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“Hey Webs!”
The entire team watched as Spider-Man's whole body seemed to turn toward the voice from above, his voice absolutely delighted. “Johnny!”
The Human Torch landed in front of their leader, coming in for a hug that Spider-Man was very enthusiastic about. The Human Torch was even lifted off the ground.
“You’re still alive!” The joy was plain as day in both his tone and his body language, Spider-Man rolling on the balls of his feet as he blatantly and obviously forgot about his teammates. “When did you get back? You said you would call me, and here I am, having absolutely no calls!”
“Did you miss me?” The Human Torch teased, and Spider-Man’s eye roll had no need for eyes. It was plain in the turn of his head.
“It’s been almost a year. Why don’t you take a guess? Seriously, you don’t call, you don’t text, I was starting to think you didn’t care!”
The Human Torch raised an eyebrow. “I told you on the roof before take-off that I wasn’t going to have cell service in space. Next time I’ll ask Reed to extend our cell coverage to Mars.”
“Very funny, Zippo.” He elbowed him, getting a nudge from the other boy in return.
“Get better material, you’ve used that one a thousand times.”
“It’s more creative than Webs, and believe it or not, some of us have better things to do than stare at pictures of you and think up insults.”
The Human Torch leaned closer. “Aw, you stare at pictures of me?”
“Seeing you in person is plenty enough time to be exposed to your ugly mug, why would I look at pictures?” Spider-Man retorted, and then stomped on his foot. The Human Torch made a high-pitched noise, jumping up and down.
“Did you just break my foot?” he demanded, bending the injured leg over his knee so he could examine it. “You don’t see me for a year and you decide to break my foot? Why are you so violent?”
Spider-Man shrugged. “I’m from Queens.”
“I’m going to burn your--”
Iron Fist cleared his throat. “Spider-Man.”
Spider-Man turned his head, suddenly looking guilty. “Oh. Hi guys.”
Johnny nodded toward the team. “Who’s this? When did you get friends?”
Spider-Man, who was about to answer, shot him a glare. “What exactly do you think you are?”
“Your very bestest best friend forever in the whole world. Obviously.”
Spider-Man stared at him, shaking his head after a few seconds. “This is my team, or at least most of it. Team, meet Johnny. Johnny, this is Nova, White Tiger, Power Man, Iron Fist, Agent Venom, Squirrel Girl, Cloak, Dagger, and Iron Spider.”
The Human Torch waved, then squinted. “Since when do you have fanboys?”
“They’re not my fanboys,” Spider-Man sighed, at the same moment Amadeus protested.
“I am not his fanboy!”
“Okay, well, you look like Spider-Man as a toaster, and you look like Spidey if he ran out of ink cartridges, so… that’s my bad I guess. Nice to meet you all, actually. Really,” he added, tipping his head and sending them a bright white smile as a group, “I’m just confused about why the hell Webs has a team now when he turned down the Four like eight times.”
“You turned down the Fantastic Four?!”
“I will explain that later,” Spider-Man said evenly, answering the Human Torch and very obviously not Sam. “This is not how I expected seeing you again to go. Give me five minutes to deal with the villain of the week and then we can go talk, okay?”
“Right, yeah, that’s my bad.” The Human Torch flashed them all a thumbs-up that some of them hesitantly returned as Spider-Man went over to hand off the villain to the SHIELD retrieval team that had just arrived.
Spider-Man waved off Johnny Storm when he returned and gestured the team to gather around so he could explain what the hell was going on. “Okay, can one of you tell Coulson I’ll be back tomorrow?”
Amadeus blinked. “You’re skipping classes?”
“Don’t try this at home kids, but… uh, yeah. Fury owes me one. Actually Fury owes me so many. I’m taking the rest of the day off. Call if you need me, but. Please don’t need me. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
“Uh, speaking of that.” Sam folded his arms. “When were you going to tell us that you know Johnny Storm?”
Spider-Man shrugged, looking confused. “It’s… Johnny? Isn’t that public knowledge? We used to fight together all the time, I know the news caught us like a hundred times.”
“I mean, I saw a news report one time, but I thought that was just you… you know, joining the fight. Like with Wolverine, or that one time the news saw you with Daredevil.”
Spider-Man’s head came forward. “Sam, buddy, you do know I’m friends with Daredevil too, right?”
“What?!”
“I thought you said you read my file.” He looked at Iron Fist, White Tiger, and Power Man. “I thought you guys said you read my file?”
“I mostly skimmed it,” Iron Fist admitted, Power Man nodding with him.
“I already knew all of this,” White Tiger said, as if it was obvious. “I wasn’t going to skimp on a mission briefing. Daredevil wasn’t in it, though.”
Amadeus made a face. “What file? I’ve been up and down SHIELD records and I’ve never been able to find anything decent about you.”
Spider-Man dismissed it. “I wiped it all from the system way before you joined up. You guys though, they had a pretty good amount of stuff on me? They definitely had Johnny in that stupid little ‘known allies’ section.”
Nova shifted on his feet. “You know how on Wikipedia they have a summary at the top and then it gets into all of the boring details? Your file had that too.”
“...and of course that’s the only part you read.” Spider-Man snorted. “It’s kind of your own fault, then. Anyway, to the New Warriors, normally I’d stay and explain, but I’m pretty sure there are at least twenty compilations of me and Johnny on Youtube, and I’m kind of in a rush, so… hasta la vista!”
He did jazz hands and then jogged back over to Johnny Storm, who was scrolling on his phone.
Weirdly enough, he wasn’t being swarmed by reporters. Ava couldn’t say she’d ever seen the Human Torch sit still for five minutes after a fight without at least ten people asking for a quote or his autograph.
Maybe it was their presence warding off the news crews? Ava had a bit of a reputation for snapping at rude reporters, so before the team had expanded, the five of them hadn’t gotten much attention besides Spidey’s bad press.
She let Luke call for a pickup and watched Spider-Man with the rest of the group.
He was talking very animatedly, rolling on the balls of his feet as he talked. Johnny Storm looked just as excited to talk to him, a smile fixed in place.
Huh.
Sam had sent her a text.
Ava opened it, and found a picture of Spider-Man in the SHIELD labs, looking sheepish as he talked to Dr. Connors.
wicked witch of the east: ?
buckethead: what do you mean ?? get down here, it’s lab five
buckethead: he’s really done it this time
Ava reluctantly slipped out of her bunk, already missing her blanket. “Hey, Luke, Danny, Sam says Spidey’s in trouble.”
Luke sighed, but Danny pulled himself out of his meditative pose to send her a concerned look. “Is he injured?”
“No idea. He was weirdly vague about it, but after this morning, who knows what he’s gotten himself into?”
Danny jumped off his bunk with an energy Ava did not feel, and she followed him down to the labs.
There she found Sam videotaping Peter and Johnny Storm , who was apparently now just allowed into the TriSkellion.
The two were sitting at either end of a cot, both looking embarrassed beyond belief.
She leaned over for an explanation, Sam snickering as he whispered into her ear.
“They got themselves mind-linked. Some C-lister got them good.”
Oh. Ava found herself laughing too, but she at least did it under her breath. Peter, of course, still heard her, glaring from his side of the cot.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up guys. Real funny.”
“Okay, to be fair, this would be funny if it was anyone but us,” Johnny Storm admitted.
Peter folded his arms, and Ava could tell by the way his left lens moved that he’d just raised a brow. “Are you saying there’s someone else you’d rather be mind-linked to? I already know way too much about you as it is.”
Johnny shuddered. “Absolutely not. Sue having access to mind is going to be my main phobia for the next ten years.”
“I didn’t exactly want to hear that one myself, actually. Please keep it to yourself.”
“Oh, shut up, this goes two ways, and I’m learning more about you than I ever wanted to know. I can’t believe you make decisions by talking to yourself.”
“At least I don’t kiss my own muscles in the mirror!”
“I thought that at you in confidence!”
“Well next time put a disclaimer, because I’m going to use that as ammo for the rest of our lives.”
“That’s so not fair. I’ve barely gotten anything I can use on you so far.” Peter glared, and Johnny put his hands up. “I’m not going to, I'm not that much of a jerk. It’s just not fair that you get all my embarrassing secrets and I get, like, your trauma.”
“Well, next time pick a less fucked up best friend,” Peter snapped. “I don’t get flashbacks eating hot dogs, so maybe try not collapsing on the pavement after getting hit with a magic blast and I won’t think you died.”
“Hey, hey, whoa, let’s not start a fight in the lab,” Luke butted in.
“You always get sooo bitchy whenever you lose hold of some of your secrets, first the truth serum and now this!”
Peter’s arms were still folded, but now they tensed so hard Ava thought he might hit him. “It’s your fault we’re in this mess, anyway! How is it wrong for me to not want somebody flipping through my thoughts like my head’s a filing cabinet?!”
“My fault?! You dragged us over to that fight!”
“Hey--”
“Stay out of it!” they both said at the same time, breathing hard as they finally went quiet. Dr. Connors looked tired, and Ava suddenly wondered if they’d been fighting since they’d come in.
“Sorry,” Peter said after a minute, shoulders slumping. “Just-- you can obviously tell why I didn’t want you seeing into my head.”
“No kidding, but like… I know you way too well for anything I see to throw me off that much. Don’t worry about it too much.”
“Ugh.” Peter sighed. “Fine, if you want ammo, have that one.”
Johnny blinked. Blinked again. “Did you really--”
“ Yes.”
“Oh my God, I love you. If I get nothing else out of this, it was worth it. ‘For science’? Are you serious? No wonder you love Reed so much, you’ve been a dork since you were born!”
“If both of my parents were scientists, and my uncle put cars together for fun, what do you think I was on track for?”
“Hey, cars are awesome. Only cool people do cars, so you clearly had the potential to be great, but you chose to be a nerd. I just can’t accept that.”
“Your brother-in-law is the smartest man on Earth.”
“And I hate it.”
The two of them were quiet for almost a minute, trading looks from the corners of their eyes.
Ava wasn't sure whether or not she wanted to know what went on in Peter's head. Probably not.
“Anyone going to explain?” Sam asked after a moment.
The response came in unison, two deadly glares turned on him at once. “No.”
“I don’t even think Sue still asks us for explanations,” Johnny muttered. “How new is this guy?”
Peter sat back down on the very edge of the cot. “She doesn’t, and pretty new. You, yourself, haven’t exactly been in the game that long either, Flameo.”
“Flameo? Avatar? How old are you, five?”
“I’m a veteran at this, I’m very old,” Spider-Man said sagely.
“We got started two months after you, would you stop saying that?!”
“It’s like a newbie at Street Fighter, so new, so unexperienced.”
“Webhead, I will kill you with your own tighty-whities--”
“I’m just saying, I didn’t spend almost two thousand dollars on a video game that added my older sister as a character before they added me. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Because you can’t even afford a sandwich!”
“I literally just paid for lunch!”
“Would you shut up?!” Ava yelled, Johnny’s head swivelling around to look at her in utter confusion.
“What?”
Spider-Man snickered.
Dr. Connors cleared his throat. “Anyway, this looks to be exactly what you said it was, Spider-Man. I can’t quite fathom how it’s possible, but you’ve managed to both project your thoughts outward on a frequency that looks similar to scans I’ve seen of telepaths using their powers. However, it’s clearly not quite as voluntary, and seems to be only connected between the two of you.”
“I’m not wearing a tinfoil hat for the rest of my life, Doc.”
“And I’m not too excited to trail behind my sister forever. Link-interrupting forcefields or not, I’d rather just die.”
“And you shouldn’t have to.” He turned the screen around, pointing to a handful of symbols that most of them weren’t even going to try to decipher. “This area here looks--”
“Like magic,” Spider-Man sighed. “Why is it always magic?”
“This is the worst day ever,” Johnny sighed, “but no it’s not. I hate my life.”
“This is so not even close to the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Spider-Man muttered, and Johnny sat up on his elbows to stare at him in abject horror.
“Webby, what the fuck? Oh my God. Go to therapy. Or like, a counselor.” He looked at Dr. Connors, who was back to looking at the screen. “Hey, Doc, does SHIELD do like, therapy? Because he goes from the Gilligan’s island theme to the most horrific things I’ve ever seen in my life in two seconds and that is not normal.”
He suddenly shrieked. “Oh my God, that wasn’t an invitation! I’m never going to unsee that, you asshole!”
“Please stop swearing in my lab,” Dr. Connors sighed.
“My bad, Doc.” Spider-Man rubbed the back of his neck. “Honestly, he deserved it.”
“Maybe, but Jesus, Ben in a speedo? I’m going to get Reed to wipe my brain.”
“As if he would,” Spider-Man snorted.
“If you and your hero complex hadn’t decided to go after that scream, I wouldn’t have ever seen Ben in a speedo and our minds wouldn’t be linked, so if Reed won’t wipe my memories, you are either going to find someone who can or I’m going to lock you up in a lab in the basement of the Baxter Building until you’ve invented something for it because I am not going to live the rest of my life with that picture in my head!”
Spider-Man’s voice was dry. “Are you done?”
“No. Yes. Shut up, I hate you.”
“Of course you do,” Spider-Man said sweetly, and then Johnny’s face was going red.
“I really, really hate you.”
“Of course you do,” Spider-Man repeated, and then stood up, brushing off his pant legs. “Okay, take me to Dr. Strange.”
Johnny made a face. “The weirdo with the Catholic windows? Reed hates that guy.”
“Yeah, him. He owes me a favor.”
“I’m pretty sure everybody in New York does, but what the hell did you do for Dr. Strange?”
“Guarded his house a few weeks ago. Beam me up, Torchy.” To the team, he added, “we’ll be back in a few hours. Maybe. If we end up on the news, we’ll probably need backup.”