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Peter couldn’t say he was surprised when he shimmied in through Johnny’s window to find him waiting in a frilly little French maid get up that Peter could best describe as indecent. Johnny had sheer black stockings on, and a ridiculous apron and even one of those stupid little hats. The lace looked soft. Peter would have bet money on Johnny not wearing anything underneath that tiny skirt.
Peter’s mouth went dry.
“Reed, Sue and Ben took the kids camping,” Johnny said, preening. He was holding an actual feather duster. Peter swallowed hard.
“Okay,” he said, one hand still on the windowsill. He was pretty sure it was going to have dents in the shape of his fingers when he let go. “Lay it on me.”
Johnny grinned.
The thing about him and Johnny was, they’d always clicked. Even as dumb squabbling kids, they’d gotten a kick out of each other, always pushing and pulling, trying to come up with the best insult, the showiest move. They’d always made each other better – or worse, depending on the viewpoint.
(“Worse,” Sue, Reed and Ben had all said in unison, the one time the conversation had come up.
“The web bat,” Reed said, not without fondness.
“I had to hear about it for weeks,” Ben said. “Weeks.”
“I was proud of that web bat!” Peter said.
“Well, you shouldn’t have been,” Sue told him. “It was very immature.”
“I was fifteen,” Peter countered. “And somebody liked the web heart.”)
Johnny drove him crazy, made him think, made him try harder, made him want to be better. Johnny made him smarter, though he’d never admit that one out loud. He kept Peter on his toes, kept his tongue sharp. Kept him from getting lost in his own head so much. Johnny trusted him implicitly and unconditionally, and some days that was all Peter had to keep him going.
He knew he did the same for Johnny, because Johnny told him, nose-to-nose in the dark with Johnny’s blazing hands cupped over Peter’s cold ones, thumbs running restless over Peter’s bruised knuckles.
Maybe it was stupid, but he’d always felt like Johnny understood him. That they’d always worked, even back when they couldn’t stand each other.
That wasn’t any different now that they were sleeping together.
They clicked in the bedroom – and the kitchen, the shower, Johnny’s garage, the backseat of his car, the Statue of Liberty, the men’s room at Peter’s favorite Italian joint, the coat room during a Reilly family wedding, a remote rooftop or seven, his childhood bedroom in Queens, the Blue Area of the moon, lather, rinse, and repeat – the same way they clicked anywhere else. Everything was sparks and fireworks. They fit, just like always.
They took it slow on lazy weekend mornings, laughing into each other’s mouths. On bad days when Peter just needed to be out of his head it was fast and hard, Johnny’s big hot hands gripping his hips. And on the really good nights, when he’d only had to web a couple of would-be muggers, sometimes he climbed into bed behind Johnny, who always twisted to face him so they could fumble together, sweet and easy.
Peter loved how hot Johnny ran, even when he was keeping himself under tight control, the radiating warmth of him. Johnny had a thing for Peter’s powers – his strength, his flexibility, the easy way he could flip or be flipped.
("So I was thinking," Johnny said, breathless as they rolled together one early day in. Peter was still in half his spider-suit, and Johnny’s fingers danced across one webshooter still strapped to Peter’s wrist. "Webbing?"
"Mm, it's not," Peter hummed, breaking off with a little laugh. He’d always been handsy in bed, and not even in an entirely sexual way. He just liked touching, liked feeling. He cupped his hand to Johnny’s face. "It's not like - it's sticky, for one."
"I like sticky," Johnny said, waggling his eyebrows. He turned his head when Peter's thumb skated close to his mouth, closing his lips over it, all wet heat.
"Weird how you've never liked it before," Peter said. "Webbing, that is, not - sticky, I never thought about you sticky -"
Johnny released his thumb with a pop, but Peter just traced his bottom lip. Johnny’s gaze was pure heat. "Well just don't attack me with a giant bat, for starters. And really? You've never thought about me sticky?"
Peter groaned a little. "Maybe once or twice.")
So everything was pretty perfect.
Or, okay, well, Peter had to admit – almost everything was perfect.
The roleplaying was kind of an issue.
“Monsieur!” Johnny said in an exaggerated gasp as Peter toppled them onto the bed, hands everywhere. “We can’t! We mustn’t!”
“If you’d acted like this for that cowboy movie, you’d have an Oscar now,” Peter told him sincerely, sealing their mouths together just in time to muffle Johnny’s noise of outrage.
“Stay on script,” Johnny said, nipping at his lip.
“There’s a script?” Peter said. “Thank god.”
“No, just,” Johnny said, then got cut off when Peter kissed him again. It was his own fault, being right there and gorgeous and truly, absolutely, impossibly ridiculous.
Johnny broke the kiss and brought his lips to Peter’s ear.
“I know your true identity,” he breathed in the worst French accent Peter had heard since he last opened his own mouth.
“That’s great,” he said, flipping them over so he could hover over Johnny on his hands and knees. Johnny reached up to twine his arms around Peter’s neck. He was still holding the duster. It tickled. “Because I have absolutely no idea.”
Johnny smacked him upside the head.
“Hey!” said Peter, snickering to himself and stealing a quick kiss. “I don’t know, okay! I wasn’t briefed. I should fire you. There has been like, zero dusting.”
“You didn’t hire me, Baron du Parkour,” Johnny said, shifting against him. Peter took the opportunity to finally get his hand up that skirt and found that he’d been right: nothing under there but smooth hot skin. Johnny’s eyes slipped shut, his hand fisted in Peter’s hair, and Peter thought, now we’re getting somewhere, as Johnny leaned in to whisper in his ear. “I infiltrated your villa to steal the priceless diamond your family stole from mine generations ago.”
Peter froze. He pulled back to glare down at Johnny. “What?”
“Why’d you stop with the touching?” Johnny asked. He had the audacity to pout at Peter. One of these days Peter was going to snap, and Johnny Storm in a Halloween City getup would be the reason. The papers would have a field day. Jameson would probably weep with joy.
“You can’t just change the plot!” Peter said. “Now there’re stolen jewels? You’re not a maid, you’re a thief?”
“I wanted some intrigue,” Johnny said, shrugging. He reached up, trying to tug Peter back down, but Peter only sat back on his haunches. He’d been denying himself things he wanted for years – not touching Johnny Storm for the next five minutes was a cakewalk. “Pete, what the hell.”
“I thought we agreed: friends and family are off limits,” Peter said, arms crossed.
“What are you talking about?” Johnny demanded, sitting up as well. The skirt slid, distracting, across his strong thighs. Peter tried hard not to look or remember the silky feel of it against the back of his hand, the brush of the lace edge.
What had he said about a cakewalk again? He wedged his fingers a little more securely under his arms.
“You’re doing Black Cat,” he said.
Johnny raised his eyebrows sharply.
“Trust me,” he said. “I think I’d notice if I was doing Black Cat.”
Peter ignored the obvious bait. “We had this conversation already. Jewel thieves are out. Everything that resembles my previous relationship history is out – and we’re not even touching yours.”
Johnny huffed a sigh, like Peter was being the truly unreasonable one here. “Are exes really friends and family?”
It was close enough to count as a challenge, and that had always been the one thing to do Peter in.
Honestly, Peter thought as he rather impressively faked swooning off the side of the bed, they really should have called it quits after the first treason charge.
Strictly speaking, the roleplaying wasn’t Peter’s thing, but Johnny was into it, and Peter was into Johnny being into things. (“Aw,” Johnny had said when he expressed the sentiment, leaning over to pinch Peter’s cheek. Peter had some serious regrets. “That’s so embarrassing for you.”)
Unfortunately, like everything where they were involved, things tended to start simple and escalate until someone was in jail. (One time, a very hard thing to explain when he’d had to call Harry to bail him out.)
The list of previous disasters was long and painful:
• Doctor and patient (“and a massive lawsuit,” Peter had added) went fine until it ended in actual injury.
• The time they’d switched costumes had ended in a fight so epic they hadn’t spoken to each other for a week. Peter had actually ended up on his aunt’s sofa, watching murder mysteries on her Netflix account, and working his way through a truly excessive amount of ice cream and working it off by taking it way too hard on his rogue's gallery. He'd made Black Fox cry, which was something he only felt a little guilty about. After that they had to declare themselves, friends, family and teammates off limits.
(“The X-Men, though,” Johnny said after the makeup sex, head on Peter’s chest. “The X-Men are still up for grabs, right?”
“I call dibs on Wolverine,” Peter said, tugging Johnny’s hair into disarray.)
• Home invader: Peter had been doing fine until he’d started having a little too much fun with the sneaking aspect and gotten caught by the security system.
(“I can explain,” he told Reed and Sue, hanging upside down in an all black getup.
“That’s really okay,” Reed said, making a face.
“Oh, to be young and stupid again,” Sue added, and none too gently let Peter drop to the floor.
“I’m never getting ravished, am I,” Johnny said, arms crossed over his chest where he stood in the doorway. Ben settled a sympathetic hand down on his shoulder.
“What’s ravished mean?” Franklin asked.
"When a man and a moron in a spider costume love each other very much," Johnny started, only to have a force field slapped over his mouth.)
• There was, disastrously, the time with the Dread Pirate and Cabin Boy outfits that had ended with them somehow out on an actual boat in the Hudson, Peter shivering in his simple linen shirt and Johnny seasick in an eyepatch. They had not gotten their deposit back on that parrot.
• Sexy police officer – the aforementioned jail trip. Sexy fireman, definitely a better idea on the calendar page.
• And the less said about the time Johnny had draped green velvet over Peter’s shoulders and told him to “talk Latverian to me, baby”, the better.
That was one more thing they were a perfect match on, though: they were both too stubborn to know when to quit.
“Matchstick? Webhead? You bozos around? Vil and Wu said somethin’ about leaving a live carp -- sweet holy Hannah, what the hell is going on here?”
Peter and Johnny froze on opposite sides of the living room. Johnny was wearing even less than he’d started out the evening in, which Peter personally felt was impressive. Peter was wearing half his costume and the fake mustache he’d stuck to his face an hour ago when he’d decided to secretly be Baron du Parkour’s evil half-brother Sergei.
They’d started in the bedroom, and since then they’d been in the hall, kitchen, Reed’s lab, and now finally in the living room, where at least there were soft surfaces. Not that Peter hadn’t had that lab fantasy, but that was a mad scientist’s coat for another day. He’d probably have to sneak them into Horizon, otherwise there was no way he’d be able to look Reed in the eye ever again.
Though speaking of never being able to look someone in the eye again, Peter was going to have a hard time with Ben for a while.
“We’re not having sex,” Peter blurted out, mouth on autopilot.
Ben heaved a long, heavy sigh. He had one huge hand clapped over his eyes. “That kinda makes it worse. You know that, right?”
Peter absolutely did know that, thanks. He really wished he hadn’t lost his shirt in the makeshift sword fight in the kitchen half an hour ago. “You, uh. You said the fish kids left something? I could –”
“Nah,” Ben said. “Nah, you two just. Stay where you are.” He glanced at Johnny, then immediately looked away, big hand held up to block the view. “Maybe put some clothes on.”
“Like this is a new sight,” Johnny said with a shrug, leaning back against the wall.
“Razza frazza,” Ben muttered, stalking from the room. “Goddamn honeymooners.”
“Hey, I’ve walked in on you in some pretty weird situations too!” Johnny called after him. “The Carmen Miranda fruit hat incident?”
Down the hall Ben slammed a door hard enough to shake the whole floor.
“I want pictures once I’m done dying of shame,” Peter said, falling backwards onto the sofa.
Johnny, utterly shameless as always, fell on top of him. Peter grabbed him around the waist before he tipped them both off the couch and onto the floor. “Done. What’s the score?”
“We were supposed to be keeping score?” Peter groaned.
“I’m always keeping score,” Johnny said. “Doesn’t matter. I won.”
“Makes sense,” Peter said. “I lost when I took up with you in the first place.”
“It’s sweet talk like that that reminds me why I fell for you,” Johnny said, viciously pinching Peter’s side.
“Yeah, yeah,” Peter said, biting down on a grin.
Ben reappeared in the doorway. He had a huge fish tank hoisted in his arms.
“This is a madhouse,” Peter said wonderingly.
“Don’t neither of you jerks move a muscle,” Ben said, stalking through the room. “I don’t want to see nothin’.”
“Bye, Benjy!” Johnny called. “Have a nice time! Maybe call next time!”
Peter waited until he heard the ding of the elevator and the swish of the closing doors before he burst into helpless, hopeless laughter.
“Oh god,” he said. “I think we owe him a gift basket or something.”
“Sorry our sexcapades blinded you,” Johnny agreed, sitting up so he could straddle Peter.
“I’ll call Edible Arrangements,” Peter said, “maybe see if they have some kind of special on those.”
“Mmhmm,” Johnny said, staring down at him, all heat and truly tattered, utterly ridiculous outfit. Peter suddenly remembered that they’d been about to do something a few hours ago, long before they’d gotten into an argument about European capitals or chased each other through the hangar. Johnny did something with his hips that made Peter see stars, saying, “Back to the grind, Sergei?”
“You’ll never get the location of those diamonds out of me,” Peter told him in his best Pepé Le Pew voice. “I don’t care how you torture me.”
Johnny burst out laughing. “I hate what that voice does to me. You’re my supervillain origin story.”
“Next time,” Peter said, grinning up at him, “I get to wear the costume.”