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It should have been a slow day. Everything had pointed to that – the lazy weekend morning spent in bed giving way to a gloomy afternoon, grey skies and rainy weather that left the neighborhood pigeons puffed up and huddling under the eaves. Unfortunately, Peter had other things on his mind.
He’d been on the trail of something big and nasty for a little over a week, ever since it had broken out of a lab on Staten Island, once again confirming Peter’s belief that absolutely nothing good happened out there. He would have asked the scientists there what exactly they’d been working on, but it had killed them all, so so much for that plan. So far he’d gotten in little more than a few glimpses of it and one cramped fight in a subway tunnel. Whatever it was, it was big, nasty, and probably originally supernatural in origin, which was exactly Peter’s least favorite kind of origin.
Thanks a lot, Staten Island.
“So much for my rep,” he told one of the pigeons, balling up the wrapper from his lunch and launching it at a Daily Bugle billboard. He picked it up on his swing out, shooting it over a tourist’s head and into a trash can, before he headed back into the subway to continue the hunt.
Abandoned subway tunnels, contrary to the Bugle’s belief, were not one of his favorite places to lurk. For one, maneuverability was low. For another, you never knew exactly what you were stepping in. For a third, the rats were as big as toddlers. Sometimes there would be construction crews down there, too, and then Peter would have to play his least favorite game of lead the baddie away from the innocent civilians.
Give him an open air battle any day of the week.
It was slow going. Peter crept along, letting his spider-sense act as a guide. He heard the creature before he saw it; a low growling noise, and the sound of claws on metal. The first part of it he saw were its eyes, glowing in the darkness. It saw him almost as soon as he saw it, and it wasn’t very happy about it.
It launched itself at him, a growl rippling through the still air. It was hard to tell in the gloom exactly how big it was, but it was heavy enough to knock Peter back a step, like getting hit with a stone statue – something Peter unfortunately had prior experience with. Its skin was as cold as ice and its breath stank of blood.
Something prickled at Peter’s throat, sharp as knives.
It was almost a relief, then, to be knocked through a wall, straight into the path of an oncoming train. He rolled away at the last second, throwing himself onto the platform. The train rushed by and he could feel the wind ruffle his hair; his mask must have been torn in the scuffle.
There was a crowd on the platform, waiting for the train. They screamed and scattered when something heavy hit Peter from behind. The platform had working lights, though, and when he struggled to face it, Peter finally got a good look at what had hit him.
It stood about seven feet tall, dressed in black and grey rags. Its skin was cold like marble, and its eyes glowing red. Its mouth was full of long fangs. It reminded Peter a little of Morbius, or worse, Morlun – something vampiric, something powerful. Something very old, and very angry.
Peter cracked his knuckles.
“Come on, big guy,” he said.
The vampire didn't need much coaxing; it charged at Peter, lips drawn back to reveal a double row of fangs. Peter leaped nimbly out of the way, springing back off the MetroCard machines and vaulting himself over the turnstiles. Though the crowd had scattered, he couldn’t guarantee nobody else would make their way down to the stop, so his primary goal had to be leading Big, Bad, and Bloodsucking away from any potentially populated areas.
He didn’t need to worry. The vampire followed him. It didn’t bother to hop the turnstile, instead ripping right through the metal with one swipe of those huge claws.
Well, Peter thought, at least it would make some New Yorkers happy.
Keeping an ear out for trains, Peter plunged headlong into the darkness of the tunnels. He could hear the vampire chasing after him, but more than that, he could feel it. It was like his spider-sense was going haywire, extra attuned to this monster, the pounding of its feet and the prickle of its claws and teeth.
There was a tingle in the back of his mind, like there was something important coming up ahead. Peter hoped it wasn’t another train.
When he saw the chance to head back into an abandoned tunnel, he took it. He just needed to get himself some ground, so he could turn around and make this a fair fight. No civilians, just him and whatever it was that was chasing him down this long, dark tunnel.
His spider-sense was going so out of control that he almost didn’t notice the jagged metal bar hanging in the tunnel in time. He stopped just short of turning himself into a spider-kebab, thankful as ever for his quick reflexes. He wondered what it was doing there – the tunnel looked old and unused, but with the rate New York City got tossed around by the super set, who knew what – or who -- could have caused it.
Peter would have bet money on the X-Men. Those guys just couldn’t stay in Westchester.
He didn’t have much time to ponder; his spider-sense went nuts again as he heard growling coming from behind him. He whipped around just in time to see the vampire barreling towards him, its hands reaching out for him, seemingly ignorant of all other surroundings.
Peter flipped out of the way, landing just behind it.
It kept running.
“Wait!” Peter said, flinging out a hand.
It was too late. The creature had charged ahead with all its strength and impaled itself on the broken metal beam.
It was over quickly. Peter sighed, taking a step forward.
“This isn’t how I wanted this to end,” he said, crouching on his heels in front of the vampire’s body. He reached up to touch the rip in his own mask. “I was hoping to go at least three rounds first.”
Then the strangest thing happened: the vampire’s body withered, crumbling away into dust. Simultaneously, Peter’s spider-sense went off, giving him a split-second warning before everything around him exploded into pain.
The pain was excruciating; Peter’s body felt like it was tearing itself apart, rearranging itself from the inside, breaking his ribs into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. He was alone, so he wasn’t afraid to admit that he screamed, and maybe passed out for about a minute there.
Waking up was a hazy, dull experience, his nerves still screaming with the memory of the pain, but it was fading now, and slowly Peter put his hands flat against the ground and slowly pushed himself up.
He groaned, putting his hands on his head, and asked nobody in particular, “Anyone get the number of that bus that hit me?”
It took him a minute to realize that something was wrong.
His palms were still flat on the ground. His hands were also on his head. At the same time, there was a peculiar sensation, like he’d scraped his knuckles on the ground. Looking down, he found that was all true: his palms were flat on the ground, his knuckles were scraping against the rubble, and his fingers were in his hair, all at the same time, because he had three sets of hands.
“Oh,” Peter said, his voice faint to his own ears. “That’s not good.”
Slowly and carefully, he leveraged himself up into a sitting position, his back to the wall, and held all his hands out in front of him. He tried to poke at each of them, mostly to confirm he wasn’t just seeing triple. Never had he wished for head trauma so hard. But all his hands got jumbled up, knocking into each other, and after about two minutes of that Peter was forced to admit he wasn’t just imagining it – he had six arms.
Again.
“You know, this kind of thing doesn’t even happen to most people once,” he said to himself.
Peter’s head ached. He tried to raise a hand to it but got all mixed up and ended up banging himself in the chin with one of the middle hands; his spider-sense blared pathetically, as if it didn’t know what to do with the fact that the greatest threat to Peter’s safety was currently his own lack of coordination.
“Spider-Man?” a familiar voice called out. “Spidey? Are you down here?”
There was a light burning up ahead, orange-yellow and flickering. It was heading in the wrong direction.
“Torch!” Peter called. He tried to stagger to his feet, failed, and slumped back down against the wall. “Johnny, over here!”
“Spider-Man!”
It took Johnny another minute to find him, winding his way around the rubble of the abandoned tunnel in the dark, but then that was Peter’s firefly: simultaneously the brightest light in the room and a dim bulb. He felt fondness glow in his chest, warm as embers, as he waited for that little light to come closer.
“How’d you find me?” he called out.
“Are you kidding?” Johnny said. “There’s about fifty people running around up there, screaming about Spider-Man fighting some giant monster in the subway. I figured I’d come and lend a hand.”
“Yeah,” Peter said, glancing at his palms. “I actually don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”
“What?” Johnny said. He appeared in the doorway, lit up by his own fire, and immediately his eyes went wide.
“Something on my face?” Peter asked, dry.
“Nothing, nothing. You just kind of busted out of your suit, there, so. That’s a lot of,” he gestured, vaguely, at Peter’s torso. “Muscles. Skin. Arms – wait.”
His eyes widened.
“Whassamatter, Torch?” Peter asked. He raised every available hand and waved them back and forth. “You never seen a man with six hands before?”
“Give it to me straight, doc,” Peter said, affecting an exaggerated Bugs Bunny accent. “I can take it.”
Reed glanced over the top of his instruments. There was a glimmer of amusement in his eyes – but only just a glimmer. Beyond that, Reed looked concerned, and that, more than anything, more even than the way Johnny hadn’t stopped hovering since they’d arrived at the Baxter Building, made Peter worried.
“What are we looking at here?” Peter said, continuing to talk because no one else was. The silence made the lab’s wide open space feel almost oppressive, as if the walls might start closing in at any moment. “Do I have a whole, count ‘em, thirty fingers for a day? A week?”
Reed didn’t answer.
Peter swallowed, something like anxiety creeping up the line of his spine.
“A month?” he tried, forcing a joke into his tone because he had to.
“I won’t have the test results for another few moments,” Reed said, pushing himself away from his equipment. He hesitated, then added, “And it’s always possible I’m wrong.”
Possible, he’d said. Peter knew that, of course – no one was completely infallible, not even Mr. Fantastic. So it was possible, but it was very unlikely.
“Tell me,” he said.
Reed told him. It seemed when he’d staked the creature in the subway tunnels – “by accident, thanks” – it had released some sort of surge of energy. Peter had said “what, like a curse?” and Reed had looked at him like he’d personally insulted his grandmother as he'd said absolutely not like that at all. The point was, something had been released in that narrow tunnel, interacting with Peter’s very unique biology – the radiation, the spider that bit him, who could count anymore – and transforming him back into a very six-armed Spider-Man.
“I’m sorry, Peter,” Reed said. “From what I’m seeing currently -- I’m afraid the condition might be permanent.”
“Hm,” Peter said. He drummed his fingers – six hands’ worth of them – on the table top, considering Reed’s words carefully. “Nah.”
“Excuse me?” Reed said. He looked more confused than consternated, which was good, Peter thought, because if Reed had the nerve to look offended when he was the one telling Peter that he was going to be stuck with six arms, Peter might have tied him up in knots like a rubber pretzel.
“No,” Peter said. “Because see, I’ve done this whole rodeo before, and this? This is not permanent.”
“You’ve had six arms before,” Reed said, slowly, as if that was the weirdest thing he’d ever heard in their business. As if Peter hadn’t passed Doctor Doom out in the hallway walking in here.
“He did,” Johnny filled in helpfully. “In college. Or anyway that’s what he told me this one time when we were looking for vampires.”
It always surprised Peter how Johnny, who appeared most of the time to be actively running for the coveted position of World’s Dumbest Blond, always remembered the oddest things, like the weird little adventures they’d shared together over ten years ago, or Peter’s favorite order from every fast food place in New York City.
“You know what they say about college being a time for experimentation,” Peter joked. He tried not to take it too hard when no one laughed. “What I’m saying is, this is not my first trip to this particular state of being. I reversed it then. I’ll reverse it now.”
“And were the circumstances the same as the time before?” Reed asked, one eyebrow raised.
“No, but who cares?” Peter said, hopping off the table. Johnny rushed to his side, making like he was going to take him by the elbow and steady him, but then he couldn’t decide which arm to take. Peter shrugged him off easily.
“Peter, you know I wouldn’t give you bad news lightly,” Reed said, a warning in his voice.
“And I’m telling you,” Peter said, pointing a finger at him. Or he tried to, anyway. It ended up being three fingers, each one on a different hand. “This is not a permanent situation.”
Then he accidentally smacked one of his arms into the wall on his way out.
“Come on, Spidey,” Johnny said as he rubbed at his elbow. “I’ll fly you home, just to be safe.”
He meant to break it to Mary Jane easy. Over a candlelit takeout dinner from her favorite restaurant, maybe, with flowers on the table, and possibly even a bottle of wine that cost more than $3.99. Though how he was supposed to get a bottle of wine open without Mary Jane noticing he had four more hands to do it with than normal, he had no idea.
The point was, this was not the way he’d intended her to find out: Mary Jane, soaked to the bone in chilly late spring rain, standing out on their rooftop watching as Johnny dropped Peter off at home. His ripped and torn costume hid absolutely nothing, least of all the extra arms.
Thunder cracked. Lightning split the sky. Its light illuminated Mary Jane’s face, throwing into stark relief the moment she saw Peter. Her eyes went wide. Her face went pale.
Peter’s heart sank.
“Oh, Peter,” she said, her voice so quiet it was almost drowned underneath the city’s hum. “What happened to you?”
He made the story short. It was easier on her that way.
“It’ll be okay, MJ,” he told her after he was done, holding her close. “It’s only temporary.”
“Did you see Mr. Fantastic?” Mary Jane asked. “What did he say?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Peter said, pulling back. He brushed a wet lock of her hair from her cheek, noting her frown, and said, “I’ll call Doc Connors in the morning. He’s got more experiences with typical me type situations anyway. C’mon, let’s go inside. It’s cold out here.”
He put the top two most hands – the original set – on her wet shoulders, steering her carefully back towards the rooftop door. A blazing light caught the corner of his eye just as he turned to go inside too, and he realized that Johnny was still there, floating a few feet above the rooftop. He made for a beautiful sight, his burning body shimmering as raindrops evaporated before they could even get close to him.
Peter wondered why he hadn’t left yet.
He thought it would be funny to wave at Johnny with three out of six arms as he headed back inside. Johnny, standing there blazing against the sky, didn’t wave back.
“Well,” Connors said, rubbing his chin as he looked from Peter, to the screen, and back again. “This certainly is interesting.”
Peter, sitting shirtless on a table, might have been alarmed if this had been his first time as a six-armed man, but he’d once come to Doc Connors and asked him to prove that Peter wasn't a clone. And yes, true, that had taken years to clear up, but that wasn’t entirely Connors’ fault. And yes, all right, Connors was a giant talking lizard of limited vocabulary roughly five months out of the year. But he was still a good scientist and, unlike some others, he still took Peter’s calls.
“Define interesting,” Peter said.
“How exactly did this come about?” Connors asked. “Does it have anything to do with the time you borrowed my house in Southampton?”
“One less Morbius this time,” Peter said. “But as you can see, the arms are back. I was hoping you could whip up some more of that serum we came up with last time, so I can get back to normal. MJ’s going a little nuts with me cooped up in the apartment all the time. She’s getting pretty tired of me knocking everything off the shelves, too.”
“I can bet,” Connors said, but when he turned to face Peter he was frowning. “I’m sorry, though, Peter. I don’t think it’s going to work this time.”
He explained, quick and clinical, not cutting corners on the scientific lingo when he knew Peter could keep up. The gist of it was, the serum they’d thought had been such a success had only been a temporary fix, and now it was done fixing. The serum wouldn’t work again. And Connors couldn’t think of anything that would.
The disastrous result of Peter’s impetuous attempt to cure himself of his spider-powers – the one that had ironically mutated him further – was something that had been waiting to reemerge all these years. It was Peter’s fault, although Connors was kind enough not to say that out right.
It didn’t matter. Peter still knew.
“I’m sorry, Pete,” Connors said, shaking his head. “There’s nothing I can do.”
“What does that mean?” Peter asked. He held out all his arms, gesturing at himself. “What am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know,” Connors said, shaking his head. “But if I were you – I’d take up juggling.”
Completely desperate, Peter hit up Dr. Strange.
“You react oddly to magic,” Strange said, floating upside down and building a house of cards, none of which made Peter feel like he was seeing him in any kind of professional capacity. “You always have. I believe it’s the totemic energy of the spider, spanning back through the ages, that has made you its current avatar –”
“Yadda yadda yadda,” Peter cut him off. “Look, can you fix me or not?”
Dr. Strange sighed as he flipped himself over and straightened up. He spent the next fifteen minutes circling Peter, occasionally waving his hands, sometimes chanting, and briefly blowing incense smoke right up Peter’s nose.
“No,” he finally said, “because from a metaphysical standpoint, there is nothing to fix. You are as the universe has willed you.”
Peter used his universally willed six arms to knock over Strange’s house of cards.
The odds of finding another vampire to kick off the process of ridding himself of his extra arms seemed slim. Peter still spent a few days waiting around for one. It got old pretty fast.
It wasn’t in Peter’s nature to sit around and do nothing. He’d done that, once. There was a long list of people he could contact after Connors and Strange – and he did. They all told him the same thing, some in kinder words than others. It seemed that Mr. Fantastic had been right all along; for the time being, at least, Peter was stuck this way.
It presented some interesting new challenges. Shirts, for one – they all had to be altered, or he had to go without. Coordination, for another. Peter had been a six-armed wallcrawler before, learned how to swing and fight and maneuver around a small New York City apartment without knocking absolutely everything he owned onto the ground, but he hadn’t expected to have to do it ever again. The learning curve was steep.
Then there was Spider-Man. He’d been through the fire enough times to know he couldn’t just give up being Spider-Man, two arms or six. So he was stuck like this for a little longer than he thought he’d be. So both Mr. Fantastic and Dr. Connors and pretty much everyone else in the science and magic sections of Peter’s little black superhero book thought it would be permanent. That wasn’t a reason for Peter to hang up the tights.
The tights just needed a little adjustment, that was all.
The costume was more work than he initially thought it would be. There weren’t patterns, it turned out, for six armed men.
“What are you doing?” Mary Jane asked when she came home, some three hours later when Peter had almost gotten the whole sleeves situation figured out.
“Reinventing the wheel,” Peter said. He held up the top half of the costume. “What do you think?”
Mary Jane stared at him like he was out of his mind. “Are you serious right now?”
“I’d better be,” Peter said. “Otherwise I just wasted an entire day and a whole lot of spandex. What, you don’t like it? Don’t think the design works with the extra arms? I could switch it up. I’ve got some sketches –”
“Peter,” Mary Jane said, reaching over and putting her hand over his, the one holding the costume. Slowly, she uncurled his fingers from the fabric, and he let her, watching as she took it from his hands and placed it down on the coffee table. “We have to talk about you… and Spider-Man.”
There was a note in her voice that made him sit up a little straighter.
Slowly, he said, “Alright. Let’s talk.”
They talked well into the night. At some point there may have some yelling, a little screaming, maybe a slammed cabinet door or two. When the downstairs neighbor started banging on her ceiling Peter yelled, “DO YOU MIND? WE’RE TRYING TO HAVE A CONVERSATION HERE,” right back down at her, and Mary Jane called him immature.
It wasn’t a new argument. It was just a new variation on an old one. So Peter had six arms. So his coordination was off. So he was possibly putting himself in danger if he went out – and so it was potentially easier to link a six-armed Spider-Man to a six-armed Peter Parker. So what.
“Did I stop being Spider-Man when there was a five million dollar bounty on my head?” Peter demanded.
“No,” Mary Jane said, staring at him with something unreadable in her eyes. Her hair was a mess from having run her hands through it in frustration, one strap of her tank top slipping off her freckled shoulder. She was always beautiful when she was furious at him. Her voice was flat and hard. “You didn’t.”
“Mary Jane,” Peter said, reaching a hand out to her. She didn’t take it.
“Peter,” Mary Jane said. “This isn’t one of those times you can find a loophole, or – or wiggle room. This, right here, right now, is when you have to make the decision. Peter Parker or Spider-Man?”
The ensuing fight left him sleeping on the couch, which, it turned out, was a hell of a lot less comfortable for a man with six arms. Mary Jane must have known because she came out of their small bedroom at around 3 in the morning, dragging a blanket behind her.
She said, her voice quiet and serious, “Don’t you think you’ve kicked yourself around enough?”
Peter grunted, but when she said come back to bed, he did. He didn’t sleep easily, though. A previously undiscovered spring in the mattress seemed to poke one of his arms no matter how he twisted or turned, and not even Mary Jane’s warm presence could lull him. He laid on his side, his back to Mary Jane, and stared out the window, at the buildings, at the sky. He listened to the distant rumble of cars and people and the subway.
There was a life out there for a six-armed Spider-Man.
He wasn’t quite sure the same was true for Peter Parker.
“Jonah, I’m telling you, I can’t take any assignments,” Peter said, one hand over his eyes, one in his hair, and the other cradling the phone against his ear. “Why? Well, first off, there’s the whole I don’t work for you anymore thing to consider. Find another photographer.”
“That’s not good enough! I need you, Parker,” Jonah snapped, and Peter was pretty sure he could hear his mustache bristling with fury against the receiver. “I need your – whatever it is, that gets the kind of shots no one else can get!” A pause, and then grudgingly he added, “Not without getting shot themselves, anyway.”
Peter raised a fourth hand to rub at his forehead.
“And I’m telling you, I can’t do it. I’ve got – the flu,” he said.
“The flu!” Jonah repeated, still loud but now skeptical.
“It’s… exotic,” Peter said, grasping for straws. “Highly contagious. I got a little too close to some mountain goats at the zoo, if you know what I mean.” Anything to end this conversation.
“Parker, I don’t care if you married one of those goats!” Jonah said. “I need those photos!” He inhaled sharply and, against all his better instincts, Peter sat up straighter. He knew that inhale. His bank account had been counting on that inhale since he was fifteen. “I’ll pay you double.”
A smart man would have stuck to his scandalously contracted goat flu plan. Peter held up two hands in front of himself, carefully ticking off numbers on his fingers, weighing the pros – money – and the cons – many.
“Triple,” he said.
“You’re a thief, Parker,” Jonah growled.
“And I want my expenses covered,” Peter said, even though his expenses usually added up to subway fare and a fast food lunch. It was the principle of the matter.
“You want me in the poor house,” Jonah said.
“Desperately,” Peter replied with relish.
“Fine!” Jonah cried, indignation building to a bristling crescendo. “Fine! Take it, Parker! Take it all!”
He relayed the details to Peter in between insults.
Peter blew kisses into the receiver before he hung up.
The modified costume fit like a glove, which was crucial – it had six of them now, after all. He’d entertained, briefly, the idea of going in plain clothes, but on the off chance he got spotted a six-armed reporter seemed like the kind of thing that would be remembered.
Spider-Man was safer for the moment, no matter what Mary Jane said. Besides, the thing was, back when he’d been fifteen and had no idea what to do with all these strange new powers, it was swinging that made him feel like he was on top of the world, and swinging that taught him mastery of his body. If he could learn to swing with six arms, he could figure out how to rearrange a cupboard with them, too. It had always been like that, between him and Spider-Man. They went hand in hand (in hand in hand in hand in hand).
The only question was, did he stick with two web shooters, or try for six?
The swinging came back to him faster than he’d expected it to, but then he’d done this once before. It was easier to acclimate without a lizard in a lab coat hanging onto his waist.
The job was to snap a few covert photos of a weapons smuggling ring, one that Phil Urich had been after – right up until he’d tried to set the long jump record for chain smokers over the age of 65 going from rooftop to rooftop and landed himself in the hospital for a week.
Peter had long considered himself blessed when it came to wedging himself into small, unexpected spaces – feet that could stick to any surface and a spine like a slinky came in handy that way. He’d gone to Mary Jane’s B-list celebrity filled yoga class once just to drive up the inferiority complexes.
He hadn’t, until this very moment, considered how the extra arms could work in his favor.
Peter snapped a front page-worthy photo and still had a hand left free to shove half a burger in his mouth. The night was looking up.
Jonah always stayed late at the Daily Bugle – it was part of his rare charm – so it was close to midnight when Peter shimmied his way in through a window on the top floor and made his way through the dark Bugle offices to leave the film and a handwritten note on JJJ’s desk.
He stepped back, admiring his work, and then he pried Jonah’s window open and slipped right back out.
It felt thrilling. It felt right. After boring grey weeks of being stuck inside, of biding his time, of listening to Mr. Fantastic and Doc Connors and their endless apologies over why they couldn’t fix him, everything suddenly felt like it was lit up bright again. He took the long way back to his apartment building’s rooftop, just to enjoy the ride.
Maybe it was New York city’s night air, he thought, taking in a deep breath of it, but he suddenly felt more like himself than he had in weeks. He lingered for a second, perched on the tips of his toes, enjoying the slight breeze and the distant sound of honking cars, the faraway rush under the subway that, if he closed his eyes, he could almost feel, even all the way up here.
It felt a little like being in love.
He forced the skylight open, leaping nimbly through it and landing in a crouch in his bathtub.
His bathtub, which was occupied.
He let his eyes travel slowly up long jean clad legs, past the arms crossed over a chest he knew now was not the right time to ogle, to Mary Jane’s beautiful – but very annoyed – face.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” she asked.
“Hi, honey,” Peter tried. “I’m home.”
“Take off the mask, Spider-Man,” Mary Jane, her gaze flinty. “We need to talk.”
It would have been easy to blame it on the extra arms. It would have been easy to blame it on Mary Jane’s career, too. But the truth was, things had been rocky since she’d come back from Los Angeles. They hadn’t been able to fall back into the easy rhythm they once shared. So it would have been easy to blame the arms, yes, or to blame Mary Jane’s career, but part of Peter knew, deep inside, that this split might have happened regardless.
“The role’s not that great,” Mary Jane said. She was a good actress; Peter could have let himself believe her, if he’d wanted to.
He wrapped one arm around her, pulling her in against him to lay a kiss on the top of her head. Easy to blame it on the arms, and easy to blame it on the jobs. But in the end, that wasn’t fair to either of them.
“It’s a great role,” he said. “It’s the role you deserve. You want it.”
“I do,” Mary Jane said, sounding miserable.
“And you’re going to be great in it,” Peter said, holding her a little closer, letting himself get carried away in the scent of her perfume. “You’re going to be the best. Nobody could play that role like Mary Jane Watson.”
She looked up at him and he met her gaze; he owed her that much.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be,” he replied, and kissed her on the forehead.
He said he’d take her to the airport, the day she flew out for Los Angeles. She didn’t say no. They’d had a lot of goodbyes before – when she’d dropped the first ring he’d given her in his open palm in the hospital lobby, or when she’d jetted off to Florida with her aunt. When she’d said no to his proposal the second time, halfway through packing her things up and scared out of her mind, about to fly to Philadelphia without telling him why. She’d always been so brave, even when he’d thought she was running away.
Peter was less brave than Mary Jane, when they got down to the hard, honest truth of it. Part of him didn’t want to take her to the airport, sitting in the backseat of the cab with her as they trundled their way through mid-morning traffic. There was something about telling her goodbye by the baggage check that made it all seem so final.
Peter was wearing an oversized trench coat, looking way more Central Park flasher than he did Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. So much for his romantic image of himself. Mary Jane paid the cab driver, of course – why break from tradition, even now.
It was sweltering, mid-July, and sweat was gathering at the small of Peter’s back and underneath each of his arms. He was drawing looks, too, from travelers and from airport security – although not as many, he thought, as if he ditched the trench coat altogether.
Still, out of respect for others and a deep desire not to ruin Mary Jane’s send off by getting tackled by security, he hung back, staying by the doors.
“You’ll call me,” Mary Jane said, once her bags had been checked and her ticket was in her hand, “if you need anything.”
Her eyes were shiny and bright, and Peter wanted to reach up, preemptively ready to wipe away a tear before it could ruin her mascara, but once again the signals got crossed and he didn’t know which hand to use. He lifted the topmost right one and the other two arms twitched where he’d belted them under his trench coat.
He lowered his arm. Mary Jane smiled at him and reached out instead, her thumb swiping across one of the bruise dark shadows under his eyes, even though his face was dry. She leaned into kiss him, her lips lingering at the corner of his mouth.
“See you around, tiger,” she said, her voice husky, and then she turned and headed for security, an extra sway in her hips because she knew he was watching. Trust his Mary Jane to make everything a show.
He waited until he couldn’t see her anymore, her red hair swallowed up by the crush of the crowd, and then he turned and left the airport. The cab was long gone; Peter hadn’t asked the driver to stick around. He didn’t try to hail another one, either, or head for the train. Instead he kept his head down and walked, not too fast and not too slow, until he found a spot where he could double back and scale the outside of the airport. It took some doing to avoid security, but Peter was an old hat at that, and before long he had himself the best seat in the house, sat up on top of the tower watching the planes depart.
It was a few hours before Mary Jane’s was set to take off, but that was alright. Peter didn’t have anything better to do. It was kind of nice, to sit there and watch the bustle below. This high up he could shed his coat, and the air felt almost cool against his face. Once he thought he caught a glimpse of Mary Jane through the windows, but it might have been a trick of the light.
“Safe travels, Mary Jane,” he said, watching when her plane took off. He waited until it was just a speck on the horizon, carrying the love of his life away towards her next fantastic adventure, before he reached up and pulled the mask down. She’d always liked him best without the mask, after all.
Then he stood up and gave himself a running start off the building.
“And as for you, Mr. Parker,” he said, flipping his wrist open. The webline caught and he soared. “I’ll see you around sometime.”
“Up! Up, Spidey, get up!”
Sunlight flooded the apartment, overly bright and irritating. Peter smelled fresh air, too – the window must have been cracked, in addition to the curtains flung open.
He groaned, rolling over and grabbing a pillow with two hands. He pulled it over his head. Someone grabbed it, trying to yank it away, as a sharp knee planted itself right in the middle of Peter’s back. He reached up with a third hand to keep a good grip on the pillow as a fourth batted his attacker’s hands away.
“Johnny, will you quit it?” he demanded, turning his head just enough that the mattress didn’t muffle his words.
“Not until you get up!” Johnny said. Peter contemplated reaching back and swatting him off, but preemptive guilt won out. He made to turn over and Johnny, always the bare minimum of cooperative, raised himself up enough for Peter to flip himself over.
Which left Johnny sitting directly on Peter’s stomach, only inches from his groin.
There were worse ways to start the morning.
Peter slid one hand over his eyes, and with four of the remaining five he reached out and took hold of Johnny, one set of hands at his waist and the other hooked underneath his thighs. He weighed about as much as a feather pillow to Peter, so it was easy to dump him, unceremoniously, off the side of the bed.
Johnny yelped. Peter bit back a grin as he reemerged, red-faced, from over the side of the bed, glaring at Peter.
“I’m up,” he said, putting half his palms down against the mattress to leverage himself up. He used the remaining half to gesture in as polite a fashion as Johnny deserved.
“You’re such a jerk,” Johnny said. “I only came over because I’m worried about you.”
Johnny had been over three times in the past week, just because was “worried” about him. Peter wondered how terrible he looked, aside from the extra arms, that Johnny thought he needed to be supervised, or looked after like he was a child.
He heaved himself out of bed, unsteady for half a moment before he remembered where all the arms went, just like he was every morning. Or – he glanced at the clock with a wince – mid-afternoon.
“I’m fine, Johnny,” he said, heading towards the bathroom. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’m not doing it because I have to!” Johnny said. “But somebody should! When was the last time you cleaned this place? Or -- ” he wrinkled his nose. “When was the last time you took a shower?”
Peter slammed the bathroom door, just to be petty.
He did take a shower, though. Six arms meant six armpits and lounging around in bed all day did nothing to help with that.
Johnny hadn’t left when Peter got out of the shower, not that he’d really expected him to. He was in the kitchen, halfway inside Peter’s fridge as if he thought if he poked around long enough he’d find something that wasn’t expired, or maybe the passageway to Narnia.
“Look,” Peter said, gesturing at himself. “I’m up. I’m showered. Are you happy now?”
Johnny glanced over at him. His gaze tracked down Peter’s chest and then, to Peter’s surprise, he went a bit pink.
“I’m happy,” he said. “You’re very shirtless.”
Peter gestured up and down his torso with the middle right arm. “Because it’s so easy to buy shirts with six arm holes. I haven’t finished altering all of mine yet, and it’s more comfortable this way anyway.”
“Oh,” Johnny said, a slight frown marring his pretty face. “I didn’t think about that. I’m sorry. It’s just…” he gestured at Peter. “It’s a lot.”
“What, the arms?” Peter said, raising an eyebrow. “No offense, Torch, but you live with the Thing, so if this is too much for you to handle –”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant – oh, forget it,” Johnny said, rolling his eyes. “You’re hopeless.”
“Yeah, well, maybe,” Peter allowed. “But I’m not putting a shirt back on just to make you comfortable.”
“No, please,” Johnny said, flicking another look his way. There was an expression on his face Peter couldn’t quite decipher. “Don’t bother with a shirt on my account.”
“Fine,” Peter said, shrugging. If Johnny was going to be weird, there was nothing he could do to stop him, but at least he wasn’t being openly bothered about the whole arms situation. “Then I won’t.”
Johnny made a face at the inside of Peter’s fridge.
“Have you told your aunt yet?” he asked as he started pulling out food, seemingly at random.
“What do you want me to tell her, exactly?” Peter asked, leaning in the doorway with two sets of arms crossed over his chest and the last pair of hands planted on his hips. “Hello to the woman who raised, housed, and fed me, notice any new appendages?”
“You can’t just, what. Not tell her?” Johnny said, shooting Peter a dubious look.
“You know, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and actually I think I can,” Peter said.
Johnny shot him a disbelieving look. “Are you being serious right now?”
“When you have a secret identity and several new arms you’ve told your dear old aunt all about, I’ll come to you, how about that, huh?” Peter said.
“But she’s your aunt,” Johnny said. “You love her. You have to tell her.”
“What part do I start with?” Peter asked. “The six arms, or how I’ve been keeping roughly 75% of my life a secret from her for the past decade? And don’t get me wrong because when I ditched my glasses at age fifteen, I told Aunt May that those vitamins she got me must have worked wonders, so she can be a little gullible, but if I turn up with six arms, and then Spider-Man turns up with six arms, I think she might put two and two together and realize that both Spider-Man and I have six arms. So which do you think I should start with?”
Johnny frowned. “I think one of those things sort of leads into the other?”
“I’m not doing it, Johnny,” Peter said, his voice flat and final. “You don’t understand. Since I was fifteen years old, I’ve kept this secret from her, for her own protection. She’s not strong enough –”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Johnny said, frowning. “I once saw your aunt get in Doctor Doom’s face outside a Stop & Shop. She told him he had no manners and that if her nephew were there, he’d teach him a thing or two.”
Peter paused, three hands frozen in the air in the middle of wildly gesticulating. He was definitely going to have to get the rest of that story later.
“That’s not the point,” he said. “She’s not – she hated Spider-Man for so long. She hated the mask, she hated the wisecracks, she hated everything about him. She subscribed to the Bugle for ten years, and not just because I worked there. And now you want me to go in there, with four more arms than last time she saw her favorite nephew, and tell her that I’ve been Spider-Man this entire time? No, I won’t do it. I won’t break her heart. I won’t –”
He broke off, taking in a harsh breath through his teeth. Johnny made a quiet noise, abandoning the vegetables he’d been chopping and moving closer to Peter. He reached out, his hand warm against Peter’s bottom right wrist. He was always so warm, just like sunshine.
“Peter,” he said softly.
Peter took a deep breath. He slid one of his other hands over Johnny’s, just holding on.
“If I tell her I’m Spider-Man,” Peter said, “then I have to tell her all of it.” He swallowed hard. “I have to tell her how Uncle Ben died.”
“Oh,” Johnny said, frozen in the middle of Peter’s kitchen. Peter almost could have laughed, if there was anything to laugh about.
“Yeah, ‘oh’,” he said. He reached over, liberating the carton of eggs clutched precariously in Johnny’s hands. “And that’s just not happening.”
Johnny’s bottom lip was caught between his teeth. He reached over to take the eggs back, and his fingers brushed Peter’s. Johnny always ran on the warm side, and his touch was a comfort. If Peter was a different person, he would have killed to sink into those warm arms and let the heat of Johnny carry away all his stress.
But he wasn’t a different person, so instead he was just going to internalize everything until he gave himself another ulcer. It was bound to happen sooner or later, now that he didn’t have any kind of outlet anymore.
The truth was, Peter had been going out, just not as himself. Spider-Man hadn’t dropped off the map completely. He hadn’t been spotted, at least, not for long. He was good at staying off the radar, when he really wanted. No one had ever really been able to compete with him when it came to taking pictures of himself, and right now he wasn’t in the market for those.
He got in, did his job, and got back out. No fuss, no drama, and no time to think too deeply about it.
No time to blow off steam, either. He explained as much to Johnny as he cooked.
“That’s terrible,” Johnny pointed out when he was done. He slid a plate containing a perfect omelet down in front of Peter. “You know that, right?”
“It’s working for me,” Peter said, stabbing his fork into Johnny’s hard work. “But that’s my point. I can’t do it, Johnny. I can’t tell May. I need – I need one thing in my life to stay the way it was. To stay Peter Parker’s.”
Softly, Johnny said, “But if you never see her, how can it stay the same? How can that still be Peter Parker’s?”
Peter stopped, his fork clinking gently against the now empty plate. It was the exact thing he’d been trying to avoid thinking about – what he was supposed to do, now that it seemed the arms were permanent. Everything else in Peter Parker’s life, to one extent or another, he could live without, if he really had to. The work, or at least, the kind of work that brought in more than the bare minimum it took to live off of. The casual acquaintances. He’d never really lose Mary Jane, he knew that, but May – the idea of cutting himself off from May entirely was impossible. She raised him. She knew him better than almost anyone else, even when he’d intentionally hidden so many parts of himself from her.
Peter pushed himself back from the table with a sigh, rubbing one hand through his hair as he ambled his way around to where Johnny was leaning back against the counter.
“You know something, Torch?” Peter said, chucking Johnny under the chin with one set of knuckles. “I really hate it when you’re the smart one.”
“I changed my mind. This is a bad idea.”
“What’s your alternative?” Johnny asked, putting the car in park. It was a shiny red little number and the vindictive part of Peter hoped it got its tires stolen. “Avoid her forever? You’ll really be okay with that?”
Peter considered it.
“There’s always Zoom,” he said. “I could hold the screen up to about chin level.”
Johnny snorted, rolling his eyes as he turned off the ignition. He leaned over, sticking his finger in Peter’s face. Peter had the strangest urge to bite it.
“We already RSVP’d,” Johnny said. They had; it was something Peter had never done for a casual lunch at Aunt May’s house before, but Johnny had gotten ahold of his cell phone. May had seemed delighted, at least. “So you’re going in there and you’re having lunch with your aunt and you are telling her.”
“Or I could run away to France,” Peter said. “Change my name to Monsieur Arachnid. Punch Alain Robert in the face.”
“Who?” Johnny said.
“Never mind,” Peter said, opening his door. “Let’s get this over with. You got the hospital on standby?”
“She’s not going to have some kind of attack,” Johnny said, following him down the lawn. “She’s your aunt. She loves you, no matter how many arms you have or what dumb costume you wear to beat up muggers.”
He said it with the kind of confidence only someone whose beloved aunt had never almost married Doctor Octopus could muster up. Then again, maybe in hindsight that wasn’t such a bad thing. Obviously, Aunt May had been willing to overlook the extra arms on one man in her life.
He still had a chance to make a break for it. Johnny was a few steps ahead of him, almost bouncing with excitement as he headed up the steps to May’s house. Johnny was faster than him, at least flamed on, but Peter had the home team advantage here; if he turned and ran, Johnny wouldn’t be able to catch him, and Peter would be spared a lunch that would be, best case scenario, embarrassing and painfully awkward, and worst case scenario –
Well, worst case scenario was that Peter’s only remaining non-clone family told him she didn’t want to see him or any of his arms ever again.
He wondered if May would forgive him for being sick in her begonias.
Johnny pushed the doorbell and it rang out inside the house, bright and cheery. Peter made to turn on his heel. Johnny grabbed him by his sleeve without so much as a glance backwards, reeling him back in.
“Coward,” he hissed in Peter’s ear, obnoxiously bright smile still pasted on his face.
“Suck up,” Peter hissed back.
Johnny stuck his tongue out at him and Peter mimed biting it, snapping his teeth shut on air.
Johnny was pink and spluttering when the door swung open. They both turned to smile at May, one of Johnny’s elbows digging into Peter’s side and Peter’s hands all twisted together underneath his oversized coat. Peter abruptly realized what kind of picture they made, standing so close here on the doorstep together, like they were either about to kiss or strangle each other.
“Peter!” May said. She sounded honestly delighted to see him in spite of the fact that he’d spent the past month blowing her off with increasingly poor excuses. She leaned up to kiss him on the cheek, her hand braced on his shoulder, and if it had slipped just a little, if she had lowered it, Peter thought she would have been able to feel the shape of his other arms under his trench coat.
But her hand stayed steady on his shoulder.
He cupped his own hand to her cheek, bending down to return the kiss.
“Hi, May,” he said, his voice a little hoarse. “I hope you don’t mind. I brought a – friend for lunch.”
“I know, dear,” May said, glancing at Johnny with a twinkling curiosity in her eyes. “He told me on the phone. He has lovely manners.”
“Unlike me,” Peter said, rolling his eyes.
“I didn’t say that,” May said, turning to let them into the house. “Although I did do my best, but there was only so much I could salvage once your Uncle Ben suggested to you that it would be funny to call up the neighbors and ask them if their refrigerator was running.”
“It was hilarious,” Peter valiantly defended.
“Well, old Mr. Silverstein down the road certainly didn’t think so, dear,” May said, patting his cheek kindly. “Take off your jacket. It’s sweltering in here.”
She was a whirlwind of motion, just like always, as if she hadn’t spent all morning tidying up. Still there were couch cushions to be fluffed and magazines on the coffee table to be rearranged, a plate of cookies already set out for company. It took almost fifteen minutes of conversation before she noticed that Peter was still wearing his coat.
“Are you cold, dear?” she asked. “I can’t imagine. The old air condition’s broken and I can’t get anyone to come see about it until Thursday. Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
“Why didn’t you call me?” Peter asked, neatly side-stepping the question. “I’ll see if I can fix it for you. You shouldn’t have to pay.”
“I haven’t had the opportunity, sweetheart,” May said, with only a hint of judgment in her voice. “You’ve missed our last six dinner nights.”
Johnny stared at Peter, one blond eyebrow cocked. Peter considered tripping him, just to change the topic of conversation.
He moved one hand to the belt of his coat, gripping it tight. He did not untie it.
“But I know how busy you are,” May continued, “especially now that you have a new gentleman in your life.”
“Wait,” Peter said. “What?”
“It really is lovely to meet you,” May said to Johnny. Peter wasn’t sure where the dessert plates filled with pie had come from, but she was pushing one into Johnny’s hands. “I never believed any of that celebrity gossip, especially not about your sex tape.”
“Oh boy,” Johnny said, shooting Peter an alarmed look.
“You know, Peter, I had a feeling when you and Mary Jane broke up this time, that there might be something more behind it,” May continued. “Some sort of -- celebrity entanglement.”
“What,” Peter said, flatter than he meant to.
“Not on your side, dear,” May said. “I thought maybe Mary Jane ran off one of those Chrises People magazine is always talking about.”
“Wait, wait, no,” Peter said. “Time out – you thought Mary Jane left me for some vapid little blond movie star?”
“Hey,” Johnny said, sounding offended.
“I’m sure he didn’t mean you, dear,” May said, reaching over to pat his hand. “Have some pie.”
Johnny preened under her attention, right up until Peter said, “I absolutely did mean him.”
May seemed confused.
“Didn’t you bring your young man over to meet me?” she asked.
“No! I mean, yes, I did bring Johnny here, and yes, he is meeting you,” Peter said. He spared a glance at Johnny, who was just sitting there mouthing his young man to himself like he couldn’t hear anything else. “But that wasn’t… that isn’t…” He took a deep breath and decided to clear up that particular miscommunication later. “That isn’t the only reason, May.”
“Peter,” May said softly, her voice filled with over a decade’s worth of unsaid things between them. “What is it? You show up so suddenly, after staying away for weeks. If it wasn’t to bring someone home to meet me, then what is it? Just tell me. You can tell me anything.”
Peter glanced at Johnny, who nodded at him, so at least, Peter thought, if this all went horribly wrong, there’d be a witness. Slowly, he stood up.
“All right,” he said, looking up at the ceiling. “If anything goes…”
He let the coat drop to the ground.
The ensuing silence was stifling, heavy enough to hear a pin drop. It felt like Peter was holding his breath as May’s eyes went wide, taking in the sight of him, six arms and all. It wasn’t a great sight, even just beyond the arms. Peter hadn’t had the time or willpower yet to sew additional sleeves onto all his shirts, so the button up underneath just had extra armholes cut into it. May was the one who had taught him to sew, but she’d definitely never taught him to be so sloppy.
For a second he worried she’d judge him for it, before he remembered he had bigger things to worry about.
“Oh,” Aunt May said, sounding faintly stunned. Her eyes were wide. “Oh dear. Was it some kind of -- science accident?”
“You could say that,” Peter allowed. It was even technically true, which was a nice change of pace. He’d done so much lying to May over the past decade, so much so that the idea of telling the truth left him feeling off-kilter.
That was one problem he was having, going forward into his brave new world. Part of him wasn’t sure who he’d be without his carefully constructed web of lies, the secret identities and the hasty excuses. He’d been kept together by them for so long.
“Oh no,” Aunt May said, her hand cupped to her mouth. Slowly, she turned and took three careful steps back until she could collapse back into her favorite armchair. “Oh, I always told Ben you were too sensitive for the sciences. I wanted you to be an English major.”
“And I think that’s the first time anyone’s parent has ever said that,” Peter said. As things went, this conversation was far from how he’d thought it would go. He pictured more screaming, possibly some yelling and fainting. Maybe a disowning, if they were feeling particularly dramatic.
Johnny shot him a thumbs up from behind May’s back, as if he thought that this was going well. Maybe when you had Doctor Doom over for a dinner-slash-hostage situation every other month, this was nothing.
Peter would have mimed back like he wanted strangle him and get all six hands in on the action, but May was still looking at him. Waiting for him, he realized, to keep talking.
“There’s something else I have to tell you,” he said.
“Oh,” May said, quietly. She looked him up and down. “Something more than this, dear?”
It shouldn’t have made him laugh, but there was something in the tone of her voice, that even ‘everything is under control’ tone she always broke out when things were spinning completely out of control, that made him start to chuckle.
The problem was, once he started laughing, he was really afraid that he might cry.
“Aunt May,” he said. The hardest two words he’d ever said to her were on the tip of his tongue, so he did what he always did when the situation didn’t look like it could possibly come up in his favor. He jumped in anyway. “I’m Spider-Man.”
He’d pictured this moment a hundred thousand times, in idle daydreams and in his nightmares. He’d thought up a thousand different reactions from her.
Never had he anticipated this stifling silence. May stared at him, her mouth hanging slightly open, and said nothing.
“May?” Peter said after a moment. He reached for her, and then thought better of it, leaving a hand hanging in the air between them, fingers outstretched.
“My nephew has six arms,” she said to herself, as if she was trying to commit the facts to memory. “He’s Spider-Man. And he’s brought home the Human Torch.”
That last part wasn’t strictly accurate, at least not how she meant it, but Peter didn’t feel like interrupting her process. He sent Johnny an apologetic glance, mouthing ‘just go with it’, but to his surprise Johnny was looking away, a faint blush staining his cheeks. As if his part in this six-armed dog and pony show was the most embarrassing.
Peter knelt down in front of May. He wanted to reach out to her, but he didn’t know if she wanted him to.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
She looked up and, with a pang, he saw that her eyes were wet.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” she said and then, to his surprise, she reached out and took two of his hands in her own. “That you’ve been dealing with this on her own… and that you felt like, until now, you couldn’t come to me…”
“Oh, May,” he said. It was a strange sensation, to squeeze her hands in his own and still be able to reach up to cup her face. “It wasn’t – it’s not like that. I just didn’t want… I guess I didn’t want to upset you. To let you down. This, all of this, it’s still just the surface stuff, you know?” He swallowed hard, his throat tight. “There’s so much else I have to tell you, and I don’t know if – I don’t know how you’re going to look at me, afterwards.”
“Peter,” she said, her voice so gentle, a kind of gentleness he hadn’t heard since he was in grade school, coming home crying because the other kids had been mean to him for some stupid reason he couldn’t even remember. “You’re my nephew. None of this matters to me. Not in the long run. Some parts of it might take some time for me to adjust to, I won’t lie to you about that. The Spider-Man parts. But what you look like or,” she glanced at Johnny, “who you bring home for lunch – none of that has ever mattered to me.” She reached up, her hand cupping his cheek, and she didn’t flinch when he brought his own up to cover it. She smiled at him. “I love you, and that’s what really matters.”
There was nothing he could say to that; if he opened his mouth he thought he might burst into tears. When she leaned towards him, he embraced her.
“Oh,” she said, surprise in her voice as he wrapped all three pairs of arms around her. “That’s going to take some getting used to, I think.”
“Sorry,” Peter said, his voice thick.
“Don’t be sorry,” May said, holding back. “You still give very good hugs.”
“That was exhausting. Are you exhausted? I’m exhausted.”
“What are you tired for?” Peter asked Johnny. He was slumped in the passenger’s seat of Johnny’s little red sportscar, one hand over his eyes. “I’m the one who just had one of the most stressful conversations of my entire adult life. All you did was sit around and eat pie.”
“And it was exhausting,” Johnny reminded him. Peter couldn’t help but laugh, which was probably the trauma on a delayed timer. Traffic was bumper to bumper; Johnny drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I think it’s good, though. You getting all six arms out there.”
“Yeah?” Peter asked. He flipped down the vanity mirror, angling it so he could see his shoulders and chest. “And why’s that?”
“So you won’t be living cooped up in your apartment like a six-armed version of Jimmy Stewart in that movie where he’s all paranoid,” Johnny said, rolling his eyes. “You know, the one with Grace Kelly.”
Peter snorted.
“It’s a step,” he admitted.
Johnny was quiet for a moment and then he said, in an exaggeratedly offhand manner, “You know, I had a crush on a guy from another planet once. He had eight arms.”
Peter turned to look at him. “What?”
“It’s, you know,” Johnny said, staring ahead through the windshield, even though traffic wasn’t moving and there was nothing to look at. His face looked faintly pink. “All those extra hands. Those extra fingers. It makes you think about – you know.”
“I can safely say I don’t,” Peter said, right before realization clocked him right on the head. “Are you talking about – in the bedroom? And, wait a second,” he said, trying to catch up with everything Johnny had just said. “Eight arms? Am I some kind of downgrade for you?”
“Wait,” Johnny said, turning his head to look out the window. “Can you feel that?”
“I don’t feel anything,” Peter said, wondering if this was just Johnny’s way of getting out of the conversation. That felt unfair, considering he was the one who’d brought it up, and now Peter was left with the mental images – beautiful Johnny, a bed, and all of Peter’s many fingers. All thirty of them, which was apparently not as many as Johnny had ever had on his body at once.
The explosion, when it hit, was loud enough that Peter could feel it coming up from the floor of the car, rattling in his bones, instantly jolting him away from his thoughts. Johnny, abnormally sensitive to light and heat, must have felt the change in the air a split second before it happened.
In an instant, a dozen car alarms went off. Johnny unbuckled his seatbelt, opening his door and leaning out.
“Do you have your suit?” Johnny asked.
“I just went to lunch with my aunt,” Peter said, raising a hand to shield his eyes and get a better look. “Why would I have brought my suit?”
“Well, what if she’d wanted to see it up close?” Johnny asked. Peter shot him a disbelieving look and Johnny held his hands up. “I’m only saying! Ugh. I think we’d better ditch the car.”
“You sure?” Peter asked, already halfway out the door.
“I’ll have somebody come pick it up afterwards,” Johnny said, like that was a thing he could just do. “Do you want me to fly you over?”
“You go ahead,” Peter said.
“Are you sure?” Johnny asked, frowning.
“Don’t worry,” Peter said. “I might not have the suit, but I never go anywhere without the mask. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Johnny said. He hesitated, his hand reaching out like he was going to grab for one of Peter’s, before he left it fall back to his side. “Just – be careful, alright? Your swinging’s still not exactly back to where it was before.”
“It’s why I need the practice,” Peter said. “Go! I’ll be fine.”
Johnny still hesitated a minute, like there was something he wanted to do or say. He only took off when Peter impatiently flapped a hand at him.
Whatever it was on Johnny’s mind, it could wait.
Peter ditched his coat with the car; the way it restrained his other arms was a detriment when it came to swinging. He moved fast, but, he considered, potentially not fast enough that no one would be able to make out a brown-haired man with six arms swinging his way up to the top of the bridge. He landed on the tips of his toes, surveying the scene down below.
It was easy to find the source of the chaos; all he had to do was look for Johnny’s fiery figure darting straight for the action. The explosion had come from the Manhattan side of the Queensboro Bridge. There was a group of men down below, and Peter would have bet good money that they were the culprits based on both the bulky mechanized suits they were wearing and the giant blasters they were carrying. Now, at least, the smoking crater taking up a lane of traffic made sense.
The tech was homemade. Peter had a pretty good eye for things that had clearly come out of someone’s basement. He adjusted one web shooter as he thought, he should know.
There was an armored truck lying on its side next to the new crater in the ground, a smoking hole blasted through its doors, but it didn’t seem like the thieves were stopping there. Johnny swooped in, shooting a warning blast of fire, just as one of the men ripped the door off a sedan and tried to drag the driver out.
Peter grabbed the mask from his pocket and yanked it down over his face. It wasn’t exactly the world’s most awe-inspiring outfit -- a mask, a ripped-up dress shirt, and his least worn-out pair of jeans -- but it would do for now.
“Where’s the rest of the family?” Peter asked as he swung down to meet Johnny. “Think they’ll drop in?”
He didn’t anticipate the men themselves being a problem, but there were a lot of them – ten, by Peter’s last count – and the thing about a lot of homemade murder tech was that it had a tendency to explode at inopportune moments. Someone with a forcefield would have come in handy.
“They’re on some field trip off planet,” Johnny said. “I think it might just be the two us.”
“Like a first date,” Peter said, and Johnny nearly flew into a luxury SUV.
He righted himself at the last moment, flashing Peter a look that was hot in more ways than just the obvious.
“I’m a much more expensive first date than that,” he told Peter.
“Well, too bad, because I’m broke,” Peter shot back. “Torch, the joints. Melt the joints!”
Johnny didn’t have to be told twice – but then he’d always taken orders well. That was definitely a thought for when Peter wasn’t fighting people in the middle of traffic.
It wasn’t a very fair fight, a bunch of guys in serviceable but very homemade robotic suits versus two superheroes who had been doing this for over a decade now. Peter would have felt a little bad for them, if it wasn’t for the amount of destruction they’d managed to cause in the minutes before he and Johnny hit the scene.
At one point, Peter looked over and saw that there was a kid filming him with a cell phone through the rear window of a car. Peter’s stomach lurched; he hadn’t been out in daylight, fighting in public like this, since the incident that had rendered him a six-armed Spider-Man. Certainly he hadn’t been caught on camera. At least in the costume, he would look – otherworldly, maybe, somehow larger than life in his usual red and blues. But with only the mask and his street clothes, the ragged holes cut into his dress shirt and his bare arms sticking out of them, he felt, suddenly, painfully human.
The kid gave him a gap-toothed smile and a wave, like he didn’t even notice. Peter flashed him an okay sign before he even registered he was using the middle right arm.
The kid looked delighted. Peter wanted to go home.
He split the difference and threw the last of the armored thieves into an abandoned BMW instead. He hit it with a crunch and a sickening sizzle of wires. The suit armored suit went limp. A quick blast of webbing made sure the man wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
“All in a day’s work,” Peter said to Johnny as he came up to him, flamed off and looking a little concerned. Peter made a show of dusting off all three sets of hands to show him he was fine.
“You’re bleeding,” Johnny said, putting his hand on Peter’s bare forearm.
“It’s just a scratch,” Peter said. His skin tingled where Johnny had touched it, and he wasn’t sure if it had to do with the fact that the newer arms hadn’t gotten much in the way of touching since he’d gotten them or if it was just Johnny. “It’ll heal in a few hours.”
Johnny frowned, but he didn’t pursue the subject. He shielded his eyes, groaning a bit at the sight of a couple of people with news cameras.
“Great, the press is here,” he said. “I’ll hold them off if you want to split.”
“I’ll see you at home,” Peter said to Johnny. It took a second for his words to catch up with him. “Your home, not my home. Unless you wanted to go to my home.”
“Do you want me to go to your home?” Johnny asked, a little breathily. He kept staring at Peter’s biceps. All six of them. Peter wasn’t going to lie – it was a little flattering.
Then he remembered the cell phone videos, and the camera flashes, and the dozens of witnesses. The crooks who were about to give some very interesting interviews about how they were beaten up by the Human Torch and a six-armed guy in a Spider-Man mask. And last but not least, the army of news crews descending to get a firsthand look at the story.
“I’ll see you at home,” he repeated to Johnny, his voice low and full of meaning.
If nothing else, it got one of Johnny’s real smiles out of him, the kind that was a little too big to truly to be handsome but no less lovely for it.
Peter squeezed his shoulder and turned to go.
“Wait!” someone called out, and for some reason, Peter stopped. He turned to look at the reporters, his wrist still poised to swing away. One of them, a dark-haired woman, crept forward, her cameraman at the ready.
“Spider-Man?” she said.
“Who’s asking?” Peter said.
“That’s him,” the cameraman said, slowly lowering his camera. “I’ll never forget his voice. He – Spider-Man, you pulled me out of an apartment fire once. Told me everything was going to be okay.”
Peter would have loved to say he remembered that man, would have loved to remember which fire and what building, the exact day it had happened, but the truth was that he didn’t. It still struck him right between the ribs to hear it, though.
“That’s him,” the cameraman repeated. “That’s Spider-Man.”
“Yeah,” Peter said, clearing his throat. He turned fully. “That’s me.”
He could still leave. There was plenty of time. Sure, he’d be all over the news in an hour, tops, and trending on every social media site in the world probably, but – he could still leave. Go back to his apartment. Pretend none of this had ever happened. Never turn on a television or check the internet again. It was doable.
So why were his feet still on the ground?
He knew. He opened his mouth.
Before he could say anything, a warm hand grabbed him by the shoulder, turning him away from the gathering crowd. Johnny dragged him a few steps away, behind a still smoldering sportscar.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he hissed.
“What do you mean?” Peter asked. He glanced back over his shoulder, where the news crews were gazing at them curiously, almost politely, as if waiting to see what would happen next.
“I know that face,” Johnny said, even though Peter was wearing a mask. He wasn’t surprised by it – somehow Johnny had always known what he was thinking beneath the mask, long before he’d ever seen his face. He caught two of Peters’ wrists, squeezing tight. “Peter, what are you doing?”
“I think…” Peter said, and then paused. He thought of all the reasons not to. Then he weighed them against everything else. Mary Jane was in Los Angeles, living her own life, doing great things – apart from him. Aunt May knew now, and Peter could protect her. The Fantastic Four could protect her, if it came down to it. He thought of the empty apartment, that the only way he could do any of his old jobs currently was by sneaking out in the middle of the night, and how much he missed the city, his people, his friends.
He swallowed hard. “I think I’m going to tell them who I am.”
“What?” Johnny said. He gripped Peter’s hand tighter. “Did you just say what I think you said? Did you hit your head? Are you even the real Spider-Man?”
“Would a fake Spider-Man bother to get four additional arms?” Peter asked.
“Peter,” Johnny said, sounding a little pained. “What are you doing?”
“Do you ever feel like, okay, this part of your life you can hide,” Peter said. “This one secret. But then the secrets keep piling up. And suddenly you can’t do it anymore.”
Johnny’s mouth fell slightly open, those blue eyes wide. When he spoke, his voice was very quiet.
“Yes,” he said.
Peter twisted his hand around in Johnny’s, threading their fingers together and squeezing.
“I think I’m done with hiding secrets,” he said.
“Spidey,” Johnny said, and then, quietly, so that only he could hear, “Peter. You don’t have to do this. You can just – swing away, and nothing will change.”
Peter nodded, thinking to himself that, yeah, he could do that, and Johnny would be right. Nothing would change. He’d go home and hide in his apartment. No job, no social life. Johnny would come visit him, at least, until he got busy or bored, and Aunt May would swing by with casseroles and sympathy, and maybe Mary Jane would come see him, when she was between films. And he would have Spider-Man still, of course, but only that.
Him and Spider-Man, alone again, like that one Christmas Eve he’d split a soda with the costume, saying to it, ”You know, I don’t mind being lonely, because with you I’m never alone.” Saying, ”You know, you used to be alive once. But then, so was I.”
“I know,” he said, putting his forehead down against Johnny’s. His breath gusted hot against Peter’s mask, a reminder of what he was about to do. “That’s the problem. Wish me luck?”
Johnny hesitated a second. Then he leaned in and brushed a kiss against Peter’s masked cheek.
“Good luck,” he said.
And that – that was something to think about, too. Maybe Johnny wouldn’t stop paying attention to Peter, when he got busy or bored.
Johnny stayed just a few steps behind, a supportive warm presence at Peter’s back as he took his place again in front of the news crews. A group of civilians had gathered as well, some climbing out of their cars. A couple of people in business suits, a pair of parents holding a toddler, an elderly woman with a kind face who reminded him a little bit of his aunt. All just gathering there, a growing crowd, watching him. Waiting for him.
He thought about saying something. Addressing them first. But what was there to say?
He stood there for a moment, his fingers gripping the edge of the mask. It felt like an hour. It felt like an eternity. It couldn’t be more than a few seconds, though – the crowd hadn’t even stopped shoving each other trying to get to the front – when a car horn shattered the silence and someone yelled, “Come on, Spider-Man! We don’t got all day!”
It was the rude, pushy New York City shove he needed. Peter yanked the mask off, and then there he was. His face, bared for the cameras and the whole world.
For one long, horrible moment, everyone was quiet, as if they were stunned. Then, like a wave swept through them, people started throwing out questions one by one.
“Spider-Man! Spider-Man! What’s your name –”
“Have you always operated alone or are there others?”
“Why unmask now?”
“Hey, didn’t you used to teach at my kid’s school?!”
“And just what is the story with the arms?!”
“One at a time, one at a time,” Peter said, holding all six hands out. The sight alone seemed to put the brakes on things, but only for a moment – afterwards the questions only started coming in quicker, reporters shouting over each other to be heard. Peter saw someone throw an elbow out and flipped his wrist over, webbing them in the face.
“Hey, hey! Knock it off, first come, first serve,” he said in the voice he reserved for supervillains and little old ladies who would not stop shoving at the supermarket. “My name is Peter Parker. If there’s others, tell them to call my lawyer, I’ve got the name trademarked – that’s a joke, thank you, I can’t afford a lawyer – and I’m unmasking now because…”
He glanced at Johnny, standing behind him. Something about his utterly shocked expression made Peter smile – so that was what it took to finally make Johnny Storm look less than perfect, and all the more gorgeous for it. If he’d known, he might have whipped the mask off years ago.
“Because the story with the arms is a long one,” he said at last. “But this is my life, and I need to get back to it – all six hands on deck.”
Slowly, he lowered his hands. A murmur went through the crowd.
“Okay,” someone said, “but you definitely used to teach at my kid’s school.”
That was the last thing he heard before the cameras started going off, and before the roar of voices rose again, but Peter didn’t pay attention to any of it. It was hard to focus on that when Johnny rushed up to him, a fire bright gleam in his eyes and a blush high in his cheeks. Peter caught him, one hand at his waist, one under his elbow, and the other at his hip, and held him there, the two of them in front of all the cameras.
“That,” Johnny said, catching Peter’s face between his hands, “was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Peter figured out what was about to happen about a split second before it did, so he was already grinning when Johnny leaned in.
He kissed Peter, and the crowd went wild.
“Well, tiger, look at you. The top story on every news channel. You never do things halfway, do you?”
“It was that or learn how to juggle,” Peter said. He’d been fresh out of the shower when the phone rang, and now he was toweling his hair off with one hand and holding his phone with the other. “Really, MJ? Every news channel?”
“Hey, I’m just waiting for the late night shows to start,” Mary Jane said. “I want to see how many jokes they can make about you getting handsy with the Human Torch. Get it? Handsy?”
“Nice talking to you, MJ,” Peter said dryly.
“Nice talking to you, too, tiger,” Mary Jane said, amusement clear in her voice. “I really am happy for you, you know that, right? And say hi to Johnny for me.”
“Mary Jane says hi,” Peter said to Johnny as he put down the phone.
“Like, actually, or like Mary Jane says hi like you’re trying to make me jealous,” Johnny asked, stepping up into Peter’s space. He slid his hands around Peter’s waist, waggling his eyebrows. “Because I could be jealous, if you wanted me to be.”
“What’s there for you to be jealous about?” Peter asked, kissing the tip of Johnny’s nose. “Just because my ex is a beautiful redheaded international supermodel and star of the silver screen and you last starred in, what, Himbos From Mars –”
Johnny’s outraged shriek was cut off by the press of Peter’s lips against his own. They kissed for a long moment and one by one each of Peter’s hands found their way to Johnny’s body, holding him close against himself.
“I think I found another advantage to the whole six arms thing,” Peter said, raising his eyebrows.
“What’s that?” Johnny asked, cheeks pink, voice delightfully breathy. He looked all too happy to be caught up in Peter’s web. He ran his hands appreciatively up Peter’s middle set of arms, fingers skipping playfully up to the next set of elbows.
“The better to hold you with,” Peter said, tilting his head to press his lips to Johnny’s.
Johnny sank his hands into Peter’s hair, humming happily against his lips, and Peter, spurred on by his touch, let his hands begin to wander. Johnny felt slim but well-muscled under the touch of his palms, breakable in the best of ways, and Peter wondered how he’d gone this long without putting all six of his hands on him at once.
He wasn’t going to let either of them wait any more.
“Hey, I have a question for you,” Johnny said later, when they were in bed. He batted his eyelashes outrageously in Peter’s direction, leaning up on one elbow to stare down at Peter. He put his hand on Peter's chest, his skin soft and warm. “Would you still love me if I was the one with six arms?”
“I’ll have to think about it,” Peter said, dry.
Johnny grabbed the pillow from behind his head and tried to hit him over the head with it; Peter caught with one hand.
“I’m not sure you have the shoulders to pull it off!” he said, laughing. He gestured at his chest with the middle set of arms, the top crossed behind his head. “Seriously, you think everyone has the kind of build to make this look work?”
“Shut up!” Johnny laughed, pulling the pillow away and resettling himself on top of Peter. “I could make it work if I wanted to, okay? I mean, how hard could it be? You do it.”
“Yeah, but I’m a super genius, and you can’t even unscrew the lid off a jar of pickles with the two hands you’ve already got,” Peter pointed out.
“I bet you would,” Johnny said, voice smug and sleepy as he collapsed down next to Peter, his head pillowed on his shoulder. “I bet you’d still love me even if I had eight arms.”
Peter folded one arm over his waist as the fingers of another played with his hair; the last right hand splayed, a little possessive, on the side of Johnny’s thigh. Later, he thought, things would probably have set in enough for him to freak out -- about him revealing his identity, about kissing Johnny Storm, and definitely about kissing Johnny Storm while revealing his identity and that being, apparently, the topic of the night on every talk show in the world. But for now he was warm, and comfortable, and all of those problems seemed very far away. A problem for later Peter.
“Maybe,” he admitted. “Try not to get yourself strangled by a radioactive octopus, though. We have enough trouble keeping track of all our gloves as it is.” He hesitated, then added, “And I like you the way you are.”
“You too, you know,” Johnny said with a jaw-cracking yawn. He put his hand over the middle of Peter’s, adding, “Exactly the way you are.”