a pile of snow, stuck out his tongue, put his hands to his ears and wiggled his fingers at Johnny. “Says you, Flamebrain!”

That did it. Johnny lunged at Peter, intending to tackle him into the freezing snow as he flamed off.

It didn’t work. Peter waited until the last minute and dodged, and then Johnny fell, disconcertingly, right through the snow.

The next thing Johnny knew, there was water spilling all over his head. Somehow. He spluttered, fell to the ground, and splashed right into a heated pool beneath the waterfall that had been obscured by the snow.

Peter was standing at the entrance of the cave Johnny’d fallen into, clutching his sides and slapping a hand against his knee as he laughed and laughed himself to tears. “Oh, man,” he managed to say, “oh, man! I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough for that to work. Wotta maroon!”

Johnny was speechless with rage. All that came out were outraged noises, interspersed with the odd incoherent syllable. “Drop—Splat—Kablooey!”

Johnny was going to do all of those things to Peter and more once he got his flame back.

They wasted a good twenty minutes while a soaked-to-the-bone Johnny chased a cackling Peter up the mountain, hurling expletives and the occasional rock at him until he was satisfied that he’d been punished enough.

Honestly, he felt better afterward. He wondered if that had been Peter’s intention all along, if Peter had been trying to cheer him up and bolster his spirits, if he’d just been looking out for Johnny, the way he always did.

They reached the city of Raltashar sometime in the late afternoon. The glimmering city of red stone, which shone like a jewel beneath the suns’ orange light, had been carved skillfully into the side of a mountain.

A great battle truly must have been fought there long ago, as the Lasat had told them because the city had been laid utterly to waste. The once towering spires had toppled beneath the onslaught of ships that had fallen out of the sky. There were scorch marks and ruins and crashed ships—some of which appeared to be earlier models of those that had attacked Earth, others of which were unrecognizable—everywhere.

When Johnny and Peter landed in what must have been the city’s central marketplace, they saw that it was littered with the skeletons of the dead, which had been stripped clean by decades spent out in the sun and the heat.

“Jesus,” Peter said hoarsely, eyes wide as they scanned the horrors that filled the great square. “What happened here? They didn’t even have time to bury their dead.”

“The Krotrakka happened,” Johnny spat out. He knelt next to a skeleton that was smaller than the rest. It had clearly been a child once, probably no older than Johnny’s nephew. Johnny’s heart split momentarily in two, but it was swiftly replaced by a burning, seething rage. “You heard what the Lasat said. These people were musicians and artists, not warriors. They didn’t stand a chance against trained soldiers.”

A deep and abiding hatred of the Krotrakka spluttered to life within Johnny’s breast. Any species that could do this to a race of singers, painters, poets, and architects deserved every ounce of it.

“Why the hell would they do this?” Peter said, voice filled with a cold fury. He kicked at one of the Krotrakka’s laser pistols. “What did they even get out of this? It must’ve been a massacre. None of the people who lived here even had any weapons. They were totally unarmed.”

“They did the same thing on Earth,” Johnny recalled quietly, “before we started to fight them. How many civilians died before we managed to evacuate the cities?”

Because it hadn’t just been New York the Krotrakka had invaded. It had been every major city on the planet. Every site that had any strategic military purpose. In the skies of each, at precisely the same instant, all across the world, had appeared the ships of the Krotrakka.

Johnny and Peter were both coming to the same realization. It appeared as though the Krotrakka had left a swath of destruction across the universe. Earth would be lucky if it wasn’t next.

And no one on Earth had any idea who they were fighting or what they were up against.

Johnny and Peter had to get back to Earth. They had to warn everyone.

Johnny rose to his feet. “Come on,” he said, eyes hard. “Let’s find a spaceship and get the hell out of here.”

Night was already falling when they found a building that bore the symbol the Lasat had drawn in the sand. It was an immense structure on the outskirts of the city.

The building, unfortunately, was mostly rubble. Johnny was beginning to lose hope that they’d find a space-worthy ship that was still alive, particularly given the extent of the destruction they’d witnessed throughout the city.

Peter swung and Johnny flew in through a hole in the roof and found themselves in what had once been a spacious hangar. There was nothing visible at first except for piles and piles of rubble beneath a roof that had largely collapsed.

“Wait!” Peter said. He pointed a finger at the opposite end of the hangar. “Is that…?”

There was a glimmer of something metallic, at least, in the direction Peter was pointing but it was obscured by a pillar and debris that had fallen over it.

They rushed over.

It was a ship! There was no doubt about it.

Johnny worked tirelessly on blasting the rubble away while Peter focused on lifting the pillar that was pinning the ship in place out of the way.

Once they were done, they moved back to examine what it was they had uncovered.

The ship was somewhat small, but it was beautiful. It was made of interwoven golden and red metal that shone dazzlingly beneath the sunlight that streamed in through the gaps in the ceiling.

Johnny thought, as he stared up at it, entranced, that it was the most beautiful ship he’d ever seen. It didn’t resemble the clunky and relatively unsophisticated ships of Earth at all. Instead, it was elegant and majestic, and Johnny thought he was a little bit in love with it.

“It’s beautiful,” Johnny said, staring up at it breathlessly. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

This was a ship worthy of carrying him, he thought. Johnny felt a deep kinship with that ship in that moment, the way he did whenever he saw anything whose beauty rivaled his own. Peter would never understand that, so Johnny didn’t try to explain it.

“Yeah,” Peter allowed. “Sure it is. Now how do we get inside?”

That question brought Johnny plummeting right back to earth. “Good question. The Lasat said the ships were alive. Are we sure it’s not dead? It’s been trapped here an awfully long time without anything to eat.” He paused. “Hey, what do you suppose ships eat?”

“Starlight?” Peter ventured. “The odd comet? I dunno, Johnny, I’ve never met a ship that was alive before.”

“As long as it doesn’t eat people,” Johnny said. “Let’s look for an opening. Last one to find it’s a loser! Not that you’re not a loser anyways.”

He flamed on and flew around it to his left, while Peter ran off to the right.

Johnny saw only smooth red inlaid with gold. Nothing that resembled an entrance. Peter must have had more luck because it took only a few moments for him to call out that he had found it.

“Guess you’re the loser!” Johnny heard Peter shout.

“Am not!” Johnny bellowed back at him.

Johnny flew towards the sound of Peter’s voice and found Peter frowning at what looked like some kind of interface. What were possibly buttons were arrayed in a spiral.

“I can’t make heads or tails of this,” Peter admitted. “Which button do we press?”

“That one,” Johnny said immediately, and pointed at the largest one, around which all of the rest were arranged.

Peter looked skeptical. “How do you know?”

“It’s the biggest one,” Johnny said confidently. “You always press the biggest one.”

“That doesn’t sound true.”

“Reed told me,” Johnny said. It was a lie. Reed had, in fact, consistently told him never to press anything until he got there, but that wasn’t particularly likely in this situation, and there was no point in reminding Peter of that fact. Peter had enough of an inferiority complex where Reed was concerned already. “You always press the biggest one.”

“Well,” Peter said, still somewhat uncertainly. “If Reed said it, it must be right.” He reached out, fingers hovering over the button, and hesitated yet again. He drew his hand back. “You’re sure Reed said that?”

“Oh, fer chrissakes,” Johnny said, and slammed his fist down on the button.

There was a whir of machinery, rather like someone taking a great big gulp of air after having been submerged in water for far too long. Johnny could see pinpricks of light flickering across the hull, felt the metal shiver and shift and pulse with life beneath his fist.

“Whoa,” he said, taking a step back, eyes wide. “I really wasn’t expecting that to work.”

Nothing else happened, but Johnny had the sense that the ship was not only alive but listening.

Well, he guessed he’d better try talking to it. Might work.

“Hi, uh, ship,” he ventured. “So we met this dragon-cat…thing, and anyways it told us you would help us if we said it sent us. It was called the Lasat of the Canyon of Jetun.”

Again, nothing.

Peter leaned over and said quietly, “I don’t think this is working, buddy. Maybe it’s mad at being trapped here for so long.”

“It’s alive,” Johnny said stubbornly. “It’s just…waiting for something.” He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. “You know, I’ve never seen anything like this metal,” he said wonderingly, reaching out a hand to run his fingertips lightly along the ship’s hull. “It’s like it’s—”

The moment his fingers touched the hull, he felt something unlike anything he had ever experienced. It was like…the brush of another consciousness against his. He understood, instinctively, that it was the ship, and that it was attempting to communicate with him.

Startled, he jerked his hand back. “Whoa.”

“What?” Peter said.

“I think it’s trying to talk to me when I touch it. I mean, inside my head,” Johnny said.

“What is it saying?” Peter said. He pressed his own hand against the hull, but it resulted in only a disappointed frown. “I don’t…think I feel anything.”

“Maybe it likes me better,” Johnny said with a brash smile. “It’s got good taste.”

“Ha, ha,” Peter said. “See if you can sweet-talk it into letting us in.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said. “Right.”

He steeled himself and then pressed his hand against the hull gently. That had worked last time, hadn’t it? He shut his eyes and sought for that connection with the ship once more. He felt it then, whispering along the edges of his mind. “I don’t know if you understand anything that I’m saying,” he whispered, “but we need your help getting home.”

His arm began to tingle almost imperceptibly. He kept going. “Our planet was attacked by the Krotrakka. We need to get back to save our planet. So that what happened to yours doesn’t happen to ours.”

Nothing happened. Johnny sagged forwards and pressed his forehead against the ship’s hull, and now the prickling sensation spread to his skull. “Please,” he whispered despairingly, “I just want to go home. I just want to see my family again.”

Johnny thought of them all then, the people he might never see again. The flushed cheeks, shining eyes, and shrieks of laughter of his tiny little niece as she played raucous games with her friends, Franklin’s infectious little giggles every time Johnny tossed him high into the air, the strength and patience of his sister, the gentleness and serenity of Reed, the kindness and bluster and generosity of Ben—

A strong hand gripped his shoulder. “Look!” Peter said. “It’s opening!”

Johnny lifted his head, and, sure enough, a doorway was swirling open next to them, thick, viscous liquid pouring out beneath it, which solidified into what looked like a ramp.

Johnny smiled gratefully at the ship, and sent waves of gratitude along the mental link he seemed to have formed with it.

When he looked up again, Peter was already inside. “Oh, fer—” he complained. “Why doesn’t he ever just wait for me?”

Peter was looking around wide-eyed, when Johnny slipped into the ship after him.

“Look at this ship,” Peter said enthusiastically. “Man, I’m gonna want to spend hours poking around and figuring out how it works.”

The corridor was made of the same pulsating golden metal as the hull, with the same intricate tendrils of crimson woven through it.

“Hey,” Johnny said, peering at the wall. “You think those red lines are wires?”

“Probably veins and wires, I think,” Peter said gleefully. “You know. Because this ship is alive.”

“Right,” Johnny said. Peter might be delighted by that tidbit of information, but Johnny was trying his hardest not to be too grossed out at the thought that he was walking around inside of another living and potentially sentient organism. “Let’s find the cockpit and get the hell out of here.”

 
The cockpit was a tight, cramped little space. There were only four seats, all pressed close together, and a mass of intimidatingly incomprehensible knobs, switches, and cables that seemed to grow out of the console.

Datapads were scattered all over the console, while the floor behind the last two chairs was covered in what appeared to be children’s toys. Different from those of Earth, but recognizably for children nevertheless.

Johnny’s eyes fixed on something that looked almost like a stuffed animal. It looked as though it had simply been tossed there, and its owner would no doubt come tripping down the hallway, giggling, to fetch it at any moment.

Johnny knelt, picked it up, and ran his fingers over the soft fur. It was practically in pieces. One arm was dangling by a thread, and there were patches where it’d been mended, over and over again. A child had loved this toy, taken it everywhere with them.

Johnny looked up to find Peter watching him. Johnny knew by the look on his face that he knew exactly what Johnny was thinking about: the horde of shrieking, giggling children he’d left behind him on Earth.

“Kids lived here,” Johnny said dully, “and now they’re…”

He let the toy slip from his fingers. It fell to the floor with a dull thud.

Peter squeezed his shoulder, the warm weight grounding Johnny, keeping him rooted in the present, in the here-and-now.

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Peter said reassuringly. “Reed and Sue and Ben would never let anything happen to the kids.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said. He pushed himself back up to his feet. “Let’s get the hell off this planet.”

Beautiful it may have been once, but now it was nothing more than the embodiment of Johnny’s fears of what he might find when he returned to Earth—a planet full of nothing but death, everyone he loved gone.

Johnny slipped into the captain’s chair and began examining the controls closely.

“How the hell are we going to figure out how to fly this thing?” Peter said, echoing Johnny’s own thoughts.

“I…don’t know,” Johnny said hesitantly. “But I know we’re going to. I’ll be damned if I die here. I’m making it back to Earth, no matter what.”

“We both will, Sparky, but first things first.”

A thought struck Johnny. The ship had seemed to understand him when he’d spoken to it earlier. The moment he’d touched it, an invisible link seemed to have formed between them. If he touched it again now, perhaps…

He reached out and pressed a hand against the smooth metal of the console. As with the exterior hull, it felt different than any metal he’d ever come across. It felt, disconcertingly, as though it were alive—a cross between skin and metal. Gross.

Johnny pushed his disgust away, shut his eyes, and tried to reach out with his mind, searching for the consciousness that had brushed his own earlier. “Hey,” he said. “Ship. How do we fly you?”

Pouring into his mind came a dizzying series of images and schematics and instructions. It was as though the ship was attempting to download the information directly into his mind, the way someone would a computer.

Unfortunately for Johnny, his mind was not even remotely like a computer, and the information whisked by so quickly he could hardly understand any of it. A wisp of information here and there was the best he could do.

To make matters worse, it hurt. It hurt so damn much. There was a searing pain burning through his mind, sending his pulse racing, his head pounding, every muscle in his body contracting in protest.

Johnny screamed. He could hear, as though it were very far away, Peter shouting his name, and he felt Peter grab his shoulders to steady him where he had begun to sag out of his chair, and then Peter was screaming at the ship that it needed to stop, because couldn’t it see it was hurting Johnny?

The pain, mercifully, stopped then, and Johnny could breathe again. His hands fell from the console and he sagged backward, everything around him spinning.

“I think I’m gonna hurl,” Johnny said, pressing one hand to his stomach and the other to his mouth.

“You’re not gonna hurl, Torchy,” Peter said gently, rubbing his back and bending over him worriedly. “You haven’t eaten anything in two days.”

“Oh, yeah,” Johnny said.

For some reason he couldn’t fathom, that struck him as very funny. He started to laugh, but there was a hysterical edge to it.

Neither did his laughter seem to soothe Peter’s worry. “Hey,” he said, squeezing the back of Johnny’s neck. “Look at me. Everything’s okay now, pal.”

“Okay?!” Johnny said incredulously. He wanted to stop laughing, but he couldn’t seem to make himself do it. He hated it, not being in control of his body. For him, that was dangerous. That was something he could never allow to happen, not for a moment. “Pete, we’re stranded on a planet light years from home, and everyone we know might be dead. We don’t have any food, any money, or any clue how to get home. How the hell is everything okay?”

“Well,” Peter said. “uh.” He squinted. “Okay, so you got me. I mean, things could be worse?”

“Oh,” Johnny groaned, shutting his eyes and pressing a hand to his face. “You did not just say that!”

Peter winced. “I just jinxed us, didn’t I?”

Johnny nodded. He finally felt as though he were calming down, his breath evening out. “You totally jinxed us.”

Peter’s eyes were wary, the weight of his hands on the back of Johnny’s neck and curled around his right bicep comforting. “Are you feeling better now? It’s not a million degrees in here anymore, so I’m guessing yes?”

Had Johnny raised the temperature without meaning to? That was disconcerting. He rarely lost enough control to allow that to happen. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m okay now, I think.”

Peter’s hands lingered on Johnny for a moment longer than strictly necessary before he let go and sat back in his chair. “No more mind-melds with the ship. Doctor’s orders.”

Johnny chuckled. Trust Pete to find some way of cheering him up.

Johnny turned back to the console, but this time, when he looked at it, he found that he actually recognized what the knobs and switches and levers were, and what each one did. “Pete,” he said, shocked. “I think what the ship was doing to me worked.”

Peter sat up in his chair. “What do you mean?”

“I know how to fly the ship!” Johnny said. “Pete, we’re getting out of here!”

Peter whooped.

 
It turned out that Johnny’s knowledge was a bit spotty—he assumed it was because Peter had stopped the ship from downloading everything it needed to into Johnny’s brain—but he managed to get them into orbit anyhow.

“Great,” Peter said, staring out, intimidated, at that infinite vastness. “So we’re in space. Now what?”

Johnny rolled his eyes. “I dunno. We find a planet with people on it, and see if they’ve heard of Earth or anything we recognize? I mean, someone’s bound to have heard of the Kree, the Skrulls, the Nova Corps, Thanos, or Galactus, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think finding Thanos would really help us much.”

“Maybe not,” Johnny allowed. “But it would at least point us in the right direction.”

“Space is big,” Peter said. He seemed determined to make this more difficult than it really was. “Space is really big. How do we find a populated planet? We could wander around for years without finding a planet with people on it. We’ll be long dead by then.”

“The ship must know where there are people. There must be navigational charts onboard.”

“Well, how do we get it to tell us in a way that doesn’t involve screaming in pain?”

Johnny thought about it for a second. “We could just ask it.”

“Ask it?” Peter asked skeptically.

“Ask it,” Johnny confirmed.

“It doesn’t talk, Johnny.”

“No, but it knows how to communicate, and it understands us somehow. It’s worth a shot.”

Peter thought about it and then gave a “what the hell” shrug. “Fine. Do it.”

“Why don’t you ask this time?” Johnny countered. He’d asked last time, and his hands were still shaking from it.

Peter tried, but he got no response. “Either it isn’t listening, or it just likes you better. You try.”

Johnny sighed. Great. Being so instantly lovable and charming could be quite the burden sometimes.

“Ship,” he said, knowing he was going to regret asking this, “we need to go somewhere where there are people and food. Do you have navigational charts or any idea where we could go? We would prefer it if it was nearby. The closer the better. We’re sort of starving.”

The viewscreen in front of them suddenly grew opaque, and a series of what were clearly navigational charts appeared in their place. Unfortunately, neither Johnny nor Peter understood the pictographs it was written in, and their universal translators only worked with spoken languages.

Peter was watching the screen intently. “They’re going by too fast,” he said, frustrated. “Slow down, ship. Our brains don’t work that fast.”

The images kept whirring past as though it hadn’t so much as heard Peter.

Peter seemed irritated. “Does it just hate me, or something?”

“Maybe it thinks you’re a menace,” Johnny said innocently. “Lots of people think that.”

Peter glared resentfully at Johnny. “One person. One person thinks that.”

“That’s what you think,” Johnny said, but he stopped abruptly when he realized that the screen had stopped flashing images. Instead, there was a single planet, revolving slowly, on the viewscreen.

“Is this where the ship thinks we should go?” Peter asked.

The console chirped.

Johnny and Peter locked eyes, sharing their surprise.

“Is the ship talking back to us?” Johnny whispered.

“I think so,” Peter said back. “Do you think it really understands what we’re saying?”

Johnny thought that over. “Well,” he said. “If it could download information into my brain, it could probably take some out too.” He shrugged. “Maybe it downloaded English.”

“I wish we could download whatever language that’s written in,” Peter said ruefully.

The ship chirped again.

“I think it’s saying that we could,” Johnny said.

“But it would hurt?” Peter asked.

The ship chirruped, but this time it sounded almost apologetic.

Peter took a deep breath and held onto the console. “So do it.”

This time it was Peter who doubled over in pain, and Johnny who held him worriedly. He could feel the muscles in Peter’s shoulders tense and contract beneath his fingers.

Johnny didn’t like this. He didn’t like seeing Peter like this. The ship had to—

He opened his mouth to scream for it to stop, but at that precise moment, Peter sagged in Johnny’s arms. It was over.

Peter remained very still and simply breathed, in and out, to steady himself.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Peter said bravely, even though his voice was still shaky.

“Right,” Johnny said dryly. He saw right through Peter. “Of course it wasn’t. Like a walk in the park. Can you understand what the screen says?”

Peter squinted up at it. “The planet Tolmeen 7. It’s a trading planet. At the edge—” His eyes widened. “Of the universe.”

“We’re at the edge of the universe?” Johnny said flatly. “That’s where we are? For reals?”

Peter nodded glumly. “Looks like it.”

Something occurred to Johnny. “This wouldn’t happen to be the end that Knowhere is on, would it?”

That wasn’t too far from Earth. And the Guardians of the Galaxy made frequent visits—

Peter shook his head. “I…really don’t think so, Johnny. The universe is pretty big. There’s a lot of edge.”

“It’ll take us ages to get home from here. I mean, we’ll be dead by the time we get there. Pete. What are we gonna do?”

Johnny was maybe starting to panic a little.

“We’ll find a way,” Peter said firmly. “We’ll get back.”

They headed for Tolmeen. They had to start somewhere.

Chapter Text

It took more than a few days to reach Tolmeen. Johnny and Peter whiled away the time by exploring the ship and figuring out what had been left onboard.

Luckily there was a small cache of dried rations and otherwise preserved food that Peter assured Johnny were still edible, and, well, they didn’t die after eating them, so Johnny supposed he must have been right.

They found an old holo-image of what they imagined had once been the ship’s inhabitants. From it, they managed to surmise that it had been some kind of roving, intergalactic science academy.

It couldn’t be a family that had lived onboard, as they’d initially thought, because the sixteen smiling faces in the holo were all clearly different species.

The adults and one of the children resembled the beings they’d seen in the murals scattered throughout the Red City, so Johnny and Peter assumed it had been their home.

“I think they were called the Rhae,” Peter told Johnny one afternoon, once he’d spent some time browsing through the old datapads that had been left in what looked like some kind of lab. “The planet we were on was called Rhaellor, once. This school was for training child geniuses. The Rhae thought of science as a type of art. They didn’t see them as two separate categories. They were brilliant.”

“Val and the other kids would’ve fit right in on that planet,” Johnny said quietly.

He hadn’t been able to stop staring at the smiling, sunny faces of the children in that holo, not for days. He’d looked at them and seen instead the faces of the children from the Future Foundation—Val, Franklin, Alex, Bentley, Ahura, the Moloids, the Uhari.

Sue had sent them away to Attilan where she’d hoped they’d be safe from the invasion. Johnny knew Valeria too well to think she’d keep out of the war. Jesus. She was three.

Neither could he stop himself from wondering again and again if the small bodies they’d found in the town square had belonged to the children who once lived here. Had that been their fate? To be shot down in the street, their bodies left to rot in the sunlight?

Was that what was happening to his family, right now, back on Earth?

Johnny’s stomach twisted.

 
Peter’s investigation into the datapads also revealed that they were currently traveling through an area of space that was called Sarim, which translated, in English, to the Last.

“Because it’s the last bit of populated space before the universe ends,” Peter said.

“Boring. Did you find out anything useful?” Johnny scoffed.

“A little bit of the history, I guess? The Krotrakka have been here. More than once. I think this is where they’re from. Or nearby, anyways. They get talked about in these history books as some kind of boogeyman. People are terrified of them. I think they wiped out at least half of the species in the Last before they somehow got wormhole technology and started attacking a larger area.”

“Like Earth.”

“Yeah.”

“Lotta good that does us.”

 
Peter spent most of his time sprawled out in the common room combing through the datapads that had been abandoned on the ship, so Johnny found himself without company or entertainment very frequently.

He spent a lot of time in the cockpit, asking the ship to fill in the gaps in his knowledge of how to pilot it.

And, well, it just seemed rude to have prolonged conversations with the ship without naming it, but that was made more difficult by the fact that the ship, it turned out, had very strong opinions on what it was called.

It rejected Johnny’s first four suggestions—The Millennium Falcon, The Enterprise, and The Galactica. The Fantastic?

Johnny spent hours leaning back in his chair in the cockpit, tossing a kid’s softball up in the air, and running through every name he could think of.

Eventually, he started getting desperate—the ship didn’t seem to like any name.

“Inigo Montoya?”

The ship blew a raspberry.

“Okay, so not Inigo Montoya. Princess Buttercup?”

The ship didn’t like that one either.

“The Darth Vader? C’mon. You have to admit, that’s a cool one.”

No on that too.

“Um…Torchette?”

The ship made an interested noise.

Johnny didn’t catch the ball that time, so it smacked him on the forehead. He was glad Peter hadn’t been around to see that one. “Whoa,” he said, when he was through cursing and rubbing at his forehead. He’d just been kidding about that one. “You would seriously let us call you that?”

The ship made a lot of beeping sounds.

“Was that a yes?”

The ship chirped once, in what had come to be their standard yes sound.

Johnny sat back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. He grinned. “Awesome.” His smile faded when he realized that Peter might not like that name. Well, too bad. He probably should’ve been here hanging out with Johnny, instead of sitting around with his nose stuck in a datapad. “Now I just have to break it to Peter that we’re flying around in The Torchette.”

 
“No. Nuh-uh. That’s a ridiculous name,” Peter said judgmentally when Johnny finally worked up the nerve to tell him about it over dinner...two days later. “I am not calling it that.”

They were sitting side-by-side in the tiny little dining room, slurping at the small bowls of watery, bitter soup Johnny’d managed to whip up. Johnny was a terrific cook, but even he couldn’t work miracles. It was the best he could do with the ingredients he had.

“Well, I like it,” Johnny muttered into his soup. “And so does Torchette.”

Peter threw up his hands. “Why would you even suggest that to it?” he huffed. “Couldn’t you have stuck to reasonable, not embarrassing names?”

“I did!” Johnny protested. “I tried for hours! It didn’t like any of the names I said.”

The ship blew a raspberry over the intercom. Oh. So it’d been listening to their conversation.

Johnny pointed his almost-spoon at the ceiling. “See?”

“Okay,” Peter said to Torchette. “Can’t we maybe reconsider this?”

The ship blew another raspberry, this one twice as long as the last.

“I think that means no,” Johnny whispered to Peter.

“I would really like to call you The Millennium Falcon,” Peter tried. “Please?”

The ship clearly disapproved of that name.

“Pretty please?” Peter tried again.

“I tried that one,” Johnny said tartly. “Do you really think I wouldn’t have tried that one?”

“I don’t know why you do half the things you do!” Peter said. “How did you let this happen?”

The ship didn’t seem to be happy about his reaction.

“Pete,” Johnny hissed. “Shut up. You’re hurting Torchette's feelings! You’ll just make it angry.”

“It’s a ship,” Peter said, waving a hand dismissively. “Come on. What’s it going to do to me?”

Peter found out exactly what the ship could do to him the next morning, when the door to his room mysteriously wouldn’t open, no matter how many times he pressed the button or banged on it.

Between fits of laughter, Johnny managed to talk the ship into letting Peter out of his bedroom, and then guffawed again at the disgruntled look on Peter’s face when he clambered out.

Fifteen minutes later, Johnny nearly had a heart attack when he heard Peter shrieking in the bathroom. It sounded like someone’d stabbed him repeatedly. There was definitely an edge of rage to those shrieks.

Johnny dropped the breakfast he’d been fixing and darted to the bathroom.

“Pete!” Johnny called out, pounding a fist desperately on the door. Torchette had better not have hurt him. “Pete! Are you okay?”

Peter might have been on the other side of a thick metal door, but it did nothing to soften the force of the irate explosion that followed. “The damn ship made my shower freezing cold!” he roared. “What is wrong with you?!”

Johnny was pretty sure that the five-minute long rant that ensued was mostly directed at the ship.

Throughout it all, Johnny was laughing so hard he couldn’t keep himself upright. He sagged down against the door, clutching his sides and howling with laughter.

It didn’t help when Peter opened the door, towel wrapped around his waist, and glowered down at him. Johnny fell backwards into the bathroom. His sides were starting to hurt from laughing for so hard and for so long.

“Laugh it up, Hothead. You’ll piss it off too, sooner or later.”

“No, I won’t,” Johnny sang out cheerfully as Peter stepped over him and marched self-righteously back to his room. “Torchette actually likes me. Because I don’t make fun of it.”

“It’s a stupid name!”

“This is exactly why it hates you!”

 
Johnny did actually manage to annoy Torchette, at the very least, when he flamed on during an argument with Peter a day later.

Apparently, Torchette's fire-prevention system was to shoot slimy, disgusting goo at whatever was on fire.

Johnny’s flame was extinguished instantly, as were his chances of winning his argument with Peter, who was too busy rolling on the floor and howling with laughter.

Profoundly irritated with both Peter and Torchette, Johnny stalked off to the shower. It took about an hour to get all of that goo off of him, and washing his FF uniform was a pain.

He ended up putting on some of the clothes that the adults who had lived on the ship had had left behind, even though they were far too big and clearly not designed for human bodies at all.

For one thing, there were three armholes in at least one of the shirts. That raised so many questions.

 
They finally arrived at Tolmeen 7 two days later. Peter was glad to finally be able to get away from Torchette—their feud had, if anything, worsened over the last few days. Peter wasn’t faring well, mostly because he didn’t have many ways to retaliate against Torchette.

Tolmeen 7, it turned out, was something of a desert world, with a few small settlements here and there.

Its capitol city—if it could be called that—was small in comparison to the cities of Earth. Just a few hundred ragged, stocky buildings in the midst of a vast desert nothingness.

The heat was dry, the sun merciless, the sand everywhere. Johnny wouldn’t want to be stuck in the city if there was ever a sandstorm, which, given the way the wind howled through the city streets intermittently, he was sure happened often.

Johnny thought it’d be a good idea for them to wander through the city and get their bearings. Maybe figure out what they could do to earn some money.

Like most frontier towns, the denizens of the city were a mixture of different species, and spaceships were constantly arriving and leaving from the shabby old spaceport that had definitely seen better days. It probably didn’t bode well that Johnny didn’t recognize a single one of them, nor that they didn’t resemble in the slightest any species Johnny had ever come across.

Neither had they, it seemed, ever seen anyone like Johnny or Peter, because they drew quite a lot of attention as they wandered through the city. There were more double-takes and people staring raptly than even Johnny, used to life in the public eye since he was a teenager, was accustomed to experiencing.

“What are we even looking for?” Peter complained after they’d roamed around for the better part of the morning.

“We’ll know it when we see it,” Johnny told Peter, with far more confidence than he felt.

“I’m hungry,” Peter said glumly, rubbing at his stomach.

“Join the club,” Johnny muttered.

Their food reserves, unfortunately, were running low. Johnny blamed their quick disappearance on Peter, who had stuffed his face full of those terrible, bitter rations every chance he got, even though he’d never for a second stopped complaining about how awful they were.

They were going to need a new source of food and money, and fast. Especially given how much Peter ate.

Peter was, notoriously, terrible at making money and even worse at keeping it, so it was all up to Johnny.

 
“Street performers,” Johnny observed when they wound up back in the main marketplace for the fifth time.

There was a small square in the center of the marketplace, where there were colorful dancers, singers, and street troupes, and all manner of performances occurring simultaneously, adding to the deafening cacophony.

“You say that every time we pass through here,” Peter said, exasperated. “Any reason you’re so interested?”

“I was just thinking. Maybe people would pay to see what I can do with fire,” Johnny suggested.

There was a thought. People on Earth always loved it, although it was more hit-or-miss on other planets, Johnny’d found, depending on each culture’s take on fire. He was either despised or idolized. Johnny hoped this one would turn out to be the latter.

Johnny knew it would probably be better not to mention that last possibility to Peter. Instead, he said, “I mean, if they’ve never seen anything like it…”

Peter rifled a hand through his hair. He didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the idea anyhow. “Yeah,” he said. “If you want to try it, I won’t stop you.”

“You should do stuff too,” Johnny suggested. “You used to be an entertainer. Do some tricks. Stick to stuff. Make web shapes for the kiddies.”

“I don’t really want to waste my web-fluid on this,” Peter hedged. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to make more, and I’ve only got about five cartridges left.”

“We’ll work something out,” Johnny said, putting an arm around Peter’s shoulders and leading him towards the square of performers. “How do you feel about getting set on fire? No important body parts, I promise. Maybe just, like, your mouth. You don’t need that, right?”

“Hardy-har-har,” Peter said flatly. “No.”

 
The crowd, luckily, was delighted with Johnny and Peter’s act, although Johnny wasn’t certain whether they were more fascinated by their odd physical appearance—hair, it seemed, was something of a novelty, as were five fingers rather than the standard three—or by Johnny’s tricks with fire.

He was mostly only certain that it wasn’t Peter’s acrobatic tricks people found interesting. Anyone could do that, he sniffed. His fire stuff was truly unique.

It didn’t take long at all for a small crowd—mostly children—to gather around Johnny and Peter, who plastered a smile on their faces and did his best to ignore the way his stomach was growling.

In the end, they managed to earn a small pile of silvery coins. It was enough to buy them a hot meal and maybe a scant few supplies, Peter said. He’d been reading up on the area and was somewhat familiar with the local currency.

 
“I don’t get why you had to pick the seediest bar in town to eat at,” Peter complained, eyeing the disreputable crowd around them warily. Smugglers, thieves, assassins…this place was not ideal by any stretch of the imagination. “This food’s so not worth it.”

Peter was right about that, at least. The meal Johnny’d managed to get for a mere pittance was fairly disgusting, but it was the best they could afford.

“You’re not worried that someone’s gonna attack us, are you?” Johnny said. He shoved another spoonful of the revolting, slimy gruel into his mouth, and missed the days when the worst he’d had to put up with had been his sister’s cooking. At least she’d been great at ordering take-out. “’Cause I really think we can take care of ourselves.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “That is not what I’m worried about.” He gestured at the busy crowd. “I just don’t like the ambiance. It doesn’t help my digestion.”

Johnny snorted. “Just be glad you’ve got something to digest at all,” he said wryly. “Don’t rush to thank me. And, yeah, I know I’m a genius.”

Peter hardly seemed to be listening to Johnny. He swirled his spoon around in the gruel, lost in thought. “Is this what our lives are gonna be from now on? Wandering around through the universe and putting on cheap performances for a bunch of kids? Barely making enough to scrape by?”

“Would it really be so bad?” Johnny asked wistfully. “I could think of so many ways we could be worse off.”

There was one thought that had been keeping him up the last few nights. What if Peter hadn’t fallen through the wormhole? What if he’d ended up somewhere other than with Johnny? What if Johnny had ended up, trapped out here, completely and utterly alone, so hopelessly, desperately far from everyone he loved?

At least he had Peter with him. Thank every god in the universe for that.

Peter rifled a hand through his hair. “It’s just—a couple of days ago we were saving the world. Now we don’t even know where our world is.”

“We’ll find it,” Johnny said. “We always figure out how to get back. We’ll do it this time too.”

“Being lost in space with Reed Richards isn’t the same as being lost in space with me,” Peter insisted. “I keep trying to tell you that.”

“And I keep ignoring you because you’re stupid,” Johnny said. He leaned across the table and tried to catch Peter’s eyes. “Hey, look at me.” Peter’s eyes found his. “Haven’t we always been better together than we are apart? You don’t have to figure this out alone.” He reached out and squeezed Peter’s hand. “We’re a team.”

“The best team?” Peter said, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He twisted his hand around to twine his fingers through Johnny’s.

“Well,” Johnny hedged, not letting go of Peter’s hand either. “I wouldn’t say that. The FF is the best. Duh.”

Peter tipped his head back and laughed, a sudden and unexpected eruption of joy. They’d been so busy worrying about surviving and getting home the last few days, there hadn’t been enough of this. The simple joy they’d always felt at being in each other’s company, trading insults, getting each other into trouble and then out of it again, as they had since they’d been teenagers.

It never failed to amaze Johnny, the way that the sight and sound of Peter’s raucous, delighted laughter never failed to steal his breath away, even after so many years.

Johnny wished, for the thousandth time, that he was a far braver, far more brazen man than he was. Perhaps then he’d have the courage to do what he’d been longing to do for years—lean across the table, fist a hand in Peter’s worn red-and-blue shirt, and kiss him senseless.

Johnny allowed himself to pretend for a few heart-pounding moments that he had the courage to do precisely that.

“You wouldn’t happen to think the FF are the best because you, I dunno, helped found them?” Peter teased, and the spell was broken.

Johnny was genuinely offended at that suggestion. “No! Of course not. We just are the best. Hey, the way I remember it, you’re the one who begged to join us way back when. You must’ve thought so too. And then what about the way you stalked me for years?”

Peter laughed again. “I didn’t do any of those things, Torchy. Not one.”

“That’s not how I choose to remember it,” Johnny shot back, smiling into his drink.

Okay, so maybe Peter’d only asked to join the FF after breaking into the Baxter Building and picking a fight with them, and maybe he’d left in a huff when Ben made a crack about Peter being a criminal.

But Peter’d definitely had, back in the early days, a bit of a tendency to pop up in unexpected places—Johnny’s home in Glenville and his girlfriend’s house, to name two.

It wasn’t much of a stretch to assume he’d been following Johnny like a starry-eyed fanboy, even if it had been ruined, most of the time, by Peter picking fights with him. Johnny, who’d been a perfect angel, had never started any, not one. Or, at least, that’s how Johnny liked to remember it.

Peter chuckled a little, but that quickly faded into smiling fondly at Johnny. Johnny wondered if he was remembering all of the good old days too.

Peter still hadn’t let go of Johnny’s hand.

Johnny smiled back, and if it was tinged with sadness and maybe a bit of longing, Johnny hoped Peter wouldn’t notice.

Peter was clinging to Johnny for comfort, Johnny told himself firmly. It didn’t mean anything more than that. Johnny shouldn’t start getting ideas. The way he was smiling at Johnny was a normal smile between friends, nothing more.

Johnny was distracted by what was happening over Peter’s shoulder. Another pair of people was sneaking into the backroom of the bar, and through the crack in the door, he could see what looked like gambling tables.

“Jackpot,” Johnny said with a smug smile. He’d been hoping there’d be gambling here.

Peter jerked his hand away from Johnny’s like he’d been burned. “What? Why would you say that?”

Johnny was a little startled at Peter’s reaction. “People are gambling,” he said by way of explanation, gesturing at the backroom. “We need to get in on that.”

Peter did not look pleased. “Is that why we came here to eat, Sparky? You wanted to gamble?”

That was exactly why they’d come here. Johnny’d made a mental note of the bar when they were wandering around earlier. It had looked like precisely the sort of place that would have illicit backroom gambling. “No!” Johnny protested. “I mean, well, okay. Yeah. We need money, and, hey, Ben Grimm taught me how to gamble. We can solve all of our money problems in one night.”

Peter blew out a weary sigh. “Oh, boy,” he said ruefully. “You’re really gonna try this?”

Johnny shrugged. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Or, at least, that’s what Reed always says. Usually, it happens right before he blows up his lab.” He squinted. “On second thought, maybe this isn’t the best plan.”

“You realize we could end up with no money, right? And then we’d go back to starving. I was not a fan of starving.”

Johnny held up a finger. “Or—consider this—we could end up with tons of money.”

Peter rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, but I just want you to understand that this isn’t a viable career option. We are not going to become professional gamblers. I draw the line. No way. Nuh-uh. May Parker did not raise a card shark.” He shook his head disapprovingly at Johnny. “Space has changed you.”

Johnny gave him a look. “I wasn’t saying that we should become card sharks. This is a one-time thing. And I’ve always liked gambling.”

Peter shut his eyes and cursed under his breath. “Fine,” he said. “But. Let me do the gambling.”

“What? Why?”

“My…Spidey sense lets me tell when people are bluffing,” Peter confessed reluctantly.

“What?!” Johnny shouted, much too loudly. When people turned and stared, he lowered his voice. “Is that why you’ve been beating me at poker so often lately?” he hissed.

Peter winced. “Yes? Also Ben gave me some pointers.”

Johnny put two and two together. “That’s why you stopped tapping your feet every time you bluffed.”

Peter nodded. “Yeah. Ben said I should probably not do that. Go figure.”

Johnny rested his cheek on his balled-up fist. “And he didn’t even warn me!” he said resentfully. “What a stinker. I’ll have to get him back for that the next time I—”

He cut himself off when it hit him that Ben might not be around to prank anymore, and if he was, there was at least a chance Johnny wouldn’t get to see him again.

Johnny had never been very good at hiding his feelings. Peter must’ve been able to see everything he was thinking written clearly on his face, because he reached out, wrapped a hand around Johnny’s wrist, smiled reassuringly, and said, “You’ll see him again. We both will. And then we’ll play the greatest prank to ever be pranked on him. We’ll be legends. Second we get back.”

A slow smile spread across Johnny’s face. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

 
They managed to get into the back room, but, disappointingly, the game turned out to be more complicated than Johnny had anticipated. There were several wheels spinning, and cards with writing on them Johnny didn’t understand at all, and he still didn’t have the greatest understanding of how money worked here—

Maybe this hadn’t been a good plan.

“It’s going to take us days to figure this out,” Peter said, pressing a dazed hand to his face as he stared at the card players.

“So it takes us days. That’s better. We’ll be able to collect more money that way,” Johnny shrugged. “More money to bet, more money to win.”

They spent the rest of the night watching the players and trying to learn how the game—it turned out to be called etum—was played.

 
For the next week, Johnny and Peter were back at the marketplace every morning, performing.

By the time night fell on the second day, they’d raked in double what they’d made the first day.

They were so successful, in fact, that the other performers began casting dark, jealous glances their way.

Johnny’d been around the block long enough to know that didn’t bode well.

 
Every evening was spent studying the etum players until the game broke up for the night, and then Johnny and Peter would trudge wearily back to their ship for a few hours of much needed sleep.

Peter had spent a day or two combing through the datapads he had back onTorchette, and found one that contained a record of how all of the most popular local games were played. He took to studying it and teaching it to Johnny. They quizzed each other on the minutiae whenever they had a chance.

Finally, Peter announced that he’d gotten a good enough sense of how the game was played to give it a shot.

Johnny asked him three times if he was sure, until Peter, annoyed, yanked their earnings out of his hand and sat to play when one of the players was cleaned out and forced to leave.

Johnny didn’t miss the way the other players cast devious glances at each other the moment they laid eyes on Peter.

He knew what they were thinking—here was an easy mark. He only prayed that Peter was as ready as he thought he was.

He wasn’t. He lost every penny they had less than an hour in.

“Unbelievable,” Johnny ranted afterwards, when they were out on the cold, empty streets, penniless once more, as they headed back to their ship. “You went all in?”

“I was showing them I was tough!” Peter insisted. “None of them took me seriously!”

“That was a good thing!” Johnny shouted back. “Them underestimating you is good! Do you really think they’re taking you seriously now?”

Given the way they had all boomed with laughter when Peter, shame-faced, had slunk away empty-handed, Johnny doubted it.

“I...guess not,” Peter allowed. “It’s not my fault!”

“It is absolutely and completely your fault! How is this even remotely not your fault?”

Peter had no defense. “Okay, so it’s totally my fault. I can just…try again in a week?” he said sheepishly.

“No,” Johnny said firmly. “You are done. I’m trying next time. You’re not going anywhere near the etum tables again.”

“That’s fair,” Peter agreed, nodding his head. “Uh-huh. Yep. That is totally fair.”

 
A week later, Johnny was back at the etum tables. Peter was not allowed in the room, so he reluctantly trudged back to Torchette.

This time, Johnny was playing it smart. He wasn’t going to go another few days without food or having to eat swill, so he handed Peter half of their savings to take with him, just in case.

The etum players took much more of a shine to Johnny than they had to Peter, not that it was necessarily a good thing. They were all hands. Especially a big burly player called Serle, who had four hands Johnny had to fend off, and who took a bit too much of a shine to Johnny.

A small, petite creature named Yult was not pleased about that.

Serle explained that it had, at first, been worshipped on Yult’s planet as a god, but had grown bored of that and wandered off to have some fun. Yult had been trailing around behind Serle for centuries, acting as the vicious, standoffish, sour-tempered bodyguard and servant Serle neither needed nor wanted.

“So, pretty one,” Serle said to Johnny, “I have never seen your like. Where are you from? What are your species called? Have I mentioned I’m a god?”

“You’re not the first god I’ve met,” Johnny said, unimpressed, as he shuffled his cards. “You’re not even the first one to get handsy with me.” He reached down and yanked Serle’s bottom left hand off of his thigh, making sure to twist its fingers back as far as he could.

Serle seemed delighted. “Fiery,” it laughed. “I like that.”

Johnny rolled his eyes. He mostly just wanted Serle to stop distracting him. Maybe it was flirting with him on purpose, to keep him off balance.

“Ye did not answer Its Majesty’s query,” Yult said brusquely. “Where are ye from, fire demon?”

Johnny fought off the urge to roll his eyes. Yult seemed convinced that he was the mythological fire creature who was destined to cause Serle’s undoing. “Oh,” he said flippantly. “You know. Around. You’ve probably never heard of my planet. It’s…far.”

Yult muttered something darkly under their breath. Johnny could guess what they were saying. Something about going back where he came from, he imagined.

“Then you are not from the Last,” Serle replied, disappointed, drawing back.

“Noooo,” Johnny said, shaking his head. “We—Pete and me—are from the Milky Way Galaxy. Planet called Terra, system called Sol.”

“How did you end up so far from home?” Serle prodded.

“There were these aliens that invaded. They were called the Krotrakka,” Johnny said. “We fell into this wormhole—”

Johnny stopped talking when he realized that the entire room had gone silent and turned to look at him. He blinked. “Uh. What did I say?”

“The Krotrakka,” Serle repeated incredulously. “You have seen the Krotrakka and lived to tell of it?”

Johnny shrugged. “Yeah. Why?”

“It is a rare thing. The Krotrakka are demons. They consume every world they come across. You are lucky to have escaped with your life. I expect your planet is gone now?”

“The war’s not over yet. Or it wasn’t when we left. My buddy Pete and I are trying to get back to help stop them. I have family there.”

There was a murmur throughout the room.

“That is…unwise,” an old, wizened etum player named Dooli rasped. It peered at Johnny over his glasses. “It will simply mean your death. Believe me. I know. They consumed my world. I am one of the last of my kind. As are you by now, I expect.”

“No, pretty one,” Serle said, caressing Johnny’s cheek. “Do not return. Come live with me, and I will give you a life of ease and luxury such as nothing you have ever known. A snap of your fingers, and whatever you desire shall be yours. Forget your home world.”

Johnny’s eyes hardened, and he batted Serle’s hand away brusquely. “No thanks,” he said stubbornly. “I have a family to get back to.”

Serle seemed displeased with his response. “They are most likely dead, pretty one, your world in ruins, your quest futile. Abandon it and be mine.”

“Nope,” Johnny said automatically. “You never give up on family.”

The type of life Serle was asking for wasn’t even an option. Johnny would never give up. He’d search his whole life for his family, if he had to, even if all that was waiting for him back on Earth was their shattered, lifeless bodies. At least he’d be able to give them the burial they deserved. He owed them that much.

He laid his cards out on the table. “I call etum.”

The other players groaned. Johnny grinned. He had won that round, at least.

In the end, he quadrupled their earnings. It wasn’t as much as he’d been hoping to make, but it was better than nothing.

His luck, however, ran out as he was walking home, his winnings tucked safely away in his boot.

He had the misfortune of stumbling across a drunken group of the street performers who were none too happy at his and Peter’s success.

They deliberately moved to block his path. Johnny didn’t like where this was headed, and Peter was back at the ship.

“If it izzzn’t the little fire creature,” one of them slurred. It was about four feet tall. Johnny’d seen it in the marketplace, doing mediocre gymnastics and tricks with streamers and concentric rings. “Zzzztealing all of our buzzznesss.”

Johnny rolled his eyes and said, “Look, I’m just trying to get home, okay? I don’t really plan on sticking around. You’ll have your old business back in no time, all right?”

One of them grabbed Johnny by the shirt and picked him up with one colossal arm that was broader than Johnny’s waist. “You’ll leave now!” it roared.

Johnny’s head erupted in flames. “I’ll leave when I want to leave!” he roared back, not cowed at all.

Honestly, he was more annoyed and exhausted than anything. He wanted to get home, tell Peter about his success, and then collapse on his bed and sleep for days.

The giant creature didn’t let go of Johnny. “If you don’t,” it said, uncowed, “you and your little friend are gonna have an accident one of these days. Wouldn’t that be a tragedy?”

A third burst into high-pitched, irritating laughter. The giant tossed Johnny onto the sidewalk, where he landed with a heavy thud.

Johnny’s hands curled into fists. He itched to start a fight—burn them but good—but then he thought better of it. He might melt all of the money he had squirreled away in his boot.

They pushed past him, and he let them.

Fine by him, he thought. It was about time they got the hell off of this backwater planet. Time to find somewhere more densely populated.

Somewhere out there was a way back home, and Johnny was going to find it, if it was the last thing he did.

 
He didn’t think there was really any point in telling Peter about his little confrontation. Peter’d just get upset, and there was really nothing to be done about it.

Instead, he idly suggested that it was time to leave, and Peter agreed.

They bought up enough supplies to get them to the next planet, and then off they went.

Chapter Text

They landed on Oolen about two weeks after leaving Tolmeen, but their stay this time was even briefer. They left in a hurry after Peter accidentally agreed to sell Johnny to a beleaguered local proprietor.

“You sold me?!” Johnny shouted when he found out about Peter’s ill-advised business plans, which was around the time they were being chased down the street by a horde of guards armed with very loud blasters. “I can’t believe you sold me!”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” Peter said, narrowly dodging a blast that had come far too close. “I thought he was offering us a job! He said he needed someone to help serve drinks! I didn’t think he meant he wanted a slave!”

“Unbelievable,” Johnny yelled. “How could you sell me? I’m never letting you forget this!”

“I’m sorry!” Peter wailed as they hurtled down the street toward the safety of Torchette.

 
It was Johnny who made the mistake that led to their hasty departure from the ninth planet they visited.

The planet Eles was more beautiful and densely populated than any other planet they’d been on. There were vast, elegant palaces, shining in the bright sunlight, lush, green landscapes, swimming pools—and best yet, they’d arrived in the midst of one of their famed, hectic seasonal festivals.

Johnny was passing through a giant, cheering crowd in the main town square, unutterably bored because Peter’d abandoned him to poke around the library of a professor they’d met the day before, when a beautiful, scantily-clad, blue-skinned young man offered him a sip of the favored local beverage. The chalice he was offering to Johnny was gold, encrusted with jewels, and clearly expensive.

In retrospect, that should have been Johnny’s first clue that something was up. Also the way the whole crowd, hushed, breathless, was staring at them.

The moment he took the first sip, the crowd erupted in loud cheers, and Johnny realized he’d made a mistake. The young man was the Elesian prince, it turned out, and Johnny had, by accepting the drink, agreed to become the king of the festival and, worse yet, the prince’s treasured royal concubine. For life.

The prince, who had been combing through the crowd looking for his nominee for king of the fair had been very taken with Johnny’s exotic appearance, it seemed.

The guards had whisked Johnny away to the palace harem before he’d even known what was going on. He’d tried to flame on, but couldn’t—something about that drink he’d been given was making it impossible.

Johnny was pampered and bathed and decorated in a way he hadn’t been since before this whole, dreadful ordeal had begun. He finally got his manicure, for one thing. And a massage. And all the food he could eat. And nice clothes…those were some really nice clothes.

Johnny was so weak.

Peter caught wind of what had happened that afternoon in the town square—it was being played on a loop all over the planetary news stations, so he could hardly have missed it—so he decided to sneak into the palace early that night and break Johnny out of the lavish bedroom to which he’d been led.

“Now, wait a minute,” Johnny said when he saw Peter slip in through the window. He wasn’t sure whether or not he was happy to see Peter. He’d been enjoying some tasty local fruits and delicacies. It’d been ages since he’d eaten this much or so well. He started scuttling off the bed and away from Peter. He held up a hand to stop Peter. “Hold on. Let’s just think about this for a second.”

Peter came to a halt on the other side of the bed. He was going to be judgy and a total buzzkill. Johnny could just tell from the look on his face.

“Johnny,” Peter said, arms crossed, raising an eyebrow. It was judging Johnny. Peter was the only person Johnny knew who had judgy eyebrows. “Johnny. You do not want to be a concubine.”

“But this is the sort of life I’m used to, Pete! I’m not like you. I’m not used to being poor or a nobody! Flying around the universe without even a penny to my name? No hordes of screaming fans chasing me down the street? No manicures? That’s no way to live, Peter! Not that you’d understand,” Johnny concluded miserably.

“Okay, I’m not even going to point out the fact that you’re gonna have to have sex with a guy you barely know—”

“A hot guy I barely know,” Johnny corrected. The prince was nearly as beautiful as Johnny, despite being so blue. “A really hot guy I barely know. Who knows! Maybe he’ll even be good in bed. A win all around!”

“I’m pretending you didn’t just say that. Johnny, he chained you to the bed!”

Johnny hooked his thumb under the collar that had been placed around his neck. “By a golden collar! Look, it even has jewels! Real ones!” He shook the chain at Peter next. “And get it right! It’s a golden chain! And I’m dressed head to foot in gold!” There wasn’t much of his outfit, but what there was? It was definitely real gold. Johnny knew the difference. He tilted his chin up. “Besides, it’s not like it’s the first time I’ve been chained to a bed,” he added, just to watch Peter’s face turn colors, which it did.

“You are not thinking straight.”

“Oh, I’m definitely not thinking anything that’s even a little bit straight.”

“Not remotely what I meant. You’re Johnny Storm! The Human Torch! A hero! You’ve saved the world! You’re better than—” Peter shook a hand at him. “—this!”

“Am I?” Johnny said. Right at that moment, he didn’t think so. “I like being spoiled, Peter! I like people noticing how hot I am! Everyone here always tells me I’m beautiful! All the time! I mean, if I go with you, my looks are just going to be wasted! No one appreciates me on that ship! Not you or Torchette.”

Peter looked up at the ceiling and blew out a sigh. “I promise I’ll tell you you’re beautiful every morning if it’ll make you happy. Now can we go?”

Now that was tempting, Johnny had to admit. That was very tempting. He chewed on his bottom lip. “Can I at least keep the outfit?”

“Why do you even want—what possible use would you have for an outfit like that?” Peter spluttered.

“I dunno,” Johnny mused, smoothing his hand over the delicate gold fabric. “I can whip it out whenever I want to feel sexy. Maybe I’ll meet someone I want to put it on for?” He gasped excitedly. “Maybe the next one will be a prince too! Maybe even an emperor. Pete, if an emperor makes me his concubine, don’t even try to rescue me—I’m staying. Unless he’s old. Or ugly. In that case, please come save me.”

“Oh, fer—” Peter growled. “I’ve had enough of this.”

He reached out and snapped the golden chain in two without even trying.

“Oh, no!” Johnny cried out, scandalized. He grabbed the two ends and tried desperately to put it back together. “What did you do?! Fix it! That was expensive!”

“I don’t care,” Peter ground out, reaching out a hand towards Johnny, hauling him over the bed, and tossing him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“I resent this,” Johnny said bitterly. Well. He mostly resented it. There was a small, very irritating part of him that found Peter’s take-charge attitude more than a little thrilling, but he decided it was best to ignore it. “If I could flame on, you’d be a roasted spider right about now.”

“Well,” Peter said, heading over to the window. “Lucky for both of us that you can’t.”

“Man,” Johnny said glumly. “I coulda been rich.”

“Sure you could, Madame de Pompadour,” Peter said, as he swung out of the window and started climbing down the side of the palace and into the sumptuous gardens below. Gardens Johnny could have lived in.

“I met her once,” Johnny said absently. “She was nice.”

“You did not. Stop making things up.”

“Did so,” Johnny insisted. “Shows what you know.”

“I bet you don’t even know who she was,” Peter scoffed.

“She was some king’s mistress. Big hair. Big dress. French. Knew a lot. Reed and Sue liked her too.”

Peter snorted derisively, but Johnny knew he was right because he really had met her.

“Told you I met her,” Johnny gloated.

Peter landed with a crunch in the gravel directly beneath Johnny’s window. What could’ve been Johnny’s window. In a palace.

Johnny's life was so unfair, he thought with a sigh, and Peter was so deeply irritating.

“You know I can still walk, right?” Johnny said tartly. They were on the ground now. Peter didn’t need to carry him. “My powers are gone. My legs work fine.”

“How do I know you won’t try to run back and be a concubine?” Peter said. He shifted Johnny on his shoulder, and Johnny yelped and scrambled to hang on. If Peter dropped him, there’d be hell to pay. “Nope. I am not letting go of you until we get to the ship.”

“It likes to be called Torchette,” Johnny reminded him. “It said Chette was fine too.”

“I’m not calling it any of those things.”

“See? You ruin everything nice.”

 
Somehow, they actually managed to get off of the planet without anyone noticing.

Dammit. The one time Johnny wouldn’t’ve minded being chased by a whole flotilla. It would have been so romantic. God knows there was no hope of Peter being even the tiniest bit romantic.

Once he was in his quarters, Johnny took off his delicate gold outfit carefully and hung it in his closet, where he could look at it from his bed and sigh over what could have been, if it hadn’t been for stupid Peter Parker.

What a rotten, no-good stinker Peter was sometimes. It was lucky for him that he had those terrific abs and biceps and that his smile was so nice. Johnny could never stay mad at him long, no matter how much he wanted to sometimes.

Johnny quickly realized that staring at that damn concubine outfit was a mistake, because he'd begun by fantasizing about what it would be like to wear it for a prince, who just happened to look and act exactly like Peter, but then he'd made the mistake of imagining what Peter would look like in it, and he'd been so turned on he could hardly breathe. 

Given that he was trapped in space with only Peter, who wasn't interested in him at all, and a spaceship for company, those sorts of fantasies soon proved to be incredibly frustrating.

Johnny shoved his concubine outfit into the back of his closet, tried hard not to think about it anymore, and wished and wished that cold showers were a viable option for him.

Dammit, he was going to chafe in very uncomfortable places tomorrow.

 
Johnny’s powers were back within twenty-four hours, which he proved to Peter by sunburning “STINKER” onto his forehead while he was, very unwisely, taking a nap in the common area.

He should really know better by now than to fall asleep while Johnny was a) around and b) pissed as hell at him for ruining his dreams of concubinage.

They quickly realized that Torchette’s databases were not always correct. They’d get the names of the planets wrong or claim that certain regions were under the control of certain factions that hadn’t, as far as Johnny and Peter could figure out, existed for anywhere between several centuries and a few millennia.

It was all so strange. Johnny wondered time and again how old their little ship was. Exactly how long had it been trapped beneath that rubble? Torchette never seemed to want to talk about it. Whenever Johnny asked, it would simply cease answering.

Johnny and Peter surmised that it must have been a couple thousand years, easy. That must have been…how had Torchette ever managed to stand it, being alone for so long? It would have driven Johnny out of his mind. He never would’ve been able to bear it.

He hated being alone. It reminded him far too much of how unutterably lonely his life had been before the Fantastic Four, when absolutely no one except Sue had given a damn whether he lived or died.

Was it really any wonder he thrived on the attention and admiration his life as a member of the world’s greatest superhero team had garnered for him?

Maybe he was stuck out here, far, far away from anyone who knew his name, but at least Peter was around to keep him company.

Johnny never let himself think about what things would have been like if Peter hadn’t fallen in to the wormhole too, if it’d just been him lost out here, all alone. The possibility made his blood run cold.

 
Johnny and Peter followed the same routine on every planet they visited—observe, learn, figure out what they could do or trade to survive.

On some planets, they took to street performances, on others, they offered to help out as heroes, on yet others, Johnny’d buy up some valuable crop or resource and trade it on the next.

But it was mostly Johnny who ended up making sure they had enough to survive in the short term.

Peter was more focused on the longer-term problem of returning home. He visited whatever intellectuals or travelers he could find on each planet, trying his best to find some sign, some indication of which way Earth was.

He always returned to Johnny downcast, mournful, and defeated.

No one had ever so much as heard of Earth, anywhere they went.

Eventually, Peter gave up asking, and the types of people he spoke to shifted, oh so subtly. Johnny watched and knew he was up to something, but he had no idea what.

Chapter Text

It was on the thirteenth planet they visited—Johnny was counting—that they really got into trouble. Or, well, Peter got them into trouble, Johnny should say.

It was all Peter’s fault, was the important thing to remember, and poor, long-suffering Johnny was the one who had to pay the price for Peter’s stupidity, as always.

The planet Jolra was mostly an agrarian planet, and the farmers and their families had been terrorized by some kind of creature—no one really knew what it looked like or where it had come from—that had landed somewhere out in what they called the Wastes of Ielos.

The town they were in, which was right on the edge of the Wastes, was just a couple of shops, a school, a police station, and a tiny doctor’s office. That was it.

Johnny, of course, had been too smart to want to help from the first. He insisted to Peter that he was mostly worried that it would take too long—not that they hadn’t already been lost for months—when really he’d been worried that Peter would get hurt, because Peter was reckless and Johnny was convinced he wasn’t very smart, no matter what Reed said.

Johnny was marching through the streets, back to Torchette, as fast as he could. He knew this argument was mostly pointless, but he was going to make a fuss anyways. Just so when it all blew up in their faces, he could remind Peter that he’d said it would.

Peter was characteristically persistent. “These people need our help, Johnny! We can’t turn our backs on them. We’re heroes, and we have a responsibility to help. No matter what it costs us. Never give up, Johnny. You taught me that.”

Johnny stopped walking. “I did?” he said. He wracked his brains trying to remember, but it just wasn’t coming to him. “When was this?”

He had no memory of that at all.

“You gave a talk at my school,” Peter said, raising his eyebrows. “It changed my life? Johnny, we’ve had this exact conversation before. Three times.”

“Huh,” Johnny said. “I don’t remember any of that.” He began to stride back to the ship again. “I guess you never know what impact you have on the lives of your fans. It’s nice to know I’m changing lives without even knowing it. Making a difference by being all noble and smart and awesome.”

Johnny puffed out his chest and swelled with pride.

Peter’s hand was over his face. “Stop walking like that. You look like Napoleon or someone else with a massive ego problem. I regret mentioning this.”

“No, don’t,” Johnny counseled. “It’s important for me to know these things. Any other ways I’ve changed your life that are worth mentioning?”

Peter’s cheeks turned a little pink. “No,” he said unconvincingly. He picked up his pace and pushed past Johnny. “Not a single one. Not that I can think of.”

Well, if Peter didn’t want to tell him, Johnny couldn’t exactly force the matter.

“We’re helping these people,” Peter called back over his shoulder. “We’re heroes.”

Johnny knew the argument was going to end this way. He sighed. “Fine!” he shouted at Peter’s rapidly receding figure. “But this’s gonna end in tears!”

 
Well, it did end in tears. It’s just that Johnny had mostly counted on the tears being Peter’s, and not, well, his.

They spent about ten days tracking down the monster that had been stealing people from their beds. Oddly, only ever their beds. Maybe it liked how sleepy people tasted? Anyways, Johnny didn’t know.

When they did track it down, it was in a gorge about twenty miles into the Wastes.

It was a pretty boring monster, Johnny thought. It was just so…conventional. Predictable, even. Easily about forty feet long, giant claws, sharp teeth, deafening roars—it ticked every box in the list of the scariest monster attributes.

There was nothing novel about it. No style. No pizzazz. Johnny did not approve.

The fight went like clockwork. Johnny threw streams of fire at it, Peter punched it a few times. They both dodged its razor-sharp claws and thick, thick tail with practiced ease. Nothing new.

Johnny, frankly, got a little bored with the whole thing and was maybe not taking the fight seriously or paying as much attention as he should have been.

That was probably how it somehow managed to catch him unawares and slam him, right in the ribs, with its giant, scaly tail.

No fair, Johnny thought as he was sent flying, out of control, across the gorge. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

He landed in a dazed heap in the sand and the rocks and some kind of prickly plants that definitely cut his face.

He was by far the most upset about that last part, he decided. It was one thing to get sent flying uncontrollably. It was another entirely to have to walk around with a banged up face, especially when your face was as flawless as Johnny’s.

He stared up at the dark blue sky. Was it just him or were the clouds spinning a little? That was weird. Clouds didn’t normally do that, he didn’t think.

He could hear loud roars and the smack of fist on scale, but it sounded as though it was happening far, far off in the distance.

The roars, he realized belatedly, weren’t all coming from the monster. Wow. Peter was really going to town on that thing. He must be pissed.

That was flattering, Johnny supposed. Peter always tended to overreact when Johnny got hurt. It was the best part of getting hurt around Peter, despite the fact that literally everything else about it sucked.

Johnny should probably get up and help Peter beat the monster up. Yeah. He was going to. Aaaaany second now.

His arms and legs didn’t seem to want to obey him. Annoying. What good were they if they didn’t do what he wanted?

The sounds of the fight died away after an anguished wail that definitely didn’t come from Peter, because Peter wasn’t really much of a wailer, Johnny didn’t think.

Hey, that meant Pete’d probably won. Yay, team! Johnny totally deserved credit for that. If he hadn’t gotten hit in the ribs, Peter never would’ve found the motivation to end things so quickly.

He’d just been selflessly taking one for the team. That was exactly what he was going to tell Peter later to save face.

Someone was cradling his shoulders. “Hey, Torchy,” a voice was saying. Johnny was still out of it so he couldn’t say for sure, but he thought it sounded very much like Peter’s. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Johnny tried to focus, but he couldn’t. “Dunno,” he slurred. “Make them stop spinning!”

“Oh-kay,” the voice said. It sounded worried. “Time to get back to the ship. I’m gonna pick you up now, okay?”

Johnny tried to nod, but it made his head throb and he winced instead.

He felt an arm wedge itself under his knees—Peter was going to bridal carry him? No. Guys did not carry other guys like that, and what was he doing?—and lift him up.

Johnny was about to make a biting comment about how he wasn’t, in fact, a damsel in distress, Peter Benjamin Parker, and he could walk for himself, probably, but Peter was spared Johnny’s righteous fury because of the bright burst of pain that blossomed in his side.

Johnny, embarrassingly, for what was probably the hundredth time since he’d become a superhero, passed out.

 
When he came to, there were bright lights and voices murmuring above him and everything was slightly fuzzy and out of focus.

“Wha?” he said, blinking his eyes against the light. His eyelids felt heavier than normal and he was weirdly floaty. Everything seemed a tad bit brighter than normal. That couldn’t be right.

Johnny’s vision was unexpectedly filled by Peter’s concerned face as he leant over Johnny. There were a few scratches crisscrossing the right side of his face that certainly hadn’t been there before the fight with the monster. Ha. Johnny hadn’t been the only one it’d clipped.

Despite the cuts, Peter had such a pretty face, Johnny couldn’t help but think. The best face.

Peter burst out laughing, shocked. “I what?!”

Had Johnny said that out loud?

Peter nodded. “Oh yeah. Uh-huh, you definitely did. So that was pretty embarrassing for you.” He held up two fingers. “How many fingers, buddy?”

Johnny could actually tell this time. Thank god Peter had stopped with the annoying spinning thing. He still wasn’t sure how Peter’d managed to do that.

“I didn’t. It was the concussion, buddy,” Peter said kindly. “Answer the question.”

“Two,” Johnny grumbled. “Stupid queshtun.”

He squinted. Hey. His mouth wasn’t working right. Why wasn’t his mouth working right?

“Painkillers,” Peter explained. “Torchette said you needed them for the ribs you broke. Turns out Torchette has fancy medical scanners. Who knew?”

Johnny knew. Because Johnny actually liked Torchette and they talked. A lot. They were bros, even.

“Yeah,” Peter said. “Turns out it likes you too, buddy. A lot.”

Johnny frowned. How did Peter seem to know exactly what Johnny was thinking? Was he spider-psychic now?

Hey. No fair. Why hadn’t Johnny known about that? Was Peter keeping secrets now?

Peter had stopped looking so worried, at least. Now he mostly seemed to be trying his best not to laugh. At what was the question Johnny didn’t know the answer to. He’d just have to think about it for a while, he supposed.

“I am not psychic,” Peter said, the faintest hint of laughter in his voice, the barest trace of a smile playing around his mouth. “And spider-psychic isn’t a thing. You’re just saying everything you’re thinking out loud.”

Oh. That made more sense.

A smile finally managed to burst forth entirely this time. “It does, doesn’t it, Torchy? At least now I know you can think.”

Johnny glared, or at least tried to. Rude. It was rude, is what it was. Johnny was wounded. Peter should really have a little more consideration.

Peter ducked his head in a futile attempt to hide his snickers.

At least one of them was having fun with Johnny being wounded and nearly killed. Johnny certainly wasn’t.

Johnny became aware, somewhat distantly, of the constricting bandages that encircled his ribs. They made it a little hard to breathe. There was another one wrapped around his head too. He could feel it. And there were also some tubes sticking out of his left arm.

Johnny didn’t think he liked any of them. They were not flattering.

He started picking at the ones around his ribs.

Peter batted his hand away. “Hey, don’t do that,” he chided. “It doesn’t matter whether or not you like them, and no one cares if they’re flattering.”

“Bandages,” Johnny said, wrinkling his nose. He was squirming and trying to sit up, but Peter kept grabbing his shoulders and shoving him back down. “They’re ugly. Off.”

“Yeah, buddy. Bandages. You need them, so they’re staying right where they are.”

“No,” Johnny whined. He sagged back against his bed disconsolately.

“Yes. Torchette says you need them,” Peter said sympathetically.

Johnny smiled. Peter called the ship Torchette! How nice. They must’ve bonded over his injuries. That made him happy. He tried to focus and remember why it made him happy, but it was hard. Johnny’s head was so woozy. “Why’m I s’ floaty?”

“The painkillers. And the concussion. We’ve been over this.”

Oh. They were in the ship’s infirmary. Made sense.

Peter blew out a weary sigh. Johnny may have said that before.

Johnny was finding it difficult to keep his eyes open. It took a lot of concentration. “C’n I sleep?”

Being this out of it was embarrassing anyways. Johnny’d rather be unconscious. It was less mortifying. Peter was going to make fun later; Johnny just knew it.

A smile was tugging at the corners of Peter’s mouth. “Well,” he said. “Maybe. I dunno. It’s a little too easy.” He glanced up at the ceiling. “Torchette?” he checked. “Can he sleep?”

There was chirp, and then some text scrolling across the screen by bed Johnny was lying in. Johnny couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“Yeah,” Peter said, frowning as he peered at the screen. “Go for it. Torchette did a neural scan, and it says you’re good to go. The two of us’ll keep an eye on you.”

Well, if Peter was going to be watching over him, it was fine. “Be here when I—?”

Peter’s hand was smoothing through his hair. Hey. That was nice. Made Johnny feel all warm and safe and sleepy.

“Yeah, buddy,” Peter said, voice as gentle as the hand in Johnny’s hair. Peter really must be worried. “I’ll be right here the whole time.”

“Nice,” Johnny sighed contentedly. He shut his eyes and enjoyed the attention. Peter could be so nice sometimes. This was exactly why Johnny was so in love with him.

There was a sharp intake of breath, and the hand in his hair grew still. “What?” Peter said urgently, eyes wide. “Johnny! What did you just say?”

But it was too late. Johnny was already fast asleep.

 
Johnny came to—he didn’t know how long it’d been since he’d passed out—and his eyes quickly settled on Peter, who was sitting in a chair he’d scooted close to Johnny’s bed. His arms were folded beneath his head and resting on the edge of Johnny’s bed, hand curled loosely around Johnny’s.

Had he been sleeping there all night? That was adorable. Johnny wanted to pet his hair.

God, but Johnny loved him. He couldn’t stop smiling, even though his head was throbbing and now that the painkillers had been reduced, there was one hell of an ache in his side.

Johnny flicked at Peter’s forehead. “Hey,” he said. “Sleepyhead. Wake up.”

Peter stirred, murmured something, but didn’t open his eyes.

Johnny flicked again. This time Peter cracked an eye open resentfully. How he managed to scowl with only one eye open, Johnny wasn’t sure.

Johnny grinned cheekily at him. “Morning, sunshine.”

“It’s not morning,” Peter rasped. He sat up and stretched, arching his back and wincing. “We’re in space. There’s no morning. You’ve been mostly asleep for two days, in case you’re wondering. I was worried.”

Johnny raised an eyebrow. “Mostly?”

“You’d come to every now and then. Try to take the bandages off because you thought they made you look ugly. I’d stop you. You’d pass out. Rinse, repeat.” He rose to his feet and started fiddling with the bag that was connected to the tube sticking out of Johnny’s arm, back to Johnny. “You don’t remember?”

Johnny frowned. Nope. The last two days were a giant blank. “No. Last thing I remember’s getting slammed in the ribs by the monster thing. Did we get it?”

“I knocked it out. Told the locals where to find it,” Peter said. “You really don’t remember any of the things you said while you were, uh, totally high on painkillers?”

Johnny narrowed his eyes. That sounded ominous. “What did I say?” he asked suspiciously. “Was it embarrassing? Painkillers and me don’t really mix.”

Peter didn’t say anything at first, but Johnny didn’t think the way the tips of his ears had suddenly turned pink was really very promising. Neither was the tense line of his shoulders.

Oh, no. Had Johnny said something embarrassing or a tad too honest? The last time he’d been high on painkillers, he’d ended up admitting to Reed that he’d been the one who’d “lost” his Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes boxset, mostly because it was boring and he didn’t want Reed to force them to watch it again. Reed had been pissed at him for a month, and Reed really wasn’t someone you ever wanted angry at you. Bad things mysteriously started happening whenever Reed was pissed at you, things that could never be definitively traced back Reed. Johnny was pretty sure Reed had gotten his old science bro, Tony Stark, in on it too, but maybe he was just being paranoid.

“It was probably just the drugs,” Peter said, back still to Johnny, after an inordinately length amount of time. “I mean, you probably didn’t mean it.”

“Mean what?” Johnny said. He tried sitting up, but didn’t get far. He hadn’t said anything about—about how he felt about Peter...had he? If Peter would only just turn around, if Johnny could just see his face, he would know. He’d be able to see it written plainly in Peter’s face, a face he knew better than he knew his own, and he knew his own pretty damn well.

“You said you—” Peter began, half turning towards Johnny, but he seemed to lose courage. He faltered. “…thought I was nice.”

That…didn’t sound true, but Johnny decided to play along. Maybe he hadn’t said anything. Maybe he had and Peter didn’t feel the same way and he just didn’t want to talk about it. Whatever it was, Johnny thought it might be best to play along for now. “Yeah,” he said feebly. “I must’ve been high as a kite, if I was getting that sentimental on you.”

“Right,” Peter said, eyes downcast. “That must’ve been it.”

 
Johnny didn’t exactly have to watch Peter closely to figure out that Peter’s behavior had suddenly become damn peculiar. He was being so…nice. Considerate, even.

It was just. The bickering, the insults, the witty repartee Johnny loved? All gone.

Also? He seemed to be watching Johnny. All the time. Like he was waiting for something.

It made things a little difficult, because Johnny was watching him all the time right back. It was rough, pretending that he wasn’t watching Peter as persistently as Peter was watching him when Peter was always looking.

Peter, Johnny noticed, had abruptly become tense, awkward, and even sometimes a little tongue-tied around Johnny. That was…definitely not normal. With Peter, it was always one rapid-fire quip after another. Johnny normally wished Peter’d stop talking, not that he’d start.

Instead, lately it was like Peter was always on the verge of wanting to say something, but he could never work up the courage.

Suffice it to say, Peter being so damn polite all the time was just driving Johnny up a wall. What was wrong with Peter? Johnny just wished he knew, one way or the other.

Was it that Johnny’d nearly died and Peter was freaking out about nearly losing him, especially since going after that monster had been Peter’s idea? Or was it that Johnny really had said something about the way he felt about Peter, and Peter didn’t know how to break the news to Johnny that he just wasn’t interested?

As if Johnny didn’t know that already. Johnny’d accepted it a while ago. At the very least since that night they’d spent in the cave. He’d known it, deep down, for a long time before even that, but that had been the moment when he hadn’t been able to run away from the painful truth: Peter just didn’t feel about Johnny the way Johnny felt about him.

There was nothing wrong with that or anything. Johnny couldn’t really blame Peter, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t still hurt like hell.

Being stuck alone on this ship with Peter, yeah, it’d had its downsides. Johnny could just feel himself falling more in love with Peter every day, no matter how hard he tried to stop himself.

He couldn’t help it. Peter was everything he’d ever wanted and everything he could never have.

But it was fine. Peter could just say that he didn’t love Johnny. Johnny would prefer it to this uncertainty.

Three days it took Johnny to work up the courage to press the issue. He’d just about had it with the watching and the weird politeness and the excruciating awkwardness that characterized every single one of their interactions now.

Johnny wanted them to get over this and go back to being buddies. The way they should be.

He had to work himself up into quite a state before he finally said something.

“Okay, I have had enough of this!” Johnny hollered, slamming his datapad down on the floor irritably. Frustratingly, it didn’t shatter into a million pieces once it hit the floor.

Maybe if he was good and angry, it wouldn’t hurt as much when Peter turned him down.

Peter looked up from the armchair he was sitting in—that was entirely too narrow for a human to sit in comfortably—and blinked.

They were both hanging out together in the common area. Well, to be entirely accurate, Johnny was the only one who was hanging out, even if he was mostly seething because he knew that Peter was watching him furtively while pretending he wasn’t and because he couldn’t just tell Johnny what the hell was going on.

Johnny was lying on an absurdly comfortable sofa, surrounded by a sea of the softest pillows he’d ever come across, covered in silky blankets, and watching some of the ancient holovids Torchette had dug up out of its archives.

“Um, what?” Peter said. He seemed taken aback by Johnny’s little outburst.

“I know I got hurt,” Johnny hissed, hands clenched, “but can you just stop being so nice to me all the time? I hate it. It makes me want to punch you in your stupid face!”

And tell me what the hell I said, Johnny wanted to add, but the words wouldn’t leave his lips. This is torture.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Peter said, dignified. “I’m not being nice. This is what I’m always like.”

Oh, so that’s how it was going to be. Peter was going to be difficult. Well, two could play at that game.

“Oh, really?” Johnny said hotly. “Sure it is. Let’s try this: you’re a bug brain.”

That always worked. Guaranteed and specially designed to get Peter riled up.

“Well,” Peter said agreeably. “I mean I guess you could technically—”

“Gah!” Johnny yelled, making strangling motions with his hands at Peter. He only wished Peter was close enough to really strangle. “Stop! Just stop. You’re supposed to say, ‘Spiders are arachnids, Johnny, but I wouldn’t expect a moron like you to know that.’ Or, ‘At least I have a brain, unlike you.’”

Peter’s expression became concerned and even a tad hurt. “I would never say those things to you. Johnny. You know I respect you.”

Johnny was apoplectic. How dare Peter say that to him? Who the hell did he think he was, being nice to Johnny?

That settled it. Johnny had entered a parallel dimension. A horrific one where Peter was somehow both nicer and more infuriating than ever before, and he’d always been pretty damn irritating, so that was saying a lot.

“Yes, you would, because it’s fun!” Johnny bellowed. “We like saying mean things to each other, and playing pranks, and making each other look like total idiots! It’s fun! Say something mean!” He flamed his hand on and glared. “Or I swear to god, I will set parts of you on fire.”

It was not an idle threat. Johnny was going for the eyebrows first. Maybe a singed elbow or two would follow.

Maybe if Peter started being mean, he’d work up the courage to let Johnny know he didn’t love him. If Johnny could get Peter good and mad, he knew the truth would come spilling out.

He just wanted to get this over with.

Peter set his datapad down on the table in front of him and leaned forward. “Johnny,” he said, concerned, sympathetic, maddening. “This is because of your concussion. You should try to take it easy—”

That did it. Johnny was going to kill him.

Johnny screamed. It was primal. Full of rage. If Peter knew what was good for him, he’d be long gone by the time Johnny finished.

Nope. He was still there. A little alarmed, maybe, but still there. He was either much braver than Johnny thought (Johnny thought he was very brave) or much stupider (Johnny thought he was very stupid).

Johnny would bet good money on the latter.

“All right, that does it!” Johnny roared, jabbing a finger at Peter that he wished and wished was a knife instead. “You are going to tell me what is going on, or I am going to dump you out of the nearest airlock!”

Better to have Peter just spit it out than keep going through the hellish, infuriating, and thoroughly unpleasant experience of Peter being nice.

Ugh. Just the phrase made Johnny want to cringe. Peter was supposed to be mean. Or at least pretend mean. It was what they did! Peter was supposed to know that. Insults meant Peter was his bro and everything between them was normal. Johnny didn’t know what the hell to do with a Peter who was being nice all the time. What did it mean?

Peter didn’t love Johnny. That had to be it. Why couldn’t he just say it outright?

“You got hurt, I got worried. What’s there to tell?” Peter said, crossing his arms and leaning back in his armchair casually. He was trying to play it cool, but it wasn’t going to work.

Johnny was having none of that.

“No, no, no,” Johnny said, shaking his head. “Nice try. I’ve gotten hurt before and you’ve never been this nice. What the hell is going on?” He half rose to his feet and slammed his fists on the small table in front of him. It rattled with the force of it. “Tell me!”

Peter was frowning at Johnny’s ribs. “Didn’t that hurt?”

“Yes,” Johnny confessed, pained. He pressed a hand to his ribs, which were throbbing, and lay back down. “I’m actually in excruciating pain right now. It hurts. A lot. So how about you have a little pity on me and tell me what’s going on before I really hurt myself?”

Johnny was having to work so hard to get Peter to just admit that he didn’t like Johnny. Why couldn’t Peter just say it like a normal person?

Peter thought it over. “Okay. Fine. It was…something you said.”

Johnny squinted. “I’ve said a lot of things in my life. Be specific.”

Peter's eyes were fixed on a spot just above Johnny's head. “When you were drugged.”

So he had said it. Johnny swallowed. He was almost afraid to ask. “Like?”

Peter’s cheeks were turning a little pink. Oh, man. That was not a good sign—

“About being in love with me.”

Faced with the reality of being stuck on a ship with a Peter who knew exactly how Johnny felt about him, Johnny panicked. Hard. He’d meant to be cool about this and all, but—what could he say?—it just didn’t happen. “Oh, is that all?” he sneered, trying his best to sound unconcerned, but this was Peter, and he knew Johnny too well, and, oh god, this was never going to work. “It was just the drugs. I don’t like you at all.”

Johnny loved him more than he’d ever loved anyone in his life.

“You are my least favorite person ever.”

He was easily in Johnny’s top five.

“Also your hair is stupid.”

Okay, that one was true. Johnny really thought that.

Johnny could tell before he was even done talking that Peter didn’t believe him, not even about the hair, which was a pity, because he really wished Peter’d let him give Peter a hair makeover. The fact that there weren’t really any barbers in the Last because no one seemed to have any hair around here definitely wasn’t helping. Peter’s awful haircut was just getting worse the longer it grew.

Peter’s eyes narrowed a smidge. “I don’t believe you. At all.”

Johnny made a show of rolling his eyes. “Wishful thinking. On your part. I’m sure you just misunderstood what I was saying.”

“You literally said, ‘I’m so in love with you.’”

Damn you, drugged Johnny. Why did you have to be such a blabbermouth who didn’t leave any wiggle room for not-drugged Johnny? Think ahead, buddy. “Why do you even care so much about this?”

Turning the tables. Good strategy. Johnny patted himself on the back. Mentally, that was. Not really, because that would be weird and a dead giveaway.

Peter’s chin tilted upwards. That was his stubborn chin. Johnny’d recognize it anywhere. “I don’t.”

“Then why’d you even bring it up?”

“I don’t know. You asked? It seemed like it might be important?”

“Maybe because you were hoping I’d say I was?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you thought it?”

“I didn’t say that either.”

“Maybe because you’re the one who’s so in love with me?”

Now they were really getting somewhere. 

“I definitely didn’t say that,” Peter said.

“I wouldn’t blame you,” Johnny continued, undeterred. “I mean, I’m hot.”

“Yeah, the sexy mummy look really does it for me.”

Johnny was too dignified to respond to that. “I’m famous.”

“Not around here you’re not.”

“I’m rich.”

“A lot of good that does us.”

“I’m funny.”

“Just keep telling yourself that and maybe someday you will be.”

“I’m smart.”

“Compared to jellyfish, sure. Dolphins, it’s neck and neck.”

“If I were you, I’d definitely be in love with me.”

“Are you sure you aren’t? It sounds like you maybe are.”

“That settles it,” Johnny decided. “You were just projecting. It’s really you who’s in love with me.” He pointed a finger accusingly. “Admit it!”

Johnny’d make a great interrogator. Why hadn’t SHIELD ever tried hiring him?

“I admit that—” Johnny’s heart leapt. Was he actually going to say it? Johnny had never for a second imagined— “—I think you’re the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met in my life.”

Peter Parker, perpetual disappointment to Johnny, New York, probably that annoying cat that kept sneaking into his bathroom back on Earth. 

Why did he have to get Johnny’s hopes up like that? It was cruel.

“And that you’re crazy in love me,” Johnny added. “Just save us all the trouble and confess now.”

Peter looked pensive. “Hmm,” he said. “I dunno. You know what? I’ll have to think about it.”

Johnny’s eyes grew round, and if it had been physically possible, his jaw probably would have hit the floor.

That was a curve ball. A major curve ball. He hadn’t been expecting that. At all.

Peter might actually love him? What the what?

Johnny had been deflecting when he suggested that. With humor. Which he did. A lot. He hadn’t for a second thought that Peter might really have feelings for him. It was a joke. He’d been kidding. Just kidding. “You…what?” he asked weakly once he recovered enough to say anything.

Peter picked up his datapad and sauntered out of the room like he hadn’t just dropped the biggest bombshell of Johnny’s life on him. “I said I’ll have to think about it. I’ll let you know what I decide later.”

Johnny watched him go, mouth hanging open. Now those? Those were Peter’s smug shoulders. And that was his conceited walk.

There was only one explanation for those shoulders and that walk. He was messing with Johnny.

What a stinker.

If he was messing with Johnny by pretending to have feelings for him…that was not cool, Peter. It was cruel.

But…what if he really did love Johnny? Johnny had convinced himself it was never going to happen. Over the years, Peter’d made his feelings abundantly clear. He didn’t even know Johnny was alive, not in that way, at least.

But now? What if Peter actually did love him? Johnny let himself begin to hope again. Cautiously. There was still the possibility that this was an uncharacteristically cruel joke on Peter’s part.

Peter would play pranks on Johnny, sure, but messing with Johnny when it came to something like this? Peter wouldn’t. Johnny knew he wouldn’t. Despite the insults, despite the pranks, despite the jokes at Johnny’s expense, Peter cared about Johnny deeply.

He had Johnny’s back, always, and despised seeing him truly hurt, physically or emotionally. The surest way for anyone to get Peter good and mad was to hurt Johnny, which that monster back in the Wastes of Ielos had sure figured out fast. And if Peter was lying about this, it would hurt so much worse than anything that monster had done to Johnny.

So there was no way Peter would kid around about this, right? He must know how important this sort of thing was to Johnny.

Johnny wasn’t the sort who ever took his relationships lightly. When he fell in love with someone, he really fell in love with them. Body and soul. Bone deep. Gave them everything he had to give, every damn time, even though it always left him devastated, reeling, and shattered when the relationship inevitably fell apart.

After a friendship that spanned half their lives, there was no way Peter didn’t know that about Johnny.

So…he couldn’t be joking about this. He must know that it would destroy Johnny, who, frankly, was already feeling a little emotionally fragile at being stranded in space, family maybe dead, planet maybe destroyed, ribs definitely broken.

But that meant…it meant…he must love Johnny back.

Holy shit.

Johnny lay back and stared up at the ceiling, floored. He turned it over in his mind again and again and again, and he came to the same conclusion each time.

Peter must have feelings for Johnny too. He just had to, or he wouldn’t’ve made a joke about it.

 
Peter was making Johnny wait. He hadn’t brought it up in hours. It was agonizing. Worse than the ribs.

By the time dinner came around, Johnny couldn’t wait one second longer. He was convinced he would literally keel over and die if he waited another moment. “Well?” he shouted. He’d worked himself up into quite a state by that point. He was fuming. Seething. Peeved, even. “Have you decided yet?”

Peter looked up at him from his armchair and blinked like he had no clue what the hell Johnny was referring to. “Decided what?”

Peter was unbelievable. Johnny was the unluckiest person who’d ever lived. What else could explain him having the great misfortune of falling in love with such a stinker? “Whether or not you’re in love with me!”

“Oh, that,” Peter said carelessly, like it wasn’t important, when really it was the most important thing ever. “I forgot to think about it. Guess you’ll just have to wait. Unless…you wanted to admit you were in love with me. I might be more motivated to make a decision then.”

Is that what this was? A game of chicken, but the sexy kind? Johnny was going to win at this. He was sexier than Peter on his worst days. Except, he realized belatedly, for the ribs. And the bandages. And the whole not really being able to move without screaming.

Dammit! That was not a sexy combination. Even Johnny, who was a natural at being sexy, couldn’t make those seem hot.

“I’m not going to do that. It would be a lie,” Johnny said, with all the dignity he could muster. “And my mother didn’t raise a liar.”

“Your sister raised you.”

“Well, she didn’t raise a liar either.”

Peter had managed to keep an admirably straight face, but his twinkling eyes were a dead giveaway. He was having way too much fun with this. It was obvious. Johnny could tell, and Johnny hated him, just a little bit. Why couldn’t he just say it, for once? Give Johnny the relief of actually hearing it. He’d been waiting long enough!

“You lie all the time,” Peter reminded Johnny.

That was unfair. Johnny never lied. Unless it was for a very good reason, like in service of playing a prank on someone. Then—okay, then he’d lie till he was blue in the face. Or in order to tease someone. He'd lie then too. Or if he felt like it.

Okay, fine, so he maybe lied all the time.

“I do not," Johnny lied. "I never lie. Name one time I’ve lied to you.”

Johnny could probably list at least twelve times he’d lied to Peter off the top of his head. In the past week.

Like that time he'd said those pants didn't make Peter's butt look big, because, well, Pete, buddy, there's nothing you could wear that wouldn't make your butt look big. Someone was going to have to break it to Peter someday, but Johnny thought it was much funnier to keep him in the dark as long as possible. 

“When you said you weren’t in love with me.”

Damn. He had been lying through his teeth. Peter couldn’t prove it, though. His word against Johnny’s. “It isn’t a lie. I’m not.”

“There! You just did it again.”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Johnny said. He got to his feet. It was wobbly and it hurt like hell, but he did it. He was going to make a speech. An important one. And for that he needed to be standing. Speeches were less impressive when you were flat on your back. “You know what? One of us needs to grow the hell up.”

“I think you mean both of us.”

Johnny ignored him as pointedly as possible. “We’re twenty years old.”

Peter frowned. “What are you talking about? I’m twenty-five. You’re twenty-six. We maybe have to lower your pain med dosage.”

“Don’t contradict me. I’m as old as I say I am, and so are you. As old as I say you are, not as old as you say you are, because you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, buddy? That’s not how ages work.”

“It is if I say it is.”

“Not how facts work either.”

“Stop correcting me. It’s irritating. As I was saying, we’re very young men of twenty, not twenty-six. Those are just rumors. Mean ones. Honestly, I think Doom might have started them to hurt our feelings. But, anyways, I think it’s time we grew up. Got in touch with our feelings. Like mature people.”

“I’m pretty sure it isn’t my feelings you want to touch.”

“Stop twisting my words. That is also irritating.”

“I think you mostly just think I’m irritating. What does it say about you that you love me anyways? I think we both maybe really need therapy.”

“It doesn’t say anything, because I don’t. You’re imagining things. It’s sad, really. You’ve lost touch with reality. Maybe it’s space sickness. It’s like cabin fever, but worse.”

“Johnny, Johnny, Johnny,” Peter said, shaking his head sympathetically. “I know you’re in love with me, because you told me you are. You know you’re in love with me. Why don’t you just admit it? There’s no point in denying it. Cat’s out of the bag, buddy, and there’s no putting it back.”

“Why would anyone put a cat in a bag? And what do cats have to do with anything? Peter, you’re not making sense! Maybe we should lower your pain med dosage.”

“I'm not on pain meds. Stop changing the subject.”

Johnny tossed his hands in the air. “I don’t like the subject," he grinned. "Pick a new one.”

“Ehhh…no. I like this one.”

Johnny sighed and sat back down. Thank god. The room had been starting to spin. “Then I guess we’re sort of at an impasse, if you think about it.”

“Oh, you mean because you’re in love with me but you won’t admit it?”

“No. Don’t be stupid. Because you’re in love with me but you won’t admit it.”

Johnny hoped it was true, anyways. It would totally suck and be really embarrassing if Peter was just messing with Johnny.

“Johnny, Johnny, Johnny,” Peter said again, shaking his head pityingly. This time, he was the one who got to his feet. “You’re never going to win this. Give up now.”

“Never. I never give up.”

“Neither do I.”

“You stole it from me. I said it first.”

“You mean like you’re going to say you’re in love with me first, because you already did?”

“No. Not like that at all. I know I’m the trendsetter in our relationship and you always copy me—”

Peter tipped his head back and laughed uproariously. “You are delusional! Oh, my god. You’ve finally gone off the deep end. Love just doesn’t agree with you, Torchy.”

“There’s no love, and I haven’t gone off of anything. I’m in the shallow end.”

Peter stuck out his hand to Johnny across the kitchen table. “Loser is the first one to say he loves the other?”

Johnny’s pulse started to race when he realized what that meant. That was it, right? That was Peter’s admission of guilt. That meant Peter must love him. There was no way he didn’t. He wouldn’t be playing sexy chicken if he didn’t. What would be the point?

Johnny shook his hand. “Done. And I never lose. At anything. You’re the only loser here.”

 
“So I’ve been thinking,” Johnny said the next morning. He’d hobbling around on the makeshift crutch Peter’d whipped up for him and looking for Peter everywhere. He’d finally found Peter in Torchette’s small cargo bay, sticking to the ceiling. What a weirdo.

The spideriness was no excuse for sticking to ceilings and reading while upside down. It was just strange, and so was Peter, and he had to accept that.

“Well, that’s never good,” Peter replied idly. “You should stop before you hurt yourself.”

He hadn’t even bothered to look up from his datapad. Johnny didn’t like it when Peter didn’t look at him. It was rude, and why wouldn’t he look at Johnny every chance he got? Johnny was gorgeous. Well. If you looked past the bandages and the bump on his head. But those were just temporary. Superficial.

Johnny ignored Peter’s little comment. “What's this whole little competition of ours really accomplishing?”

“Well, this’s gonna be good,” Peter sighed. He put down his pad. “I’m listening.”

“We’re really just wasting valuable time, if you think about it.”

“Uh-huh,” Peter said, clearly just humoring Johnny.

“I mean, instead of playing sexy chicken, we could be having sex right now.”

Johnny held his breath. Was Peter going to laugh at him no? Say he was just kidding, this was all a game, he never loved Johnny at all, and never wanted to have sex with him ever?

Peter snorted. “Oh, so that’s what this is about.” He picked up his datapad and started to read again like this whole conversation was beneath him.

Johnny’s heart sank. That was it, it was over, Peter didn’t love hi—

“Not with your ribs like they are, we couldn’t,” Peter finished.

Johnny wanted to whoop with joy. Peter hadn’t said, ‘I don’t want to have sex with you.’ He hadn’t dismissed the thought of having sex with Johnny out of hand. No, instead he’d said, ‘When you’re well enough.’

That promised that sex was definitely happening in the future, once Peter’d decided that Johnny’s health permitted it. So Peter had to have some interest, right?

That wasn’t exactly what Johnny’d wanted to hear, but it was close enough.

“What are you talking about?” Johnny tried. Now that he knew for sure Peter was interested, there was no way he was letting this go. “My ribs are fine.”

Peter gave him a look. Johnny recognized it immediately, because it was the same one he always gave Johnny when Johnny’d just said something especially stupid. To be fair, Johnny was pretty sure he gave Peter the exact same look all the time.

“They’re broken, buddy,” Peter said dryly. “Three of them. Want to see the scans? There are breaks and everything.”

Ugh. There was really no way to argue with a medical scan. Johnny was just going to have to give in and confess that, yes, his ribs were hurting like hell. “So my ribs are not fine. But we can work around that.” He grinned suggestively. “My mouth works just fine, y’know.”

Peter didn’t take the bait. He remained as indifferent as ever. Story of Johnny’s life. “I noticed,” he told Johnny. “It’s a tragedy for everyone that it wasn’t your mouth that got broken. I could use some quiet around here.”

“You could at least pretend to be a little bit interested in my body.”

That was reasonable, Johnny thought. Johnny had a killer body, after all. All of the tabloids said so.

“But I’m not interested,” Peter said coolly. “Waiting till you’re fine. Sexy chicken’ll keep me entertained until then.”

Johnny’s life sucked beyond the telling of it. Peter finally wanted to have sex with him—even if he wasn’t really admitting it—but, damn it all to hell, Johnny’s ribs were broken, so he had to wait. Even longer than he already had. “How long till I’m fine?”

“A year.”

“What?!” Johnny spluttered, horrified. “Buddy, tell me you’re not serious.”

He would never make it that long! It had already been far too long since he'd gotten any. Johnny didn't even want to think about how long it'd been.

“No,” Peter said, snickering a little, and Johnny hated him. “I had you, though. Admit it.”

“You had nothing,” Johnny scowled. “How long really?”

“Let’s see, you got your ass handed to you a week ago, right?”

“That is not what happened.”

“That’s exactly what happened. And then I had to save your butt and beat the monster by myself and carry you all the way back to Torchette.”

Johnny rolled his eyes. “I could’ve flown.”

“You were unconscious, so I really doubt that.” Peter stopped. “Buddy, don’t ever do that to me again. Most terrifying half hour of my life, and, let me tell you, I’ve had some scary half hours.”

“I promise never to get hit in the ribs by boring monsters again. Happy?”

“No,” Peter admitted. “Not at all.”

Peter looked really worried. Johnny felt a pang of guilt. “I’m fine, Pete,” he reassured him. “I’m gonna be fine.” His eyes lit up. “You wouldn’t happen to need a hug, would you?”

Peter blew out a gust of air. “No! That’s cheating.”

“Your loss. So how long?” Johnny asked impatiently.

Peter considered that. “Two more weeks if you’re lucky. Five if you’re not.”

“I’ll do it in one,” Johnny decided.

He had a goal to work towards. Don’t let him down, body. Sex with Peter awaited. It’d better not be as disappointing as he was convinced it was going to be.

After so many years of dreaming about it, there was no way the reality was going to live up to the fantasy. He’d just built it up in his mind too much.

Peter gave him his patented ‘you’re being a moron’ glare. “Johnny. That is not how healing works. You can’t just arbitrarily decide—”

“I said one, and I meant one. It’ll be one. Mark your calendar. Sex. With Johnny. One week.”

Peter sighed like he was the most put-upon person in the universe. “That’s not—Johnny. You can’t just. Let’s put it like this: it isn’t happening, and why do I like you again?”

Johnny’s eyes lit up. He opened his mouth to cry victory, but—

“I meant as a friend!” Peter corrected hastily. “Because we’re besties.”

“Not anymore. I decided to demote you to acquaintance. For being a stinker. It’s what you get for doubting me and my determination. One week. You’ll see.”

 
Johnny was not fine in one week. Or even two. The waiting was sheer torture.

Then there was the fact that Peter was making his life so difficult, and worse yet, they both liked it. Sometimes Johnny would wonder what was wrong with him. With both of them.

Peter kept doing this thing where he’d ‘accidentally’ end up with his mouth near Johnny’s, just teetering on the brink of a kiss, without ever really kissing him. It was thrilling. Highlight of Johnny’s day.

Johnny, overall, had to admit that he held out on admitting his feelings longer than even he thought he would. A whole week.

The minute Peter walked into the common room dressed in Johnny’s sexy gold concubine outfit, Johnny knew he was a goner. Game over. Peter Parker, total victor.

At first, he thought he was really a goner, in the sense that he thought he was dying, because it took ages for him to remember how to breathe, and he was convinced that he was having a heart attack.

Low blow, Peter.

“Something the matter, pal?” Peter said innocently, hands on his hips, grinning down at Johnny in a way that said he knew he’d won.

“Fine,” Johnny croaked, eyes wide and fixed on Peter’s unfairly magnificent abs. He really couldn’t stop staring. It was mortifying. Johnny was the one who was supposed to have this effect on other people. Leaving them speechless. Not Peter. It really wasn’t fair that Peter had such a knockout of a body that he didn’t even have to work to keep. Johnny could just feel his muscles disappearing as he lay in bed for days. “I am completely fine. Nothing out of the ordinary here.”

“Really?” Peter said, still grinning.

He leant over Johnny, and Johnny made an embarrassing noise. It was maybe a whimper, but he’d never admit to that, even under torture. Which this totally was, Peter, you sadistic bastard! How dare he try to outsexy Johnny? And in Johnny’s own clothes, too! Johnny’d stolen that outfit, fair and square.

Johnny didn’t think Peter looked sexy in it. He didn’t. He refused to. On principle.

He definitely hadn't whiled away far too many hours of his life thinking about what Peter would look like in it.

Peter tutted and pressed a hand to Johnny’s forehead, feigning worry. “You’re looking a little flushed. Are you sure you’re drinking enough fluids?”

Was someone talking? Johnny was having a hard time concentrating on anything other than the abs that were right in his face. Those pecs and those biceps weren’t fair either, Johnny decided. They shouldn’t even be legal, if they knew what was good for them.

“I’m feeling very attacked right now,” Johnny said before he could stop himself.

If he touched one of those abs, would that mean he lost the game? Just a brush of his fingers. It wouldn’t mean anything, right? He could get away with that. Pass it off as an accident.

His hand inched towards them like it was possessed.

He really hoped he wasn't drooling. Was he drooling? He felt like he was drooling. But he couldn't be or Peter would've laughed at him by now.

“Any special reason you’re feeling that way, buddy?” Peter said sympathetically. His face was so close to Johnny’s. Johnny just had to lean forward, and then he’d be kissing him. “Maybe because you think I’m really sexy? Because you’re totally in love with me?”

Johnny’s hand fell away. It was like someone’d tossed a bucket of ice-cold water over his head. He mustered up his best and most devastating glare. “Let’s get one thing straight right now: I’m the sexy one. This isn’t even up for debate.”

“You totally think I’m sexy, though,” Peter insisted, mouth a few bare inches from Johnny’s. There was maybe a quirk to it.

Peter was so damn full of himself. Johnny hated that.

It was just. Did his mouth have to be so close to Johnny’s? Johnny was only human. A human who hadn’t had sex in longer than he cared to think about.

Johnny had needs. Many of them. None of which were being met. But now he knew they could be, and by Peter, which was the best imaginable scenario.

“That outfit looks horrible on you,” Johnny said defiantly, not giving Peter an inch. “Also, it’s mine, you thief. Did you break into my quarters to get it? Not cool. Take it off.”

“Well, if you insist,” Peter said, hand flying to the series of hooks that kept it in place.

Johnny’s eyes flew wider. He caught Peter’s wrist to stop him. “Not what I meant! Do not take off your clothes.”

If Peter took off his clothes, the game really would be over. Also, in his weakened state, Johnny might faint, which would be mortifying. Johnny would never live it down. Peter’d see to that. He'd probably send out a memo to everyone the minute he got back, and then Johnny'd have to find a rock to crawl under and die of embarrassment.

“I thought you didn’t mind seeing people naked because you aren’t a prude. I remember you telling me that when we were on Vaul.” That did sound like something Johnny’d say, to be fair. Peter hadn't liked Vaul at all because no one who lived there wore any clothes because there was a cultural taboo on secrets. Peter'd run back within five minutes of landing and then spent the rest of their trip there hiding on the ship. Johnny, on the other hand, hadn't minded at all. They were nice, the Vaulians. He'd made a lot of friends.

“Why am I different?" Peter continued. "Maybe because you love me?”

“I absolutely do not,” Johnny said mulishly. “And you’re not different. Or sexy. And I don’t love you. At all. In fact, I’m pretty sure I loathe you right now.”

He really, really did.

Peter’s eyes were sparkling. “Oh, so if I took off my clothes, you wouldn’t care?”

Johnny decided to put on a brave face. “You aren’t really wearing many clothes anyways. What difference would it make?”

“Of course it wouldn’t,” Peter said. His smile was sharp. “Or you could, I dunno, admit that you’re in love with me, and we could make out. Right now.”

Johnny’s pulse skyrocketed. “Who wants to make out with you?” he scoffed. “Definitely not me.”

Johnny would give his right arm to make out with Peter for ten seconds.

“I don’t think this is sexy at all.”

He’d never been more turned on in his life.

“You in that outfit? Ridiculous.”

Johnny didn’t think he’d ever seen anything sexier.

Peter drew back. Johnny found that deeply upsetting and morally wrong.

“I guess my evil plan didn’t work,” Peter sighed. “Maybe it wasn’t as evil as I thought it was.”

His plan? So evil.

“I guess I’ll just have to give up then.”

Johnny really wished he wouldn’t.

“Maybe do some of those chores that need doing.”

Johnny was a little taken aback. That was random. “What chores?”

Peter pulled out a datapad.

“Where did that even come from?” Johnny said, frowning.

Peter’s outfit was skintight and barely there. Emphasis on the barely. Johnny didn’t understand where he’d hidden it.

Peter ignored him completely. “Oh, look,” he said. He looked up at Johnny, smile affable but Johnny also detected something slightly predatory in the sharpness of its curves. The game wasn’t over yet, was it? They were just moving on to battle number two. “Next on the list is cleaning the floor in here.”

Johnny’s eyes widened. Oh no. Johnny knew where this was going. Who knew Peter could be so diabolical? Peter didn’t have this in him. He must’ve gotten it from somewhere else. Maybe he’d been raiding Johnny’s fantasies somehow. 

“You know,” Johnny said. “I’ve been seeing a whole new side of you since sexy chicken started. Evil. Sadistic. Vindictive. Cruel. I approve. Who knew you had it in you?”

“I don’t know what you mean, buddy,” Peter said. “This is how I always act.”

Johnny raised an eyebrow. “You always walk around dressed like a concubine? Where was I when this was happening? I would’ve paid good money to see that.”

“Well,” Peter said, smirking a little. “Not always.”

Johnny squinted. “You have never worn anything sexy before in your life.”

Johnny was absolutely convinced that Peter was the sort of person who only had sex under the covers with all of the lights off, and that he was terrible at it. He’d already resigned himself to having to deal with blowing Peter’s mind after showing him what actual good sex was like.

Peter’d probably never stop bugging Johnny for sex after that. Ah, well. Johnny would just have to make that sacrifice.

Peter’s head tipped back and laughed. “You really have no idea what I’m like in bed.” He swayed forward until his lips were so close to Johnny’s he could feel Peter’s breath on his own. “I’ve worn sexy outfits before, and I’ll wear them again.”

Johnny’s mind reeled at the implications of that statement and the infinite possibilities it presented. Maybe he could talk Peter into going to a beach somewhere and reenacting the Baywatch fantasy. Item one on his new sex agenda. “Why do you keep attacking me like this? What have I ever done to deserve this? Nothing. I’ve been a perfect angel, all my life.”

“You won’t admit you love me. That’s why. Duh. Admit it and the torture ends.”

“I mean apart from that. That happened like last week. Let it go already. Stop living in the past.”

“Also, you wore this outfit before I did, so how is that fair?”

“People made me. By which I mean they told me I’d look pretty in it. What choice did I have after that?”

“Pretty isn’t the word I’d use.”

Johnny perked up. “Oh? What word would you use?”

Johnny loved it when people described exactly how hot he was. It was one of his favorite things to listen to or read or watch on television.

“Tell you what, admit you love me and I’ll give you a detailed list.”

Johnny chortled and patted Peter’s shoulder. “Nice try, buddy. Real nice.”

Peter sighed and his shoulders sagged. “You’re really gonna make me resort to the floor cleaning? Oy, my knees.”

“Yep,” Johnny said, folding his arms behind his head as though he didn’t have a care in the world. “Start with that corner.”

He pointed at the one right across from him. He’d have a great view of Peter’s ass from here.

Peter rolled his eyes. “I’m getting a bucket,” he threatened. “Right now. And then I’ll be on the floor. On my hands and knees. Cleaning. In this outfit.”

“I understand,” Johnny said, nodding solemnly. “I am so ready for this. Bring it.”

 
Johnny was not even remotely ready for any of it.

Johnny stared at Peter’s unreasonably shapely ass and sighed, over and over, at how difficult and unfair his life was.

He wanted to touch that ass. It was his goal in life. His dream.

Other men—foolish men—dreamt of fame, success, glory. None of that interested Johnny in the slightest, probably because he had it all already. Instead, Johnny’s dreams were filled with the hope of getting his hands on that ass.

His was a better dream. A nobler one.

“Put your back into it!” Johnny heckled.

Peter stiffened and then turned to glare at Johnny over his shoulder. “C’mon. Not even a little tempting?” he whined.

Johnny would trade his soul for five seconds with that ass. But, no, he was going to hold out, because he was too proud.

“Eh,” Johnny lied. “It’s okay. I would be sexier at it, and we both know it.”

Peter wasn’t too great at being sexy on purpose, Johnny decided. Take, for instance, the fact that somewhere along the way he’d gotten invested in actually cleaning the floor and was really scrubbing at it.

Was it weird that he was sexier once he’d stopped trying?

Peter sighed, rolled his eyes, and turned back around.

Johnny watched until he couldn’t stand it any longer. It was getting harder and harder, he found, to remember why he wasn’t doing whatever Peter wanted, as long as he got to touch that ass.

Peter’s ass was hypnotic, Johnny realized, but much too late to save himself.

Pride? Why did it even matter? Who cared about pride? Peter’s ass and Johnny’s lifelong dreams were on the line here. They were what really counted. Also the kissing.

He couldn’t take it anymore. “All right!” he shouted, throwing up his hands. “You win!”

“Yes!” Peter crowed. He leapt to his feet and pumped both fists in the air. “I win at sexy chicken, and don’t you forget it!”

Johnny glared. “I was promised a sexy make-out session. I demand payment.”

“Say the thing and we’ll make out till your lips go numb.”

Johnny wasn’t going to give Peter the satisfaction of saying it like he meant it. He crossed his arms and rolled his eyes and muttered, “I love you,” under his breath, and he made sure he did it as resentfully as he could.

“What was that?” Peter said, smirking, cupping a hand around his ear. “I didn’t catch that.”

Johnny gave him his patented ‘drop dead’ glare. “You’re the single most infuriating person I’ve ever met in my life.”

“I know I am,” Peter sighed sympathetically. He inched closer. “Isn’t it terrible?”

“You’re terrible. The absolute worst.”

“Yep. I absolutely am.”

“I really hate you.”

“I know you do, baby,” Peter cooed, very sympathetically, nodding along.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Whatever you say, hot stuff.”

“That’s better. Call me that all the time and we’ll get along just fine. Pet names that mention how hot you think I am are always appreciated.”

Peter, who’d finally made it across the room as they were talking, hooked a hand under Johnny’s knee and slid his legs open, just enough to let Peter wedge between them. Johnny couldn’t help it; he shivered.

Peter smiled down at him. It was smug, and Johnny had never hated him more, and he’d never been more turned on.

Johnny shuddered again when Peter crawled on top of him carefully and hooked Johnny’s knee over his waist.

Unfair. Peter wasn’t supposed to be this sexy. He was supposed to be floored at how sexy Johnny was.

Johnny put his arms around Peter’s neck and tried to pretend that none of this was getting to him.

“I don’t think we’ll ever get along just fine,” Peter said. “We like arguing too much. But that’s okay, because making up will be a lot of fun.”

Peter smiled at him, and Johnny’s heart skipped a beat. Several, really.

“Well?” Johnny said impatiently. “Are you ever going to get around to kissing me? I don’t have all day!”

Peter squinted. “You literally have nothing to do today other than lie around on this sofa and look pretty.”

“It’s an expression. Don’t be so literal. Tell me more about how pretty I am.”

“Why don’t I show you exactly how pretty I think you are instead?” Peter said.

Ooo. That was smooth. Johnny really hadn’t thought Peter had it in him. Johnny was just about to tell Peter that, when Peter’s mouth got in the way.

Rude. It was so rude.

Johnny should really break off the kiss and tell Peter never to interrupt him again, certainly not before he’d even started talking. Who did he think he was, interrupting Johnny like that?

Then Peter did this thing with his tongue inside of Johnny’s mouth, and Johnny’s thoughts flew right out of his head.

Neat trick. Peter’d have to teach him that one. Might come in handy.

Johnny’d been expecting it to be anticlimactic—nothing could top the fantasy version of Peter he’d concocted in his daydreams, who was endlessly sexy and knew exactly what Johnny liked, always—but it wasn’t, somehow.

Fantasies were exciting and all, but Johnny was rapidly realizing there was nothing that could have prepared him for this, for what it felt like to have Peter’s arms wrapped tight around him, or the slick wet heat of Peter’s mouth, or the press of Peter’s lean, hard body against his, or the leisurely, focused, but simmering passion with which Peter devoured Johnny’s mouth.

Johnny’s hands found their way to Peter’s brown curls, and he pulled Peter in to deepen the kiss. 

Fantasy, shmantasy. Johnny’d take the real thing any day of the week.

There should be some sweeping romantic music playing in the background to mark this momentous occasion. Johnny thought it was a little depressing that there wasn’t.

Peter yanked his head back. Johnny was indignant and upset. He considered it a personal affront.

“Do you hear that?” Peter said, frowning in puzzlement. He looked up at the ceiling. “Torchette, what are you doing? Are you playing music for us?”

Johnny abruptly realized that there was, in fact, sweeping romantic music playing. String quartet, it sounded like. Violins. The whole bit.

Honestly, it sounded like that song from Titanic. 

Johnny smiled up at the ceiling. “That’s my girl,” he said, touched. “You get me. You really get me.”

Torchette made a sound that was almost a coo. He really loved this ship. It was his best friend. Ish.

“It’s a ship. It’s genderless,” Peter reminded him.

“That’s my genderless ship,” Johnny cooed. “My buddy. Have I mentioned that I really hate it when you correct me?” he told Peter.

“Many times.”

“Are you ever going to stop?”

“Not a chance.”

Johnny sighed. Why did Peter have to make everything so difficult? “I think you’d better kiss me again. You’re better when you’re not talking.”

Peter ducked his head a little and laughed. It was adorable. Now Johnny really wanted to kiss him again.

“Aw, honey,” Peter sighed. “I think the same thing about you.”

He kissed Johnny again, before Johnny even had a chance to insult him back. He’d show him the consequences of calling Johnny ‘honey.’

Johnny took advantage of the kissing to slide his hands down to Peter’s ass and squeeze. Life goal #1: Accomplished.

“Are you sure we can’t have sex?” Johnny sighed when Peter broke off the kissing long enough to catch his breath.

Peter looked up at the ceiling. “Torchette? Is he okay enough? Please say yes.”

Torchette blew a raspberry.

“Looks like you’re out of luck, Torchy.”

“I could still help you—” Johnny said, slipping a hand towards Peter’s crotch.

Peter batted his hand away, scowling. “No. When we do this, we are doing it right. We’re both waiting.”

Johnny thunked his head back against a pillow. “You’re no fun,” he sulked. “I hate waiting.”

“Let’s see if I can’t make the wait a little less hard on you,” Peter said with a sly grin.

He bent his head and started mouthing lazily along the slender column of Johnny’s neck.

Johnny’s breath died in his throat. Peter was way too good at that. No fair. “I don’t see how that’s supposed to make me less hard.”

Peter huffed out a laugh against the skin of Johnny’s neck, and Johnny loved him for being Peter and hated him for being a stubborn ass.

Chapter Text

It was about two weeks later when Torchette finally gave the go-ahead for Johnny and Peter to have sex.

Johnny would always remember very clearly where he was when he heard those momentous words—well, really they were chirps—for the first time. Now he understood why people were always saying they'd never forget where they were when they first heard JFK or Elvis were dead. Some events were so momentous they changed the very fabric of reality.

In Johnny's eventful life, there were many such moments: his father's death, the fateful spaceflight, his sister's wedding, the birth of his niece and nephew, his own disastrous marriage, that time he found those jeans that fit his ass like they were made for him (he'd immediately ordered fifty).

And now, sex with Peter. 

When it all started, he was lying on his back in the med bay, napping a little, while Torchette’s scanners whirred and clicked over his body. Peter was standing next to him and, oh so annoyingly, not kissing him. He was too busy peering at the medical scanner and grumbling sourly to himself because Torchette’s medical jargon didn’t 100% translate to Earth English, and he had to guess about a lot of stuff. It typically took about an hour.

Johnny didn't waste time worrying about that, though, because his boyfriend was smart. Peter wouldn't kill him or anything. Johnny trusted him.

They did this check-up every couple of days, just to see if the breaks were healing correctly.

Johnny was almost entirely asleep when he was jarred awake by a sharp intake of breath. “Wait,” he heard Peter say. “Does this mean what I think it means?”

Johnny cracked an eye open a little grumpily. He’d been having a very pleasant cat-nap and hated being interrupted. “What does it say?” he asked.

Peter held up a finger to silence him. Johnny glared at it. He really wanted to set it on fire, just to teach Peter not to be so rude, but he decided against it. He was planning on getting Peter to kiss him later, and if Peter's finger was burned, he'd probably be way too busy sulking on a ceiling somewhere where Johnny couldn't get at him—not without risking getting covered in goo by Torchette, anyways.

“Torchette?” Peter asked, still ignoring Johnny.

Torchette chirped.

“It’s listening,” Johnny interpreted. If he said it a little sourly, well, he couldn't help it. “But I don’t think it knows what you’re trying to ask it.”

“Am I crazy, or are you saying he’s fine now?” Peter asked Torchette urgently.

Johnny finally caught on to what was happening. He jolted upright and stared, wide-eyed, up at the ceiling. Maybe this nightmare of waiting was finally over. “Torchette?” he asked hopefully. “Am I?”

It chirruped once, which, in the course of their conversations, had come to mean yes.

Johnny and Peter locked eyes for one breathless, magical moment.

It’s finally happening, Johnny thought giddily, somewhere in the back of his mind. The front of his mind was mostly occupied with furiously running through the list of everything he wanted to do with Peter. It was a long list. They were going to be at this for hours. Maybe days.

“Let’s—” Johnny started.

“Go right now?” Peter finished for him. “Way ahead of you, buddy!”

And he was, too. Peter was halfway out of the room before Johnny’d even managed to hop off the bed, and he’d vanished from sight completely before Johnny’d even reached the door.

Johnny couldn’t believe it. He stared down the long hallway that led to their quarters and shook his head, over and over. “Did he seriously just forget me?” he wondered. “Unbelievable.”

He started to trudge after Peter, grumbling bitterly to himself about what a terrible boyfriend Peter was, and why, oh why, hadn’t he decided to fall in love with someone sensible and considerate who would never ever ever forget their boyfriend when they were on their way to have sex?

Johnny figured that making sure your boyfriend was around was sort of important when you were going to do it for the first time. You definitely shouldn't run off to your bedroom alone and ditch your boyfriend. Might make them tetchy. Johnny certainly felt tetchy.

He kept up his silent rant—he may or may not have muttered angrily to himself every now and then—until he ran smack dab into Peter, who’d been running back down to the med bay, full speed.

Johnny, who, unlike Peter, didn't have perfect balance, toppled backward against the floor. 

Johnny glared vindictively up at Peter. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted. “First you forget about me and now you knock me over? Are you trying to send me back to the med bay? Oh, god. Is this your idea of foreplay? Please tell me it isn’t.”

Peter, a trifle shame-faced, winced as he held out a hand to help Johnny back to his feet. “Sorry, buddy. I maybe got a little overexcited.”

Johnny was still a little pissed at Peter, but he took his hand anyways. It was the least Peter could do. 

Of course, it was while he was getting to his feet that it finally sank in that Peter was shirtless. “Wait, wait.” He started to snicker. “Did you make it all the way to your quarters and start to take your clothes off before you realized you forgot me?”

Peter squinted. “No? The way you’re saying that is kinda making me think I should go with no.”

Johnny couldn’t help it: he started to laugh, deeply and heartily, until his sides started to ache and his eyes started to water. This was all so absurd, and Peter was so adorably ridiculous. Johnny couldn’t believe how much he loved him.

Peter caught Johnny’s wrist. “C’mon, Torchy,” he said impatiently. “You can laugh at me later. We got stuff we need to do.”

Johnny didn't really see why he couldn't laugh at Peter now and later. Both were probably going to happen, Johnny was 90% sure.

“The stuff that needs doing being me?” Johnny teased. This wasn’t helping get him to stop laughing.

Peter tugged at the wrist he had in his grasp until Johnny was pressed flush against him.

Ooo. Exciting. That caught his attention.

Johnny wrapped his arms around Peter’s broad shoulders and found that he couldn’t seem to stop grinning at Peter, that dope.

It must have been infectious, because Peter started smiling too. Maybe he’d finally caught on to how completely absurd this all was. “That was the plan, yeah.” His smile turned playful. “I mean, unless you don’t think you can keep up.”

Johnny’s head tipped back as he laughed. Peter was such an idiot. But, hey, he also happened to be Johnny's idiot. That meant something, Johnny supposed, although he wasn't entirely sure what.

God, but Johnny loved him. His ridiculous, swell-headed, surprisingly sexy boyfriend. Who Johnny’d been pining after for what felt like half his life and maybe really had been, but it had all been worth it, because now Peter was his, all his, always his. Johnny didn’t think he’d ever been this blissfully happy.

Johnny wanted to tell Peter all of that. Tell him too about all the times he’d would have traded his soul for a kiss from Peter, every night he’d spent lost in dreams that were filled to the brim with Peter, Peter, and only Peter, the way his heart sang with joy every time Peter smiled at him.

But he couldn’t seem to find the courage, so instead, he schooled his features into a frown and said, all bluster, “I can take anything you dish out, Web-Head.”

“You sure?” Peter teased, condescendingly feigning concern. “I mean, buddy, you have just been sick for a while. I really couldn’t blame you if you couldn’t keep up with me.”

Johnny’s eyes narrowed. Peter didn't really think that Johnny wasn't going to be able to keep up, did he? Because that did not sit well with Johnny. His chin tilted up. “Get me into that bed and I’ll show you who can’t keep up.”

“Aw, I already know you can’t, buddy. You don’t need to show me.”

“I was talking about you, Web-Wit.”

“I know you were. I know you were, baby,” Peter said patronizingly. “It was a joke.”

“I knew that. I was just making sure you did. Also, did I or did I not tell you not to call me that?”

“Um…hot stuff? You liked that one, right?”

“Better,” Johnny allowed.

“I know I’m better than you,” Peter said, with a huge grin. Johnny hated it when Peter twisted his words like this. “Thanks for noticing. And just so you know, I’m totally going to be better at sex too. I am so gonna win this. You don’t stand a chance.”

“It’s not a competition, Pete,” Johnny said, but he was lying through his teeth.

Peter wisely didn’t believe what Johnny’d said at all. “Sure it’s not,” he said derisively.

Johnny snorted. Hey, maybe Peter wasn’t nearly as dumb as Johnny thought he was. Johnny could only hope, because nobody could be that dumb.

Johnny and Peter wasted a good amount of time beaming at each other before Peter—who really was being slower than usual today—got it into his head to kiss Johnny.

Finally. That was much more like it.

Johnny slid his hands up into Peter’s hair and sighed contentedly. Peter may have kissed him dozens of times over the last few weeks, but it still hadn’t gotten old. It was still just as new, still just as thrilling as it had been the first time Peter’d kissed him.

There was only one thing Johnny could remember, pre-Peter, that had made him feel this way—the first time he’d realized he could fly, all those years ago. He’d felt the same elation, the same pure, dizzying joy. The same sense of completeness, of rightness. Like flying was what he’d always been meant to do, since the day he was born. Like going up in that spaceship and getting blasted by cosmic rays was his destiny, and always had been.

That’s exactly what he felt like right now. Like he was soaring through the clouds for the first time in his life, like he had finally found the one place in the universe where he truly belonged—here, wrapped tight in Peter’s arms.

He pulled Peter in closer and wished and wished that he could feel this way forever.

But if life had taught him anything, it was that nothing this good ever lasted, and that was why these moments had to be treasured, cherished, enjoyed to the fullest as they occurred.

Stranded out here in the middle of nowhere, Johnny had no idea what tomorrow might bring, so he was going to enjoy what little he had—no, the everything he had with Peter—as much as he could.

“I think we can both agree,” Johnny announced, hours later, after they were both pleasantly worn out and completely spent, “I won that round.”

Johnny’s head was pillowed on Peter’s shoulder, his left leg tossed carelessly over Peter’s. He was tracing lazy little patterns across Peter’s chest with the tips of his fingers, enjoying the way Peter’s skin prickled in their wake. Peter’s fingers were combing idly through Johnny’s hair, and everything was perfect. 

Peter, admittedly, had been…different than Johnny’d expected. Johnny’d always assumed Peter would be slow, hesitant, maybe even shy in bed, but he’d been completely, blissfully wrong. Peter knew exactly what he wanted, and, oh, man, did he know how to ask for it. Just thinking about it still made Johnny shiver.

He was a lot closer to being like the Peter Johnny's very overactive imagination had dreamt up than Johnny had ever dared hope, even if he was, at times, a little clumsier and, uh, cornier than Johnny's fantasy Peter.

It was okay. Johnny could deal with that. 

“Yeah, no, I don’t think so,” Peter said. “Nice try. I think I won. In fact, I know I did. And, hey, I thought it wasn’t a competition, Flamebrain?”

A smile tugged at one corner of Johnny’s mouth. “I think we both know I was lying about that.”

“I thought you didn’t lie, you liar," Peter said, faking outrage.

“Yeah, that was a lie.”

“Knew that too," Peter said. Johnny didn't even need to glance up to know that his smile was pretty damn smug. "Don’t know why you even bother trying to lie to me. I always figure you out eventually.”

Johnny hummed. “I dunno about that. Took you ages to figure out I was in love with you, didn’t it? I wasn't even being very subtle, Pete.”

“Ages?” Peter said, pretending to be casual, but Johnny wasn’t fooled. His ear was pressed right against Peter’s heart, and he heard the way it had suddenly begun to race. “So, uh, how long is ages?”

“Oh, I dunno,” Johnny said. He wanted to stop talking about this now, thanks. “A while?”

“But, like, how long a while?” Peter pressed.

Peter had caught the scent now, Johnny realized with a sinking feeling. He wasn’t letting this go until he figured out why Johnny didn’t want to answer, and, oh man, did Johnny not want to answer. The answer was mortifying, and he so didn’t want Peter to know.

“I dunno, Pete, just a while! Does it really matter exactly how long?”

“I mean, you must have some idea of when you figured out you had feelings for me.”

Jesus. He really wasn’t giving up, was he? Johnny rolled his eyes. “It’s not like I wrote it down in my diary or anything, Pete. ‘August 25th, 2013,’” he intoned, “‘Dear Diary, realized today that I maybe have a crush on the most annoying guy on the planet. Yeah, I do mean Spidey. It’s embarrassing as hell, and what is wrong with me? Do I need my head examined?’”

“Definitely,” Peter said instantly. “You definitely need your head examined. Why haven’t you already had it examined, is the real question.”

He paused.

Johnny could pinpoint the exact moment when Johnny’s words registered because Peter’s hand stopped combing through Johnny’s hair.

“2013?” Peter asked, voice tight. “Is…is that when?”

Johnny sighed. He wasn’t worming out of this any time soon, so he supposed he might as well get it over with. No point in dragging this secret out longer and making it a bigger thing than it had to be.

“No,” Johnny said haltingly. “It was. Uh. It was maybe before. It. It might have been around when I helped you build the Spidey-Mobile.”

He felt his face go all warm, and he was probably blushing, because, yeah, that was one hell of a bombshell.

Overcome by embarrassment, Johnny sat up abruptly and wrapped his arms around his knees so that his back was facing Peter.

Peter didn’t say anything for a while after that, and Johnny couldn’t really bring himself to turn around and look him in the face, so he just let the seconds tick by. Maybe Peter’d take pity and change the subject.

He knew it was a lot to take in. Johnny’d been in love with Peter for such a desperately long time. If he was being entirely honest, he could hardly remember what it’d felt like to not be in love with Peter, it had been so long ago. It was hard now to remember what it’d been like to not feel his heart soar every time he happened to spot Peter swinging by, weaving gracefully through the city’s shimmering skyscrapers, or having a smile that he couldn’t make go away whenever he saw Peter on the television, or the way his chest would go all tight with worry every time Peter got hurt or went missing. 

“That long?” Peter rasped, jarring Johnny out of his reminiscences. Peter sounded like he could hardly believe it. Johnny supposed it did sound fairly implausible. A guy like Johnny crazy in love with someone like Peter for so many years? “That long? I mean, Torchy. We were still in college then. We were still kids.”

“You were in college,” Johnny corrected. “I’d already dropped out by then.” He took a deep breath. “And it’s not like I sat around moping over pictures of you or anything.” Okay. He’d done it once, but Ben had caught him and laughed at him about it for weeks, and Johnny’d never done it again. And Peter was never going to find out about it either. Johnny’d sworn Ben to secrecy on pain of death by fire. “I dated other people. I got married. I had my family. I had a whole life. A pretty happy one. I was okay without you.”

He hadn’t been this happy, it was true. But even without Peter, there had been plenty of joy and more than enough love in Johnny’s life.

It was difficult to feel as though there was a lack of love in his life when he lived with fourteen rowdy children, all of whom adored him and competed constantly for his attention. And there was, of course, also Sue, Ben, and Reed, the best family anyone could ever have. Sure, what they all felt for him wasn’t romantic love, but Johnny could never say that he hadn’t been loved to excess.

“But you loved me,” Peter said roughly. “You loved me. All that time. And I was too stupid to see it.”

Johnny felt the bed shift behind him as Peter sat up. Peter put a calloused hand on his shoulder. Johnny gasped when Peter dropped a kiss on his shoulder blade.

"I'm sorry, pal," Peter murmured. He pressed his cheek against Johnny's shoulder, wrapped his arms around Johnny's torso, held him tight. "I should've seen it sooner. I know you so well. Why couldn't I see it before?"

“Because you're stupid," Johnny said. He twined his fingers through Peter's and pressed back against Peter's chest. "And...I dunno. It wasn't so bad, really. I can love more than one person at once, Pete. And when I was with other people, I dunno, the way I felt about you kind of…faded into the background.” He rifled a hand through his hair as he tried to find the words to describe how he had felt. “It was always there, and I could always feel it, but it…didn’t matter as much.” He smiled. “It was like a pebble stuck in my shoe.”

Johnny could feel the curve of Peter's smile against his skin.

“I was a pebble?” Peter asked, amused.

“You were a pebble,” Johnny confirmed, ducking his head and laughing a little. “Annoying, can’t get rid of you no matter how hard I try, yeah, you were a pebble in a shoe.”

“So what was I the rest of the time?” Peter breathed into Johnny's ear.

Johnny knew the answer, but didn’t particularly want to get laughed at. It was easy. Obvious, even. Peter was the love of his life. Would have been even if they’d never gotten together.

It was fair to call Peter that, he thought. The way he’d felt about other people—about Dorrie, Wyatt, Crystal, Frankie, Lyja, Daken, and Namorita—that had all come and gone. The way he felt about Peter had been a constant in his life since he was barely out of his teens. He had no reason to believe it would ever fade away.

Besides, loving Peter had become a part of who he was. How he defined himself. Johnny Storm, the second Human Torch, co-founder of the Fantastic Four, brother to Sue, Ben, and Reed, uncle to Franklin, Valeria, and the kids of the Future Foundation, desperately, painfully, wildly in love with Peter Parker. All of those things together made Johnny who he was. Remove any single part of that equation, and what was left wouldn’t be Johnny anymore. Maybe it’d look like him, maybe it’d sound like him, but it wouldn’t be him.

“I dunno,” Johnny said evasively. “I was in love with you and I couldn’t have you. What do you think you were?”

Peter was silent again, but his embrace tightened. He nuzzled into Johnny's hair. 

Johnny didn’t want Peter feeling sorry for him. Johnny had been fine. Really. “So when did you?” he asked. He was honestly curious. He really had no idea how long it’d been for Peter. “When did you realize how you felt about me?”

Peter hadn’t said the word 'love' in relation to Johnny, not yet. Johnny was still waiting.

“Not, uh,” Peter started. He scratched his head. “It wasn’t even half as long as you. I’m kind of embarrassed to say now.”

“Pete. Mine was more embarrassing. When?”

“I didn’t figure it out until after we went through the wormhole,” Peter admitted.

Johnny twisted around and frowned at Peter. All the time they’d known each other, everything they’d been through together, and, well, “Why was that the thing that made you figure it out?”

It was hardly the first time Johnny’d been in danger around Peter. Hardly the first time he’d been lost in space either. Why now?

A slow blush crawled up Peter’s neck and he pulled back a little. He ducked his head, chewed at his bottom lip, and didn’t answer for a good long while. Maybe he was trying to figure out what to say?

When he finally did speak, all he said was, “Because I couldn’t figure out why the hell I jumped in after you,” very quietly, but it was enough. Enough to rock Johnny's world to its core.

The air left Johnny’s lungs. “What,” he managed to croak out. “What.”

“I saw you fall in, and then I thought.” Peter swallowed. “I thought I might never see you again, and I…couldn’t. Johnny, I just couldn’t let that happen.” His shoulder hitched up in a small shrug. Was it just Johnny or were his eyes a little brighter than normal? Johnny couldn't seem to tear his eyes away from Peter's face. He was mesmerized. “Next thing I knew, I’d let go of my webs and I was diving after you. Couldn’t figure out why I’d done it until that night in the cave. Figured it out then but fast. I spent a lot of that night freaking the hell out.”

Johnny couldn't bear it anymore; he lunged at Peter and kissed him, hard and deep. Peter fell backward onto the bed, slipped his hands into Johnny’s mussed hair.

“You idiot,” Johnny kept saying, over and over, between kisses. “You complete idiot.”

Peter could’ve died. That was the thought that Johnny’s mind couldn't get past. That wormhole could’ve opened up in the middle of space or on a planet with an atmosphere that wasn’t breathable or something—Johnny could’ve been dead long before Peter’d ever even let go of his webs.

Jumping in after Johnny had been an incredibly stupid thing to do. Of course, it was also, unfortunately, by far the most romantic thing anyone’d ever done for Johnny.

Peter didn’t try to argue, which was uncharacteristically smart. “I know. I know it was stupid. I couldn’t help it." He grinned. "Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly," he sang, "I’ve gotta—”

“Do incredibly dumb things that could easily get you killed?” Johnny supplied.

Peter blinked. “Well," he fumbled. "Gotta say, that wasn’t exactly how I was going to put it. But, yeah, it’s probably pretty accurate." He grinned. "Me in a nutshell?”

Johnny was having none of it. "Look, just don’t do it again,” he warned. He pressed his forehead against Peter’s and looked him dead in the eye. No weaseling out of this, Peter Benjamin Parker. “Not ever. Promise me. If I fall into a wormhole, you let me fall. Don't come after me. You go get Reed or Val and come get me with a spaceship or something later.”

Peter’s eyes were hard. “No. No! I can’t promise that, and I'm not gonna. You jump into a wormhole, I jump into a wormhole. That’s how this works.”

“I jump off a cliff, you do too? That’s not right, Pete. I don’t want that.”

“Where you go, I go. This isn’t up for debate.”

“Oh, I think it is,” Johnny snapped. He jerked his head back. “You could’ve died for no reason. It wasn’t smart.”

“I don’t care if it was smart,” Peter said heatedly. “It was what I needed to do. We’re a team. Better together than we are apart, remember? That’s enough of a reason for me. More than enough.” His gaze faltered. His fingers dug into the skin of Johnny's hips. “Besides, I don’t like it when you aren’t around. It sucks. I’ve kinda gotten used to you, you know? Who’ll annoy the hell out of me if you aren’t around? I mean, maybe Ben could, but you’ve really got a knack for getting under my skin.”

Johnny wasn’t about to let himself get distracted by the chance of making an awesome joke about who exactly had been under whose skin. “I don’t like this. I don’t want you getting hurt because of me. That’s the last thing I want for anybody.”

“If I got hurt, it would be because of the decisions I made. That would be on me, not on you.” Peter fell back against the bed and frowned up at the ceiling. “Now I just feel like I’m on the wrong side of this conversation.”

“No,” Johnny shot back. “No! You’re stranded all the way across the universe because of me. You might never see your family again because of me. Say whatever you want, this’s on me. I’m the one who’s gonna have to live with this always.”

Johnny flopped down on the bed next to Peter, curled up on his side, and let himself be consumed by guilt. It was hardly a new feeling. Add this to the long list of fuck-ups in Johnny’s life. Add Peter to the list of people whose lives Johnny had single-handedly destroyed. Right up there with Mike Snow. Maybe even worse than Mike.

He dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “If I’d just listened when they gave the order, this wouldn’t’ve happened. We would both be on Earth right now. I’m such an idiot! Why don’t I ever listen? Everyone’s always telling me to, but I never learn!”

Peter grasped Johnny’s wrists and tugged them away from his face. “This isn’t your fault,” he said. “If you want to blame anyone, blame the Krotrakka. They’re the ones who decided to invade Earth, and they’re the ones who opened up that wormhole. Blame them. This isn’t on you.”

That soothed Johnny’s guilt a little bit, but it didn’t make it fade away entirely.

“I jumped in after you because I love you. You can’t control how I feel. It’s not like you asked me to follow you, pal. You didn’t. I made that decision on my own, because of how I feel about you. Take it from someone who knows: beating yourself up for the bad decisions other people make is no good. It takes you to dark places. Places you should never go. You’re Johnny Storm. You and the FF are all about light and hope and the future and stuff. I’m the one who’s all about making up for past sins, so stop stealing my bit. Doesn’t suit you.”

Oh, if Peter only knew. Johnny had plenty of sins to beat himself up about. He wished and wished he could be the wonderful, inspiring guy Peter saw every time he looked at Johnny, but Johnny knew he wasn't. 

“I still feel like it’s my fault you’re here,” Johnny admitted. He couldn’t help it. That was how he felt.

Peter kissed him reassuringly. “It isn’t.” He offered Johnny a conciliatory smile. “And, hey, look at it this way. There’s a plus side. Long as you’re with me, you don’t ever have to be afraid of being alone again.”

Johnny couldn’t help it; he kissed Peter again, over and over, and wondered how the hell he’d been lucky enough to have Peter pick him to be the guy he fell in love with.

He didn’t deserve him, not for a second, that was for sure.

It turned out that there wasn’t really much to do on Torchette that was more entertaining than sex, and, well, Johnny figured he had a lot of years to make up for.

It was new and strange and wonderful, being able to touch and kiss and have sex with Peter whenever he wanted.

It was hard to make himself stop, especially when it was so easy to tell Torchette to turn off her internal scanners and let Peter press him down against the nearest available flat surface.

Case in point: Johnny and Peter hadn’t wandered into the cockpit planning on having sex, but the second Johnny’d playfully clambered into Peter’s lap, it’d been game over.

Now Johnny and Peter’s shirts had disappeared and Peter’s mouth was hot and dizzying against Johnny’s neck and one of his hands was shoved down the back of Johnny’s pants, and, oh, this was happening.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Peter said breathlessly, pulling back. “Did you finish putting the coordinates in like I asked you to?”

“Seriously?” Johnny replied. “Right now? Can’t it wait five minutes?”

“Please, Torchy, this’s gonna take at least fifteen.” He grinned. “Put the coordinates in for me and I’ll make sure it lasts thirty.”

Johnny sat back and sighed. “This is totally spoiling the mood. It really couldn’t’ve waited?”

“Not if we didn’t wanna forget,” Peter said, settling his hands on Johnny’s waist. “Remember what happened when we were heading to Melaron?”

Johnny winced. Oh, yeah. Johnny’d forgotten to finish plugging in the coordinates because Peter’d had the bright idea of having sex in the cockpit, and, well…note to self: don’t let Peter bend you over the console. Buttons should not be pressed randomly, or all at once.

Torchette had nearly exploded, and even though Johnny had managed to fix its engines in time, it hadn’t forgiven him for a good long time. It kept covering him in that fire-extinguishing goo, every time he lit even just a hand on fire. Which he’d have to do all the time, because it also thought turning all of the lights off in whatever room he was in at the time was hilarious.

It also had neglected to mention the fact that neither he nor Peter had entered any coordinates in for, oh, about two days.

Torchette had taken the opportunity to drift along happily. It did love to wander and sight-see (it loved flying through nebulas the most).

“Fine,” Johnny said resentfully. Peter had a point and he knew it. He twisted around—it was a little awkward, but Peter helped by holding him in place and keeping him from tipping over—and started flipping the switches. “Why are we going to this planet again? What’s the rush?”

“There’s just,” Peter said. “Someone I want to talk to.”

On most of the planets they’d been stopping at lately, Peter’d duck away to meet people he’d been talking to over the ship’s comm systems. Johnny didn’t understand half of what they were saying, so he usually went wandering off on his own. Found the closest bar or something. A shopping center, if the planet had any. His closet was now packed thanks to that. Peter, on the other hand, rarely ever went shopping. He mostly stole Johnny’s clothes, and shamelessly at that.

“What about?” Johnny prodded. He was genuinely curious. Peter never talked about it. “What do you talk to all of these people about, anyways?”

Peter’s hands tightened around Johnny’s waist. When Peter spoke, it was halting. “I’m…trying to, uh, find a way home for us?"

That caught Johnny’s interest. He punched the last button and then settled back down on Peter’s lap. “Have you found one?”

If Johnny didn’t know better, he’d say Peter looked shifty. “I…have some thoughts. On things we could do.”

“Like what?” Johnny asked.

“You know what? I don’t think I want to tell you. I don’t think you’re gonna like it.”

Well, now Johnny just had to know. “Peter,” he said. “Spill it.”

Peter blew out a guff of air. “You really aren’t going to like it.”

“I deserve to know.”

Peter gave a nod to signal that he couldn’t really argue with that one. “The only people around here that we know for sure know Earth’s location are…”

“The Krotrakka,” Johnny finished, stomach sinking as though it’d been weighted with lead. “You can’t be serious.”

Peter’s chin tilted upwards and his face took on a decidedly mulish look. “It’s the only way. We have to get home. There are people depending on us, or have you forgotten? I haven’t.”

That wasn’t fair. How could Peter think that. Johnny could never forget his family. Not one day passed when he didn’t wonder if they were still alive, if they ever thought about him, if they missed him as much as he missed them. It made his heart ache and ache, until the only thing that could soothe it would be Peter’s hands, his mouth, his body.

“I haven’t forgotten,” Johnny said fiercely. “I’ll never forget them.”

“Me either,” Peter said, eyes defiant. “That’s why I’ve been trying to track down where the Krotrakka came from. Hashee from Yelor 3 is the answer. Everyone says she knows more about the Krotrakka than anyone else in the Last. I’ve been searching for her, and I finally found her. She can tell us where they are, maybe how to get them to tell us where Earth is. I can’t think of anything else to do, Johnny.”

Johnny sagged forward and buried his face against Peter’s neck. “I don’t like this,” he said. “It sounds dangerous. We could get hurt. We could die. I can’t die out here, Pete. I want my family to know what happened to me.”

Peter’s hands smoothed up Johnny’s bare back comfortingly. It made Johnny shiver.

“I know,” Peter murmured, pressing kisses against Johnny’s shoulder. “I know.”

Chapter Text

They reached Yelor 3 two days later.

Hashee turned out to be a cranky, ancient little woman who hardly reached Johnny’s waist, even if she stood on the tips of her toes. Her skin was a blue-violet that was so dark it was nearly black.

She lived in a small cottage far, far past the furthest edges of Yelor’s sprawling capital city. Her home was teetering on top of a cliff that seemed to be in the process of rapidly crumbling into the ocean that lay beneath it, not that she minded.

“Impractical bastards those architects were,” she scoffed when Johnny questioned the wisdom of building a house on the edge of a cliff. “Not a brain in their damn heads. If it falls, it falls, what the hell do I care? I’ve lived for a thousand years, and I’m damn tired. Makes my life exciting. God knows I’ve been bored lately.”

She stared glumly out at the ocean from the vantage point of the flimsy, ancient chair she’d stationed brazenly at the cliff’s edge. Her hand was clutching at the head of a twisting wooden cane that was resting against her lap.

“Now why are two boys like you here pestering an old woman like me?” she grumbled. “I was just about to have a nice afternoon nap. Maybe a drink or two.”

"No reason why you can't have those drinks anyways," Johnny said amiably. "Hell, I'll join you."

"Johnny," Peter said immediately. "No."

"I was just being friendly, Pete," Johnny said defensively. "The general didn't mind, now did she?" 

He flashed a charming grin at her. The sort that made all of his fangirls and boys squee and faint every time, without fail.

"No," Hashee said. "But I'll be damned if I'm sharing my mizal with you."

"Oh," Johnny said, a little crestfallen. "Dammit."

He'd really been looking forward to trying this planet's alcohol. That was a lot of what he'd been doing on this trip, honestly. Peter went and talked with his experts, Johnny hit the bars, gambled to get them cash, and tried out every alcoholic drink he could find. 

It was research! He was going to write a book one day about where to find the best drinks in the universe. Or, at least, that's what he told Peter (and himself).

“I’ve been sending you messages,” Peter was telling Hashee. “I’m trying to track down the Krotrakka, and everyone said you were the person to talk to.”

“Well, everyone would be right,” Hashee said. She settled back in her chair, shut her eyes, and soaked in the warmth of the sun. “I’ve spent a thousand years fighting those bastards. Know everything there is to know about the way their brains work.” Her brow furrowed and an eye slit open. “Why do you want to know where they are, kid?”

“Well,” Peter said. “It’s a long story, ma’am. But let’s just say that they have information we need.”

Hashee huffed out a laugh. “The Krotrakka don’t negotiate. Hell, they don’t even communicate with the opposing side. Just appear in the sky and take over your world. I’m the only person who’s ever successfully fended them off.”

Johnny decided it was time to jump in and try to smooth things over. “Look, it’s just that we’re lost. We fell into one of their wormholes when they invaded our planet, and they’re the only ones out here who know where it is.”

“Then you’d better accept that you’re never getting home, kid,” she said dryly. “They’re not going to tell you anything. Besides—how long ago did they invade your planet?”

Johnny started counting off the months on his fingers.

Peter reached out a hand to stop him. Johnny could tell he was trying not to roll his eyes.

“Seven,” Peter said. “Maybe six months ago.”

"Months?" Hashee said.

"Erm," Peter said. Out here the standard measurement of time was not called a month, it was known as a 'kralir.' "It's...thirty-seven kralir?"

"Thirty-seven kralir?" Hashee said. "And you think your world is still standing? I've never known of anyone who's held out that long."

That struck a nerve. That was exactly what he and Peter were both terrified of. What if Earth was no longer there? What if it was as barren as Rhaellor had been? 

“You may know the Krotrakka, but you don’t know our people,” Johnny said mulishly. He was going to keep believing it was there, that everything was okay, his family alive and well, until he knew for sure that it wasn't true. “Earth is still there.”

Hashee shrugged, unconvinced. “If you say so.”

“My brother, he beat Galactus," Johnny said proudly. "You’ve heard of Galactus, haven’t you? If Reed can beat Galactus, he can beat your Krotrakka."

Reed was keeping Earth safe. Johnny knew he was. Reed with Sue and Ben by his side? No one could beat them.

Reed would never give up. Sue would never let him, which meant Reed would keep fighting to his dying breath, and there was very little his brother-in-law couldn't do, if he put his mind to it.

“Look," Peter told Hashee diplomatically, "we just want to know where they are. We can handle the rest. We’ll figure something out.”

“You’ll get yourselves killed, is what you'll do,” Hashee said. “Is getting back home really worth your lives?”

“Yes,” Peter and Johnny both said simultaneously.

“It’s worth everything,” Johnny said. “Everything we have.”

Hashee shut her eyes and blew out a weary sigh. “All right,” she said. “Take me to your damn ship. I’ll show you where to go. You haven't got a chance. This plan is suicide.”

Johnny and Peter were not at all prepared for Hashee’s reaction when she first laid eyes on Torchette.

She froze in place, eyes wide, mouth wide open. Her cane clattered to the ground.

“Are you all right?” Johnny asked, concerned, as he caught her to keep her from falling onto the winding stone path that led to the field where they’d landed Torchette.

“That’s—” Hashee said, eyes riveted on the ship. She pressed a hand to her mouth. “But that’s—” Unexpectedly, she gave Johnny a good hard thwhack on the leg. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Johnny replied. He had no clue what she was talking about.

"You have one of the living ships of Rhaellor and you never mentioned?" Hashee shouted. "Why wouldn't you mention that?"

Peter and Johnny exchanged confused and slightly alarmed glances.

"We...didn't think it was important?" Peter ventured. "Is it?"

"Yes!" Hashee shouted. "Yes! Of course it is!"

Johnny raised his hand. "Uh. Can I ask, why is it important?"

Johnny honestly had no idea.

Hashee pinched the bridge of her nose and just breathed.

Probably a good idea, Johnny thought, given how worked up she'd gotten. At her age, she should really be watching out for her blood pressure. Assuming she had blood, anyways.

"Their ships," Hashee hissed. "The Krotrakka battle cruisers. They're the genetically engineered and weaponized descendants of these ships."

Johnny still wasn't getting it. He glanced inquiringly at Peter to see if he got it, but he was too busy looking pensive. 

Well, that just left Johnny to ask.

"And that's important why, exactly?" Johnny asked.

"Because the Krotrakka ships, which have engines that are not very much different than yours, travel by wormhole generator," Hashee said very slowly.

Johnny thought about that a little. "Are you saying that we can change Torchette's engines to make them wormhole generators?" 

"Yes," Hashee said. "Exactly."

Peter slapped a hand against his forehead. "Oh, man. Why didn't I notice that?"

"Have you ever been in the engine room?" Johnny asked judgingly.

He truly doubted it. Johnny had. Loads of times. He was the one who did any of the maintenance Torchette required, not Peter. 

"No," Peter allowed. "I s'pose not."

"This is exactly why taking the time to be friendly to people matters," Johnny lectured, very self-righteously. "Even if they are ships. You could even say especially if they're ships."

"Well, you didn't notice either," Peter said accusingly. "And you and Torchette are buddies."

Peter had him there. Johnny considered how to get out of that one for a beat, and then it hit him. Duh.

"Well, I don't know anything about wormhole generators," Johnny reminded Peter. "So of course I wouldn't have noticed that."

"It's a miracle you notice anything," Peter shot back. 

"There's plenty you don't notice either," Johnny said heatedly. Peter hadn't noticed that Johnny'd been in love with him for years or that he was in love with Johnny. Not until it'd practically killed him. Johnny was still a little steamed about that. "So don't you even start."

"Oh, no," Hashee cut in, eyes wide and horrified. "Please tell me you two aren't dating."

"We're totally dating," Johnny said. "I know it seems kind of weird, since I'm so much hotter than old Web-Head over here, and waaaaay out of his league, but it's true."

"Did you have to say 'way' like that?" Peter complained. "What was with that 'way'? You're not that much out of my league. I'm pretty smart, you know. I'm a smart guy."

Johnny squinted at him. "What is your point here?"

"I'm just saying," Peter explained, "maybe it's—maybe I'm the one who's out of your league. Did you ever think of that?"

"No," Johnny said immediately. 

Peter pressed a hand to his chest. "Ouch," he said, but it was mostly playful. "Buddy. Buddy. I gotta say, that really hurt."

Hashee's hand was covering her face, like she couldn't bear to look at them anymore. Johnny understood completely. They were pretty adorable together, if he did say so himself. If he was her, he'd be jealous too.

Peter held up a finger. "Wait, wait, wait. I just thought of something."

He stopped talking after that and just chewed on his lower lip. 

"Were you ever going to share with us what you thought of, or is this a private thing?" Johnny said.

"Yeah," Peter said. "I mean, sorry. It just occurred to me that we still don't know where Earth is. Having a wormhole generator will be handy, but it won't get us back home."

Damn. That was a good point. Johnny kicked himself for not thinking of it first, but to be fair, he'd been distracted because Peter smiled at him. Peter probably did it on purpose.

They both looked inquiringly down at Hashee.

She rolled her eyes and sighed. "Do I have to spell everything out for you?" she complained.

"Yes," Johnny said, at precisely the same time that Peter said, "Probably. Evidence suggests."

"The ship's telepathic, isn't it?" Hashee pointed out impatiently. "It can search through your memories. Have either of you ever seen your planet's galactic coordinates programmed in anywhere?"

Johnny raised his hand. "I have. I've seen it loads of times. Because I go to space a lot. I'm very well-traveled."

"But you never once bothered to memorize them?" Peter said incredulously, shaking his head at Johnny. "C'mon, man."

"I was busy," Johnny sniffed.

"Doing what?" Peter asked skeptically.

"I dunno. Stuff that isn't boring, so...pretty much anything else?"

Peter looked up at the sky and blew out a puff of breath exasperatedly.

"Well, I'm gonna memorize it now," Johnny promised. "Minute we get back."

"Sure you are," Peter said skeptically. "Sure you are."

Fine, so Johnny was lying. He had zero intention of sitting down to memorize a long string of numbers that he'd probably forget in five minutes anyways. Sounded boring.

It took Torchette all of five excruciating moments to locate the coordinates in Johnny's mind.

"It was really that easy?" Johnny said. "But...we could've done that whenever."

"It was really that easy," Hashee confirmed. She'd been in the cockpit all of ten minutes and she'd already taken over Johnny's chair. "And, no, clearly you couldn't, because you're both idiots."

"Right," Johnny said ruefully. "There is that."

Converting Torchette's engines into a wormhole generator took much longer. Five days, almost, of Peter and Johnny slaving away, following Hashee's orders to the letter.

There were certainly large periods of time when Johnny wished he and Peter were alone, mostly because Peter had a tendency to take his shirt off while he worked. Torchette's engine room was filled with steam, and he'd get all sweaty and, well, he was pretty steamy himself when he was like that.

On the other hand, Johnny supposed it was probably good Hashee was there, because if she hadn't been, they'd never have gotten any work done.

Johnny would waste enough time drooling over his shirtless boyfriend as it was before Hashee would notice and shout at him to get back to work. 

She had the whole scary drill sergeant voice down. It really made Johnny jump and do whatever it said automatically.

Of course, the second Hashee went back to her cottage-on-the-cliff for the night, it was straight into Peter's arms that Johnny jumped. Or, really, pounced.

Peter, frankly, didn't seem to mind much. Judging by how enthusiastically he kissed back, Johnny'd say he was even as into it as Johnny. Probably because Johnny always pointedly took off his shirt off too, just to get back at shirtless Peter for being so unfairly distracting. 

He'd definitely caught Peter staring lustfully at him once or thrice, much to his satisfaction, after which he'd immediately start trying to do whatever he was doing in a sexy way, until Hashee would catch him at it and thwack his leg with her cane. Johnny suffered so much for love.

When the day came to leave, Johnny and Peter thanked Hashee for all of her help profusely. They were standing on the grass by the hatch, Peter’s arm around Johnny’s shoulder, Hashee a tiny bundle of spite and energy and scorn.

“What are you two idiots talking about?” Hashee scoffed. “I’m going with you.”

“Whoa,” Johnny said, straightening up. He hadn’t expected that. “Is that—is that a good idea?”

“You need to defeat the Krotrakka,” Hashee said stiffly. “I’m the only person who’s ever done that. You'd be fools not to take me up on my offer.”

Peter squinted. “Why would you want to go all the way across the universe to help a bunch of strangers?”

Hashee looked downright offended. “I’ve spent my life fighting the Krotrakka. Keeping people like yours as safe as I could, even though they were all strangers to me. When I was ordered to retire, well, damn it, I wasn't done yet, and I’m not about to give up now, just because my body’s old and withered. I think these old bones have one last battle left in them. And if it’ll save you and yours…I have a responsibility to help, same as I've always had, my whole damn life.”

The minute the word “responsibility” left her lips, Johnny knew there was no way Peter wasn’t going to let her tag along.

Peter turned to Johnny. “We're taking her with us,” he said firmly.

Johnny shut his eyes and sighed tiredly. “Somehow I knew you were going to say that,” he muttered.

They took her with them.

Johnny’s throat was tight when the blue ring of the wormhole opened in front of them. This was it. Their way home.

“Don’t let me down, baby,” Johnny murmured to Torchette, smoothing his hands along her console and sending waves of hope, excitement, and, well, worry, but just because he couldn't help being worried. “Get us home.”

“Torchette’ll get us home,” Peter said confidently from the copilot’s seat. Hashee was strapped in tightly behind them, a sour expression on her face. “Do it.”

Johnny took a deep breath and drove Torchette forward into swirling blue light of the wormhole. Everything whirled past them too quickly for Johnny's mind to register what it was he was seeing, but he had the impression that they'd crossed a vast distance, that entire galaxies were swooshing past them. Wherever they were going, it was far, far, far from the Last. 

Johnny was starting to feel a little dizzy, his head pounding, when finally it all ended and their surroundings stabilized. 

Johnny didn't even dare breathe. Black space, interspersed by a few twinkling lights and--the ship rocked with what sounded like an explosion. 

"What the hell was that?" Peter shouted. 

"Dammit!" Johnny yelled back. "We're in the middle of a damn battle!" 

Of all the rotten luck. 

Johnny didn't even think about it. He started ducking and weaving through the rain of fire that was pouring down around them, but it meant that he didn’t have time to look around and get his bearings.

“Did it work?” he shouted at Peter. “Are we near Earth?”

They had to be. They just had to.

“Those are Krotrakka battle cruisers,” Hashee mused, oddly calm despite the unceasing missiles and lasers being aimed in their direction. Johnny was puzzled by it until he remembered that she’d been a warrior for nearly a millennium. She was probably as used to being in the thick of a massive space battle as Johnny was to being in a beauty salon. “It seems likely.”

Peter punched a few buttons on his side of the console. “It’s Earth!” he confirmed. He whooped with joy. “It's Earth! Buddy, we’re home!”

Johnny would’ve cheered, but, well. He was a little busy keeping them from blowing up. “Stop with the cheering and find me a way down that doesn’t end with us getting blown to pieces!” he hollered.

“Uh,” Peter said, mirth abruptly cut short. “Right.” He scrambled to look back down at the readings from the external scanners. “Whoa, boy.”

That sounded bad. Johnny really couldn’t handle bad news right now. “What the hell is it, Peter?” he spat out. “I don’t have time for games!”

“Torchy, I hate to tell you this, but…we’re going the wrong way.”

Johnny wanted to strangle Peter. Somehow, this was all his fault. Johnny hadn’t figured out how just yet, but, oh, he would. “You couldn’t have figured this out sooner?”

“I’m not used to spaceships!” Peter protested.

“You’ve been living on one for months!” Johnny roared. “Figure it the hell out! Give me coordinates! Tell me where to go, buddy, or we’re space debris!”

“You two are terrible at this,” Hashee said with infuriating calm. “How have you survived this long?”

“So not the time, Hashee!” Johnny yelled.

“I’ve got it!” Peter shouted frantically. “It’s not 100% Krotrakka free, but it’s better than nothing! Just do what I tell you, for once.”

“Okay,” Johnny said reluctantly. “But you’d better not blow me up. Or I’m gonna be pissed!”

Peter managed to get them down into the Earth’s atmosphere mostly in one piece. There were several heart-stoppingly close calls, and poor Torchette’s hull was probably singed in a few places.

Johnny hoped it wasn’t too painful. “My bad!” he’d say, wincing each time he felt Torchette shudder as lasers grazed her hull and missiles exploded entirely too near. “That was on me!”

Finally, they made it down through the dark, ominous storm clouds, and Johnny was able to see where they were.

Johnny’s heart leapt when he realized that Peter’d led them down right over New York. It had been practically leveled after months of fierce, constant battles, but there were Earth ships still dancing through the sky, waging fierce battle against the Krotrakka. Earth’s resistance forces were still standing, still undefeated.

“Well, I’ll be,” Hashee said, grudgingly impressed. “So your people have held out.”

“Told you,” Johnny said. He felt almost giddy. Earth! He was on Earth! He’d been starting to be afraid that he’d never see it again. “We're just that damn stubborn!”

He piloted the ship down into the ruins of the once great streets of Manhattan, ducking and weaving to avoid the smaller Krotrakka fighters that repeatedly tried to shoot them out of the sky.

Now that he knew they were the descendants of Torchette and her kind, he could sort of see the resemblance. Those ships were white and silver instead of blood-red and gold, but the wings were tilted upwards at the same angle, the cockpit was identical…yeah, Johnny could see it.

As they sped through the city streets, they swept past heroes here and there—on one, he glimpsed what looked like Luke Cage and Jessica Jones, barreling side-by-side through an entire platoon of Krotrakka, on the next, Jen Walters, Jess Drew, and Carol Danvers, fighting tooth and nail, and so on, and so on. But nowhere could Johnny find the three blue-clad figures he was hunting for above all.

“Where are they?” Johnny said desperately. “They have to be alive. They have to be all right. They just have to be.”

Peter, who had been peering into his scanner since they reached Manhattan, frowned and said, “I think that’s—I think it might be—two streets over. To the left.”

Johnny’s heart was pounding as he maneuvered Torchette in the direction Peter’d indicated.

The ship rounded the corner…and yes, hell yes! There was the rest of the FF, alive, well, and absolutely fantastic.

There was Reed, stretched up to a titanic height, swatting Krotrakka out of the way with flicks of his giant wrist, Ben, feet planted firmly in the concrete, clobbering them good and hard into the pavement, which shattered and cracked with the force of his blows, and Sue, ever the badass, tearing her way through ten Krotrakka at a time as though they were no more than annoyances.

The Fantastic Four, together again. At last. At long, long last.

“I’m gonna land the ship,” Johnny said, heart in his mouth, and Peter knew better than to argue.

For whatever reason, the Krotrakka began to retreat the moment they spotted Torchette setting down in the street behind the FF. Perhaps they assumed Torchette had firepower that was similar to that of their own ships, despite the fact that, as a former school, she had none.

Reed, Ben, and Sue turned to watch them land warily, uncertain as to what had caused their change in fortune. Ben’s fists were raised, a familiar pugnacious scowl across his rocky face. Sue surrounded the three of them with one of her force fields as a precaution. Johnny could practically hear the great wheels in Reed’s mind ticking from here.

With shaking hands, Johnny clumsily unclipped the buckle of his harness and ran towards the hatch the moment the ship touched earth.

He was nervous. Was it weird that he was nervous?

He didn’t think he’d ever been away from the three of them this long before, not ever, not since Reed had taken that room in Johnny’s aunt’s house, and he, Sue, and Ben had ended up becoming the only family Johnny’d ever known. The best family anyone could ever have.

Johnny slammed his hand down on the button that opened the hatch and careened down the ramp, almost before it had extended down to the surface entirely.

He came to a halt the moment he touched the ground, and he could hardly believe it. He half wanted to fall to his knees and kiss the earth beneath his feet, he was so glad to be home.

He found, however, that it was difficult to tear his eyes away from the sight of the three people he loved more than anything.

They stood there staring at each other across the smoking remains of what had once been a vast street, in the rubble of a once great city, for a few breathless moments.

He didn’t know who started running first, him or Sue, but Sue was definitely the one who barreled into him, threw her arms around his neck and started covering his face in kisses, while Johnny clung to her and laughed out of sheer unbridled joy. 

Sue kept saying, “You’re alive! You’re alive!” over and over again like she couldn’t believe he was here, that he was all right. Johnny knew exactly how she felt.

Reed was the next to reach Johnny. He wound his arms tightly around both Johnny and Sue, and Johnny couldn’t tell anymore whether he was laughing or crying, but it didn’t really seem to matter.

The moment Ben reached them, he swept them all off the ground in a great big hug, and Johnny didn’t think he’d ever been so happy, even though he couldn’t really breathe at this point and he was afraid that his ribs—still not entirely healed—were busted again.

He loved them all so much he could hardly bear it, and he had missed them all so terribly. He hoped he'd never have to endure the agony of leaving them ever again. It didn't feel right, being away from them. Johnny just wasn’t Johnny without his family around him.

At least he’d had—hey, where was the Web-Head?

Johnny raised his head from where he’d had his cheek pressed against the top of his sister’s head and searched for him.

He spotted Peter standing a few feet away, hugging his arms to his chest, and watching their family reunion wistfully. Johnny knew from the look on his face that he was thinking about his aunt.

Well, Johnny couldn't have Peter feeling left out.

“Pete,” Johnny called out. “Don’t be stupid. Get over here. You’re part of this family too.”

Peter shook his head. “No, it’s okay, buddy. I don’t wanna intrude—”

“Get over here!” the FF yelled, all at the same time, which they all thought was hilarious.

The minute Peter was close enough, Ben and Reed both reached out and dragged him into their hug until that he was plastered against Johnny’s left side.

“You’re family, kid,” Ben told Peter kindly, giving him what looked like a pretty painful squeeze of the shoulders. “You belong in this hug just as much as I do.”

“You know we all love you, Peter,” Sue said, draping an arm around Peter’s shoulders and pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“Yeah,” Peter said, voice strained. “Uh-huh. I can really feel the love. You’re all crushing my ribs.” He eyed Ben pointedly. “Especially you, big guy.”

Johnny snickered. “Just power through it.”

“This can’t be good for your ribs,” Peter said. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

“What happened to your ribs?” Sue asked immediately, pulling back enough to frown down at them. “Did you hurt them? Do you need us to get you to a med bay?”

Dammit, why’d Peter have to spill the beans? All he’d managed to do was get Sue to worry.

“I broke my ribs a few weeks ago,” Johnny explained. “But I’m fine now! They barely hurt anymore.”

Ben and Reed let him go carefully, and they all took a step back.

“We’ll take a look at you once we get back to base anyways,” Reed decided.

“You shoulda said something, junior,” Ben said, glaring disapprovingly. “We woulda gone easy on you.”

Johnny fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Quit worrying about me, Benjy. I’m fine.”

“Well, I suppose I'll just ask what we're all thinking—where have you two been?” Reed said. Johnny could hear in his voice how worried he’d been. The world falling to pieces around him, and he still took the time to worry about Johnny. “We’ve been trying to ascertain your location for months, but the anomaly was nearly impossible to trace. It fluctuated so wildly. We had no way of knowing where you were. But we did look. Val and the Future Foundation in particular have been devoting their time to determining your location and where the anomaly opened at the precise moment you two fell through. We were rather afraid that you hadn’t wound up in the same place. I’m glad to see you did.”

“I know you looked, bro,” Johnny reassured him. He put a hand on his shoulder and smiled affectionately. “Believe me, I know you looked.”

He’d never doubted it for a second.

Reed looked relieved. Maybe he’d felt guilty about not being able to find Johnny, about failing yet another person who’d put his complete and undiluted faith in him, the way Johnny always had.

“There was nothing you could do,” Johnny continued. “Pete explained why you wouldn’t be able to find us. We knew we had to get back on our own. Took us awhile, but we managed it.”

Johnny and Peter gave them the very quick, cliff-notes version of their adventures. Which still ended up taking a good ten minutes, because a lot of things had happened to them.

The entire time they were talking, Ben, Reed, and Sue couldn’t seem to stop touching them, as though they wanted to make sure they were really there.

Ben kept periodically mussing up their hair, especially when Johnny mentioned the gambling and how Ben’s tutelage had saved their lives.

Reed broke down every now and then and, grinning, thumped his hand against their backs.

Sue would throw herself at Johnny every now and then and hug him. Peter'd take over telling the story for him then.

Reed got a little overexcited when Johnny finally got to the part about Hashee. He grabbed Johnny by the shoulders, looked him square in the eye, and said, very urgently, “A military expert on the Krotrakka? And she’s here? You brought her here?”

Johnny nodded. “She’s on the ship. Did…did I do something wrong?”

When Reed talked in that tone of voice to Johnny, it usually meant Johnny’d messed up big time. Pressed a button that was going to make the world explode in five minutes unless Reed magically thought of a way to stop it. That sort of thing.

Reed’s smile was kind. “No, lad. You did something very, very right.” He clapped a hand against Johnny’s back. “I’m very, very proud of you, son.”

Reed rarely ever called Johnny ‘son.’ It was only when he was especially proud of Johnny that he did it, which wasn’t often.

Johnny beamed at Reed. He felt exactly like a kid whose dad had just watched him score the big touchdown. 

Reed turned to everyone else. “To the ship,” he ordered. “We’re going to end this damn invasion today.”

Johnny felt a thrill course down his spine. God, but he loved it when Reed talked like that. Shit was going down when Reed used that tone of voice. Bad guys beware, because Reed was going to kick your ass.

Reed, Ben, and Sue took off for the ship immediately, but Johnny hung back a little so he could watch them go.

Peter noticed he wasn’t following and hung back too. “You okay, Torch?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Johnny said. His eyes were feeling a little watery. “It’s just. You know. It’s good to be home. Really good.”

Good to see his family again too. He’d been so very afraid that he’d never see them again. Now he never wanted to let them out of his sight.

He rubbed at his left eye. He mumbled something about how debris or something must’ve fallen in it.

Peter rubbed his hand up and down Johnny's back comfortingly. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah. It really is.”

Reed had Johnny fly them back to their newest base, since the last three that they'd had since the Krotrakka arrived had been systematically destroyed.

As soon as they landed, Reed rounded up Tony, Hank Pym, Adam Brashear, Hank McCoy, T'Challa, and every other scientist he could find and dragged them all into his make-shift lab along with Hashee and Torchette, who they'd had Johnny pilot in.

Peter had vanished in his quest to find a working cellphone or some means of contacting his aunt.

"What do we do?" Johnny asked Sue. He was staring at the doorway that Reed had disappeared through not two minutes ago. "Shouldn't we, I dunno, help?" 

Sue shook her head. "You just let Reed handle this part, bro. You and Peter have done enough. How about we get you to the med bay and get those ribs looked at?"

She tugged at his arm and tried to steer him towards what was undoubtedly the med bay.

"Aw, come on, sis," Johnny complained, dragging his feet. He didn't want to go. He felt okay! He'd been working hard on Torchette's engines all day and having his way with Peter all night, and not a twinge from his ribs. He was certain he was okay. "I'm fine. Really. Pete had Torchette run scans on me like every day, 'cause he's a worrywart. I'm telling you the same thing I told him: I'm fine."

Sue's expression was judgy as hell, but she let go of his arm, at least. "Torchette? Johnny. Baby brother. Tell me that's not what you named your ship."

"It picked the name!" Johnny protested. "Not me!"

It was a cool name! Why were he and Torchette the only two people who could see that?

"Right," Sue said flatly. She didn't sound like she believed him.

Johnny sighed. "Why does no one ever believe me about that? Pete didn't either."

"Yeah," Sue said. Her eyes lit up. "You know, about him. You two were stuck in space alone together for an awfully long time."

"Yeah," Johnny said noncommittally. He knew exactly what his sister was fishing for, but he wasn't going to make it easy for her.

"You two looked pretty cozy on the flight over here," Sue continued. "He couldn't stop touching you."

"I guess," Johnny said. "He was just grabbing my shoulder. No big deal. He does that a lot."

"And you've been in love with him for ages."

"Have I?"

She gave him a look. "You know you have. Everyone knows you have, except him, it seems like. So did he ever figure it out?"

Johnny acted like he was considering that. "Mmmm."

Technically, Peter hadn't ever figured it out. Johnny'd had to tell him point-blank.

Sue, however, had had enough of his inscrutable answers. She put her balled up fists on her hips and said sharply, "Jonathan Lowell Spencer Storm, would you stop trying to be cute and just tell me if you're dating him already?"

A smile spread slowly across Johnny's face. Messing with his sister was so much fun. He'd forgotten how fun it was. "I'm always cute. I don't have to try," he sniffed. "Peter totally appreciates me."

Sue understood what he meant instantly. "So you are dating him?" she asked excitedly. "Oh, my god!" She dragged him into yet another hug. Johnny figured it was maybe the tenth one in the last hour. "Good for you, little brother. I'm so happy for you!"

"I missed you too, sis," he said, and held her tight.

Now he really felt like he was home.

It took a few hours of waiting around—Johnny and Sue took advantage of the free time to contact Franklin, Val, and the rest of the Future Foundation kids to let them know Johnny was okay, and patiently answering all of their fast-paced, overlapping questions while simultaneously listening to them fill him in on everything that had happened while he'd been away sucked up a lot of Johnny's morning—but finally Reed and the other scientists emerged from their lab.

"We have a plan," Reed announced. 

"Everyone to the war room!" Carol shouted, and everyone jumped to obey. She really had that general voice down too. 

The plan Reed and Hashee concocted was simple but brilliant. 

Using Torchette's mind as the blueprint and a captured Krotrakkan ship as a point of reference, they were able to isolate the changes that had been made to the Krotrakka ships' genetic structure during the long millennia they'd spent in captivity. 

The scientists had rapidly discovered that the Krotrakkan ships, soon after they were born, were, in a sense, lobotomized so that they were incapable of differentiating between right and wrong. Bloodthirstiness and a blind, slavish obedience had both been selectively bred for and encouraged via their mental links with their Krotrakkan pilots, and communication between ships was discouraged.

The plan, as Reed put it, was to correct all of that. They'd devised a virus that was intended to rewrite the Krotrakkan ships' minds into something that more closely resembling that of Torchette's mind—what the Krotrakkan ships minds were originally meant to be like, in other words, with Torchette's pacifism, joy, love of music and art and travel, and sense of morality—and to render any mental link with the Krotrakka impossible. It would, on the other hand, encourage a mental link between Torchette and the other Krotrakkan ships, effectively ending their lifelong isolation.

Johnny mostly hoped they didn't all end up with Torchette's sense of humor and love of pranks. But, then again, maybe it'd gotten that from its mental link with him. Johnny was only now considering that possibility. He hadn't realized that the ships' pilots had such an effect on their personality, but the way Reed described it, it sounded as though it were some kind of symbiosis. Torchette bleeding into Johnny and vice versa. Huh. He hadn't even noticed.

The battle lasted, in the end, three days, but by the end, every last Krotrakkan ship was infected with the Earth virus.

Once infected, the ships would writhe and shudder and shake, but it would always end with serenity and silence. The Krotrakka were all alive, of course, but they were, effectively, prisoners on their own ships. 

Once the ships were all free, a curious thing began to happen—they all turned towards Torchette, looking to it for guidance. By the time the battle was over, there was a ring of ships encircling Torchette. 

"Whoa," Johnny said, gazing up at his viewscreen worriedly. Should he start getting Torchette the hell out of here? "What is happening?"

"I believe they are all acknowledging your ship as their leader," Reed said. "It makes sense. It is by far the oldest, and the only ship familiar with their true culture, prior to their capture by the Krotrakka. It has much to teach them about themselves, I expect. Particularly now that whatever militaristic culture they have formed over the last few millennia is no longer viable. They can no longer bear to take another life, and those they have helped to claim would likely weigh heavily on their consciences. They have much to atone for. Torchette is untouched by death. It will give them the hope they need to continue." He smiled at Johnny. "At least, if it is anything like its pilot."

"Oh," Johnny said. He smoothed a hand along its console and felt unutterably saddened. "I'm gonna have to let you go now, aren't I, buddy?"

He could feel Torchette, there on the other end of whatever sort of mental link they'd formed, and he could feel that it was overjoyed. He could understand. 

Torchette had probably believed itself to be alone in the universe, the last of its kind, and here it was, having unexpectedly discovered a family once more. 

Johnny knew how that felt, that overwhelming loneliness and the joy of discovering the one place in the universe you truly belong, and he found that he suddenly could feel nothing but joy for his friend.

"Just come back and say hi sometimes," he whispered, low, so no one else could hear. "Just so I know you're doing okay."

Torchette chirped, and Johnny smiled.

Torchette took the time to bring Johnny, Peter, and the FF back to Earth. It set them down in New York, where Johnny took the time to say a heartfelt goodbye. Torchette had saved Johnny's life, after all, over and over, and it'd helped him and Peter find their way to each other. He owed that ship a lot.

But there was another goodbye he had left to say: Hashee. She was returning to the Last with Torchette, who, it seemed, was taking its newly-restored sisters to Rhaellor, a planet Hashee had always dearly longed to see.

"I've been hearing stories about the lost planet of Rhaellor since I was a girl," she told Johnny. "No damn way I'm going to pass up a chance to see it now. I'll get to go down in the history books one last time. The discoverer of Rhaellor."

"Well, say hi to the Lasat for me," Johnny said.

Hashee's eyes widened. "It—the Lasat is alive?" she asked weakly. 

"Yeah," Johnny shrugged. "It's taking care of its eggs. Is that important?"

Hashee shook her head, over and over. "You and your damn boyfriend made the scientific find of the goddamn millennia, and you didn't even know it! The Lasat—legend says it was responsible for bringing art and culture from the gods to the people of the Last. It gave us our culture. It's revered."

"Well," Johnny said. "I'd watch out. It almost ate us because it thought we were gonna eat its eggs. Be careful not to piss it off. Its teeth are sharp as hell."

Hashee's eyes were shining with hope, excitement, and wonder. "It sounds wonderful," she said. "One last adventure before I die, and it's the lost planet of Rhaellor. Goddamn."

She practically raced back to the ship. 

"Best of luck!" Johnny called after her. "And thanks! You really saved our butts."

Hashee turned and flashed a grin at him from Torchette's hatch. "It's what I do, kid."

The hatch started to swirl closed around her, but it stopped abruptly. "And kid?" she said.

"Yeah?" 

Hashee eyed Peter, who was laughing off to the side with Reed and Tony about god knows what, pointedly. "Torchette and I expect to be invited to the wedding. You wouldn't want to piss off a general and a fleet of warships full of angry Krotrakka, now would you?"

Wedding? Johnny's eyes widened. He hadn't even let himself think about that--but he supposed, yeah, he and Peter were bound to get married someday.

"Will do," he promised solemnly. He gave her a military salute and a wink. "You two'll be the first on the guest list."

Torchette's hatch swirled closed entirely then, and Hashee was lost to view, Torchette herself shortly after she bounded towards the heavens and became nothing more than a speck in a clear blue sky. 

Sadness welled up into Johnny's chest. He hated it when his friends left. 

He trudged over to Peter, slipped his hand into his, looking for comfort.

Peter took one look at his face and frowned. He leaned over and whispered, "You okay?" 

Johnny nodded, throat tight. "Yeah," he said roughly. He gave Peter a watery smile that probably wasn't too reassuring. "I just. You know. I'm gonna miss that ship. It really got me, you know?"

Peter probably could've pointed out that it was because Torchette had basically imprinted on him, but he took pity and didn't.

Instead, he wrapped his arm around Johnny's shoulders and squeezed. "We'll get you a new one, babe," he said comfortingly.

"It's not the same," Johnny lamented. "Pete. Torchette was one of a kind. You can't just replace it. It was my buddy. My pal."

Peter pressed a kiss against Johnny's temple and started combing his fingers through Johnny's hair. Johnny shut his eyes and allowed himself to be comforted. 

"It'll get better, babe," Peter said gently. "It always feels like it won't at first, but everything always does. And, hey, you've got me, don't you?"

Johnny grumbled something vaguely, but it really did make him feel better.

There was some good news to offset the bad later that night. Everyone was celebrating their victory and drinking in the mess hall—Logan and Ben had broken out some bottles of whiskey that they were passing around to everyone who was interested—when Sue leaned in with a smile, handed Peter a cell phone, and told him that someone was calling for him. 

Peter took the phone, a little bewildered, pressed it to his ear, and said, "Hello?"

There was a pause while the person on the other end answered.

Peter's eyes widened. "Oh, my god," he choked out. The grip he had on Johnny's hand tightened. "Aunt May! I can't believe it's you! Are you okay?"

Johnny'd noticed that Sue and Reed had been missing from the party, and now he knew where they'd been. Tracking down Peter's aunt. Her cell phone had been out of service, and Peter had been frantic earlier when he hadn't been able to locate her. 

"No!" Peter was saying to Aunt May. "I'm fine! All in one piece. Totally fine. No body parts missing. Every finger is here."

"Except your brain, but that's always been gone," Johnny whispered.

Peter glared, got up, and stalked away where he wouldn't be interrupted by Johnny's brilliant jokes.

Johnny turned to smile gratefully up at Reed and Sue. "Thanks," he told them. "You guys are the best. Pete was really worried."

He'd feared the worst. They both had. So many people had died because of the invasion.

"Don't mention it, John," Reed said benevolently, arm around Sue's shoulders. "We all know how important family is."

Sue leaned down and kissed Johnny's cheek. "Don't get lost again," she said, wagging a finger in his face. "I mean it."

Johnny smiled. "Wouldn't dream of it, sis." He took a look around, at the smiling faces of all of his friends, and Benjy, and Peter, and glanced back up at Sue and Reed. "Believe me, there's nowhere else in the universe I'd rather be."

The next morning, the sky was dull and grey, but it was also somehow the most beautiful any of them had ever seen. Not a Krotrakkan ship in sight. Just a sea of clouds, and an uncanny stillness spreading out throughout the abandoned ruins of New York.

No one had any clue how long the reconstruction efforts were going to take, but Johnny had no doubt people would start pouring in, eager to help, as soon as they were allowed in.

Reed and Sue decided it was time for some family bonding, since they'd all been apart for so long, so they brought all of the kids back and dragged everyone up to the top of what had once been the Baxter Building for a picnic. 

The kids kept Johnny pretty busy with their games, but Johnny soon found himself distracted by the sight of the remnants of what had once been New York City. He hadn't had time to really look and see exactly how little of the New York he knew was still left. 

He stood at the edge of the Baxter Building and let it all sink in. "It's gonna be a long time before things get back to normal, isn't it?" he said wistfully. 

Reed, Sue, Ben, and Peter all exchanged glances. 

"Yeah," Peter said, reaching out to squeeze Johnny's shoulder. "But it'll be okay. Won't it, Reed?"

"You really shouldn't've asked him that," Johnny muttered to Peter. 

Peter seemed taken aback. "Why not?"

"Because he's gonna make a speech now," Johnny hissed. "Reed loves speeches. Almost as much as he loves memos. Or lectures."

Sure enough, Reed took that as his cue to stride over and survey the wreckage of the city he had made his home, the city he'd sworn to protect. "We'll rebuild," he promised them all.

"Is he posing?" Peter whispered to Johnny.

Reed had his foot up on a pile of rubble. Yeah, it really did look like he was posing.

"Oh, yeah," Johnny said, shaking his head at Reed fondly. He loved the guy, but... "What a total nerd, am I right?"

"I think he thinks he's Napoleon Bonaparte now," Peter said.

"Nah," Johnny said. "We met him too. He was a jerk. A short jerk, but a jerk. Really full of himself. I hate people who are like that."

Peter gave him a judgy look. Johnny ignored it. 

"Starting with Baxter Building," Reed continued, very seriously. "It’ll be a symbol of hope for everyone. A promise that the darkness is long past and that tomorrow holds infinite promise. Just as it should be." 

"Well, hey, I know one thing," Johnny said to Peter, voice low so only he could hear. "Our tomorrow is going to be fantastic."

"Amazing, even," Peter whispered back.

Johnny scowled. "Pete," he complained. "No. You ruined it."

Peter started to snicker, which quickly turned into a full-blown laugh. Johnny couldn't help it—he started to laugh too. He felt so full of joy that he just couldn't keep it all in.

Now that he thought about it, he didn't think he'd ever been so excited to see what tomorrow might bring. This was like...a clean slate for them all.

Whatever the future brought, as long as Peter and his family were by his side, he knew it really was going to be fantastic.