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The thing is, Peter didn’t intend to fall in love with his best friend.
He doesn’t even realize it at first. Perhaps doesn’t realize it for a long time. The line between you’re my best friend and I’m in love with you is a lot blurrier than some might think, so when Peter’s feelings for Ned cross that line, he just…doesn’t notice.
It’s May who points it out. They’re sitting on the couch together, watching reruns of Project Runway , and May looks at him and says, “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
Peter’s head jerks toward her - he opens his mouth to ask what she means, who she means, and then he clamps his jaw shut because he knows.
It hits him, right then and there, that he knows exactly what she means.
Ned. His best friend.
And now, his first love.
Quietly, he says, “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
May hugs him tight and tells him she’s proud of him. For what, Peter doesn’t really know, but it’s nice to hear, all the same.
For the most part, nothing changes.
He and Ned continue on with business as usual. They joke and laugh and eat lunch together and build LEGOs together and remain, essentially, attached at the hip. But if feels different. Every interaction, every smile, every touch, is different. Charged.
Because he’s fallen in love with his best friend. And he’s fallen hard. On the surface, everything’s the same, but suddenly Peter’s got butterflies in his stomach whenever Ned says his name or holds his hand out for their handshake.
Which is fine. It’s fine. It’s not like he’s freaking out or anything.
(He’s kind of freaking out.)
Ned is one of the three most important people in his life - he’s been in Peter’s life for as long as he can remember, and Peter has no idea where he’d be if he didn’t have Ned. He can’t make things weird with Ned because he’s in love with him.
It’s not that he thinks Ned will make it weird. Not on purpose, at least. But he knows what happens when it comes to unrequited love - a friendship might not fall apart, but it will crumble around the edges.
He can’t handle that. He knows he can’t handle that, because the one and only time things got weird between him and Ned was when they had a fight over something Peter can’t even remember - they didn’t talk for a week and Peter’s anxiety got so bad that May wanted to take him to the hospital.
And it’s obvious that Ned doesn’t feel the same way. He’s aware of how he looks at Ned, even though he can’t technically see himself, and Ned doesn’t look at him that way. He’s made his peace with the fact that Ned’s always going to see him as a friend and nothing else.
Doesn’t lessen his anxiety in the slightest, but he’s made his peace.
He’ll pretend. He’ll pretend until maybe, just maybe, the feelings will fade back to platonic.
They don’t.
Three months. Six months. A year. Time keeps passing and Peter keeps being hopelessly, helplessly in love with Ned.
If anything, the feelings get stronger. The nerves get duller, sure, because eventually he remembers that this is Ned he’s talking about, but the feelings gradually get more and more intense. And harder to hide.
When he finally tells Ned, it’s no more intentional than falling for him was.
Ned is laying on his bed with his homework in front of him, while Peter sits at the desk and stares at his own homework with only half-seeing eyes. His hearing has hyper-focused on the sound of Ned’s pencil scratching across paper, and it’s hard to pull away from it.
Ned keeps looking at him. Probably because he’s not actually doing his homework. Probably because he hasn’t spoken in twenty minutes, and that’s entirely not like him.
Peter scribbles on the corner of his paper just to do something.
“Hey, Pete?”
Oh, no. There’s something…nervous, Peter thinks, in Ned’s tone that he definitely doesn’t like. This is going to go so badly.
“Yeah?” Peter’s voice comes out squeaky.
He hears shuffling on the bed, like Ned’s sitting up. There’s a momentary pause, and then, “Are we okay?”
Shit.
Shit.
He thought he was doing everything right. He thought he was hiding it, thought he was acting like things were perfectly normal between them, thought there was no way Ned knew anything was weird.
Apparently, he was wrong.
God, he’d tried so hard not to make this awkward. The one thing he wanted more than anything else was to avoid making Ned feel like something was off between them, because that would lead to this exact conversation.
It’ll be weirder if he tells him. He knows it will.
So he lies.
“Of course! Why wouldn’t we be okay?”
“Because - because you’ve been kind of odd lately, but I noticed that it’s...it’s only around me,” Ned answers. Peter hates himself, he really does.
“Well, I’m totally fine if you are. There’s nothing wrong here, everything’s all good, I don’t see why -”
Ned cuts him off. “You’re doing that rambly thing you do when everything’s not fine.”
Peter always forgets how terrible of a liar he is until he actually tries to lie.
And yet, he keeps going because the only other option is to admit that he’s in love with Ned and that’s not actually even an option.
“It’s nothing, Ned, seriously.”
“Uh huh.”
“If I’ve been weird, it’s not because of you.”
“Uh huh.”
“Come on, Ned -”
“Peter, I’ve known you since we were five, just tell me the truth!”
“I’m in love with you!” He doesn’t mean to say it, but he does. He does and he regrets it before he can even process the fact that he just said it.
Holy shit, he just said it.
Oh my God. Oh my God, it’s going to be awkward now and he’s going to be weirded out because I’m in love with him and he’s not in love with me and I fucked this up, I fucked up our whole friendship, and now we’re not going to be friends and MJ will have to choose between us - except who am I kidding, it’s MJ, she’ll just tell us we’re stupid and either hang out with both of us or drop both of us - and I’ll be lonely and -
Peter bolts.
Doesn’t wait for Ned’s response. Doesn’t even pack up his stuff.
He runs, because he thinks maybe it’ll hurt less if he goes on his own instead of waiting for Ned to leave him instead.