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Ned laid back on his bed, limbs spread out around him like a starfish. He let out a huff of- well, he didn’t even know what emotions he was feeling. Frustration? Jealousy? Anger? He had no idea. Whatever it was, it wasn’t pleasant.
He stared up at the ceiling, head racing with thoughts about the day. How was it that MJ could immediately tell the difference between Peter’s alters? Was she psychic? There had to be some kind of explanation for it that he was just missing!
Well, he’d only known about Peter’s disorder for about a week and a half, while MJ had known about it for a month, possibly more, so he guessed it made sense that she’d be able to tell the difference between alters fairly easily. Still, it didn’t make any sense to him how she did it! According to Peter, May relied pretty heavily on guessing and had to ask who was fronting ninety percent of the time, and Tony had to create a whole freaking AI program to clue him in on when switches happened, and they had known about it for far longer than MJ!
And yet, MJ didn’t have to rely on guesswork or an AI program- she just… knew.
Ned let out a frustrated groan and raked his hands down his face, sitting up and slamming his hand on his nightside table to retrieve his phone. “Hey Siri,” he mumbled into the speaker, “call MJ.”
”Calling MJ…”
The phone rang once before MJ picked up.
“What’s up, loser?”
“Can you come over tomorrow? I have to talk to you about something.”
There was a pause on the other line. “Are you asking me out, Leeds? Because if so you definitely need to work on your subtlety-”
“What? No I’m not asking you out!” Ned huffed, “it’s about Peter.”
“And we can’t talk about that now because..?”
“One, it's late and I’m tired, and two, this is probably gonna take a really long time to talk about and I really don’t feel like having my phone taken away because I’m talking to someone past curfew.”
“Alright, alright, I get it. I’ll swing by your place at three tomorrow. Cool?”
“Thank you so much.”
“Sure. See ya.”
“Bye.”
Ned hung up, flinging his phone somewhere near the end of his bed and flopping down on top of the covers. He closed his eyes, processing the conversation.
He was going to find out what MJ’s scary secret ability was, and he was going to learn how to do it too.
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“Ned! Your friend’s here!”
Ned startled, flinging his pencil across the room in his panic. He shoved his homework aside and darted downstairs, yelling as he went, “Coming, Mom!”
His mom stood at the door, her apron absolutely covered in flour and something brown, holding it open. MJ tilted her head up in greeting. “Sup?”
“Hi MJ,” Ned responded. “Wanna head up to my room?”
“Sure.”
“Just make sure to leave your door open,” his mom swatted him on the shoulder as he walked by, a teasing smirk tugging at her lips.
Ned flushed. “Mom!”
MJ looked amused, but she followed Ned upstairs to his bedroom. Ned made sure to leave his door cracked open a little (mostly so his mom wouldn’t tease him later) and flopped back down on his bed. MJ took the desk chair, propping her legs up on the desk and crossing one over the other.
“So, what’re we talkin’ about, Leeds?”
Ned sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Um, well… I’m not really sure how to go about asking this, but…” MJ’s eyebrows raised in anticipation. “How do you, I don’t know, tell? Which alter is which?”
MJ shrugged.
“I mean- you just know how to tell at a glance, and I can’t even pick out Peter from the rest of them,” Ned’s shoulders slumped down in defeat.
“It’s not difficult,” MJ said, drumming her fingers against the desk, “I just know what to look for.”
“But how?!”
“How what?”
“How do you do it?!”
MJ shrugged again. “It’s not hard,” she said unhelpfully.
“How do you do it, though?” Ned pressed.
MJ sighed, rocking back in the chair a few times before swinging her feet off the top of the desk, instead spreading her legs out and leaning forward to rest her elbows on her thighs. “I kept a journal of Peter’s mood shifts,” she eventually admitted, “for like, six months.”
“You… wrote a journal about him? That’s not creepy at all.”
“Shut up, I’m just observant. Anyways, I kept track of what caused his mood shifts, when they happened, and what they looked like, and then once Finley spilled the metaphorical beans, I asked about his alters’ names and a general description of them. Then I just assigned each alter to a different mood I had written down, and boom- now I know.”
Ned tried to open his mouth, but all that came out were a series of flabbergasted sputters. “I- wha- when did you- how-?”
MJ’s cheeks burned. “God, you’re so empty-headed,” she teased, leaning back and crossing her arms over her chest.
“I’m not!” Ned protested.
“Dude, it literally took the most obvious sign of DID for you to even consider the possibility that Parker wasn’t mentally stable.”
Ned had nothing to say because fuck that was accurate.
“Well, um…”
“I have the journal with me, if you want it,” MJ smirked.
“How did you know to bring it?”
“I just knew,” she shrugged, pulling it out of the inside of her sweatshirt (Ned was convinced she had some sort of pocket dimension in there). She held it out. Ned took it and stared at the blank, purple and white cover.
That… that was the notebook he always saw MJ writing in.
Ned’s head shot up to gape at her. “That’s what you were doing with this?! I thought it was a school notebook!”
“You think a lot of things, Leeds. Unfortunately, most of those thoughts are stupid.”
“Hey!”
“It’s the truth and you know it,” MJ smirked.
Ned’s face pinched up. “I’m not stupid,” he grumbled, flipping the notebook open to briefly flip through it.
A knock came from the door. Both Ned and MJ swiveled their heads around to look at the entry.
“Come in,” Ned called, dropping the notebook beside him.
Ned’s mother peeked through the crack in the doorway, then opened the door fully. “How’re you guys doin’ up here? Need anything?”
“No thanks, Mom. We’re good.”
“Do you have anything to eat?”
Ned’s mother smiled. “I just finished my baking for the week. There’s cookies, if you want some.”
“Sweet. You good if I just leave it here, Leeds?” MJ leapt off of the chair and stretched her limbs, cracking a few of her joints as she went.
“Sure."
“Alright. See you later, sweetie,” Ned’s mother smiled, then shut the door, leaving Ned all alone in his bedroom.
He sighed and picked up the notebook.
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Thirty minutes later, and Ned had a newfound respect for (and possible fear of) MJ. He had expected maybe a few pages of half-assed entries, much like her actual note-taking style, but he quickly learned that was not the case. He had no idea when she found the time, energy, or motivation required to write seventy-five pages of detailed notes about his best friend.
Suffice to say, Ned had his work cut out for him.
He skimmed over the diary pages once again- a section of notes detailing every day of the current school year, complete with dates, timestamps, and detailed entries about Peter’s mood changes, when they happened, why they happened, what they looked like, later additions added in purple ink detailing which alter was which, everything.
MJ’s superpower wasn’t telling the alters apart from one another, it was whatever fresh hell this notebook was.
He read and reread countless entries detailing Peter’s good and bad mental health days, and suddenly a lot of things were starting to make sense. He finally realized that the reason Peter seemed sad after their English class’s Christmas party was because he didn’t remember attending it. He finally realized that Peter would snap when anyone brought up anything even remotely sexual when he genuinely didn’t notice that before. He finally realized that all those times where Peter was just acting a little strangely were actually switches, and he hated that he never noticed that.
Ned ran a hand through his hair and let out a shaky breath.
“You good over there?” MJ asked.
Ned gave a half-assed hum of assent. “Yeah.”
“If it’s too much I can try to break it down?”
“No, it’s not that.” Ned sighed. “I just… never realized that anything was wrong, and now looking back, I can’t believe that I never noticed.”
MJ stared for a minute before crossing over from the desk chair onto the bed, taking a seat beside Ned. She braced both of her hands on the mattress and swung her legs back and forth. “It’s not your fault,” she said, unnaturally quiet.
Ned’s brow furrowed. “Am I a bad friend?”
MJ’s legs paused, then resumed their swinging. “No.”
“Stop lying,” Ned bit out, uncaring of his tone. “I should have realized that something was wrong. All of those signs, and I missed every single one of them.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“How?!” Ned angrily snapped his head over to face her, realizing with horror that bitterly hot tears were streaking down his cheeks. “How is it not my fault?! I’ve-” he gulped, swiping his arm over his face to wipe away the tears, “I’ve been his best friend for ten years, MJ. Ten years! Ten years and I didn’t notice a goddamn thing!”
MJ stayed quiet. Ned sniffled, tilting his head up to the ceiling to stifle any more tears from leaking out.
At last, MJ spoke. “You couldn’t have known.”
“How?!”
“You weren’t educated. You didn’t know how to recognize the signs, and that’s not your fault.”
“I knew something was wrong, MJ, but I didn’t say anything, and my best friend suffered because of it!” Ned couldn’t stop yelling now, much to his bitter chagrin. “I should have told someone! I knew about Skip, I was there when Peter came to school with those injuries, I-”
MJ grabbed his shirt and tugged him in her direction. “Enough!”
Ned stared at her with wide eyes, breathing coming in ragged pants. MJ glared at him with a fiery passion in her eyes. “You’d better listen closely because I’m only gonna say this once,” she snapped. “This was in no way, shape, or form your fault. You didn't abuse them. You didn’t contribute to their trauma. The adults in your life never educated you on mental illness. You weren’t taught what to do, you weren’t taught what signs to look for. You cannot be blamed for missing something that most adults don’t notice.”
“But I-”
“Quiet!” MJ’s glare deepened and she tugged his shirt even harder, bringing him in closer and closer until he could feel her burning-hot breath on his face, her eyes just inches from his. “Maybe you didn’t speak up before, but you can now. You can learn how not to make those mistakes in the future. You can learn what to look for and how to help, but you can’t do that if all you’re focusing on is blaming yourself!”
Ned looked down, shame creeping through his body and settling on his face in the form of a burning flush. MJ sighed, taking a minute to catch her breath, and released his shirt. Ned backed away and straightened his clothes.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to start yelling.”
MJ’s shoulders slumped. “It’s understandable,” she shrugged, “you were upset. I shouldn’t have gotten all up in your face like that.”
“No no, you were justified in doing that.”
“Oh? Cool.”
Ned huffed out something that could have been interpreted as a watery laugh. “I think we both need to work on our emotions,” he tried to joke.
MJ snorted. “No shit.”
The two friends sat in silence, MJ eventually flopping down backwards to lie on the bed.
“So, wanna learn how to tell who’s who?”
“Please.”
MJ laughed. “Alright. Let’s begin.”
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.
The first thing MJ told Ned to practice was to get out of the mindset that Peter was always at the front.
It would be difficult, breaking that habit of always assuming Peter was fronting, but MJ told him that asking who was out was a big first step.
So Ned put that to work on Monday morning.
“Hey dude,” Pe- they greeted, a smile tugging at the corner of their mouth.
“Hey,” Ned greeted in return, “busy weekend?”
“You said it,” they huffed, scooching over to make room for Ned on the lobby bench, “May had me doing chores when I wasn’t out on patrol.”
’I?’ Ned furrowed his brow in confusion.
”Spiderman doesn’t shut up about patrol,” the memory of MJ’s voice floated through his mind, ”he used to be able to do it freely, but now that you know about their DID, he’s been a lot more cautious.”
Ned’s eyes widened.
”Still, old habits die hard.”
“How was patrol, Spiderman?”
The gaping look on the person’s face was enough to confirm his suspicions.
“How-how did you-?”
“Did you see any badass villains like the Vulture?!”
Spiderman snapped his mouth shut, dragging a hand across his tired face. He glanced over at the clock. Ned’s gaze followed. If Ned read the clock correctly (he was never too sure, he hadn’t learned about analog clocks since that one math class in second grade), they only had five minutes left until homeroom.
“Yeah, but you gotta promise not to interrupt. There’s not much time before homeroom.”
“Got it.”
Ned felt a wave of pride wash over him. He did it!
Now he only had to do it for the rest of the system, too.
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The second thing MJ told Ned to practice was picking up on the little things. She taught him about everyone’s little giveaways, how easy it was to tell the difference when a slip-up happened.
Ned’s memory wasn’t the best, but he remembered some of the basic signs:
Spider-Man wrinkled his nose at the smell of peppermint and hates English class. Alex called everyone “kiddo” and would sing along if you played a popular TikTok audio. Keith or Keiran or whatever his name was huffed whenever something annoyed him and has a death glare scarier than MJ. Peter loved science and would ramble for hours about his lab days with Mr. Stark. And so on.
Ned was worried he’d forget some of them, but hey, that’s what freakishly-detailed notebooks written by a certain Michelle Jones are for, right?
According to Alex, Peter fronted the most often and at school, meaning that Ned probably wasn’t going to get much practice outside of when they hung out over the weekend or during Decathlon practice, but somehow, Ned got the perfect opportunity to practice.
Right away, Ned noticed something was off when P- his friend came to school.
They had a pretty nasty bruise over their right eye covered by sloppily-applied concealer and had a barely-noticeable limp- something Ned wouldn’t have picked up on if he wasn’t trying as hard to notice the small details. Their grumpy expression had a look of annoyance to it, which set off a million red flags.
Peter wouldn’t have come to school in that state- he would have stayed home to avoid concern and let himself heal properly before coming back.
Ned’s conclusion? Someone else was out.
“Hey dude,” he greeted tentatively, “what- what happened?”
“Some assholes ganged up on me outside of Delmar’s last night,” they snipped, flinging their backpack down on the bench and pulling out a half-eaten piece of toast. They ripped off a chunk of it and angrily chewed.
“Shouldn’t it have healed by now?” he asked, “and aren’t you, like, super strong? Why didn’t you just defend yourself?”
“What, you think I didn’t?” they snapped, crumpling up their napkin. “Spiderman's the only one with any real powers, anyway. I don’t have his strength or healing or whatever.”
So, that ruled out Spiderman as well.
It definitely wasn’t Alex, either- Alex wouldn’t have snapped at him like that.
Was it Iron Man? No, Iron Man would have been sarcastic, not downright rude like this person was being. It couldn’t be any of the child alters- littles?- either. None of them would have known what the word “asshole” meant.
Who was it, then?
“Um, sorry, I didn’t realize you don’t have powers,” Ned awkwardly apologized, tentatively sitting down a couple feet away from the person. He decided to try to change the subject. “So, do some of your traits change when you’re in the body, then?”
The person’s annoyance never settled, but they did answer the question. “Some of them do. Spiderman is the only one with the powers- Pe- I have a healing factor and some enhanced senses, but it’s not as strong as his. I have to wear contacts, too. I’m the only one who does.”
Ned’s face pinched in confusion. Why was the alter trying to act like Peter? Did they not trust Ned? Were they trying to fly under the radar?
“Do your eyes ever change colors?”
“No, this isn’t some bullshit serial killer movie,” they snapped. Ned shrunk under their glare- wait, glare?
”General pissy attitude, likes to start fights- he huffs when people annoy him and shuts everyone out when he’s hurt. His glare is scarier than mine, by the way. Don’t cross him or you’ll probably end up in a ditch somewhere.”
“Any reason why you’re pretending to be Peter, Keagan?”
The person froze. “Fuck, was I that obvious?”
“Kinda, yeah.”
Keagan sighed. “Whatever. Yeah.”
“Oh- I got your name right this time!” Ned realized.
“This ti- how fucking hard can my name be to remember?”
“There’s a lot of similar names!”
“Which-”
The bell rang.
Keagan sighed, standing up. His annoyance seemed to have dissipated a bit, thank god, and his glare had settled into a simple frown.
“See ya during history,” Ned waved.
Keagan nodded. “Yeah.” He paused, zipping up his backpack and slinging it over his shoulder. “Uh, if anyone else comes out, could you not tell them I was out?”
Ned cocked his head. “Um, sure. Why don’t you want them to know?”
Keagan shifted uncomfortably. “Well, they’re kiiiiind of all pissed at me right now, and Peter was supposed to front today.”
Ned nodded. “Sure. See you in history?”
“Yeah, see ya.”
Ned turned, smiling to himself. He was getting better at this!
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The third and final thing MJ told Ned to practice was using the correct terminology and respecting boundaries. That step was probably even more confusing than the first two because it seemed like everything Ned had previously thought about DID was suddenly uprooted and turned on its head.
”Don’t ask about their trauma,” MJ had advised, ”DID forms from severe, repeated trauma. It’s not anyone’s business but theirs and their therapist’s.”
That seemed easy enough. Ned had wanted to press them about what had happened at first (other than what he already knew about what had happened with Skip), but he quickly realized how uncomfortable that made them and he stopped right away. So, step one was already complete.
”Make sure you’re using up-to-date terms,” she’d also told him, ”Don’t say Multiple Personality Disorder, personalities, broken, et cetera, et cetera.”
That one was a bit trickier. There were several times where Ned had to correct himself quickly because he slipped up and used MPD instead of DID. But step two wasn’t that bad either.
”Use the right terms when you refer to them,” she’d said, ”use they/them when you’re not sure who’s out, call them alters or headmates, not personalities, use the term ‘fronting’ when someone is out.”
Again, not terribly difficult. There was a buttload of new terms, but once he got in the habit of replacing them with the old terms, it wasn’t so hard.
”Ask, don’t assume. If you’re not sure about which terms to use, ask. Ask who’s fronting. Ask what pronouns to use. Ask about everything but shit they don’t want you to ask about.”
That… was a little bit harder, Ned wouldn’t lie. Ned knew he was very loud. He spoke the first thing to pop into his head and didn’t think about how it would sound afterward. It was hard learning to stop assuming all the time. But he supposed he’d learn in time.
And finally, the last piece of advice MJ had given him:
”Learn other terms relating to DID. You’re gonna want to know the difference between co-consciousness, co-fronting, and blending, and what splitting, integration, and fusion are. Also, learn about the different types of roles. The system has a lot of them and it’s good to know what everyone does.”
Another notoriously difficult step. Ned’s memory sucked, but he knew he couldn’t be a good ally and friend if he didn’t learn all that he could about DID.
So, he took the time to research… which led him down the rabbit hole he currently found himself in.
Ned didn’t even want to look at the clock. He already knew school tomorrow was going to be absolute hell.
Not that he cared right now, of course, no- he was rapidly spiraling down a deep web of searches detailing alter roles in DID.
There were so many and every website he went to seemed to have a different definition. MJ had told him not to trust medical websites since they usually weren’t completely accurate, so he instead resorted to Tumblr and, regrettably, TikTok.
It wasn’t all bad, though- his Google Docs sheet was filling up quickly, and before he knew it, he had six pages of detailed notes.
If only he had this much motivation to do his homework.
Ned sighed and rubbed his forehead, trying to ease away the headache that had crept in sometime after midnight.
He adjusted his blue light glasses (those were a godsend) and skimmed over the pages, trying to see if he’d left anything out. Once he was certain he had all the basics, he opened up MJ’s freaky diary and flipped to the back, where he could see detailed notes of every alter, including, luckily for him, their roles.
Peter. Host. That was simple enough. Ned was still confused about the whole concept of a core personality. It was all very confusing and it was way past three in the morning at this point, and Ned didn’t have the brain capacity to think any of it through, so he pushed that question aside and focused on the roles themselves instead of the semantics behind the legitimacy of them.
Wow he was delirious.
So. Peter. Host. Primary host, actually- apparently that meant that he was out the most often, which made sense. MJ had written that he’s usually out at school and a select few other places.
Spider-Man. Co-host, unique role. Ned had learned what a unique role was, thanks to some DID discourse post- he couldn’t be bothered to remember who exactly had posted it. Everything sort of blurred together when you were sleep deprived, he found out. According to MJ’s notes, Spider-Man was out during patrol, which made sense, and worked to keep the whole vigilante thing up. Apparently he also fronted during lab days, but from what Peter had told him, Peter was out during lab days. It was all so confusing. Did they just switch in and out? He sure as hell didn’t know.
Alex. Caregiver. That was easy enough. Peter had actually been the one to tell Ned about her. She took care of all the littles, the system itself, and the body when it wasn’t doing well.
Keagan. Gatekeeper, sexual protector. Ned felt gross even thinking about why the system would need a sexual protector. He seriously was considering breaking into wherever Skip was being held and making him pay for all the messed-up shit he’d done.
He skimmed the rest of the notes, finding roles like fragment, little, trauma holder, and, strangely, dormant. He wasn’t sure what that meant. He’d have to look it up in the morning, when he was slightly more coherent.
Ned closed his eyes and let his head flop back onto his pillow.
DID was so complicated, and Ned didn’t know if he had the brain capacity to process all of it.
He supposed he’d just have to wait and see.
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“You know Ned, you’ve gotten really good at telling us apart,” Peter pointed out one day.
“H-huh?”
“We have a journal now,” Peter explained, “apparently you can tell the difference between us. It’s kinda freaky- you’re almost as good as MJ. Which is… weird.”
“She helped me out a little,” Ned admitted, kicking a rock out of his path. Peter laughed.
“She intimidate you into it?”
“I asked her.”
“Wow, you’re on a confidence streak.”
“Maybe. Also, you keep a journal?”
Peter nodded. “Yeah. Dr. Picani recommended it.”
“Is he your...?”
“Therapist, yeah.”
“That’s cool.”
“Mhmm,” Peter smiled down at the sidewalk. “He’s weird, but I like him.”
“Weird how?”
“He applies cartoons to our situation,” Peter laughed, “and I’m not into cartoons at all. He makes some good points, though.”
“Wow. I’d love to have him as my therapist.”
“You wanna see a therapist?” Peter turned to look at him, pace slowing. Ned shrugged.
“My mom wants me to see someone for my ADHD,” he said, “apparently she doesn’t think executive dysfunction is healthy.”
“Uncultured swine,” Peter huffed, “everyone knows that only the real ones have executive dysfunction.”
Ned burst out into a fit of laughter.
After a moment of silence, Peter stiffened and looked around. “Wait, this isn’t the way to Delmar’s. Where are we going?”
“MJ wanted to meet up at the library,” Ned explained, nudging his friend along, “Alex wants you to study more or something.”
“Alex was out?”
“During sixth period, yeah.”
“MJ’s not in that class,” Peter pointed out, turning his gaze to the side to look at Ned.
“I know.”
God that felt badass to say.
Peter stared, nearly tripping over his own two feet, then let a smile tug onto his face. “Spidey told me you were getting good at telling us apart.” He smirked at Ned. “That’s impressive, man.”
“It was no big deal,” Ned gloated, waving his hand nonchalantly, as if it were the easiest thing in the world (which it absolutely wasn’t, but Ned wanted to bask in his badassery for a couple more minutes before something inevitably ruined it).
“I’m really happy you care enough to learn,” Peter smiled genuinely, seemingly not noticing Ned’s moment of pride. “That’s really cool of you, dude.”
Ned blushed. “Thanks, man.”
“How’d you learn?”
Ned hesitated. “MJ… may have taken a few notes.”
“A few?”
“Okay maybe that was an under-exaggeration,” Ned’s voice quickly crept up into the near-shrill range.
“Do you happen to have said notes with you?” Peter raised an eyebrow.
Ned sighed in defeat, shoulders slumping, and reached inside his coat for the purple notebook. He handed it over, admitting that his soul would quickly be banished to the shadow realm by MJ as soon as she found out.
“Holy fucking shit,” Peter breathed, then winced. “Sorry, sorry,” he muttered, eyes skimming over the contents of the notebook.
“What was that?”
“Alex. She hates when I swear,” Peter explained.
“She’s… co-conscious?” Ned guessed.
Peter nodded, then paused. “Wow, you really learned a lot, dude.”
“I, uh, did a lot of research.”
“Ooookay, I’ve bumped MJ up to a whole new level of terrifyingly stalker-ish,” Peter let out a shaky breath and handed the notebook back to Ned. “First it was the whole knowing about how I dropped all my extracurriculars, then it was guessing about my DID, now she’s writing FBI-level surveillance notes that could probably get me killed if some bad guy gets his hands on it and-”
Peter paused, squeezing his eyes shut. “You okay, dude?” Ned asked, trying not to let his concern seep too much into his voice.
Peter made no indication that he’d heard Ned and instead focused on- whatever it was he was focusing on. “Um, here, you should sit down,” Ned squeaked out, awkwardly maneuvering Peter so that he could sit down on the curb and out of the way of other passersby.
Peter hunched over and dropped his head between his legs, taking slow, measured breaths. His fists clenched and unclenched at a few weeds sprouting up from the cracks in the sidewalk. Ned grimaced at how filthy they were (who knew how many people walked over them every day?) and reached out, letting Peter grasp onto his hand. He winced as Peter’s grip tightened to an inhuman degree, but he endured it for the sake of giving Peter something to hang on to.
The minutes ticked by.
Peter raised his head up, looked around, and let his eyes rest on Ned.
“You good now?” Ned asked, now having a pretty good idea of what had happened. “That was a really long switch.”
“You should see some of our others,” the alter grimaced as they stood up, stretching out their limbs, “one time it took thirty minutes for us to pull our crap together.”
“Hi, Iron Man.”
“Shit, that obvious?” the man winced.
“I don’t know if Peter’s filled you in yet, but-”
“You have MJ’s weird psychic powers now,” Iron Man nodded. Upon noticing Ned’s blank face, he snorted and poked him in the stomach. “Relax, I’m kidding. So, the library?”
“How do you know about that?”
“I’ve been co-con since the end of school, kiddo,” the older man said, then winced. He reached into Peter’s backpack, rummaged around a bit, and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. “God, that’s so much better,” he breathed a sigh of relief.
Ned smiled, despite what all had just happened. He remembered Iron Man’s terrible migraine the first time he’d seen him switch out- in? He didn’t know all the technical terms yet- and knew that his headache must be splitting his head open right now, especially with how difficult the switch was.
“Library?”
Iron Man nodded. “Library.”
Ned stood and brushed the back of his pants off. “Cool! MJ’s waiting.”
Iron Man smiled and slapped him on the back near his shoulder blades. “Let’s not keep her waiting. I hear she’s a menace when she’s grumpy. Hormones.”
Ned grinned. “Yeah. She’s probably gonna kill me, to be honest. I’d welcome that, ya know?”
“No??”
“You’re too old to understand,” Ned shook his head disapprovingly.
“You kids and your mee-mees.”
Ned laughed. “Yes, us kids and our mee-mees,” he echoed.
MJ wasn’t the most pleasant to be around all the time, but she definitely helped Ned, and he was grateful.
And even though Ned got horribly verbally harassed later (and a bit physically harassed as well), he didn’t mind- the teasing glint in MJ’s eyes when she yelled at him was enough for him to know that she understood his gratefulness.
He’d figure it out in time- he’d already learned so much in just a few weeks.
DID was complex, but Ned knew he’d be able to learn.
And that was all that mattered.