Chapter Text
‘r u sure u don’t need me der?’
‘yep mrs leeds’s otw’
‘k let me kno wen she’s there. Tel ned to feel better’
Peter lifted his eyes up from the screen of his phone. Ned was still filling up his patient’s form so his mom only had to sign it when she arrived, Dr. Palmer watching over him by the foot of his hospital bed. He looked pretty chill now. Peter turned back to texting May, sending a quick ‘k. See u l8tr dinner. Larb u may’. He felt eyes on him. He looked up to see the pretty ginger haired doctor smiling at him. “Girlfriend?” she asked.
“Aunt,” Peter answered politely, thinning his lips, offering her a small smile of his own.
Dr. Palmer’s brows quirked.
“N-no girlfriend,” he added hurriedly.
Dr. Palmer adopted a look similar to May’s when she particularly thought Peter was being “cute”. It was usually followed by a hard pinch on the cheek that always made him feel like he was five. Thankfully Dr. Palmer only returned her attention back at Ned, her slate-blue eyes trained on where he was writing. “What about you, Ned? Any girlfriends?”
Ned stopped writing to make eye contact with Dr. Palmer, his face somber.
“Girls think we’re losers.”
Dr. Palmer paused, and then she laughed, dainty and all pretty like her. It sounded really nice. “You’ll have to excuse them. They’re still young,” she said, amused gaze shifting from Ned to Peter and staying there.
Peter’s breath got caught up in his throat. His phone vibrated in his hand while his brain scrambled for something witty to say; something Spider-Man-y, something Mr. Stark-ish...
“Um,” he mumbled and then made the mistake of looking down and reading May’s reply, “ ‘larb u too bby’.”
Peter’s eyes widened, head snapping back up, jaw coming loose.
You. Dumb. Shit.
Heat boiled up from his neck and spread out across his face.
“Hm?” Dr. Palmer only continued to beam at him.
Peter swallowed, willing the cushioned stool he was sitting on to sink him into the tiled floor. It didn’t. Fortunately for him, even with a not-so-dislocated kneecap anymore, his best friend was totally made of awesome and always had his back:
“Uh, how ‘bout you, um, Dr. Palmer?” Ned timely interjected like the real superhero he was. “What’s your boyfriend like?”
That got another pretty laugh from Dr. Palmer, this time loud.
“I need a boyfriend first to answer that,” she replied, mercifully turning back to Ned. She shook her head. “Actually, I’d have to have a life first.”
“But you’re a doctor.”
“Exactly.”
Ned’s face scrunched up, obviously thinking Dr. Palmer didn’t make sense. Peter completely agreed with his sentiments. Doctors were cool, and Dr. Palmer was one and she was really pretty too. “It’s not always this relaxed in the ER,” she elaborated kindly, sticking her hands into her coat pockets. “Anyway, you boys going to be alright waiting here alone?”
“Oh.” Ned quickly filled out the rest of his form and then offered it up to Dr. Palmer who was already shaking her head and waving her hand.
“It’s okay,” she said, putting her hand back into her coat pocket. “Just give it to the nurse’s station when your mother signs it.”
Peter heard something—her phone, most likely—vibrate inside her pocket. Dr. Palmer’s attention flickered down to it before she fixed it on him again. “It’s cinnamon bun day so Mrs. Myzel might take a while.”
Peter nodded. “W-we’re good.”
“My mom’s already close too. …I think,” Ned followed-up easily.
Dr. Palmer gave another smile, regarding them both now. “Okay. But if you boys need anything just ask a nurse.”
Ned said his thanks while Peter wisely chose to keep his mouth shut. Dr. Palmer retreated behind the white curtain drawn around Ned’s bed, closing the gap she left behind, separating them from the slow hustle and bustle of Metro-General Hospital’s ER. Ned side-eyed Peter. Judging.
Peter deflated in his seat. “I know, man. I know,” he groaned, his ears catching Dr. Palmer’s quiet snort and chuckle; still sounded pretty but no doubt a delayed reaction prompted on his expense.
“At least she was pretty chill about it,” Ned offered with a non-mean Ned-grin as if reading his thoughts.
Peter made a face.
“She didn’t laugh,” Ned added.
“Not at my face.”
“Hence, why she’s chill.”
Peter’s mouth pursed. Point. Mr. Stark and May would have laughed point blank. Ms. Potts and Col. Rhodes, too, for that matter, if not a bit more tamed or reserved. When everyone found out that super hearing could mean hearing through multiple 10-inch thick walls on worst days, those who tried eventually just stopped sparing him his pride. “Useless effort,” Mr. Stark had said while Peter tried to convince him not to have FRIDAY schedule upgrading all three of his bedrooms with ‘SHIELD’-grade soundproofing. Peter sighed, tuning out the noise outside Ned’s makeshift room and putting that embarrassing episode with Dr. Palmer behind him. It wouldn’t be the last time he’d commit a massive brain fart in front of someone, Parker Luck and all. “How’s the knee?” he asked by way of changing subjects.
“I guess I’ll have to retire from dragon slaying now.”
“Dude,” Peter’s face pinched. “Dragonborns don’t retire.”
Ned snorted and then cleared his throat. “ 'I used to be your guy in the chair—' "
“Don’t you finish that,” Peter pointed a finger at him, grinning but serious. “Guys in the chair don’t retire either.”
“Then what should I say? I... used to go to school…? But that’s so lame, dude. I don’t wanna be a dropout. Nobody likes a dropout.”
Peter forced a laugh, then, “Yeah, true. But seriously, Ned, you’re okay?”
Ned gave his left knee an appraising look. Peter waited for his verdict, his gaze sliding on said knee too. The accident earlier at Mrs. Myzel’s candy store was insane. Like Final Destination insane. One moment he finally decided on a licorice flavor to give Mr. Stark and Ben for tomorrow and then the next thing he knew his ‘spidey-sense’, as Happy dubbed it, tingled right before a store clerk accidentally dropped a large sack of something off of the counter. Peter was too far to prevent it from happening without risking his secret identity. He wished he took the risk.
He should had.
The simple mistake had caused a mop to topple over some displayed candies causing a customer to step back in surprise which then prompted Ned to react the same. Only, Ned inexplicably ended up falling down with a sharp, pained yelp. When Peter finally got to him, he was balancing precariously on his right leg while his left was stretched out stiffly, his hands clamped around his left knee in a death grip. Peter could still picture exactly how it looked when Ned uncovered the injury. The kneecap was off to the wrong side underneath the skin, like an inch off, like it slipped and then slotted out of place, the skin contouring over it in a way it shouldn’t.
“Stop looking like that, dude.”
Peter’s brows furrowed as he looked back up at Ned, the comment snapping him out of his thoughts. “Looking like what?” he asked. “I’m not, I’m not looking like anything.”
Ned sighed. He paused then opened his mouth and then closed it and then sighed again before he finally seemed to make up his mind, “Dude, it’s fine. Okay? It doesn’t even hurt anymore. …Well, as long as I don’t move it. But it just feels... stiff, right now. And weird. But mostly stiff.”
Peter nodded. He really should have taken that risk.
“Well at least—“
A number of panicked shrieks and scrapes of running feet interrupted Ned from finishing. He locked eyes with Peter, eyes wide. “What’s that?”
Peter strained his ears, registering every sound inside the ER, picking out the ones that didn't belong; heavy clinking links—chains. Then a snap. No. A click—a lock click. Peter stood up.
“Peter?”
“Stay here,” he said, already moving away. Someone pleaded for some guy to see reason. His stomach clenched. That didn't sound good at all.
“Dude.”
Peter held one of his hands back at Ned, wordlessly asking him to wait, the other pulling the curtain aside, making a window to the outside. “I’ll be right back,” he said, stepping out into the ER and right into the way of a gun.