Chapter Text
Ned’s birthday rolls around with the cold the same way it does every year, and with it an excuse for Ned to collect all of his people together in the same place, fill them with food and alcohol, and pretend for one night that life didn’t have to stop when they all signed their souls away to the rat race; to health insurance and five-year plans and mediocre team lunches that are meant to build morale but always leave Ned wishing he would just—die, face-down in his salad, instead.
Darin and Salma are there, and Adel and MJ, obviously, and another twelve or so friends from the city that Ned’s managed to acquire in his year back home.
He doesn’t invite anyone else, from high school, because in a moment of desperate improvisation he and MJ had convinced Adel that’s where Peter had sprung from—just an old friend of Ned’s from high school—for no reason other than they’re idiots, and didn’t think about the fact that, you know. Other friends, from their high school, might have a question or two about that.
Not that Ned’s shifting his life to fit around Peter. Not that he’s changing the plans for sacred, time-honored traditions like his annual birthday party, to account for the comfort and safety of Peter Parker.
Peter Parker, the man himself, who shows up an hour late, looking characteristically exhausted but otherwise fine. Who gets himself a drink, smiles at Salma as he sips it, and drops his backpack near the door. Who squeezes Ned’s shoulder with a grin of, sorry I’m late, happy birthday, dude, and then…proceeds to lock himself in the bathroom for the next ten minutes.
Which is—fine.
Because, at least he’s here. At least Ned’s not going to have to spend the next two hours covertly checking Spidey Tracker, ignoring MJ’s eyes and wondering if it’s even safe for them to all be getting this drunk, on the off-hand chance that whatever Spider-Man’s fighting makes its way across the city and within striking distance of their apartment.
At least Ned remembers the vast majority of his pre-teen and teenage years in a way he hadn’t last year, this birthday.
He manages to forget about Peter in the bathroom for a good half-hour, introducing Darin and Salma to Jade from work, pouring drinks and accepting hugs and even getting roped into a weirdly horny version of charades for a few rounds, which he only manages to untangle himself from with a truly impressive feat of social engineering.
It’s warm in the apartment, full of laughter and chatter and the soft brush of bodies and plates and drinks, and Ned can almost feel his Lola patting him on the back across the distance, congratulating him on a gathering well-thrown. He feels himself getting lost in the familiar sensation of the bustle. He feels himself smiling, unable to stop.
He feels himself missing something.
Somewhere deep in the recesses of Ned’s old-new memories, two boys light-saber fight through a mess of wrapping paper, May Parker’s eyes twinkling at them through a thick set of glasses as they go.
Ned glances back down the hallway towards the bathroom. A moment later Adel sidles up to him, drink in hand.
“Happy birthday, Leeds-Machine,” he says good naturedly, popping a few M&Ms and grinning in Ned’s general direction. Looks to me—” he gestures pointedly to the charades group, where Darin is currently dropping it low while Salma and Jade howl with laughter—”like you might have nailed it.”
“God,” Ned says, “I haven’t seen him move like that since they cancelled the 382 final.”
“Professor Rushton,” Adel agrees. “Fucking fascist.”
“Remember when MJ accused her of plagiarising that Wakandan research on the medical applications of electromagnetic nano-actuators?”
Adel and Ned both shudder, and Ned does a quick scan of the apartment. “Speaking of. Did you uh, lose her? Again?”
Adel shrugs. “Bathroom, she said. Alcohol goes right through her. Especially the cheap stuff.”
And…it doesn’t, actually, but Ned doesn’t say that. Just nods, surveying the apartment as they both chew their M&Ms.
Adel breaks the silence that stretches, clearing his throat. “Have you, uh—” he pauses, scratching at something on his face in a would-be casual motion. “You haven’t happened to like, notice anything going on with her, recently. Have you?”
Shit.
Ned takes a very long, drawn-out sip of his drink. Deflect, he thinks. Deflect, deflect, deflect.
“I mean,” he shrugs, “have you?”
Which isn’t really deflecting. Just for the record.
Adel gives Ned a wry smile, nodding his head as he clearly reads Ned’s non-answer for the unwillingness to engage in this entire—conversation, that it is. “Right.”
“Sorry, dude,” Ned says, with what he hopes is an understanding half-smile, rather than a condescending one. “Just, her business is kind of—her business, you know? But…if you want. A word to the wise?”
Adel raises his eyebrows, expression flat.
Ned shrugs. “Try not to push her. When MJ’s got stuff to work through…she does it in her own head first, most of the time. And when she’s ready, for your opinion, or your help or your—whatever, you’ll know. She won’t ask for it, necessarily, but. You’ll know.”
Adel shakes his head slightly, draining the rest of his drink before chucking the cup into the trash across from them. He stares at it, mouth working.
“Right,” he says, again.
And that’s when Ned hears it.
MJ’s voice, first, a harsh whisper that floats down the hallway from the bathroom. A moment later, an even lower, similarly heated murmur, landing familiar and frankly, worryingly, in Ned’s ears.
Ned straightens, clearing his throat. Adel glances at him.
“I have to go check on something,” Ned says, too fast, too fast, too fast. “You’re okay, right?”
Adel looks at him strangely. “It’s your party, man.”
Smiling superficially, heart pounding, Ned slips out the doorway and into the hallway, setting his drink down on the counter as he goes. The whispering gets louder as he turns the corner and, yeah. That’s one-hundred percent, absolutely MJ and Peter. Choosing tonight of all nights, Ned guesses, to let the tension that’s been boiling like a damn stew between them finally snap, and fuck Ned, he does not want to be the one left holding the bag when the smoke from that conversation clears. Not on his birthday, at least.
A small part of him is offended they couldn’t wait.
The whispers go silent, as Ned approaches, and sure enough as he turns the corner, it’s them.
Peter, parallel to the wall, hands down by his sides and jaw held tight. MJ perpendicular to him, brow knit together in something that looks—more like worry, than anger.
“What’s going on?” Ned blinks, when neither of them break their silent staring contest to welcome him.
“Nothing,” Peter says immediately.
“He’s hurt,” MJ says at the same time, and Peter makes an annoyed sound low in his throat, pursing his lips.
“Not hurt,” he grits out. “I was just—”
“In there, puking his guts out. I heard him. Probably cracked the toilet seat.”
“It kind of sounds, to me, like you need to get your ears checked.”
“Sounds like you need to get your brain checked, if you think people aren’t going to be able to tell that you’re beat to shit—”
“Oh, don’t worry, I doubt anyone else on earth is half as observant as you, right? Listening at the door? Bathrooms are supposed to be sanctuaries.”
“News flash, genius, it doesn’t take super-senses to overhear a guy tossing his cookies three feet away—”
“Hey,” Ned says, loudly. Peter and MJ both fall silent. MJ shakes her head at Ned, annoyed, and Peter—Peter shuts his eyes. Looking closer, Ned can see the sweat beading on his forehead. The shallow up and down motions of his chest. The grimace tugging at his lips.
“Are you?” Ned asks, flatly. “Beat to shit? And before you answer, remember that it’s my birthday, and the only gift I want is Spider-Man’s absolute and utter honesty.”
“And a PS5,” MJ amends for him. Which is…a little irrelevant, but. True. Ned supposes that’s true.
Peter’s eyes remain closed. “It’s nothing,” he says firmly. “Seriously. Just took a weird hit, earlier. Both of you should get back to the party.”
Right, Ned thinks.
MJ’s train of thought must be taking the same tracks as Ned’s, because she rolls her eyes. Rolls her eyes and then reaches forward and, without preamble, pokes Peter, hard, in the stomach.
Immediately Peter blanches, arm going to the fabric of his sweatshirt over his ribs as he collapses against the wall behind him. He wheezes out a noise that doesn’t sound intentional, jaw clenched tight in what is so obviously abject agony as he hunches forward that Ned’s heart actually jumps in his chest. Like something pavlovian.
“Told you,” MJ says, her set mouth not hiding the tightness around her eyes. “It’s his ribs. Probably has a concussion, too, if you want to read into the vomit. Which, to be honest. I’m not super interested in doing.”
“Jesus, Peter,” Ned exhales, scrubbing a hand down his face as Peter continues to silently wheeze. “Are you—can you even walk? Did you fucking—swing here?” His eyes catch on Peter’s red Solo cup, near MJ’s left foot. “Are you drinking? With a concussion?”
“It’s water,” Peter and MJ say at the same time, Peter’s voice furled tight with tension.
Right.
“So you were aware of this concussion,” Ned says flatly. “And made the active choice to swing here, anyway. That’s awesome, dude.”
Peter, actively sweating, opens his mouth to say something, probably a brush-off if the example of the last three months are anything to go by, but then his face screws up again, and what comes out instead is a low hiss of pain. Slowly, he slides down the wall until he lands in a pile of Spider-Man at Ned’s feet.
“Dude,” Ned says, worry quickly replacing the hot, sharp anger in his chest.
Peter is silent for a few moments, clearly focusing on his breath. Ned exchanges a tight, worried look with MJ.
Because it’s not like they learned about the existence of Peter Parker and suddenly just, know how to handle this. How to do this. How to treat shattered ribs, or concussions, or broken relationships resulting from years of memory magic, with any sort of professional efficiency. It’s not like a few medical technology clinics at MIT suddenly prepared Ned for handling actual medical crises, or mental crises, or—any of the other million crises, that must come hand in hand with functioning as a full-time vigilante.
But MJ really looks at Ned, in this particular moment, with Peter clearly trying very hard not to wheeze in pain from his place on the ground. Looks at him hard. Gives him a little nod.
I’m here, she says. Memories or no.
Ned shuts his eyes for a second, overwhelmed.
Thank you, he tells her, when he opens them.
For everything. For the past few months, letting Peter in through their window multiple times a week even though it has to be awkward for her, maybe even deeply uncomfortable. For allowing him a place at their table, a place in a room full of their friends, even as she sorts through her own conflicting emotions, because Peter Parker is important to Ned Leeds, and she gets that, in a way Ned can only ever be endlessly grateful for.
Peter Parker functions at sixty percent emotional capacity on a good day, but he’s giving Ned the best approximation of that full sixty whenever he can, and Ned knows that. The same way he knows that Peter’s also wicked smart, and cares deeply, and uses more outdated references than MJ, and is, yeah, a little bit terrifying when he’s out in that suit. And the tricky part of the truth is that any of those bits alone, in the grand puzzle that is Peter Parker, would have been enough for Ned to want even this fucked-up version of him as a friend. As a brother.
Trickier still is the fact that, in a moment like this, with Peter hurt and bruised and here, on the floor in front of them, it doesn’t exactly…matter. What MJ and Ned would have chosen, four and a half years ago, if Spider-Man had done the brave thing in that donut shop.
Peter Parker is a part of their story, and he always has been. An important part, for all three of them.
For better or worse.
“I’m sorry,” Peter chooses then to grunt from his place on the floor, eyes finally open and exhausted-looking. Without a second thought, Ned crouches down next to him. “You’re right. I knew I shouldn’t come, I just—it’s your day, right? The big one. And I’ve already missed…so fucking many, of them. So I tried to just—” he lets out a pained exhale. “I don’t know. Ruin your night, clearly.”
“Pete,” Ned says quietly. “It’s okay.”
Peter shakes his head, wincing again. “No,” he says. “It’s not. You guys are right, I’m—I’m useless, like this. I should go. Sleep it off.”
“You’re fucked in the head, Spider-Man,” MJ says with no heat in her voice, arms crossed as she looks down at them both from where she’s leaned against the wall, and Peter snorts, then winces at the feeling.
“She means, you’re not leaving,” Ned corrects. “Sleep here.”
Peter blinks at Ned tiredly. “And how would you explain the homeless-looking guy, zonked out on the futon? I might be nuts but, uh,” he licks his dry lips, “I seem to remember there being a party going on.”
“In my bed, asshole,” Ned shakes his head, getting to his feet and reaching a hand out to help Peter, carefully, to his. “I’ll take the couch, once everyone leaves.”
“I’m not gonna let you sleep on the couch on your birthday.”
“Except for the fact that you absolutely are—”
“Nobody needs to sleep on the couch,” MJ cuts in. “Jesus. I’ll be at Adel’s tonight. He can just take mine.”
And that’s—a great way to kick Peter while he’s down, Ned thinks. Peter seems to agree, shutting his eyes tightly.
“I’m not sleeping in your bed.”
“Yeah? Give me one good reason why not.”
Peter laughs, sounding exhausted. “I’d think that would be pretty obvious.”
MJ cocks her head at him. “Not unless you’ve been fooling us with the whole beloved neighborhood vigilante, decent-to-the-point-it’s-almost-unbelievable guy routine this whole time, and you’re secretly a creep. Are you secretly a creep, Peter Parker?”
Ned watches, only slightly anxiously, as MJ stares at Peter steadily. After a few infinite seconds, Peter blinks.
“No,” he finally relents. His sweaty forehead catches against Ned’s shoulder as he leans heavily into Ned’s side. “No, I’m not. Take me to—whatever gets the world horizontal fastest.”
“Thank god,” Ned mutters.
MJ nods. “Good. Try not to puke in it.”
Then she turns to lock herself hip-to-hip with Peter, reaching an arm down to gently take the rest of the weight from his other side.
--
Ned doesn’t know, what it is that wakes him up in the middle of the night.
His bladder, maybe, or a dry throat, but his Lola would say a ghost. Maybe an angel.
However it happens, Ned does, he wakes up and pads his way into the kitchen, thinking he’ll check the lock on the door, the window, maybe grab a glass of water.
What he finds instead is Peter Parker there on the couch, struggling with his shoes in the darkness and jumping so hard he winces, when Ned clears his throat in the entryway.
“I thought you had a sense for that,” Ned says dryly, voice rough with sleep.
Peter looks over at him. “It doesn’t work very well on people I trust.”
“Is that what you call this?” Ned yawns, stretching out a hand to hit the lights and blinking blearily in the resulting glow. “Trust? Sneaking out of here at—” he glances at the microwave—”three in the morning, without even, I dunno. A text?”
Peter pauses in his struggle with his shoes. Resumes. “I wasn’t—I’m not trying to sneak out, of anywhere.”
“I, too, like to try on my coat and shoes in the middle of the night, just to make sure they fit before I don’t sneak out.”
“Funny,” Peter mutters. “But I’m serious. I’m just going to get a sandwich. I was coming back.”
Ned takes a deep breath, because, sure. Why the hell not? “You’re going to get a sandwich. At three in the morning.”
“Luigi’s is open all night,” Peter says like it’s obvious. He grunts as he leans down for a second attempt at pulling on his sneaker. “They’re just down the street.”
“I know. I love Luigi’s. They’re literally just down the street.”
“Then you know I’m not lying.”
“You can’t tie your fucking shoes, Pete,” Ned says, so frustrated with this idiot of a man that he feels a little bit like he could explode, right here in his kitchen. “You’ve got a concussion where your brain is supposed to be. Your ribs sound like rice krispies. Why on earth would you be going to get a sandwich?”
Peter tenses. And Ned thinks, God.
Because if they can’t do this, a stupid conversation about a stupid sandwich at three in the stupid morning, that has to be it, doesn’t it? Indisputable proof, that five years was just—too long, and it’s time to cut the cameras. Pull the plug. Slap a big DO NOT RESUSCITATE sign and a bow on the whole damn thing, and kick it out to pasture.
“Peter,” Ned pleads anyway, because he can’t not. This is—this was his best fucking friend. He can’t not. He can’t not. “Come on. It’s just us, dude. I promise you, it’s just us.”
Peter closes his eyes for a long moment. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he tells Ned, voice hoarse. “I never know what you want me to say. I was hungry. It helps, to eat. I know what works. Figured I could make it back without waking you up, but forgot to account for the fact that I move like a fucking—geriatric moose now, apparently.”
Right. The healing. The whole, super body trying to repair a set of fractured ribs in less than a week, thing. The part where that sort of a chemical process requires fuel, street name: calories. The part where Peter Parker is so fucking weird about everything else even remotely related to being cared for—from mooching one of Ned’s energy drinks to making a scene about the prospect of sleeping in one of their open, available beds—that Ned probably should’ve seen this part coming, too.
“Can I ask you a question?”
Peter looks back at him, warily.
“Would it like, ruin your life, to let me make you some ramen, or something?”
Peter looks at his hands, clearly embarrassed. He huffs out a laugh, then winces as it obviously pulls at something in his abdomen.
“Unless you’re dead-set on a sandwich.” Ned moves to the cupboard, already searching for a pan. “Because in that case, I can grab the earmuffs and suit up. What was it, again? With great provolone comes great responsibility, or something?”
“Something like that,” Peter mutters, gaze still fixed on his hands. He clears his throat, then looks up. “And, yeah. I mean, no. Sorry. Ramen’s good. Ramen would be—” he takes a deep breath, as if internally settling something. “Ramen would be great, actually.”
“You bet your ass it will be,” Ned confirms, barely managing to hold back a yawn as he goes for the noodles. “Because you’re getting the Chef Leeds special. Ten points for flavor, five for mouth feel, and the rest? All style, baby. In fact, you know what? Iron Chef called. They want their struggle meal back.”
“That’s big instant-ramen talk,” Peter observes, settling carefully back into the cushions in what Ned hopes is a more comfortable position for his ribs. “And I’m something of a connoisseur.”
“Trust me,” Ned tells him, with what is very possibly an unearned level of confidence. “After this, your tastebuds will never be the same.”
Peter watches, as Ned bustles around the kitchen, gathering pans and eggs and bowls, continuing his diatribe in a desperate bid to keep himself fully awake while working the burner. Ned glances over, and Peter smiles a little, despite the deep bags under his eyes.
“Yes chef.”
--
“Can I ask you something?” Peter asks, thirty minutes and two full packages of Ramen noodles later. “You don’t have to answer.”
“Shoot,” Ned says immediately.
Everything about Peter seems softer, with food in him, and Ned wants to kick himself for not thinking of it earlier, before he remembers that Peter is a grown-ass man. A grown-ass man, who had the problem under control with or without Ned’s help.
Was he choosing to play the whole sandwich-retrieval level on hard mode, if Ned hadn’t swooped in? Sure. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t capable of beating it.
Peter Parker has been full-time Spider-Man for longer than Ned’s been a full-time anything. The sheer act of keeping himself alive on a weekly basis has been a far more active choice in his daily life than Ned’s ever had to make, and yet, he’s done it. For five years, he’s done it.
And Ned’s going to try to do a better job of remembering that.
“I’ve always wondered, about May. With the spell. Whether or not it—” Peter scratches at a fleck of dried Ramen broth on the table, shrugging. “Let you guys keep her around, or not.”
Ned tries to think back, to what he’d remembered, back when he hadn’t remembered at all. It’s—admittedly unsurprisingly—difficult to recall. To parse through and sift, what used to be and what wasn’t and still isn’t and what is, now. Here at this kitchen table at three thirty-eight a.m.
“I think I only had the bits that were like, outside the context of you,” he finally says. “Visiting FEAST, just me and my mom. Or, seeing her leaving yoga, with friends. I don’t think there was anything left that was…super personal. Nothing from Midtown. Or—your guys’s place. Mostly just, smiles and waves.”
“You guys were at the funeral.”
Ned looks up at him, sharply. “You were there?”
Peter’s mouth quirks. “‘Of course I was.”
And there’s another pang. Another bone-deep ache.
“I wish you’d come and found us,” Ned murmurs.
Peter nods. “I know.”
“Not even to make us remember. Just—to have someone. To sit by, or whatever.”
Peter laughs lightly, like the memory is something soft. Something that billows, light an airy, rather than strangles him in his sleep, the way Ned had always assumed it did, from what MJ had shared about that letter on the Punisher’s boat.
“I wouldn’t have realized if Captain America himself had sat down in the chair next to me,” Peter tells Ned in a voice that sounds nakedly, painfully honest. “I’m sure people were staring at me either way, because I didn’t manage to like, track down a real suit. Or dress shoes. Or—a haircut. But I don’t think I even noticed. That whole day…those first few months, really. They were just me and her.”
Ned swallows, throat tight with emotion he doesn’t want to let spill, because it might interrupt this—whatever it is, they’ve managed to create, in this insulated little bubble of early morning. Where the walls feel thin and Peter’s got all this vulnerability spilling out of him, like he’s suddenly not so worried about what Ned’s going to do with the proof he’s so obviously different, now, from how he’d been five years ago. How both of them are.
One year older and wiser, too.
“I’m glad,” Ned tells Peter truthfully. “To have her back in my head. If it’s cool with you…I’d love to go see her, sometime.”
Peter nods, eyes drooping. Ned can tell that he’s about forty-five seconds from passing out, the combination of his fed super-healing factor and the concussion he’s still nursing working overtime to pull him down into the dark, inevitable abyss.
Ned knows that both because he remembers, and because he’s paying attention, now. Here in the present, where the two of them have further to go than they do history behind them, if Ned’s honest. Where it’s not just going to—snap back into place, just because the seventeen-year-old version of Ned wishes it would.
Because Ned’s not that same kid anymore. That kid who was just happy to be included when it came to drawing up another plan to save the city, who didn’t understand the power and value of his own brain and soul and heart. Who lived in a bit of a bubble, until Mysterio came along and popped it, and hadn’t yet chosen, who it was he wanted to be to the world. To Spider-Man. To himself.
Ned’s twenty-three, now, and he’s—much closer, to figuring the answers out, if not exactly all the way there yet. He knows himself better, at least, than that other kid had. That kid who’s no longer much of a kid at all, but…something new, entirely.
And there really aren’t enough words in the English dictionary, to describe just what, exactly, it is that Peter’s become, either.
And it’s not that they’re—broken. Not forever, Ned thinks.
Just different, five years later.
Legos loose on the table.
The rumbling potential of something new, waiting there patiently until the two of them are ready to start building.
“She’d love that,” Peter yawns. “Your birthdays are kind of close, actually. You can come with me for hers, if you want.”
“I remember,” Ned agrees, helping Peter to his feet as he winces and lets Ned wrap an arm around the back of his waist for balance. “And yeah. That would be really cool, man.”
Peter smiles. He echoes a murmur of, “Cool.”
And together, they step forward.