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“Hmm.” Peter squinted at the cracked screen of one of his student’s phones. He raised a brow, faking inquisitiveness (internally, he was screaming). “That guy does look uncannily like me. And that’s, uh, one of the Fantastic Four, right?”
He mentally berated himself. Uncannily? He never used that word. And pretending not to know Johnny Storm, whose face was plastered on almost every ad in the city? Rookie move. But, in Peter’s defense, he hadn’t expected Maria to ambush him right after class, shoving her phone in his face and demanding, “Is this you?”
The picture in question must have been taken the previous evening when Peter and Johnny had their Tuesday date night. Peter’s face was, thankfully, angled toward the ground as Johnny leaned in to kiss his cheek, their hands intertwined, so it wasn’t obviously Peter in the picture. However, there was enough that his students were recognizing him; their stares and whispers throughout the day were beginning to make sense.
Peter loved his job. He really, really did—but sometimes the job was murder. And he’d quickly learned upon taking the position that nothing was deadlier than the high school gossip mill.
Sure enough, Maria wasn’t buying it. She was staring at him like she’d never seen him before, brown eyes blown wide and mouth hanging agape. “It is you,” she breathed. “Oh. My. God .”
“What? No.” Peter laughed unconvincingly. His hands started sweating; he wiped them discreetly on his pants. “Don’t you, uh, don’t you have to get to your next class?”
“School’s over,” Maria whispered. She was still staring. Peter could hear shuffling out in the hallway—eavesdroppers. Probably Maria’s gaggle of friends, because unlike Peter, she was a popular student. With dawning horror, he realized that all it would take was a few tweets to completely upend his life.
He cleared his throat. “A ride to catch, then.”
“I drive myself.”
That was just unfair, in Peter’s opinion. Who drove in New York?
Maria was typing furiously on her phone now, brow furrowed—Peter was just glad she finally stopped staring. He began gathering up his papers and stuffing them into his briefcase—he normally stayed at the school for an hour or so after the students left, but he had a feeling this was only the beginning of the interrogations and he didn’t want to stick around for them. He’d just skirted around his desk when Maria looked up again.
“Twitter says you’re dating Johnny Storm,” she told him.
“Twitter lies,” Peter responded. “Really, that’s not how you should get your news.”
He entered the hallway. A sea of eyes stared back at him—including some of Peter’s colleagues—and he sucked in a breath, feeling horribly on display. He wondered, briefly, if it would be better to try and get out through the window. But no—his classroom was on the second floor. Because of course it was. Braving the crowd it was.
“Mr. Parker—”
Peter whirled around to face Maria, who was coming out of the classroom. She was holding out her phone, trying to show him some sort of BuzzFeed article she’d pulled up, but he held out his hands to stop her.
“My personal life,” he said firmly, “stays at home. So… that’s where I’m heading. Good afternoon everyone, if you’re my student you have a test tomorrow, study hard, I’ll know if you don’t—bye!”
Then, with agility afforded to him by ten years of being Spider-Man, he slipped through the crowd and raced outside. The bus ride home was thankfully uneventful; the picture really wasn’t that revealing unless someone was already familiar with Peter’s face. Still, his heart thumped rapidly in his chest and he sat tensed the entire ride. Ten minutes in, he gave in to his curiosity and pulled out his phone.
There were tons of notifications, mostly from Johnny and Sue, asking if he was okay and assuring him that the media hadn’t gotten wind of his identity. There were a few “I’m sorrys” from Johnny, so Peter made sure to shoot off a text relieving him of any guilt; neither of them had seen that photographer. Peter was actually irritated that he hadn’t sensed whoever had photographed them, but he supposed he’d been pretty wrapped up in Johnny.
He sat back in his seat and ran his hands through his hair. The woman beside him glanced over at the noise, but she turned away once she realized he wasn’t anything special. Peter wondered what would happen if she knew who his boyfriend was.
If he lost his anonymity, he might strangle Johnny. He doubted it would get to the point where he was recognized on the street—he wasn’t a celebrity himself, after all, and Johnny had had many partners who remained fairly anonymous—but he really didn’t want to have to deal with students filming him during class, or asking questions that could get him in trouble, or… any of it, really.
His mind was still bogged down by images of being hounded by students and coworkers when he entered the apartment. Immediately, warm arms wrapped around Peter; he instinctively returned the embrace, relaxing a little in his boyfriend’s hold.
“Reed got control of the picture,” Johnny mumbled into Peter’s shoulder. “It’s down, but loads of people have seen it—I don’t think anyone could recognize you, and you don’t really have a social media presence, so…”
“My students know,” Peter said, his grip tightening on Johnny’s shoulders. “I told them I wouldn’t be talking about my personal life, but… well.”
“I’m so sorry.” Johnny’s voice was laced with guilt. Peter frowned—this really wasn’t Johnny’s fault—but the Human Torch continued before Peter could cut off that line of thinking. “I know how much your privacy means to you, but we were so careful… I feel awful.”
“Hey.” Peter pressed a firm kiss against his boyfriend’s jaw, trying to convey just how much he loved him. “This isn’t ideal, but it’s hardly the end of the world. We’ll take it a day at a time, and it’ll blow over soon. You’ll see.”
He wasn’t as confident as his tone, but he did have faith in the Four’s PR team. Johnny had once had a sex tape publicly released; this was nothing compared to that.
“Sure.” Johnny still sounded miserable. When he pulled away, Peter saw that his eyes were red. Concern flooded him, but Johnny was already walking toward the living room. “Sue wants me to call the publicist tonight—you might want to listen in to the call.”
“Okay,” Peter agreed hesitantly. He’d never considered how Johnny might be reacting to the sudden reveal of their relationship, and he was having a hard time getting a good reading on the other man. It was unclear exactly what was bothering him; he’d had worse secrets outed to the public and he’d barely batted an eye. “Want to order takeout? Watch a movie, take it easy?”
There was a brief silence. Peter followed him into the living room, greeted by the sight of Johnny bracing himself against the loveseat. Peter set down his briefcase and walked around the room, pulling the blinds and curtains. Once he’d finished, he moved over to Johnny and wrapped his arms around his boyfriend. Wordlessly, he guided Johnny around the loveseat so they could sit down, and they sat huddled together for several minutes before Johnny finally spoke.
“A movie sounds good.” His voice was gruff, but Peter simply nodded and picked up the remote. A minute later, a pizza was on its way to them and Love Actually was playing on the television. Johnny snorted when he realized what movie Peter had chosen.
“Wrong season for this,” he observed, but Peter was having none of it.
“Please, you love this movie,” he scoffed, and Johnny laughed and snuggled closer.
“Yeah,” he admitted, starting to sound a little more like himself. “Yeah, I do.”
They settled back to watch the movie, and nothing more was said. They could deal with everything in the morning; right now, Peter was focused on taking care of his boyfriend.