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lady-hammerlock · 2 years

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The Trouble With Secret Identities - Chapter 1/9 (Spider-Man, Otto x Peter)

Summary: Peter Parker has been in love with his mentor and friend Doctor Otto Octavius for a while. He isn't planning to do anything about it, until one day Spider-Man and Otto Octavius's paths cross, and Doctor Octavius ends up with a not-so-secret crush on Spider-Man. Now Peter not only has to hide his feelings for Otto, which is getting harder and harder as Otto and Spider-Man grow closer, but he also has to make sure that Otto doesn't find out that Spider-Man and Peter Parker are one and the same person.

Oh yeah, and there's also the fact that three of Spider-Man's worst enemies have broken out from the Raft, and Peter has no idea what they're planning.

Takes place in a vague mix of canons, with whatever versions of Peter and Otto you want to mentally cast.

AN: It occurred to me that this pairing didn't have this sort of fic just yet. This sort of fic being false love triangle shenanigans involving secret identities, with a decent amount of fluff and pining thrown in for good measure. As the summary says, this fic takes place in a vague mix of canons, although it has certainly been inspired by both the video game and the Raimi movie universes and versions of the characters. Feel free to imagine any version of the characters that you want while reading this, although it should be noted that in this story Peter is in his mid 20s, and Doctor Octavius is somewhere in his 50s. Also, when this story begins, Doctor Octavius isn't Doctor Octopus just yet. We will get there though.

I have this whole fic planned out, but large chunks of it have not been written yet, so I'm not sure how long it is going to be, or how regular the updates will be. With that said, I hope you all enjoy it, and as usual, the full fic is under the cut.

CHAPTER ONE

Peter Parker had a problem, and its name was Doctor Otto Octavius.

Said problem was currently leaning over a workbench and humming as he worked, and it was one of the most adorable things that Peter had ever seen. Peter was well aware that the man was in his fifties, and probably wouldn’t appreciate Peter using the word ‘adorable’ to describe him, even if it was only mentally, but Peter couldn’t help it.

He had admired Otto Octavius for years. At first it had been purely because of his work with robotic prosthetics, and his desire to make the world a better place through his creations. Peter had followed his career with interest since he had first found out about the other man’s work at the tender age of fourteen, and had to admit that he might have even developed something of a crush on Doctor Octavius when he had been a teenager. Back then it had just been a silly crush, like other people in his school had developed for celebrities or superheroes, with absolutely no chance of Doctor Octavius ever even noticing him, let alone returning his feelings.

And then university had come, and his friend Harry had pulled a few strings to get him an interview to intern with Doctor Octavius. Peter had arrived ten minutes late from stopping a mugging on the way to the interview, with his hair and clothes both an absolute mess. He was sure that he had blown the interview, and that his hero Otto Octavius wouldn’t even want to talk to him, let alone take him on as an intern, but it turned out that Doctor Octavius had completely lost track of time as well, and had been even less prepared to start the interview than Peter had.

Peter hadn’t been able to stop himself from marveling at all the machinery and disorganized chaos inside Doctor Octavius’s workshop as the older man had led him to an office, where the two of them sat down and spent the next two hours discussing Peter’s thesis and Doctor Octavius’s current work. Eventually Otto had invited Peter out for lunch, and what was initially supposed to be a ten minute interview ended up turning into the two of them spending more than half the day together.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Octavius had said upon checking his phone to discover that it was past three in the afternoon. “I’ve kept you for far longer than intended.”

“No, it’s completely fine,” Peter said, meaning every word. Spending half the day just discussing science with his hero had felt like a dream come true.

“When was your internship supposed to start?”

“Monday, two weeks from now,” Peter replied, hoping that he hadn’t somehow blown his chance. He found that he liked and admired Doctor Octavius even more after spending several hours with him. All the interviews and articles that he had read hadn’t quite managed to portray how warm and friendly Otto Octavius was in person, or how his eyes lit up when he was talking about his work.

“All right then,” Otto said, extending his hand for a handshake. Peter grabbed it in his own and tried not think about how warm and comfortable the older man’s hand felt as it wrapped firmly around his own. “I look forward to seeing you in two weeks.”

The internship had been amazing, and the end of it, despite Peter’s consistent problems with punctuality and reliability, Doctor Octavius had offered him a job. Peter had accepted without hesitation, and for the past six months he had been working as Doctor Octavius’s lab assistant. It was by far the best job that Peter had ever had. He had never imagined that he might enjoy a job as much as he did working alongside Doctor Octavius.

The problem was that what had started as a crush on Doctor Octavius had only gotten worse as Peter had worked with him and gotten to know him for real. Every coffee Doctor Octavius had bought him, and every smile the older man had sent his way just made Peter fall that little bit more in love with him.

Now Peter had no choice but to accept the fact that he was madly, hopelessly in love with Otto Octavius, and he didn’t think that his feelings for the older man were going to go away any time soon. Otto Octavius was charismatic, friendly, and brilliantly intelligent. In fact, Peter was a little surprised that Doctor Octavius hadn’t found someone to settle down with already. The only way he could explain it was the fact that the older man was incredibly committed to his work, and tended to keep odd hours, sometimes working long into the night if he was particularly invested in whatever project he was currently working on. It was one of the reasons he didn’t seem to mind if Peter sometimes showed up late to work. After all, Peter often stayed at the lab with him on those late nights, at least as long as there wasn’t any crime that immediately demanded Peter’s attention.

There was also the fact that Peter not only hadn’t told Otto Octavius about his feelings for him, he also hadn’t told him that he was Spider-Man, and wasn’t sure that he ever could. As far as he was concerned, the fewer people knew about his secret identity, the better. It meant that his secret would be easier to keep, and that the people that he cared about would be in less danger. So far only his friend and ex-girlfriend Mary Jane knew the truth, and that was because Peter had shown up one night at her door with several broken ribs and a large gash on his arm.

So far it had been easy enough for Peter to hide the fact that he was Spider-Man from Doctor Octavius, but he had a feeling it would become infinitely more difficult if they were to ever start a romantic relationship. Trying to explain his unexpectedly toned body or the faint scars that covered his torso would be difficult enough, and Peter knew from experience that blowing off dates in order to save the city really didn't do wonders for a romantic relationship, even if they did know that he was Spider-Man.

It wasn’t just Peter’s identity that gave him pause either. There was also the age difference, and the fact that he was Doctor Octavius’s employee. Neither of those things worried Peter all that much, but he knew that they might be an issue for Doctor Octavius. After all, he knew Doctor Octavius well enough to know that the man was nothing if not good, and that he wouldn’t be interested in a relationship with Peter if he thought that there was even the slightest chance that he might be abusing his authority.

Peter wished that he would be interested though, no matter how inappropriate a relationship between them might be. He had found himself daydreaming about Doctor Octavius pinning him against one of their workbenches and kissing him senseless more times than he could count. He tried not to let himself linger too long on such thoughts while he was at work however. The last thing he wanted was to get caught staring at Doctor Octavius’s lips or getting lost in his eyes.

Like he was doing right at that moment. Well, if he was being completely honest, he had been staring at Doctor Octavius’s entire face this time, instead of just his eyes or mouth. He had just looked so relaxed and happy, and Peter couldn’t help but wonder if the older man had realised that he was humming, or if he was so focussed on his work that he had just started humming without really realising it.

“Come on. Focus Pete,” he thought to himself. “You can daydream about your boss at home, where there is zero chance of him catching you staring at him like a creep.”

Peter allowed himself one last little fond glance, before forcing himself to return to his work.

After a while Doctor Octavius’s humming came to a stop. Peter missed the soft, relaxing sound, but only for a moment, because Doctor Octavius quickly chose to fill the silence.

“How is the wiring on that panel looking?” he asked.

“Good,” Peter replied. “I think I’ve managed to get the lag down to under five microseconds.”

“Five microseconds? Really?” Doctor Octavius said, looking up from his own work for a moment to smile over at Peter, which really didn’t help Peter with his whole ‘being madly in love with Doctor Octavius’ problem.

“Yeah,” Peter replied, returning Doctor Octavius’s smile.

The older man moved from his own workstation to stand beside Peter and look over his work.

“I think we can probably increase the power input if we reroute the central panel through something like the converter that you were hypothesizing the other day as well,” Peter added.

Otto lifted the wiring panel that Peter had been working on carefully up by little more than the tips of his fingers so that he could examine it closer, before turning to give Peter another beaming grin.

“Extraordinary work Peter,” he said, and Peter hoped with all his might that he wasn’t blushing. He felt like he might be blushing. “You never cease to impress me. Did you know that?”

“I try,” Peter replied, giving the older man what he hoped was a cocky grin that definitely did not give away his feelings for the older man or the fact that his heart felt like it was beating twice as hard as usual. “Although maybe I should start slacking off once in a while. Can’t have your expectations for me being too high or I won’t be able to keep up with them.”

Doctor Octavius just chuckled and shook his head at Peter. That was another thing about the older man that Peter adored and was extremely grateful for. Doctor Octavius did not seem to have a problem with Peter’s terrible habit of joking about things whenever he was stressed, or nervous, or when the silence had gone on for just a second too long, or whenever he couldn’t think of anything better to say. Not everyone appreciated that particular habit of his, including a lot of the criminals that he dealt with as Spider-Man, and on a slightly more depressing note, MJ. His ‘inability to take anything seriously’ had been one of several reasons she had cited for their eventual breakup.

Doctor Octavius pretended to think the matter through for a moment.

“I suppose you’re allowed to slack off, on the condition that I am as well,” the older man concluded, before placing the wiring that Peter had been working on back down on the work bench, and pausing to check the time. “And considering that it’s almost six o’clock, I’d say that the two of us have earned our slacking off time. I’m going to grab some Chinese. You’re welcome to come if you want. My shout.”

Chinese with Doctor Octavius sounded amazing, but Peter knew that he couldn’t go with the older man. There had been a Raft breakout a couple of nights earlier, with several of Peter’s most dangerous enemies having apparently teamed up and found a way to escape the prison together. Peter had set up his crime monitoring system to ping him if there was any sign of the escaped supervillains, and while there hadn’t been any news throughout the day, he knew that he needed to go out on patrol that evening and try to track down the Raft escapees before they could do too much damage.

“I’d love to Doc,” Peter said, absolutely meaning it. “But I already promised my Aunt that I’d have dinner with her tonight.”

He wished that he didn’t have to keep lying to the people that he loved. It was one part of being a superhero that he absolutely hated, and which never got any easier, but he didn’t really have a choice.

“Of course,” Doctor Octavius said. “Your family comes first.”

“All right,” Peter said. “Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow morning?”

“See you tomorrow Peter,” Doctor Octavius said, giving Peter another smile which made Peter’s heart beat too fast.

Several hours later Peter was perched on the corner of a rooftop, surveying the nearby city and listening to the police radio for any mention at all of the escaped criminals, or any other crimes that he should attend to.

It was quiet. Much quieter than he had been expecting considering Scorpion, the Lizard and Rhino were all on the loose.

He had spent several hours the previous night investigating the breakout and trying to track down the three escaped supervillains. Usually Rhino left a trail of destruction several blocks wide, but this time he had done a remarkably good job of leaving little in the way of a trail for Peter to follow, which made Peter suspect that the three escaped prisoners were still working together, Scorpion and Doctor Connors assisting or instructing Rhino so that the three of them could make a more stealthy getaway.

The evening was turning out to be a lot quieter than Peter had been expecting, and so he found his thoughts wandering, as they so often did these days, to Doctor Octavius. He was starting to wish that he had accepted Doctor Octavius’s offer of grabbing Chinese together after all.

A small, foolish part of Peter had wondered if maybe Doctor Octavius had meant for the two of them getting Chinese together to be a date. He knew that it was a foolish thing to think. They had gotten dinner together plenty of times before after all, just as friends and colleagues, and even if Doctor Octavius had meant it as a date, it wouldn’t have changed the fact that Peter wouldn’t have been able to join him. Doctor Octavius didn’t seem particularly upset by Peter’s declining however, which then made Peter wonder if Doctor Octavius hadn't really desired Peter’s company at all, and had just invited Peter to be polite.

Peter tried to tell himself that he was just over-analysing Doctor Octavius’s behaviour. Oh, and that being in love absolutely sucked.

He remembered going through something similar with MJ when they were still in high school together. He had spent far too much time worrying about what she thought of him, and constantly worried about whether he looked like a total fool whenever he talked to her.

He was lucky that he didn’t seem to have that problem with Doctor Octavius. Talking to the older man seemed to come as easily to him as breathing. Doctor Octavius was the only person that Peter had ever met that got as excited by a reaction cascade or a potential minor breakthrough as Peter did, and whenever Peter did open his mouth and say something that was monumentally dorky or stupid, Otto Octavius usually just smiled at him and shook his head, or let out a soft little chuckle. He was the only person that Peter felt he could be one hundred percent himself around, without fear of mockery or reprisal.

If only Peter could show Doctor Octavius the part of him that was Spider-Man as well.

“Maybe I should just tell him,” Peter whispered to the night sky, not even sure himself whether he meant telling Doctor Octavius about his feelings or about his identity as Spider-Man.

“What am I even talking about?” Peter immediately chastised himself. “I can’t tell him. I could lose my job.”

And even more than he wanted to kiss Otto Octavius or tell him the truth, Peter just wanted to keep working alongside the other man. They were so close to a breakthrough, to improving the lives of thousands of people around the world, and the possibility of not being there when that happened, of not seeing the smile on Doctor Octavius’s face when all of their hard work finally paid off, of never again hearing him humming softly or muttering to himself while he was working, was one that Peter didn’t even want to consider.

Peter caught himself thinking about Doctor Octavius’s smile again, and lightly slapped himself on the side of the face. He had escaped supervillains to worry about after all.

“Come on. Focus Pete,” he told himself, not for the first time that day.

He listened in as a new report came in over the police radio.

“All officers, we have a hostage situation taking place in the West Village. Several armed perpetrators have taken a bus hostage. Repeat, we have a hostage situation. All available officers, please proceed to the West Village and await further instruction.”

“Well it doesn’t sound like the Raft escapees, but it's still something I should definitely check out,” Peter decided, before swinging off in the direction of the West Village.

Doctor Octavius’s evening wasn’t going so well. The day had started out pleasantly enough. Working with Peter at his side was always nice, and the project that they were working on was coming ahead in leaps and bounds. At the rate they were going they were probably going to be able to move into the testing phase in the next couple of weeks, which was incredibly exciting. After years of work and countless struggles the end was almost in sight, and he wasn’t sure that he ever would have been able to manage it without the younger man’s help.

He was disappointed that Peter hadn’t been able to join him for dinner of course, but it was probably for the best. He knew that his relationship with Peter had been growing more and more unprofessional of late. Of course they worked together perfectly fine in the lab, but Otto knew that it couldn’t and shouldn’t become more than that. He just hoped that Peter didn’t already find his familiarity off-putting or inappropriate. After working with Peter for so long he could hardly imagine going back to working without him, and wasn’t sure how he had ever coped before the younger man had come along.

He supposed that was one downside to having sacrificed so much of his life in pursuit of his scientific ambitions. It had left him little time for a social life, and if he was being honest with himself then he would admit that he had been desperately lonely before Peter had come along.

He had enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine with dinner that night; something that he wouldn’t have allowed himself if Peter had been accompanying him, and had tried to relax and just enjoy himself. However, considering that he was dining alone and didn’t have any company to distract him, he soon discovered that his brain would not be silent, no matter how much he might wish otherwise, and he had ended up sketching out a couple of ideas on a table napkin and making a couple of notes on his phone.

He had taken his time and lingered in the Chinese restaurant for a lot longer than he normally would have, waiting for his mind to clear a little before he attempted the trip home.

Now he was wishing that he hadn’t; that he had either chosen to forgo the second glass of wine entirely, or that he had just eaten and gotten the hell out of there, because the bus that Otto Octavius had caught was currently being held hostage.

There were three men on the bus that he could see, and at least another three of them outside. All of them held guns, and none of them were bothering to hide their faces. They were well dressed too. Otto certainly wasn’t an expert on these matters, but if he had to guess then he would have said that the attackers were career criminals; Maggia or one of the other crime families.

“Listen up!” yelled a big guy that Otto assumed was the leader of group, waving a semi-automatic rifle around in the air as he spoke. “If you lot want to get out of this alive, then you’re going to do exactly what me and my friends here tell you to do. You got it? No heroics and no disobedience. You behave yourselves and we might just let you live to see tomorrow.”

The big guy paused to point his gun at an older woman near the front of the bus, and Otto found himself holding his breath in fear.

“On the other hand, if you do anything that I don’t like, then me and my boys will have no problem shooting you. You got it?”

The poor woman looked terrified, and Otto couldn’t blame her. Their captors were obviously reckless and had a complete disregard for human life if they were willing to stoop to threatening an old woman so callously, and Otto found himself filled with an immediate disgust and hatred for the group’s leader in particular.

“Any objections?” the leader asked.

The bus stayed mostly silent. Otto could hear someone near the back of the bus crying, and the old woman let out a small, scared-sounding whimper as the leader of the group finally pointed his gun away from her.

“No?” he continued. “Good. Then you all better hope that the cops want to play nice too.”

Peter hung back for a moment and tried to get a good look at the situation. Several police cars had already arrived by the time that he had, and they had cordoned off a section of the road. The bus was reasonably full. As far as Peter could tell from his current distance, the criminals had roughly twenty hostages.

Peter could spot six criminals, three of them on the bus and three of them patrolling outside, and all of them had semi-automatic weapons. That would make things a little more difficult. He needed to find some way to draw them away from their hostages, otherwise there was a very serious risk that some of the hostages would get hurt.

Peter held back as the hostage negotiator stepped forward from the police line, megaphone in hand. Peter only half-listened as he tried the usual friendly introductions and attempts to calm the criminals and stop them from doing anything rash. Instead Peter kept a close eye on the bus, watching the movements of the gunmen. One of the men on the bus soon stepped outside, approaching the police negotiator with a grin on his face.

That left only two gunmen on the bus. Peter tried to calculate whether it was worth moving yet. He knew would feel a bit more confident if he was able to get a closer look at what was happening inside, and quickly zipped over to the other side of the street where he could more easily see inside the bus, hoping as he did that none of the gunmen would spot him crawling down the side of the building.

“If you tell me what you want then I promise I’ll do whatever I can to help,” Peter heard the police negotiator say.

Peter was reasonably sure that he knew what the hostage takers wanted. He had dealt with the Maggia enough times to know them when he saw them, and he also knew that Hammerhead had been arrested a couple of weeks earlier and was currently in police custody awaiting trial.

“We want you to let our boss go,” the leader replied. “He’s being held unlawfully, and you need to let him go straight away, or this bus full of people is gonna get it.”

Hammerhead wasn’t the most subtle guy in organized crime, but Peter had a hard time believing that he would sanction anything this reckless, or this public. He had a feeling that the Maggia ringleader wasn’t going to get the promotion or the pat on the back that he was probably hoping for the next time he saw Hammerhead. In fact, he would probably be lucky if Hammerhead only broke a few of his bones.

Peter tuned out the rest of the conversation as the hostage negotiator and the Maggia ringleader started to discuss things in more detail, instead focussing on the bus and trying to pick a good moment to move.

The two Maggia gunmen that were left in the bus seemed to be too busy picking on their hostages to have noticed Peter's approach. Thankfully it didn’t look like there were any children on board, but there was one man closer to the front that Peter found himself focussing on for some reason.

Oh god. It was Doctor Octavius. Peter’s mentor, friend and unrequited love was one of the hostages on the bus.

“Okay Pete,” he told himself. “Just stay calm. It’s not like you haven’t dealt with similar situations to this before. This doesn’t change anything.”

Only it did change things. It changed how nervous he was about the situation if nothing else.

Peter forced himself to be calm and to focus on the situation at hand. Doctor Octavius didn’t look as though he had been hurt, and neither did any of the other people on the bus. That was hopefully a good sign. Maybe the Maggia gunmen could be reasoned with. Peter wasn’t willing to bet on that though, especially not when a man near the back of the bus got to his feet and one of the gunmen started to wave his rifle at him.

Things on the bus were growing tense. As soon as the leader of the group had left to negotiate with the police, the two goons that had been left behind started waving their guns around and demanding that people hand over their valuables. Otto suspected that robbery hadn’t been part of their leader’s original plan, and everyone on the bus was starting to get restless.

“Come on, I said to hand over your jewellery,” one of the goons said as he waved his rifle vaguely in the direction of a young woman near the back of the bus.

“I don’t have anything,” the woman protested.

“That’s a load of bull,” the gunman said, waving his gun around in a careless fashion that spoke of a complete lack of regard for safety or trigger discipline. Otto was surprised that none of their guns had actually gone off yet, considering how reckless they were being with them.

“I can see that big hunk of rock on your hand,” the gunman continued. “Now hand it over.”

The woman sounded like she was on the brink of tears.

“Please, no,” she begged. “It’s my wedding ring.”

The man that had been sitting next to her got to his feet and frowned at the nearest gunman, and Otto found himself tensing, expecting the situation to devolve into violence at any second.

“You know how long it took my friend to save up to buy her that!?” the man yelled at the goon. “It took him years, and then they weren’t even married for much more than a year when some asshole like you came along and killed him.”

Otto couldn’t stand it anymore. He got to his feet, putting his hands up as he did so. The gunman that had been standing near the front of the bus immediately turned to point his gun at Otto.

“Sit back down!” he demanded. “Now!”

And that at least was enough to get the attention of the second gunman as well, who had now turned away from the sobbing woman and her irate friend to face Otto as well.

“Come on now,” Otto said, trying to speak in as gentle a tone as he could muster. “Let’s all just calm down now, all right? There’s no need for anyone to get hurt.”

“Yeah?” the second gunman goaded him. “You want some attention? How about you cough up what you’ve got instead then, huh?”

“All I have on me is my phone and my wallet,” Otto said. “My phone’s a few years out of date and there’s no cash in my wallet, but if they’ll stop this from devolving any further then they’re all yours.”

He was loathe to give up his phone, if only because of all of the photos and memories on it that he had never backed up, but he would much rather hand it over than see any of the other passengers on the bus get shot.

He began to slowly reach into the pocket of his jacket for his phone and wallet, but before he could pull either of them out the radio that sat on the belt of the gunman near the front of the bus buzzed into life, and the gunman stopped to answer it.

“Yeah?” the gunman answered. Otto tried to hear what the man on the other end of the call was saying. He couldn’t make out anything clearly, but he was fairly certain that the call had to have come from the leader of the group.

“Yeah, okay,” the gunman replied, before ending the conversation and putting the radio back on his belt.

He took a couple of steps towards Otto, and poked him with the barrel of his rifle.

“You,” he said, frowning at Otto. “You want to play at being a big hero so much, then you can come outside and see what happens when people like you go sticking your neck out.”

The gunman gestured for Otto to move to the front of the bus. Otto complied, still keeping his hands up and hoping that this wasn’t going to end with his death. He spared a thought for those he might leave behind if everything went wrong, and found that his thoughts lingered on just one person.

“If this ends badly,” he thought to himself, “then I’m sorry Peter. We were so close to doing something amazing.”

Peter watched closely as one of the gunmen marched one of the hostages out of the bus at gunpoint. Of course that hostage had to be Doctor Octavius, didn’t it? As if Peter wasn’t worried enough. It did mean however that there was only one gunman left on the bus. If Peter wanted to make a move then it needed to be now.

Unfortunately Doctor Octavius’s position meant that if anything went wrong, he was the most likely hostage to be injured or killed, but Peter forced himself to put that thought to the back of his mind.

He waited until one of the gunmen patrolling the outside of the bus was in a vulnerable position, grabbing him and webbing him to the side of a building as quietly as he could, and hoping as he did that none of the assembled police or hostages would give his presence away in their excitement.

He waited a couple of moments, but there were no cries of either excitement or anger, so Peter started scouting and looking for another guard that was safe to take out. Soon enough another two had joined the first, meaning that there was just the leader, the man on the bus, and the man that had a gun pointed straight at Doctor Octavius’s head.

“If you don’t give me something right now then Vinnie here will blow this guy’s head off!” the leader of the group yelled, loudly enough that Peter couldn’t help but hear the threat.

It seemed like negotiations were starting to break down. As much as Peter wanted to swoop down and save Doctor Octavius, he knew that he needed to ensure the safety of the hostages on the bus first.

He landed on top of the bus as quietly as he could, before crawling inside the bus door. Unfortunately the gunman inside the bus chose that exact moment to turn around. Peter’s spider sense tipped him off a moment before the man actually turned around and spotted him, but there wasn’t really any way for Peter to hide when he had been crawling along the ceiling of the bus.

Instead of hiding he dropped down and immediately fired a web towards the gunman, pulling the rifle out of his hands. He then pounced on the criminal, but he wasn’t quite fast enough.

“Hey, it’s Spider-M…” the Maggia goon managed to yell out before Peter’s fist made contact with his face and promptly knocked him out.

He fired an extra couple of webs to make sure that the Maggia goon wouldn’t be getting to his feet any time soon, before running for the open bus door as quickly as he could, hoping as he did that he hadn’t just gotten Doctor Octavius killed.

The criminal leader and the one holding a gun to Otto’s head immediately turned around when they heard their compatriot’s cry from inside the bus.

When asked about it later Otto wouldn’t have been able to say why he did what he did just then. All he knew was that he saw a blur of red and blue emerging from the bus that he knew must be Spider-Man, and that at least two semi-automatic rifles were being brought around to aim at the superhero.

Otto threw himself at the man that had been holding a gun to his head only moments earlier, sending them both flying to the ground.

The criminal unfortunately recovered more quickly than Otto had, and managed to push Otto off quickly, before bringing his gun back up to point it right at Otto once more. Otto thought that he was done for; that this was surely how he was going to die; but the criminal’s gun suddenly flew backwards out of his hands, Spider-Man’s webbing quickly yanking it out of his grip as though it had never been there to begin with.

What happened afterwards was a blur. Something barrelled straight into Otto and then he was quite literally being swept off his feet. There was the sound of gunfire, which was quickly cut off, and then Otto was flying through the air in the arms of Spider-Man.

Later, when he would have time to think back on the events of that evening and make sense of them, he would be able to work out the sequence of events as follows. The gunman that Doctor Octavius had tackled had been about to shoot him, so Spider-Man had used his webbing to pull the gun away. In the meantime the leader of the group of criminals had also turned around and set his sights on Otto, pointing his gun at him. Spider-Man had been quicker though, and had jumped at Otto, grabbing him and pulling him out of the line of fire, before grabbing the leader’s gun with his webbing as well and swinging away with Otto in his arms.

When Otto realised that Spider-Man was carrying him, he found himself marvelling at the superhero’s strength. Otto wasn’t a small man after all, certainly not as small and lithe as Spider-Man himself was, and yet the costumed hero was carrying Otto with so much ease, as though he barely weighed anything at all.

Spider-Man gently placed Otto down on a nearby rooftop. Otto was still processing everything that had just happened, but somehow managed to find his voice.

“You just saved my life,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Well, I couldn’t let a guy as brave and handsome as you are get hurt now, could I?” Spider-Man said, before his mask did the best approximation of a wink that it probably could.

Otto’s heart was pounding, and while it was mostly due to the fact that he had just nearly died, he would also admit that it was partially because Spider-Man had just flirted with him. That was what had just happened, wasn’t it? Somehow, amidst all the madness, Spider-Man had taken a moment to flirt with him.

“You just stay safe up here and I’ll come back and grab you in a moment, all right?” Spider-Man said, pausing to give Otto another wink and… were those finger-guns? Before jumping off the building and swinging back down to help the police take down the last two criminals.

Otto glanced around to see three of the other perpetrators webbed to various buildings, and realised that Spider-Man must have already taken them out without alerting anyone. It was all extremely impressive really, and he couldn’t help but watch in awe as Spider-Man made short work of the gang’s leader.

“Incredible,” Otto whispered under his breath as he watched. “Absolutely incredible.”

Peter took a moment to reassure the hostages on the bus and make sure that everyone was okay, before touching base super quickly with the police and getting chastised for ‘reckless endangerment,’ as he knew that he would.

He then returned to the rooftop on which he had deposited Doctor Octavius, so glad to see the older man alive that he almost couldn’t contain it. The adrenaline was still flowing through Peter’s veins thanks to the stressful hostage situation and the subsequent combat, but seeing Otto Octavius alive and well despite everything that had just happened made Peter want to take his mask off, run over to the other man and kiss him senseless.

He didn’t though. Instead he landed on the roof right in front of Doctor Octavius, and grinning like an idiot beneath the mask, sent Doctor Octavius the most casual wave he could summon.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I don’t usually just abandon heroes like yourself on rooftops like this. Scouts honour.”

“I’m no hero,” Doctor Octavius immediately insisted. “I’m just a man who ended up in the wrong place. You however…”

“Oh, and he’s a charmer as well,” Peter replied, before cringing a little at his own words. “Seriously though, you did great back there. Is there anywhere in particular you want me to drop you off?”

“My apartment is only a couple of blocks from here,” Doctor Octavius said.

Of course Peter had already known that, but at least he remembered to ask Doctor Octavius for directions before picking him up and then swinging off in the direction of his apartment building.

Doctor Octavius clung to Spider-Man and kept staring up at him with such open admiration that Peter was glad for the mask all over again, if only so Doctor Octavius wouldn’t be able to see how much he was blushing.

Peter was used to people clinging to him and gazing up at him like that, but it was different when it was someone that he had been secretly pining over for months. For just a moment he let himself consider the idea that maybe Doctor Octavius wasn’t so out of reach after all, or at least he wasn’t for Spider-Man. Peter Parker probably still didn’t stand a chance.

Soon Peter had gently put Doctor Octavius back on his feet near the front door to his building. Doctor Octavius finally stopped staring at him, and took a moment to straighten out his clothing.

“Well, thank you for the help Spider-Man,” Doctor Octavius said.

He nearly put his hand out to offer it to Spider-Man to shake, but then quickly seemed to think better of it and pulled it back before Peter could even react.

“No problem,” Peter said. “It’s kind of what I do.”

“Not just for today I mean,” Doctor Octavius said. “The work that you do every day out there in the city is incredible, and I don’t think you get enough appreciation for it.”

“Thanks,” Peter said, knowing that he was blushing beneath his mask again. “But you were pretty great out there today too, you know.”

He also knew for a fact that Doctor Octavius had spent most of his life trying to improve the lives of others. If anyone deserved a little extra appreciation it was him.

“You uh… need me to accompany you up to your apartment too?” Peter asked, and then watched as a small blush appeared on Doctor Octavius’s cheeks and over his nose as well.

Oh no. That sounded really bad, didn’t it? Totally inappropriate for Spider-Man to be saying to someone he had just rescued. He hadn’t even meant it like that, had he? Or perhaps he had. He tended to speak first and regret his choice of words afterwards when he was Spider-Man.

“Not like that,” Peter immediately corrected himself. “I mean… Sorry.”

The blush did not disappear from Doctor Octavius’s face, and a warm smile, the sort of warm smile that always made Peter fall a little bit more in love with Otto Octavius whenever he saw it, appeared on the older man’s face.

Well, at least Peter hadn’t upset him.

“Well, you take care of yourself, all right?” Peter said, giving Doctor Octavius a little wave and turning to leave before he made an even bigger fool of himself than he already had.

“You too Spider-Man,” Doctor Octavius replied, and then Peter was bounding off and swinging back up to the rooftops.

“Damn it Pete,” Peter chastised himself as he continued to swing away from Doctor Octavius’s apartment as quickly as he possibly could. “’Do you need me to accompany you up to your apartment?’ What the hell was I thinking? Oh, ‘and he’s a charmer too’?”

Peter groaned as he continued to swing on, completely mortified by his own behaviour.

He came to a stop on one of the nearby roofs, knowing that he needed at least a little break to get his thoughts back in order.

“I should not have flirted with him,” Peter told himself, as he cringed while he mentally replayed every cringe-worthy thing that he had said to Doctor Octavius that evening. “Oh well, at least I had my mask on for all of that.”

What Peter didn’t see however, was Otto Octavius standing outside his apartment and watching Spider-Man swing off into the distance, or the soft smile that appeared on his face as he did so.

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#my fic #spider-man #peter parker #otto octavius #peter x otto #octopeter #doctor octopus #spidervius

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lady-hammerlock · 2 years

Text

The Trouble With Secret Identities - Chapter 2/9 (Spider-Man, Otto x Peter)

AN: The next chapter is here. Things start to get a little spicy with this one. This fic is enormously fun to write, so I’m happy that some of you are enjoying reading it as well. As always, the full chapter is under the cut.

CHAPTER TWO

When Peter stepped into the lab the next day, he was greeted by a very exuberant Doctor Octavius, who immediately walked over to him and planted a hand on one of his shoulders.

“Peter!” Octavius exclaimed. “Good to see you. Come on in.”

The lab was a flurry of activity. It looked as though Doctor Octavius had already been working on their prosthetics project for several hours before Peter had arrived, and there was another project on one of the other benches that Peter had never seen before and couldn’t even make sense of.

“Would you like a coffee?” Doctor Octavius asked. “I’ll make you a coffee.”

The older man clapped his hand down on Peter’s shoulder again before making his way over to their little kitchenette before Peter could even reply. Peter wouldn’t lie though. A coffee did sound good, especially if he was going to keep up with the energetic mood that had seemingly taken hold of Doctor Octavius that morning.

“Someone’s in a good mood,” Peter commented.

He hadn’t known what to expect from Doctor Octavius after the events of the previous evening. Different people reacted to trauma and stressful situations in different ways after all.

He had thought about giving Doctor Octavius a call to check how the older man was doing after the hostage situation, but the news hadn’t given it all that much coverage, and Doctor Octavius’s face had been blurred out in any footage that he was in, so there wasn’t really any way that Peter Parker should have known that Doctor Octavius had been a part of the event. And so he had stayed silent, ready to put on his best shocked, caring, perfectly-normal-young-man impression if and when Doctor Octavius did mention the bus attack to him.

“I had a very eventful evening,” Doctor Octavius explained.

Well, Peter thought, that was certainly one way to put it.

“I hope it was the good sort of eventful,” Peter said.

“Well, most people probably wouldn’t say so,” Octavius said as he stirred Peter’s usual three sugars into his cup. “I don’t know if you would have seen any of the news coverage of it, but my bus last night was taken hostage by a group of very reckless and foolish Maggia.”

“Oh my god Doc,” Peter said, his concern for the older man incredibly easy to feign. “Are you okay?”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Doctor Octavius said, turning to give Peter a blindingly bright smile. “I don’t have a scratch on me.”

He handed Peter the cup of coffee, which Peter grabbed gratefully in both of his hands.

“We were lucky that Spider-Man showed up to save us,” Doctor Octavius continued, lifting his own cup of coffee in something approaching a toast. The two of them began to drink, Peter wondering as he did whether he’d accidentally made things more difficult for himself.

“In fact, he saved my life. You know, I’ve always admired his work,” Octavius continued as Peter paid his own coffee rather more attention than it probably deserved. “But I think it took seeing him in action myself for me to realize exactly how amazing he is.”

Peter almost choked on his coffee. Hearing his beloved mentor praising his alter ego so openly was making it very difficult for him to stay cool and rational. To make things even worse, Doctor Octavius was smiling so widely and so brightly as he spoke. Peter just knew that there was no way he was going to be able to get his racing heart back under control.

“Wow,” Peter said, trying to sound as casual as possible. “That’s… I mean… I’m just glad you’re all right. I guess I should be grateful to Spider-Man for keeping you alive and safe, huh?”

That prompted another smile from Doctor Octavius, before the older man paused and took a long sip of coffee from the green mug in his hand. The mug read “Evil Genius”, and Doctor Octavius had owned it for as long as Peter had known him. As far as Peter could tell there wasn’t an evil bone in the older man’s body, but the cup still made him smile.

“You have a way to get in contact with him right?” Doctor Octavius suddenly asked.

“What?” Peter asked, already trying to think two steps ahead, so that there was absolutely no chance of Doctor Octavius working out that Peter was, in fact, Spider-Man.

“You took pictures of him back when you worked for the Bugle, right?” Octavius said. “Surely you must have had some way of getting in contact with him?”

“I might be able to pass along a message or something, sure,” Peter replied, wondering where on earth this was going.

“It’s a little bit more than a message I’m afraid,” Doctor Octavius said, making his way over to one of the cluttered workbenches and gesturing for Peter to join him. “After seeing his tech at work I found myself feeling inspired. I spent a few hours last night and this morning working on a couple of things for him.”

Peter glanced over the wiring on the table and the tablet screen that Doctor Octavius had left open, trying to decipher whatever it was that Doctor Octavius had cooked up.

“It’s not quite ready yet,” the older man continued. “But when it is, do you think you could pass it along to him?”

“Sure,” Peter replied. “I’d be happy to.”

“Thank you Peter. I figured that it was the least I could do. Spider-Man saved my life after all, and he does so much for the city without ever asking for anything in return. It only seemed right that I should try and help him out in whatever way I can.”

Peter felt himself blushing again.

“You obviously admire Spider-Man a lot,” Peter said, grinning widely at Doctor Octavius. “It almost sounds like you have a crush on him.”

Peter had been joking, employing the same tactic that he had for years whenever he got nervous or uncomfortable. What he had not been expecting however was for a very warm and soft smile to appear on Doctor Octavius’s face.

“Maybe I do,” he said, sending that smile in Peter’s direction.

That was it. There was no way that Peter could possibly function any more. Doctor Octavius had just confessed to having a crush on him. Well, to having a crush on Spider-Man at any rate.

Peter quickly downed the rest of his coffee in one go, hoping that the action might hide his blush from Doctor Octavius at least a little bit, before taking the cup over to the kitchenette and busying himself with cleaning the cup and anything else within arm’s reach that looked even mildly dirty. Anything to avoid having to look Doctor Octavius in the eye for a couple more minutes.

Otto Octavius had a crush on Spider-Man, which meant that Otto Octavius sort of had a crush on Peter. Did that mean that he actually stood a chance with the older man? Or would Doctor Octavius ultimately be disappointed if he discovered that his beloved Spider-Man and the young man that he worked alongside every day were one and the same. Heck, what did that even matter for now? Doctor Octavius had a crush on Spider-Man!

Peter took a few deep breaths and tried to calm himself down. After all, he needed to act normal and not like a complete dork when he turned around to face Doctor Octavius again. There couldn’t be any blushing, and absolutely no sign that he was internally freaking out.

For just a moment Peter found himself wondering if it was at all possible for someone to be jealous of their own alter ego, before he took one last deep breath, straightened his lab coat, and then turned around to face Doctor Octavius once more.

“All right. That’s done,” Peter said, noting that Doctor Octavius had already resumed work on whatever design he was cooking up on the tablet. “What are we working on today, Doc?”

“So, do you need me to accompany you up to your apartment too?” Peter asked, and for once in his life he was super smooth and suave about it.

Otto Octavius smiled back at him, and it wasn’t quite the soft, warm smile that Peter was so madly in love with, but Peter still thought it was beautiful. There was something a little more devilish in Otto Octavius’s current smile. Something that promised all sorts of delicious, wicked things.

“Maybe I do,” Otto Octavius purred, taking a step closer to Spider-Man and gently running his fingers over the side of Peter’s masked face.

In his crappy little apartment on the other side of Manhattan, Peter shoved his hands down his boxers and groaned as he imagined Doctor Octavius leaning closer, his mouth so close to Peter’s face that somehow Peter could feel the warmth of his breath as he spoke, even through the tough fabric of his Spider-Man suit.

“Please,” the Otto Octavius of Peter’s imagination whispered. “You’re extraordinary, and with everything that you do for the city, the least I can do is show you my appreciation.”

Peter let out another muffled moan as he imagined the hand that he was wrapping around his own hardening cock actually belonged to his beloved Otto. In his imaginings he and Otto Octavius were already in bed, and Otto was touching him so nicely and kissing him all over.

He brought his other fist up to his mouth to stifle any screams that he might accidentally let out. His toes curled in his bedsheets, his fingers tightening around his length as he imagined Otto pinning him to the bed and whispering sweet nothings in his ear.

Peter was just in the process of imagining Otto’s lips trailing down his bare chest, pressing kiss after kiss on his bare skin, when the crime monitoring app on his phone went off, bringing a quick and very unwanted halt to any further fantasizing.

“Damn it!” Peter cursed, as he grabbed his phone with one hand and shoved himself back into his pants with the other. “Couldn’t you have waited another couple of minutes at least?”

He used his webslingers to gather his clothes and spider suit from where they lay on the floor, trying to make sense of the alert on his phone as he did.

“An A.I.M. truck?” Peter pondered. “But why would they…?”

Rhino and Scorpion had finally emerged from hiding. They had attacked an A.I.M. transport vehicle that had been transporting a shipment of experimental tech. Peter could only hope that he would arrive on the scene in time to both stop the villains and discover what they were planning.

Peter did not arrive in time to stop Rhino and Scorpion. In fact, when he arrived there was no sign of them, just the A.I.M. truck, which had been flipped over onto its side and torn open like a can of sardines.

Peter tried to check in with the officers at the scene, but they basically told him to go away and stop interfering with their crime scene. A little more pestering and poking around revealed that Rhino and Scorpion hadn’t taken any of the weapons that were on board the truck, and that none of the A.I.M. employees that had been travelling on it were too badly injured.

“Where are Rhino and Scorpion?” Peter asked, still surprised that he hadn’t arrived to find them tearing apart everything within a two block radius.

“We lost track of them,” the police officer in charge admitted, speaking a little quieter than he had up until that moment.

“You lost…?” Peter replied. “How do lose track of a two ton wrecking ball and a giant scorpion?”

“They went into the abandoned subway tunnels up north,” the police officer bit back. “You want to follow them down there, you be my guest.”

Peter wasn’t particularly surprised by that news. After all, Doctor Connors had used the tunnels as a base before then, and if Rhino and Scorpion were working with him then it made sense for the three of them to be hiding out in the tunnels below the city. It also explained why no-one had found them yet.

Realizing that he wasn’t going to get any further information out of the police officer, he cornered one of the A.I.M. employees who had been travelling on the truck; the one scientist that had been travelling with several guards. He was relatively young, not much older than Peter himself, and was receiving medical attention for what looked like a broken shoulder. If Peter had to guess then he would have said that the scientist had received the injury when the truck had been flipped. If either Rhino or Scorpion had attacked him deliberately then his injuries probably would have been a lot worse.

“Any idea what the two of them were after?” Peter asked him.

“All they took was my laptop,” the scientist told him.

Peter didn’t need further explanation to know what that meant. Rhino and Scorpion had been after information, whatever was contained on the scientist’s laptop.

“Let me guess,” Peter said. “You’re the chief scientist on a project that’s developing a super-secret weapon that Rhino and Scorpion want to use to terrorize the city?”

“What?” the scientist replied. “No. I’m not the chief scientist of anything. I mean, I’ve worked on a few weapons here and there, but if they wanted weapons then they could have grabbed the ones from the truck.”

“Huh,” Peter remarked. “Well that’s a nice change of pace. Any idea what they wanted with your laptop then?”

“I don’t know,” the scientist replied. “There were plenty of blueprints on there, but nothing worth stealing. Lots of emails, I guess. Lots of communication and planning about the Oscorp merger.”

The scientist gave a small chuckle that didn’t sound like there was any genuine humour behind it at all.

“I still don’t know if I’m going to be out of a job in two weeks’ time, and then this happens,” the scientist said, gesturing to his bandaged up arm. “Should have just listened to my Dad and gone for the job at Oscorp instead.”

Peter couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the guy. He had heard about the ‘merger’ as the A.I.M. scientist had put it. It wasn’t a merger so much as Oscorp swallowing up A.I.M.’s New York research and development team. Peter hoped that it would mean that a lot of A.I.M.’s talent and resources would be put to better use than they had at the ethically dubious A.I.M., but he wasn’t holding his breath. He already knew that other departments at Oscorp were working on several projects that were a lot more ethically grey than the advanced prosthetics that he and Otto Octavius had been working on for the past few years. Some of the higher ups at Oscorp were probably extremely eager to get their hands on some of the more questionable stuff that A.I.M. had in their possession. Why else would they have bought up A.I.M.’s New York division?

“Hey, maybe next time I see you, you’ll be wearing an Oscorp lab coat instead.” Peter told the A.I.M. scientist. “I hear the benefits package at Oscorp is better anyway.”

Knowing that the three escaped criminals were hiding in the tunnels under the city wasn’t much to go on, but Peter made his way over to the abandoned subway tunnel that the police officer had mentioned anyway, hoping that he might be able to pick up Scorpion and Rhino’s trail.

Sure enough he was able to see exactly where Scorpion and Rhino had been. The big Russian alone left as much of a trail as a dozen other people would, and Peter was able to track the chemical residue from Mac Gargan’s suit pretty easily.

He wasn’t sure whether it was wise to go chasing them down into the tunnels when there were three of them and only one of him, especially considering they undoubtedly knew the layout of these tunnels way better than he did, but he knew that he should at least try. Maybe he could find their hideout, do a quick, sneaky scout of the place and then come back once he had a plan, or when he knew there were only one or two of them down there.

“Man, sometimes I wish the numbers were on my side,” Peter said as he entered the old tunnel. “Even just one other person fighting alongside me for once would be a nice change of pace.”

It didn’t help that the tunnels were kind of creepy. There was something haunting about the old train tracks and abandoned subway cars.

He continued to follow the villains’ trail as it went deeper down into the bowels of the earth. Peter passed through a broken brick wall, down a tunnel that was even darker and creepier than the one before it, and eventually found himself in the city’s sewer system.

Soon enough the tunnel he was in opened into a large cistern. There were half a dozen different tunnels that led into it, and Peter spent several minutes trying to work out where Rhino and Scorpion had gone. Scorpion’s chemical trail just disappeared near the edge of the cistern, and Peter hadn’t been able to clearly make out Rhino’s trail since he had entered the sewers.

“How the hell…?” Peter wondered, glancing down into the cistern and trying to work out how Rhino could have safely traversed the area. Scorpion would have had no problem crawling around a place like this, and Peter suspected Doctor Connors was running around in his reptilian form again, which would mean that it was no problem for Doctor Connors either. Rhino however…

“Maybe he just jumped down into the water below?” Peter wondered, before swinging down and discovering that the water below was at least twenty feet deep, and as far as he knew, Rhino’s suit meant that he was not able to swim.

He crawled back up the way that he had come, having another look around the cistern and feeling like he had definitely missed something.

He was frustrated that he hadn’t been able to find where the three villains were hanging out, but at the same time he was also slightly relieved. He wasn’t looking forward to fighting all three of them at the same time, especially not down in the tunnels. If something went wrong down there and he was injured or killed, then he might not ever be found.

That was a particularly sobering thought, and with a shudder and one last disappointed glance back at the cistern, Peter reluctantly started making his way back to the surface.

Peter kept a close eye on the news and police reports after that, looking for any sign that Rhino, Scorpion or the Lizard were on the move, or any sign of what they might be planning.

He found himself looking further into A.I.M. as well, researching their current projects and the merger with Oscorp in hopes that he might be able to work out if the three of them had a specific target. It wasn’t easy though. A lot of A.I.M.’s projects were either classified, or kept tightly under wraps.

Peter wondered whether he might be able to use his Oscorp credentials to find out more, but the information that he had available as a mere research assistant was only a little bit more than what was available to the general public. There was some information about dates, what resources would be provided to the new Oscorp employees, and a reminder from HR to welcome Oscorp’s new division in as friendly and helpful a manner as possible.

“Hey Doc,” Peter called over to the other side of the lab, when his search for information hadn’t come up with anything useful. “Do you know much about the A.I.M. acquisition?”

Doctor Octavius looked up from the robotic arm he had been adjusting, and appeared to give the matter some thought for a moment.

“Only a little,” Doctor Octavius soon replied. “Why the sudden interest, Peter? What did you want to know?”

“Oh, I was just hoping to find out what their teams have been working on,” Peter replied. “You never know, there might be something in there somewhere that we can use for our prosthetics project.”

“There might be,” Octavius replied with a frown. “Just be careful around them Peter. I don’t know much about the New York group, but I know that their compatriots overseas have been responsible for some very dangerous stuff.”

“Don’t worry Doc,” Peter replied with a smile. “I’ll be careful.”

Doctor Octavius nodded, and then perked up all of a sudden.

“I just remembered,” he said. “The designs that I wanted you to pass along to Spider-Man are ready.”

“Oh!” Peter exclaimed, telling himself to be perfectly calm. He couldn’t wait to see what Doctor Octavius had cooked up, but he would have to wait until that evening, when he was finished with work and away from the older man.

Doctor Octavius reached into one of his pockets and removed a thumb drive, which he handed to Peter.

“For our mutual web-slinging friend,” he told Peter with a wink.

“I’ll make sure he gets it,” Peter said, smiling back at Octavius. “Is there any sort of message you want me to give him along with the drive?”

Doctor Octavius seemed to think the matter through very seriously for a moment.

“Just tell him that I appreciate everything that he does for the city,” he told Peter. “And that I wanted to help him out in whatever way I can.”

Peter felt his heart pounding again. Hearing someone he loved say such things about his work as Spider-Man so openly and sincerely was a nice change. It was easy at times to let all of the things that J. Jonah Jameson and his supporters said get to him and make him wonder why he even bothered, but sometimes something as simple as a friend appreciating him and trying to help him made a world of difference.

Peter couldn’t say any of that though; couldn’t let Doctor Octavius know exactly how much his words had meant to Peter.

“Should I tell him about the massive crush that you have on him as well?” Peter said instead, gently teasing Doctor Octavius.

Otto let out a chuckle and shook his head.

“I think we should probably leave that part out for now,” he said, as Peter slipped the thumb drive into his pocket. “Besides, he probably has more admirers than he can count.”

‘Not as many as you might think,’ Peter thought to himself. ‘And besides, I’d pick you over any of them any day.’

He couldn’t exactly say that though. He wished that he could, but he couldn’t.

“Just so you know, I’m not going to pass on any valentines if you still feel this way when February comes around,” Peter joked instead. “You’ll have to hand those to him yourself.”

That earned another chuckle from Doctor Octavius, and another soft smile, which meant that it was worth it.

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#spider-man #otto octavius #peter parker #otto/peter #octopeter #doctor octopus #my fic #spidervius

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