Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter woke up the way he usually did these days - a few hours before his alarm was supposed to go off and coated in a cold sweat that made him shiver.  With an exhausted groan, he turned his face further into his pillow - he had finally splurged and washed all of his bedding two days before but they already smelled like the rot and mildew that permeated the shoebox apartment he was living in.  

With the way he constantly lost jobs it was really the best he could afford but if he kept missing his rent payments he’d be back out on the street.  Again.  He wasn’t really looking forward to that.

The alley beyond his dingy and stained window was just as dark as it had been when he’d gone to bed just a few hours before and he momentarily toyed with the idea of trying to go back to sleep before giving it up.  He was never someone who could get restful sleep once he woke up like this and, after everything , he was even less likely to even doze.  Was it even worth it?

Not really.

With a sigh, Peter forced himself upright since there really was no point in trying to relax anymore and off of his thin, thrift store mattress.  His back twinged as he stood up from the floor where he’d shoved his bed in the corner - the mattress was well past its use by date and was painful to sleep on but at least he had something between him and the peeling laminate.  It was cold that morning, barely warmer inside than out since he hadn’t been able to pay for heat yet this month and he shivered harder outside of his warm cocoon.

“ This is what you wanted Parker, ” he told himself bitterly as he fished through the cabinet that he’d been using as a closet for a clean-ish towel.  “ You chose this .”

His shithole studio in Flushing was truly smack in the middle of one of the poorest areas of Queens and his super had illegally subdivided the apartments years ago directly after the Blip in order to fit more people and make more money.  Peter considered what he paid for the place to be highway robbery but it was hard to get approved to live anywhere with a rental record like his.  All this to say he was stuck sharing a bathroom and shower with the five other apartments on his floor.

Lucky for him he was rarely at home when it was in high rotation - most of his showers were taken in the dead of the night like this one and, even better, hot water was included with the cost of rent.  Well, water was included with rent.  He’d never gotten the shower hotter than lukewarm at best but at least he’d be clean.

Much like the rest of the place, the bathroom was more than a little rundown and rusted and in desperate need of a deep clean and remodel.  It was falling apart at the seams and barely usable but Peter would take what he could get these days.  Right after everything had happened, after he had raided his old apartment for anything of sentimental value and some clothes and left, after he lost everyone he had ever known or cared about he’d spent time lamenting his choices.

The first few weeks ran together.  It was days of him curled in corners of his new apartment that he lived in completely alone, lost in thought and absolutely aching for the life he’d had.  He could remember being sad when his parents died and had felt like his heart had been stabbed clean through when Ben had died but this.  

This.

This felt like someone had scooped out his insides.  Like an ache that wouldn’t go away but would turn debilitating at random.  Pain that absolutely incapicated him to the point that it was all he could do to breathe and exist.

Losing May had been an impalement but losing everyone he had left was a death blow.  There were many days where he didn’t think he’d survive without them.  Never ending hours of emptiness.  But he made a new suit because Spider-Man was all he had left.  Because May had told him that he had great power and he had a responsibility to use it to help others.

The first swing back out felt like breathing.

That had been almost two years ago now and while Peter couldn’t say he was necessarily any happier, he had at least accepted his choices.  Beck may have been the one to reveal his identity but Peter had been the selfish one that had nearly caused the multiverse to deconstruct around them just to get into college.

“Little too maudlin for this early in the morning Parker,” Peter mumbled to himself as he cranked the squeaky knob of the shower to hot in a blindly stupid hope that the water might at least be warm.  The pipes gurgled and spurted pathetically for a few seconds before coming out in a drizzling stream.  It was tepid at best when he stepped under the spray and he winced and sped through his routine, eager to be dry and quasi-warm as quickly as possible.

The iota of light that creeped through his window had taken on the slightest tint of watery gray in the pre-dawn when Peter re-entered his apartment and he let out a yawn that cracked his jaw with the strength of it.  With hardly a glance, he turned on the police scanner he had programmed into his phone to run quietly in the background while he ate a protein bar and drank directly from the kitchen tap.

It was Saturday and he was free of any major obligations.  After getting his GED he’d managed to get accepted into Empire State University where he was accruing massive student loan debt and taking classes part time while working as a lab assistant in the chemistry department.  Being the person responsible for cleaning the labs and equipment had given Peter plenty of opportunity to mix up batches of web fluid while still pulling down just enough of a paycheck to afford his rent, utilities and groceries.  Most months.  He’d faced a moral quandary when he first started, for all intents and purposes, stealing ingredients but what other choice did he have if he wanted to be Spider-Man?

On his scanner, dispatch was announcing the shift change and wishing everyone a happy first night of Hanukkah and Peter closed his eyes.  He didn’t keep up with the holidays anymore.  He didn’t celebrate anything - after all, who was he supposed to celebrate with?  All the holidays meant to him was that he’d have cut hours and a smaller paycheck and he spent the majority of his time alone if he wasn’t out patrolling.

Peter didn’t do so well on his own anymore. 

With a shake of his head, Peter ran his fingers through his over-long hair and took a slow, deep breath.  He wasn’t going to dwell on it.  He wasn’t going to get stuck on that, not today.  The scanner lit up with activity and, without bothering to listen or comprehend what was being said, Peter suited up and crept out of his apartment, swinging through the snowy streets of Queens.

Michelle Jones-Watson swirled the melted, watered down remains of her iced coffee as she huddled deeper into her jacket as she made her way to the subway, lamenting her decision to not get hot tea instead.  Fresh snow was just starting to fall and was already accumulating on the dirty and trodden piles on the sides of the road and sidewalks and she took extra care not to slip and fall like she had done numerous times before.

Her walk home from the coffee shop she and Ned had grown to favor when they were in town was long and she almost regretted not taking him up on his offer to meet up later in the week.  It's not like they didn’t see each other daily on campus but she just really felt the need to get out into the city again.  

Boston was great but it didn’t hold a candle to New York.

She stopped on the curb in front of Delmar’s bodega and waited for her turn to cross the sluggish intersection, her mind wandering.  More and more often lately, Michelle would get the feeling that something was off.  It was like she was forgetting something and not something like she left her oven on.  Something big.  Something momentous and life changing and right on the tip of her tongue -

And then gone.

Little things seemed to be triggering it more and more lately; the smell of wheat cakes at her favorite bakery that she couldn’t remember ever buying but seemed to know the exact taste of.  She’d volunteer at FEAST and feel like there was an empty void next to her.  She’d indulge Ned in building legos and they would laugh and joke and she’d look to her side, try to share the moment with someone but meet nothing but empty air.

It was maddening.

The smell of warmed pastrami from the bodega made her feel like that now - untethered and ungrounded.  Like she should be splitting a sandwich with someone.  It felt like she’d done it so many times before it was like she could practically taste the meat melting in her mouth…

Tires screeched as one of the taxis slammed on brakes just in front of her and Michelle jumped back away from the road only to land badly on her heel and slip to the side.  As she fell, Michelle closed her eyes in preparation for smacking her head on the pavement but the impact never came.

Instead, she heard a soft whoosh of cutting air and a warm, hard body collided with her own, scooping her back onto her feet and steadying her with careful hands.

“Are you okay?”

Michelle opened her eyes and felt them widen in what she was sure was undisguised shock and surprise, her lips parting and mouth moving on its own for just a few seconds before she came back to her senses.  “What?  Oh, yes, I’m fine thanks to you.”

Verbose, Michelle.  Good job.

Spider-Man’s large, white and non-blinking eyes seemed to bore into her own for just a hair too long before he nodded, his chin tipped down when he completely froze.  Clearing his throat in a thick cough, he gestured at Michelle’s throat and said, hoarsely, “I like your necklace.”

Michelle glanced down at the little broken black dahlia pendant that hung from a delicate silver chain around her neck.  She couldn’t remember where it came from or how she had gotten it which annoyed her to no end but it felt so important.  So important, in fact, that she hardly ever took it off.  Reaching up with a gloved hand, she traced the jagged petals and said, “Thanks.  It’s a black dahlia like -,”

“The murder?” Spider-Man finished softly, crossing his arms tightly over the chest of his bright red and blue suit.  He looked cold and Michelle wondered dumbly if the suit was well insulated.  Something deep in her pinged and she grabbed at the feeling, the memory, but it was gone as quick as it had come.  “Anyway,” he continued with a cough, looking into the distance, “I’d better go.”

And he was gone before she could utter another word, firing a web from trembling hands as he took off.

Michelle frowned after him, an unidentifiable thought niggling at her brain and giving her a headache that made her sigh out a frustrated breath through her nose.  She had, like everyone else who lived in New York, seen the masked hero swinging through the city when she was home on her breaks or infrequent weekend visits.  She wasn’t an expert by any means but there was something about Spider-Man that seemed… different over the past couple years.  Off.

The Spider-Man Michelle remembered from rescuing her class on their disastrous European vacation and in Washington (why was he in either place when New York was so clearly his home turf?) had been bright and boarder-line bubbly but the one that patrolled the streets now…

Well.

Michelle stared after him for far too long, her brain working desperately at a problem she couldn’t put a name to and one that only served to irritate her further before letting out a sigh through her nose as she turned back to the cleared street.

The rest of her walk home was much more uneventful and she shook off the last of the chill gratefully when she entered her warm apartment lobby.  Her dad would still be at work, a contractor’s job in a metropolis never finished, but her mother would be home.  Light music drifted through the front door and Michelle smiled as she unlocked it and stepped inside.

“Shelly!” Her mother, Mary Jane, sang from the kitchen in tune with whatever Christmas song was playing over the radio mounted under the cabinets.  She effortlessly weaved in harmonies to the classics in a way that made Michelle, who was tone-deaf on a good day, completely jealous.  “How was it?” Mary Jane asked, scooping her last glob of cookie dough onto a filled baking sheet and dropping her spoon to step around the kitchen island to pull Michelle into a careful hug - hands up and out to avoid smearing her with dough and flour.

“It was good,” Michelle answered as she dropped her bag to the floor and shrugged out of her jacket and snow-tipped boots at the door.  “Ned said to tell you hello.”

“You need to invite him over for dinner soon!” Her mother told her, as she slipped the first pan of cookies into the oven.  “We haven’t seen him since summer!”

“I’ll tell him,” Michelle promised, jumping onto a barstool and twirling one of her fingers into the chain around her neck.  She still felt a little out of sorts, discombobulated in a way she wasn’t used to feeling and her mother frowned at her from where she was struggling with their ancient mixer.

“I know that look,” she said pointedly.  “What problem are you trying to figure out?”

“Do you ever feel like there’s something important that you’re forgetting and you just don’t know what?  Like it's right there at the tips of your fingers but it slips away before you can grab it?” Michelle asked, staring at the cookie batter in contemplation and then leaning forward to swipe some from the dish, narrowly avoiding her mothers half-hearted smack with her mixing spoon.

Mary Jane grabbed the bowl away from Michelle’s hands with a faux-disappointed look and pulled out another baking sheet.  “If you’re asking if I’m absent-minded you know the answer to that question,” she teased.  “Do you have any idea what you might be forgetting?” Michelle hesitated, debating what she should say.  It sounded crazy in her head and she was sure it would sound even more insane out loud.  

After all, how was she supposed to tell her mom that she thought she knew Spider-Man and had forgotten him?

“Chelle?” Mary Jane pressed, her brows furrowed.

“I’m not sure,” Michelle chose to say instead.  “Just feel like I’m forgetting someone.”

Mary Jane gave her a disbelieving look but didn’t push it.  “Go wash up, I have another few dozen cookies to bake and I could use the help.” She offered an abrupt subject change that Michelle gladly took.  An afternoon hanging out with her mom sounded like the perfect distraction.

Later that night, sprawled out on her bed and staring out the window into the dark streets of Queens, Michelle let her mind wander.  She dreamed of calloused hands holding hers, sparks of light and a deep feeling of love and correctness that left her cold and lonely in the morning.

Chapter Text

The one good thing about Peter’s apartment was also one of the worst things - the lighting was absolute shit.

It was winter so the days were almost unbearably short and cold and the night lasted almost longer than Peter could handle and he spent the majority of his waking hours in little to no light beyond his dingy bedroom lamp.

This was absolutely the worst for his, progressively more terrible, seasonal depression but it did do wonders for blacking out everything so he could develop his pictures.  His current batch was hung across the laundry line he had strung from one end of his apartment to the other with just the last two in the developer pans he had made out of second-hand, warped Tupperware.

Not the best but it did the job.

As a pre-teen, photography had been a fun and mindless escape and a hobby that he could get super invested in and one that Ben had nurtured from the day Peter had gotten his first disposable camera.  He remembers their long walks through Forest Hills as Ben taught him about proper lighting and framing and then how to develop the photos himself.

“You’re not a real photographer until you can develop your own film ,” Ben had said sagely in their cramped bathroom in near darkness.  Peter had been enraptured and had thrown himself into learning as much as he could on the disposable cameras until May and Ben had bought him his own for his own for his thirteenth birthday.

That same camera sat on his bed even now, a little more beat up and repaired more than once but still functional.  Peter had pulled it out not long after his self-imposed exile, desperate enough for money that he’d been willing to sell to the Bugle .  That first batch had been objectively terrible - blurred edges and shit lighting - but J Jonah Jameson had bought them.  He’d been brusque and belittling in a way that made Peter’s hackles raise but he had walked away two hundred dollars richer.  

So he dealt with it.

To be fair, it was almost funny now that he took glorified selfies and sold them to the man who hated him more than just about anyone in the entire world.  It was even funnier that this had been his most consistent source of income over the last two years.  Peter wasn’t what one might call a ‘model employee’ and had been fired from greater than ten jobs in the last year alone due his frequent tardiness and absences.

He was frankly impressed that he had managed to get and keep his lab job.  It probably helped that he didn’t keep his phone on his while he was gloved up and dealing with various dangerous chemicals.

Peter snapped himself out of his stuporous musings and groaned when he glanced down to check his last two photos - overexposed of course.  And his own fault to boot.

He removed them from the developer and washed them, hanging them to drip dry with the others and looking over the whole set with a critical eye.  He highly doubted that Jameson would offer him anything at all for the last two (besides a tongue lashing but that's besides the point) but some of the others were pretty good.  

With any luck, they should net him just enough to pay his heating bill and buy a round of groceries.

From it’s spot buried in his blankets, his phone let out a loud ping that had him sighing and rubbing his fingers into his tired eyes.

‘Guess I’m clocking in early tonight,’ he thought grimly as he dug his suit out from where it was wedged half under his desk and shimmed into it.  The air outside his window was bitingly cold but Peter just fired a web anyway, swinging off in the direction of sirens and letting his mind blank out.

This was the one thing he really excelled at.

Peter’s work as Spider-Man was sometimes the only thing that got him out of bed in the morning, the only thing that could really get him through the day.  It was his one true calling more than anything else - it was May’s legacy that she had passed onto him.

With great power also comes great responsibility.

This mantra served to get him up out of bed in the morning, it kept him focused.

Well.  It had kept him focused until he had run into Michelle again, had held her in his arms even for just a brief moment.  Now he had trouble concentrating in the suit and out of it.  He’d kept up with her and Ned of course - stalking their Instagrams while they were in Boston and swinging past their apartments when they were visiting the city - but he hadn’t let himself get close to them since that day in Peter Pan Donuts.

After all Jameson said it best - everything Spider-Man touched came to ruin.

“Cut it out,” Peter muttered to himself, allowing his head to drop forward to rest in his head as he perched on the edge of a Manhattan high rise.  He’d been trying to catch his breath, take a quick break but all he had managed to accomplish over the past few minutes was feeling sorry for himself.

He didn’t really have the energy for that right now.  This was why he didn’t like taking breaks.

The air pressure around him popped and changed rapidly and the hair on the back of Peter’s neck rose to stand on end and he let out an audible groan.  He so didn’t have time to deal with this.

“Yo Spidey!” Johnny Storm yelled jovially as he jetted past Peter, circling around the building once to float in front of him, still completely wreathed in flames.  “What’s happening man?”

“Storm,” Peter grunted back, squinting through his fingers at the brightness of Johnny’s flames.

The Fantastic Four were a recent addition to New York, settling into the newly named Baxter Building just over a year before.  The vast majority of the city had been enthralled with them - obsessed in the way a populace could only be when a new hero team filled the power vacuum left by the defunct Avenger’s team.

Peter, however, wasn’t among those that felt super welcoming - especially since Johnny Storm had met him exactly once and had decided that they were the best of Pals and that there wasn’t anything Peter could do about it.  So far he’d done a fair job at keeping him at arm’s length but it was getting increasingly harder to do so.  The Four got it , they understood better than just about anyone and, bonus, Peter hadn’t known them before .

They were maybe the only people he could talk to and yet…

And yet.

He couldn’t do that.  He couldn’t get that close to someone again - not if he might have to lose them.  Not if they might die because of him.

“What’s up with your face?” Johnny asked jokingly as he settled on the ledge next to Peter, extinguishing his flames with a soft whoosh and making Peter blink rapidly as his eyes adjusted.  It was probably good that the eyes of his suit didn’t react to his facial expressions anymore - the blinking would’ve looked pretty strange.

“You can’t even see my face,” Peter pointed out gruffly, not looking over but still feeling Johnny’s eye roll.

“Completely irrelevant,” he said, waving his vaguely smoking hand in Peter’s face and making him flinch back out of the way - he didn’t fancy catching on fire again.  “I can practically feel you brooding so what’s up Webs?”

“Nothing’s up,” Peter grumbled back, shifting uncomfortably and trying his best not to scoot closer to Johnny’s warmth - he was cold nearly all the time in the winter and the heat radiating from the Human Torch was almost too tempting.  The only thing that really kept him from giving in was the fact that he knew it would make Johnny even more insufferable than he already was.  “And I’m not brooding ,” he protested belatedly.

“Oh yeah sure,” Johnny snorted out in an openly disbelieving tone before he softened his voice.  “You can talk to me about it, you know.  We’re friends after all.”

Peter flinched away and stood up abruptly.  “No, we aren’t,” he insisted.  “Friends, that is.  I don’t have.  Uh,” the look that Johnny gave him as he stumbled over his words was bordering on pity and, yeah no.  Peter didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with all of this right now.  “See you around Storm.”

He tipped over the edge of the building in a free fall, desperate to get away as quickly as possible and only firing a web to catch himself at the very last second.  It pulled hard on his shoulder and back and made his muscles ache but it didn’t stop him from flipping away as fast as he possibly could.  His Spidey sense hummed in the background and he heard screams in the distance and he sighed in relief before changing directions as he picked up the pace.

He had work to do.

“Over here!” Michelle half-raised her hand and waved it in greeting as Ned entered the cafe and stood on his toes to see over the heads of the people in line.  Michelle was tucked up in the corner away from everyone else with her back to the wall so she could watch the door for her friend.  She was glad she had come early with the intent to get some work done since Clutch was unusually crowded that day and she had spent over fifteen minutes waiting in line to order and another ten for her order to be ready.  She had only just snagged this table a few minutes before.

As Ned squeezed through the line of irritated patrons, Michelle hastily moved the pile of napkins and cold brew she had bought for Ned (his drink of choice no matter the time of year) out of the way.  He had brought his laptop and she suspected that he planned to go meet up with Flash for a gaming night after he was done with their coffee date.

“Thank you so much!” He said, his voice muffled by the lid of his cup as he took several gulps before he bothered to set his bag down or even take his seat.  “Sorry I’m late - the subway is backed up from something happening in Midtown.”

Michelle hummed around the lip of her oversized tea cup - chai, her weakness around the holidays - and tapped ideal fingers against the warmed ceramic.  “Any idea what?” She asked, bored.

As a native New Yorker and someone who had dealt with various alien invasions and other superhero nonsense for the majority of her life, she was used to the frequent delays in public transit.  It had been exciting - and terrifying - as a child but, as an adult, it was more inconvenient than anything.  She hardly bothered to check on the automated notifications on her phone any more unless she was close to the action.

Ned, now settled in his seat and swirling the ice in his half-drunk cold brew, just shrugged.  “I think Spidey is fighting some guy in a rhino costume,” Ned snorted in good humor.  “Where do these guys come up with this shit?  Like a rhino of all things.”

“Yeah.  Right,” Michelle agreed, distracted as she tapped her phone once, twice, three times before giving into the urge to open twitter.  As per usual, some idiot had decided not to evacuate and was shakily live-streaming the fight on his phone for a few thousand viewers.  With an eye roll directed both at the person shooting and at herself for even thinking about watching, Michelle muted her sound and clicked on the video.

The footage was blurred and shaky at the very best but, from the little she could make out, Spidey was definitely getting his ass kicked.  She clenched her jaw when he was knocked out of the air and wished everyone would just leave so he could get to work and finish this and her body jolted.  It was like she knew Spidey couldn’t put his all into anything with civilians around.  Like she could hear him bitching about how irritated it made him.

She lunged for the memory but, just as fast as it was there, it was gone again and all Michelle could feel was frustration.

“Here,” Ned nudged her, making Michelle jump and jostle the table, their drinks rattling precariously.  He had pulled up a couple different streams on his laptop and had angled it in her direction, scooting his own chair over to sit next to her.

“Thanks,” Michelle muttered, eyes glued to the screen and trying to think through a headache forming behind her eyes.  Ned was chewing in his bottom lip and twitching with every hit, his fingers clenching into fists again and again as he watched the vigilante get slammed into the sidewalk hard enough to crack it.

“Get up ,” Ned mumbled with a wince and Michelle had a sudden moment of clarity.

“Ned?” She asked, hesitant, and not wanting to look over at him though she could feel his eyes on her.  “Do you ever feel like you’re forgetting something?  Or someone?”

Her best friend, who had never been the best at schooling his expression or lying to her looked almost… guilty when she hazarded a glance at him after a minute of silence.  “Yeah I… sometimes feel like that.  A little.” He didn’t look away from the screen and something in his worried expression seemed to confirm every one of Michelle’s theories.

She wet her lips, carefully considering her words.  “Do you ever feel like it has something to do with Spider-Man?”

“Yeah,” Ned breathed out, wincing as Spidey got punched in the face hard enough to send him sprawling.  They both held their breath for a moment, releasing twin shaky exhales as he stood back up slowly and jumped back into the fight.  “Sometimes I see him and I just feel like… like… I don’t know!  It’s always right on the tip of my tongue and then I just-“

“Forget it?  Feel like it‘s on the tip of your tongue?” Michelle offered, clenching her hands around her cooling tea cup.  “Me too.”

“Do you think this has anything to do with that time with Dr. Strange?” Ned asked her, fingers tapping a discordant rhythm on the table as he split his attention between her and the computer - Spider-Man had the upper hand just barely and seemed to be halfway through webbing the current menace to society up.  “We never did figure out why we were there.  He just said that we must have forgotten for a reason.”

“And what if that reason was Spider-Man?” Michelle finished, her eyes following the vigilante as he swung away lethargically making her heart ache.  Her resolve firmed and she said “We need to find him.”

“What?” Ned choked and spluttered around the gulp of cold brew that he had inhaled, causing other patrons of the café to shoot them disgusted looks. Michelle passed him a napkin and placed a wad of them over the droplets on the table.  “We need to find him?”

“And talk to him,” Michelle confirmed, wrinkling her nose as she wiped up the mess.  “I just… I get this feeling that he’s the only one who knows what’s really going on.”

Ned mopped his face up and grimaced at the dribbles of coffee that he had spewed onto his computer keyboard.  “You really think he’s just going to stop mid-swing if we flag him down to talk to us?”

“I think that if we’re always where he is and we keep asking he’ll eventually give in,” Michelle argued.  “Persistence is key.”

Ned gave her an incredulous look.  “It’s not that I don’t want to know what’s going on but we’re only home for three weeks for winter break.  You think we can get answers that quick?  We don’t even know where he’s going to be!”

“I may have some ideas,” Michelle answered, reaching into her bag and pulling out a slim notebook, opening it and pushing it across the table to Ned.  He scanned the pages, flipping forward and then back again before closing it and leveling her with a blank look.

“You’ve been stalking him?”

She scoffed, pulling the book back and cradling it close to her.  “Not stalking,” she protested.  “I’m just… very observant.”

“Sure,” Ned said, a touch of sarcasm in his tone.  “So we know his basic patrol routes or at least where he tends to be and what hours he’s usually out.  When do you want to start?”

“I’d say now,” Michelle sighed as she relaxed a little - there was a split second there where she thought Ned might not go along with her plan but she should have known better; he was her best friend for a reason.  “But I don’t think he’ll be doing too much more tonight.”

“Probably not,” Ned agreed, his face contemplative as he stared at her notebook.  “Why do I get the sinking feeling that he doesn’t have anyone to go to for help when he needs it?” And that was something that Michelle didn’t want to think about. She fiddled with her necklace, the broken glass cool against her fingers as she plotted her next move.

She’d figure out her connection to Spider-Man no matter what it took.

Chapter Text

Nailing down logistics of their Spider-Hunt was surprisingly easy and Ned, despite his early hesitation, was almost more enthusiastic than she was to fill in the blank spaces.  So, when she left the coffee shop just over three hours after she arrived, it was almost with a skip in her step.  She was so close to solving this mystery she could taste it.

Her apartment was empty and dark when she got home, her parents were out at the premiere of a show that one of Mary Jane’s closest friends was starring in and Michelle was relieved to have a little alone time.  She knocked the last of the snow chunks off her boots on the mat outside her door and shed her heavy coat and scarves as she walked in, kicking her boots off and leaving them to drip on the mat.

Now.  What to do?

Wandering through her childhood bedroom, Michelle let her fingers run down the edges of her old sketchbooks and bit her lip.  She hadn’t looked through them since she had left for MIT and hadn’t taken any of them with her - preferring to buy new ones for the new chapter of her life instead of dwelling in the past - but something in her itched to look at them.  With a sigh, she pulled a couple off the shelf, all small and bound in black the way she used to prefer and carried them out to the living room.  Her pencils and charcoal were still on the table where she had left them the night before, so she curled up on the floor in front of the coffee table with her favorite blanket and pulled the first book into her lap.

The spine cracked as she opened it and she smiled as she flipped through the first couple pages.  The dates on some of the doodles were from her freshman year and she marveled a little at how far her style had come.  How far she had come.  She had been a bit of a loner through a good portion of her high school career, spending her free time with Ned and the rest of her AcaDec team but not with many others.  She wasn’t one to venture too far out of her comfort zone and cushy group of friends.

The early pages of the book were all filled with little sketches of her classmates and friends; page after page scored with lead and the occasional pen.  She snorted out a laugh as she passed an exaggerated caricature of Flash with a comical look of distress on his face while holding a physics test with a large ‘B’ on the top and she smiled at one of Ned elbows deep in a robotics project with oil smeared on his cheek.

Then she flipped to the next page and her mind fuzzed out completely.

On the cream colored page in front of her was a hastily done headshot of a curly haired boy with a deep frown and a black cloud over his head.  Michelle had drawn a few little frown-y faces around the border and had come back in at a later date and had scribbled in a black tear drop with a gel ink pen that had smeared over part of his face.  One of the corners had been rubbed soft and curled like she had spent a lot of time looking at this particular drawing.

She didn’t recognize him.

With her frown deepening, Michelle slowly continued to flip through the book.  She skipped past pages with Betty and Abe and Cindy.  Thumbed through the ones that had terribly shaded landscapes from when she thought she wanted to do more still life drawing.  Passed a few more of Ned and Flash until it was him again.  The same curly haired boy.  

Again.

And again.

And again.

Doodles of him rolling his eyes.  Sketches of his profile as he leaned heavily on a desk with half-lidded eyes.  A fully detailed piece that must have taken her hours that depicted a soft smile and eyes that crinkled at the corners and dimples.  Firmly drawn outlines of his shoulders.  Of hands with long and dexterous looking fingers complete with nails bitten down to the quick.

Her hands trembled as she dropped the first book into the blanket nest on her lap and grabbed the next from the stack to flip through.  And then the next.

More and more of this mysterious boy leaning against a gondola with a massive smile on his face.  Half-asleep with his face mashed into the wall and with glasses cutting into his nose and forehead.  Of him with Ned, their faces crinkled with laughter and their hands contorted like they were doing a handshake.  Looking awkward in an ill-fitting AcaDec blazer.

Of his face blotchy with bruises and cuts but with a look of pure wonder on his visage.

And then, as suddenly as he was there, he was gone again.  Michelle’s sketches went back to her friends, her teachers and parents.  Random people she saw in the park when she was getting coffee or taking a walk.

No more curly-haired boy who had, clearly, been more to her than just a muse.  Who seemed to have burrowed so deeply into her that she had filled up nearly two full sketchbooks with drawings of him.

Michelle took a couple deep gulps of air and then let a shaky exhale out as she flipped back through the journals until she stopped on one of the sketches of the boy and Ned, arms around each other and laughing.  Her hands trembled as she snapped a picture with her phone.  

Her fingers were numb as she attached the photo to a new text message to Ned, hastily tapping out ‘ do you know who this is’ before hitting send.  It took only a moment for the message to pop from delivered to read but it took much longer before the three dots appeared to indicate Ned was responding.  They stopped and started several times and MJ couldn’t help but impatiently tap her finger against her knee as she waited.

Finally, over 5 minutes later, Ned responded with a ‘ maybe? ’.

Michelle glared at her phone a little.  Okay, this was fine.  She just needed to work this like one of her physics problems.  She had drawn this guy for years and he had, clearly, been in AcaDec with them.  Been close to them.  Michelle could hazard a guess as to why she would draw someone this much but how could she not remember them ?

“He went to Midtown,” she muttered, dropping her phone on the table and leaving her nest on the ground.  She banged her knee on the table and swore, limping to the bookshelf in the living room and pulling her Junior and Senior yearbooks down.  She dropped them back on the table and flipped hastily through the book to find the club pages, nearly ripping the photography club one and stopped on the AcaDec page.

Their team picture looked so awkward - all of them smiling half-heartedly at the camera.  A mish-mash of kids she knew and some that had barely been in middle school when she had been snapped but, right there in the front row due to his height, was the same kid from her drawings.

“Peter Parker,” she breathed, tapping a finger on his name and taking in his face.  The face she had drawn for years and yet, somehow, forgotten.  The Peter in this photo had been standing next to Ned and looked a little worn with dark circles under his eyes but was smiling brightly at the camera anyway.

His lip was split, she noticed as she let her eyes roam over the other pictures on the two-page spread.  The candides included a shot of Peter giving a cheesing Ned a piggy-back ride, both with their tongues stuck out at the camera.

“Peter Parker,” she said again.  Michelle had heard that name before.  Where had she heard it?  

“Hi I’m Peter Parker and I’d… like a coffee please.”

“No problem Peter Parker.”

“I’m thinking you didn’t come by to just get a coffee Peter Parker,” Michelle told the smiling picture of Peter in front of her and she felt intense sadness welling up in her tinged with just a bit of betrayal.  The teen she had met in the coffee shop all those years ago had stared at her and Ned with an almost hungry look in his eyes and she remembers the worn piece of notebook paper he had been fiddling with until he had seen her bandage and had frozen.

He had looked sad and his face had splintered when he had asked if she was okay in a broken voice.

She ran her hand over her sketch of him again, thoughtful

Peter Parker and Spider-Man.  A deep feeling that she was forgetting something important.  Someone important.  She snapped another picture of the yearbook page before closing it and settling back onto the couch.  

“ I’m going to figure you out Spider-Man ,” she promised to herself.  She had three weeks home - it would be more than enough time.

“So I can’t find any records of a Peter Parker that went to Midtown,” Ned told her, shivering and blowing into his hands in between typing something on his phone.  The two of them were bundled up on a bench in Forest Hills, Queens - one of the main neighborhoods that Spidey had been frequenting over the past few years.  “In fact,” Ned continued, “I can’t really find a record of a Peter Parker that fits our mystery classmates description at all .  He’s basically a ghost,” he considered for a moment before adding, “online anyway.”

Michelle huffed some hot air into her own hands, massaging the disposable heat pack she had brought with her as if she could coax anymore heat out of it to warm her chilled fingertips.  “It's weird,” she mused.  “From the pictures it seemed like we were really close.”

“I found some pictures of him at home,” Ned admitted, making Michelle flinch and look at him wide-eyed.  “In my mom’s photo albums and some… some of us framed in the hall.  I can’t believe I never noticed them.”

“Did your mom remember him?” Michelle asked, trying not to sound too desperate or hopeful but one look at Ned’s face dashed them pretty quickly.  He looked just as confused when he shook his head.

“No one does.  My mom was just as surprised when I showed them to her but why would we have kept them if he wasn’t important in some way?  Mom even had some of his old school photos in an album with mine!” A good question.  Why would Michelle have sketchbooks full of drawings if he wasn’t important to her?

A sharp gust of wind made Michelle shiver and pull her jacket tighter around her.  “Come on, we should move spots before we freeze.  We can grab some hot chocolate from Delmar’s.”

Ned looked all too willing to generate some extra heat and joined her in picking through the foot traffic.  As they maneuvered through the holiday crowds, the theory that Michelle’s brain had been toying with crossed her mind again.  She wasn’t sure why she forgot everything but what if… what if Peter was Spider-Man?  What if she had known him when he was still young and new at everything?

“You don’t have any proof!” Her logical side shouted but something about the theory just felt.  Right.  It felt like relief.  It felt like walking in and out of a room over and over and forgetting why you were there until you finally remembered.  It felt like taking a deep breath after suffocating for years.

Why did she forget him?

“Alright I have a totally crazy hypothesis,” Ned interrupted her musings, dodging around a woman with an armload of bags talking loudly on her phone and then swerving back to link arms with Michelle, falling in step easily.  “Feel free to laugh.”

“Let’s hear it Leeds,” Michellesnorted, pulling them to the side and nearly against a wall to avoid a group of teenagers who definitely weren’t paying attention to their surroundings.

Ned waffled back and forth for a few moments as they walked a few more feet and then whispered, like it was some big secret he’d sworn to keep, “What if Peter Parker is Spider-Man?  What if that’s why we don’t remember him?”

He paused and Michelle felt her heart pounding loudly in her ears.  “I’m not laughing.”

“No.  You’re not,” Ned agreed softly as they stopped to loiter on the sidewalk outside of Delmar’s.  “Why aren’t you?  It’s completely insane right?” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself of that more than he was trying to convince her but Michelle didn’t think it was so far-fetched of a theory.  

“Remember when we were on Liberty Island with Dr. Strange and we couldn’t remember why we were there and he said that he couldn’t either and that he’d probably used a spell that wiped our memories?” The pieces were falling together and she didn’t care for the picture they painted.

“And you cussed him out for brainwashing everyone without their consent?” Ned chuckled, bringing a smile to Michelle’s face too.  “How could I forget that?”

“What if that spell made us forget Peter?  And Spider-Man?  What if it made us forget all of it?”

“But why would he do that?” Ned argued as he scuffed the worn toe of his boot into the salt melt on the sidewalk, smearing blue granules across the concrete.  “We must have been close right?  Why would he make us forget him and then never come find us again?  It doesn’t make any sense!”

“That’s why we have to find him and ask,” Michelle nodded and opened the door of the bodega, reveling in the warm air that caressed her skin.  “We just have to stick to the plan and we’ll catch him in no time.”

At least, that’s what she thought.  Three days later they were still on the hunt but, according to Twitter and the @SpideyWatch account and hashtags, Spider-Man had been nowhere to be seen since his fight with, what the media had now very originally dubbed, the Rhino.

“My fingers are going to fall off,” Ned whined as he vigorously rubbed his palms together in an attempt to warm them via friction.  Michelle’s own hands were tucked into her favorite pair of gloves with some new hand warmers that were barely warm anymore.  They’d been sitting at the bus stop in Forest Hills longer than she cared to admit waiting for a Spidey sighting and her patience was wearing thin.  “We've been at this for days, MJ.”

“I didn’t promise it would be fast,” she grumbled back, standing up to pace and bounce a little on her toes to warm up.  “Let’s walk toward the park,” she suggested.  “We can stop and grab a hot chocolate at that one coffee cart on the way.”

“Anything’s better than sitting here,” Ned agreed, moving stiffly from the cold and ambling after her.  The walkways were clearer of people today since the temperature had dropped into the single digits the night before and had barely crept up to the high teens even in the afternoon.  Michelle’s face felt chapped from the cold air and she couldn’t wait to get home and take a hot shower and curl up in bed with a book and some tea.  “What’s the plan when we find him?” Ned asked for the third time in as many days and Michelle held back a groan.

What did they do when they found him?  If he didn’t want them to remember him, and she suspected he really didn’t for whatever reason, would he actually stop to talk to them if they flagged him down?  What if all this was for nothing?

“Then we find Peter Parker instead and see what he knows about it,” she decided.  They were on the right track, she just knew it.  Once she could get one of them to hold still long enough for her to question them she was certain she’d get the answers that were haunting her.

They just had to find him.

“@SpideyWatch says he’s in Manhattan today,” Ned lamented, wiggling his phone under her nose two days later when they were camped out in Astoria with thermoses of coffee and some scones Michelle’s mom had sent with her.  “Want to try to catch the subway there or?”

“No,” Michelle huffed, shredding her scone into crumbs that dribbled onto the sidewalk between her feet.  She needed to remember to pick them up so she didn’t hurt any wildlife.  “We’d never get there before he moved on somewhere else.”

Ned groaned, letting his head fall back against the bench.  “Reconvene at Delmar’s tomorrow?”

“Nah,” Michelle yawned, shivering lightly at the breeze that brushed past.  “Let’s take a day off.  If I send you all of his usual coordinates can’t you work your computer magic and see if you can find us a good starting place?”

“Yeah,” Ned nodded.  “See you in a couple days?”

“At Delmar’s,” Michelle confirmed.  She was going to find Spider-Man if it was the last thing that she did.

Chapter Text

“Looking a little rough there pal,” Johnny called out as he cut out his flames and dropped the last few feet to land on the roof that Peter had chosen as the optimal place to lick his wounds.  “Lose a fight with a meat grinder?”

Peter, who just wanted to sulk in quiet, groaned and tipped his head back against the wall behind him as he squeezed his eyes closed tightly.  He was, all in all, too tired to deal with all this and, damn, if his ribs didn’t always itch like a motherfucker when they were healing.  He’d already dodged Johnny once that day and had to deal with a crazy guy in an honest to God Rhino-Mech.  Was it too much to ask for a break?  “Can’t you just leave me to suffer in peace?” He grunted, choosing to ignore Johnny’s poorly hidden laugh.

“No can do buddy,” Johnny chirped back, dropping down with a grunt to sprawl out next to Peter.  “You’re not, like, actively dying or anything right?  Need urgent medical attention?  A good cry maybe?  Mouth to mouth?” He wriggled his eyebrows unattractively and Peter chuckled against his will.

“It’s nothing I won’t heal from,” Peter grumbled, dodging the other questions and massaging at the massive bruise he could feel forming on his bicep.  He really needed to dodge better.  “No medical attention required.”

Johnny hummed a little in acknowledgement and then lapsed into a heavy silence that prickled at Peter’s nerves.  It stretched for a minute.  Two.  Then he finally said “You can talk to me you know.  If you want to.”

Peter scoffed and tensed his sore and aching muscles as he prepared to stand with the intention of swinging off to find somewhere a little less supportive to brood but Johnny’s unnaturally warm hand on his arm stopped him.  “I’m serious, Spidey.  I just… get the feeling sometimes that maybe you don’t really get to vent about the hero stuff.  I’m sure I’m not your first choice but I get what you’re dealing with if you ever want to, you know, talk about it?” He shifted awkwardly and released Peter’s arm, staring back at the horizon.

He knew it was rude, jeez May had raised him better than this but Peter couldn’t help but barking out a rough laugh, one hand coming up to rest over his eyes and massage his temples.  “I appreciate that but, and I mean this as kindly as I can, no you don’t.  There’s no way you could understand.”

“Alright then,” Johnny challenged.  “Explain it to me then.  I’m all ears.”

Peter froze completely.  Could he even do that when he had gone so long without talking to anyone about anything more personal than the weather?  How was he supposed to just unload nearly seven years worth of baggage on someone he barely even knew?

God he really wanted to.

“Back when I was seventeen my identity got revealed,” Peter blurted, surprising himself with his candor and, apparently, shocking Johnny too since the other man jolted and accidentally caught his hair in fire before hastily patting it out.

“And yet,” Johnny mused, “I don’t know who you are.  I know I was snapped and then in space for a good part of the last few years but I feel like I would remember a supes secret identity becoming national news.”

Peter sighed out sharply through his nose, feeling exhausted down deep into his bones.  “I asked Dr. Strange to cast a spell to make the entire world forget I existed.”

Johnny gaped at him, his expression shocked but his face paling more as he realized and processed the implications of the spell.  “No one remembers you at all?” He asked.  “No friends or family or anything?”

Peter ‘s heart clenched painfully tight at the last memory he had of May, still warm and in his arms in the lobby of Happy’s condo, reminding him to be good - reminding him that he had his powers for a reason and that he had a responsibility to use them for the right reasons.  He thought of Ned’s silent tears as they did their handshake, the one they had crafted and added on to since middle school, for the last time and how tight and warm and comforting that hug had been.

He remembered Michelle’s chapped lips on his split ones and only being able to taste the metallic tang of his own blood and the salt of both of their tears.  How he had promised to find her and explain everything so he could tell her how much he loved her.

That final watery and trusting smile and the little niggling feeling inside of him that he would never see her smile at him like that again.

He remembered how he lied to both of them to keep them safe at the cost of himself.

“No one,” Peter forced out hoarsely, his eyes burning with the tears he promised he would cry anymore.  He’d been blocking out these emotions for so long, feelings he hadn’t wanted to or allowed himself to feel rushed back to him and be swallowed around the tightness in his throat.

He wasn’t going to cry right now.  He wasn’t going to break down.  He wasn’t going to cry in front of Johnny Storm.

“Spidey…,” Johnny started, his own voice tight as it broke off and Peter clenched his fist into his thigh, not willing to look at him.  “I just.  Can I give you a hug?”

Peter flinched hard and whipped his head to look at Johnny in shock, just completely stunned at the offer.  But Johnny looked so sincere, didn’t look like he was pitying Peter but like he, really and truly, cared.  And Peter, after a moment of processing, slowly and hesitantly nodded.

As expected, Johnny was both extremely warm and also a superbly excellent hugger.  Peter stayed tense in his warm embrace, his arms held up a little awkwardly before he hooked them around Johnny’s back and, slowly, let himself relax into the embrace.

To his mortification, Peter could feel his eyes welling up with tears and his mask sticking to his face as they slowly tracked down his cheeks and he made no attempt to stop them.  Under all of the sadness and pain he felt a tight ball loosening in his chest and relief that flooded through him and made him weak in the knees.

He hadn’t been hugged like this in a really long time.

Paying no heed to his aching ribs, Peter pulled Johnny in closer and rested his forehead on the other man’s shoulder, finally relaxing.

Johnny kept up the embrace until Peter was ready to let go - which was a lot longer than Peter really wanted to think about - and he clapped Peter on the back one final time when Peter pulled away.  “Thanks,” Peter croaked, letting his eyes slip closed and leaning back against the wall, completely and utterly emotionally wrung out.  “I think… I think I really needed that.”

“Anytime.  Seriously pal - anytime,” Johnny promised sincerely, his own voice just a little harsher than it usually was.  “So how do we go about fixing this?”

“Fixing this?” Peter echoed, not processing.  He really just wanted to go home and curl up in his bed and sleep for the next week.  “We don’t fix it - we can’t .  The spell’s done; it's not like I can ask Dr. Strange to break apart the multiverse for me again just so a couple of people can remember me.  It doesn’t work like that.”

The look Johnny gave him was nothing short of belligerently incredulous.  “Dude,” he protested, “there’s a lot we clearly need to unpack later but can’t you just like… go and tell your friends and family everything?  You can prove it to them can’t you?  That won’t break the multiverse again or whatever right?”

Peter scoffed.  “It’s not that easy,” he argued back, running his hand sharply across his head in exasperation.

“Oh yeah?  And why’s that?” Johnny challenged him, waving one arm out.  “It’s your family pal!  Your friends !  Even if they can’t remember you they probably still miss you and it’s really fucking uncool of you to take that choice away from them.  What if they want to know you huh?  What then”

And that hit a little too close to home.  MJ wanted him to find her.  He promised Ned they would see him again.  He made the decision to not tell them on his own despite their wishes and yet…

And yet.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Peter tried, his voice tired.  “They got hurt because of Spider-Man, because they were close to me.  I hurt them by making the choice to be a vigilante.”

“If they didn’t want to be associated with you after you decided to be Spider-Man then they wouldn’t have stayed with you,” Johnny shot back.

“Does it really matter?” Peter said, his voice raised.  “They can’t remember me now and at least they’re safe.  Done deal.”

“That is such bullshit !” Johnny spat, jumping to his feet to stand in front of Peter.  “You’re afraid to let them back in.”

“I am not!” Peter snarled back, forcing himself to his feet and ignoring the dizziness that came with standing too fast with a concussion.  “They’re better off without me!”

“Why don’t you let them decide that!” Johnny roared back, getting into Peter’s face.  “Look Spidey, buddy, I get that you want to keep them safe, why the hell do you think I snuck into space with Sue?  But taking away their choice in the matter isn’t okay.”

Peter sneered, backing away.  “You don’t know anything.” And, for the second time that day, Peter turned away from Johnny and launched himself off the roof.  His vision spotted a little when he caught himself on his webbing at the last second but he kept going, intent on getting as far away from Storm as possible.

He never should have opened his mouth.

Peter’s apartment was dark and quiet and empty when he fell through the window a short while later and he laid on the floor, staring at the ceiling and trying to catch his breath.  He’d accepted his decision to leave Ned and MJ in the dark a long time ago but now.  

“Fucking Johnny,” Peter grunted, forcing himself off the floor to dig through his single cabinet for his first aid kit.  He’d just have to take a day or two off to avoid the Human Torch so he didn’t punch him at his first available opportunity.  He hadn’t volunteered at FEAST in a long time and he needed to get back into it.

May would want him to be around people.

So that’s what he did - over the next couple days Peter spent most of his time volunteering at the rundown FEAST shelter in Harlem, only leaving to sleep and run his photos to the Bugle and haggle with Jameson.  The offers the editor gave for Peter’s photos were, frankly, insulting but Peter gave in more often than not because he needed the cash.  

He hated this.  

He hated being poor and not being able to pay his bills and not having electricity most of the time.

He hated being alone.

He hated himself for ever wanting to become an Avenger and he hated all the adults that let him and encouraged him to do it.

“Parker!  Are you even paying attention!?”

“Not really,” Peter responded, not bothering to tune into another patented JJ rant about how his alter-ego was a ‘menace to society’ and ‘why can’t any of you fucks get a decent picture of him committing a crime?’.  Peter knew for a fact that no one else was even getting close to as good of a shot as he was.  He was taking glorified selfies (and getting paid for it - something that gave him a deep sense of satisfaction on the days Jameson was particularly unbearable).  “Look, just tell me when you need the next batch.”

JJ narrowed his eyes in thinly veiled anger - he hated being interrupted more than just about anything and Peter was on perpetually thin ice since he interrupted and talked back more than anyone else dared to.  And the fact that JJ was convinced that he was friends with his own alter-ego.

The irony wasn’t lost on Peter.

“The deadline is tonight Parker!  Don’t you listen to anything I say?” JJ barked, swiping the blurred images one of the staff photographers had managed to get of him swinging off the table and onto the floor.

“I make a concentrated effort not to,” Peter said under his breath before responding, “Sorry Mr. Jameson I must have missed that part.  I have some shots back home I can bring you in a few hours.”

“A few hours!” Jameson shouted back, slamming a fist on his desk.  “You have one hour.  And bring me a cup of coffee from that place on 6th!”

“Yes Mr. Jameson,” Peter griped after he’d been shoved out of the office.  “Of course Mr. Jameson.  Want me to spit shine your shoes next asshole?” Jameson’s secretary snorted, clearly overhearing him, but didn’t comment.  No one in the office particularly cared for their boss - most of them would only last a few months before quitting on principle.  Hell, Peter had lasted longer than some of them.

Peter took the stairs two at a time and exited the building at a brisk trot.  His walk home was easily fifteen minutes and throwing in a coffee run was going to have him pushing it to be back within the hour with the photos.  It wasn’t like Jameson could really do anything, he ‘fired’ Peter at least once a month but always called him back because no one could get pictures like he could, but he really didn’t feel like listening to it today.

Also his rent was due three days ago and his landlord was getting harder and harder to dodge by the day.

The photos were in a folder on the milkcrate that served as Peter’s nightstand and he shoved them into his bag as he ran down his steps and back out onto the street.  JJ’s favorite coffee shop on 6th, Clutch, was unusually crowded for a Wednesday afternoon and Peter got in line with a groan.  There was absolutely no chance he was going to make it back on time now.

The bell above the door dinged behind him as another person entered and he shuffled forward a little more to give them some extra space.  The poor barista behind the counter looked beyond stressed at the size of the line and Peter wanted nothing more than to step out of it and grab coffee at the cart up the street.

…And why shouldn’t he?  It wasn’t like Jameson would really be able to tell the difference - black coffee was black coffee right?

Right.  And it was cheaper too.

Resolved to his new decision, Peter turned and bumped right into the person he had forgotten was behind him.  “Oh my god I’m so sorry!  I didn’t see you-,”

“Peter Parker,” Michelle Jones-Watson breathed, her face shocked but her mouth ticking up into the satisfied half-smile that Peter knew so well.  “I’ve been looking for you.”

“You-what?” Peter croaked, trying to step around her and failing as she anticipated his moves and blocked the door.  “I’m not - I don’t know what - I’m not Peter Parker.”

“Yes you are,” her voice was strong and resolute and had she changed her bangs?  Peter was having a hard time not staring at her.  “I found you in my yearbook.  I have hundreds of sketches of you and Ned found pictures of the two of you in his photo albums.  You mean something to me.  To us.”

Peter gulped and shuffled his feet.  “I don’t, I really don’t.”

“You do,” Michelle argued back.  “And I’m going to find out what; I’m pretty stubborn so I’ll do it with or without your help so you might as well just sit down and talk to me.”

Peter just stared.  He hadn’t been this close to Michelle in years and here she was, close enough for him to touch and talking to him twice in less than a week.  Her lips were just as chapped as they had been the day that they’d shared their last kiss and he could just barely see the hint of the chain of her black dahlia necklace.

She was still wearing it after all this time.  After not knowing who he was.

Michelle tilted her head at his silence and cautiously grabbed his elbow with slender fingers, her touch burning into him.  “Come on Spidey, I think we have a lot to talk about.”

Chapter Text

“Come on Spidey, I think we have a lot to talk about.”

Michelle knew she was taking a risk when she called him that but something about it felt so right .  Like she knew deep down somewhere that Peter Parker was Spider-Man just like she knew that he meant something to her even if she didn’t know what that was yet.  And she knew she had hit the nail on the head when Peter suddenly paled and went completely ridged in front of her.

“Ned’s meeting me in the park,” Michelle told him, pulling him closer by the elbow she still had a grip on and slipping her arm through his to guide him out the door.  “Let’s go have a chat.”

Peter jolted against her and tried to pull away but she held on with an iron grip and kept pulling him out of the shop and down the street.  “I can’t do that MJ,” he protested, tripping over his feet like he couldn’t decide if he should dig in his heels and stop or not.

“Only my friends call me MJ,” Michelle mused, ignoring his flinch, “so we were friends.”

“Let it go Michelle ,” he ground out, putting extra emphasis on her name but she had him now - she wasn't letting go until he told her what she wanted to know.

Her lips quirked up as she directed them around the foot traffic and toward the park as quickly as Peter would let her - she knew that he was strong enough to stop them anytime and she could feel his muscles bunched up and clenched against her.  But he was still walking with her.

“Thanks for coming without a fight,” she whispered as they entered the park.  “I just… we just.  We need to know what happened and why you mean so much to us.”

“You aren’t going to like my answers,” Peter said, defeated, and Michelle frowned.

“I don’t have to like them to get closure,” she explained simply and his frown deepened.

“Holy shit,” Ned interrupted making both of them jump - neither had realized just how far into the park they were.  “Peter Parker!  How did you find him?”

“Ran into him,” Michelle teased, pushing Peter to sit on the bench at the weathered picnic table Ned had chosen and slipping in next to him.  “Do I have to tie you down or will you promise not to run off?”

Peter glared at her without true heat and then said, “I can’t promise not to leave.  I might have to go.”

“For Spider-Man stuff right?” Ned pressed, practically vibrating.  “That’s why you might have to go?”

Peter’s face contorted and his fingers that he had gripped into the wood of the table squeezed down hard enough to crack it making them both jump and him wince.  He let out a long, shaky breath and pulled his hand away to tuck in the pocket of his jacket.  “Just shout it out for everyone to hear Ned.”

“Oops,” Ned blushed, his voice lowered.  “But that is the reason?”

Peter’s nod was nearly imperceptible but it was there and Michelle gave a mental fist pump - one answer down.  “So why does it feel like we know you?  Why do we both have pictures of you?  Pictures of all of us together?”

Peter was silent for a long moment, worrying at his lower lip and making it red and chapped but he finally said, “You feel like you know me because you did know me.  We were… friends.”

She knew it.  They had been friends or maybe, in her case at least, something more. But that really begged the question: “If we were friends then why don’t we remember you?” Parker flinched again and Michelle tried to reel in her accusatory tone - she didn’t want him to close himself off before she found out what she needed to know.

Peter swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing dryly and painfully and the muscles in his jaw twitched.  “There was an… incident after the Mysterio situation in London.  My identity got leaked and it caused a lot of problems and I drug you two down with me and,” he stopped again, his face looking pale and drawn.  “It caused problems, okay?  I tried to fix it but I only made it worse so Dr. Strange had to cast a spell that made the world forget that I existed.”

“That can’t be all,” Michelle insisted, leaning across the table and making Peter lean back away from her.

“That’s all that happened,” he shot back, voice firm.

Ned, looking a little dazed, muttered “We didn’t get into MIT.”

Parker’s eyes cut over to Ned, lips pursed tightly together.  Michelle followed his gaze and immediately reached out a hand to steady her closest friend who had gone pale and shaky.  Sweat dotted his forehead as he looked dazedly at Peter.  “We did get into MIT, Ned,” Michelle told him gently.  “Our acceptance letters got mixed up so they had to send them later than normal - remember your mom yelling at the admissions office for hours?”

“They rejected us,” Ned insisted, still staring at Peter.  “They rejected us because we were friends with Spider-Man and they didn’t want to be involved with a controversy.  That’s how all of this started.” Ned’s voice was slowly getting louder as his face turned red the way it always did when he got angry, a seldom occurrence.  “You went to Dr. Strange and he botched the spell the first time and then you promised Peter.  You promised you’d find us and tell us everything.”

Peter swayed back on the bench, farther than anyone should be able to and Michelle ideally wondered if his ability to stick to things extended over his whole body.  “You almost died multiple times, Ned.”

“But we didn’t ,” Ned insisted, angry tears beading up in his eyes.  “We fucking didn’t die Peter and I lost my oldest friend and so many memories because they were attached to you .”

“Ned,” Michelle said sharply, making a timeout sign with her hands, “calm down!” Both men were breathing heavily, Ned out of anger and Peter out of something that seemed to be panic, and Michelle pulled Ned’s hand into hers, squeezing it tightly in solidarity.  “I’m missing something.”

Ned sniffed loudly and swiped at his face with his free hand.  “I remember,” he paused, considering.  “Well I remember some things.  There are some fuzzy pieces but Peter told us we would forget him and then he promised he would find us and tell us everything.”

“I did find you,” Peter whispered.  “I was going to tell you but you were so happy and safe without knowing about me.  I couldn’t just-,” he choked on his words and looked away.  “I did what I thought was best.”

“What you thought was best?” Ned’s words were boiling like lava, angry like she had never heard from him and filled with pain.  “You took away our ability to choose!  Did you even think about what we wanted?  Did you even think about how you were taking away our agency in the whole situation?”

Peter jerks away from the table with a gut-punched sound, his face turning absolutely white.  “That’s not what I was trying-,”

“I don’t fucking care what you were trying to do Peter,” Ned seethes, angrily wiping the tears from his eyes, his face red and blotchy.  “You still left us in the dark.  Do you know how many times I’ve had deja vous and thought I was crazy?  All the times I thought I was forgetting something important?”

“Ned,” Peter tries again, his voice sounding like gravel.

“No,” Ned said firmly, pushing away from the table and stumbling a little as he stood.  “Just.  No.  I don’t want to hear it Peter.  Not now.  Maybe not ever.” Peter just nodded, mouth moving like he wanted to respond before he snapped it shut, his teeth audibly grinding together.  “MJ I can’t make you leave but I’m not staying any longer.  I just.  Can’t stand looking at him anymore.”

Michelle, still stunned and a little confused, nodded and stood up as well.  “That’s okay, we can go.” She turned back to Peter and held out her hand expanctly.  He stared at her palm dazedly and she rolled her eyes.  “Give me your phone.  I don’t want to have to go through all of this to find you again.”

Peter’s eyes darted between her and Ned before dropping to his lap.  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea Michelle.”

“And I don’t really give a shit,” she responded.  “I wasn’t asking.” Peter sighed but acquiesced, passing her a beat up pay-by-the-minute phone that had a cracked screen and a layer of peeling duct tape across the back.  She unlocked it (not password protected, she’d have to remember that) and sent a text to herself before tossing it back.  “We’ll be in touch.”

And with that, she threaded her arm through Ned’s and pulled him carefully away from Peter Parker and out of the park.

“Are you okay?” MJ asked, offering Ned the box of tissues she had dug out of her parent’s linen closet.  Her dad had looked at them both strangely when they had burst through the apartment door ten minutes previous but hadn’t pushed for answers, instead making them each a cup of hot chocolate before announcing loudly that he was taking a walk.

Michelle absolutely adored her parents.

Ned sniffled a little and took the offered tissue, blowing his nose loudly.  “I’m pissed.”

“Yeah I got that much,” MJ said with a quirk of her lips.  “You remembered?”

“Not everything,” Ned sniffed.  “And some of it’s still really fuzzy, but a lot of things, yeah.”

“And?” Michelle pressed, sinking cross-legged onto her bed and cuddling close to her best friend, wrapping an arm around his shoulders in a firm half-hug.  Ned instantly relaxed into her and wrapped his own free arm around her waist.

Ned worried at his lower lip, leaving it bitten red and swollen.  “Peter Parker was my best friend, I’ve known him since middle school.”

“Oh,” Michelle responded a little dumbly, her head reeling with the implications.  

“He made us forget him,” Ned continued, his voice angry and hurt and broken and Michelle pulled him in closer until he was resting his head on her shoulder.  “Mysterio revealed his identity and people figured out he was… friends with us pretty quickly.  We didn’t get into MIT because of it and he tried to fix it but ended up making it worse.”

A fuzzy memory surfaced in Michelle’s head - Peter, looking younger and healthier and happier, Ned in his letterman jacket and her in a snowy antechamber, Dr. Strange on the stairs above them.  “There was a… spell,” she said hesitantly, her head throbbing with the effort to remember .  “Dr. Strange was there?”

“Yeah,” Ned nodded, his chin digging into her bicep.  “Peter botched it and all of these villains from other universes ended up in ours.  Peter caught them and thought he could cure them and he did kind of.  But then May died-,”

“May?” Michelle asked with a frown.  “May Park- oh.”

“The Goblin killed her,” Ned sniffled.  May Parker had been a role model of Michelle’s and she did her best to live by the motto she saw every time she volunteered at FEAST - when you help someone, you help everyone.  She had always kind of wondered how she knew May but she was Peter’s aunt .  Another memory surfaced, the three of them on the roof at Midtown, Peter beaten and bloody and sobbing in their arms.

“There were other Peters,” Michelle whispered, remembering three red and blue suits but no faces to go with them.

“There was a big battle at the Statue of Liberty and the spell that Dr. Strange had contained blew up and the only way to fix it was for everyone to forget Peter existed,” Ned continued, his gaze far off.  “He promised that he would find us and tell us.  That he would make us remember him.”

Sunrise, Peter’s hands on her face, bloody tears in his eyes and a coppery taste in her mouth as she told him she loved him.  Made him promise not to say it back until he found her again.  A broken but hopeful smile before he swung away.

“He promised,” MJ agreed wetly, tears falling unbidden from her own eyes.  A confusing mixture of emotions was warring against each other but, above all else, she felt a profound sadness and pity for Peter Parker.  It almost won out over the seething anger that was building in her gut.

She had loved him just like Ned had loved him.  She had spent years comparing every relationship and kiss and touch and moment of emotional intimacy to a boyfriend that she didn’t even remember existing.  Things that had never made sense to her in the past suddenly did and she didn’t know how to even begin processing it.

“What do we do now?” Ned asked much later, the watery light from the sunset painting her wall pastel oranges and yellows.  In the background she could hear her parents puttering around the kitchen, smell the rich smells of cooking garlic and onions and tomatoes that would normally make her hungry but now only sent her stomach turning.  She and Ned were still cuddled close together on her little double bed, wrapped in blankets with arms and legs tangled.

“I don’t know,” Michelle answered, freeing a hand to wipe the salty tracks off her cheeks and press down on the pressure point on the bridge of her nose in a pointless effort to stave off her growing headache.  “I think I need time to process.”

“Me too,” Ned whispered back, adjusting a little and popping his back.  “Part of me really wants to see him again because I miss my friend but the other part…”

“Wants to break his nose?” Michelle suggested with a smile and Ned snorted.  “I get it.  I think… I think I need to talk to him again but I need time to get my head on straight first.”

“Dinner!” Mary Jane called with a short knock on Michelle’s closed door, making both of them jump and nearly fall off the bed.  “Will you be joining us, Ned?”

“Thanks for the invite Mrs. Watson!” Ned said back loudly, trying to force some cheer into his voice but still sounding a little flat to Michelle.  “I’d love to!”

“Wash up then you two!” She said, her footsteps fading away as she went back to the kitchen.

Joints popping and toes asleep, Michelle forced herself out of bed, stretching out the kinks in her joints as Ned did the same.  “I think we both deserve a few days to think this over,” she finally said.  “And then we can decide what our next steps should be.”

Ned nodded thoughtfully, hands fidgeting at his sides.  “Yeah that… that sounds good.”

“Let’s get dinner,” Michelle said with a smile, punching Ned lightly in the shoulder and leading him out to the kitchen.  They both needed a loud family dinner after the day they’d had and maybe they overcompensated with the frivolity but Michelle felt better by the time she was hugging Ned goodbye at the entrance to her apartment building, regretting not putting on a jacket.

As she watched him trudge to the nearest subway station her mind was drifting back to Queens, to her senior year of high school and the memories that kept slowly getting clearer and clearer.  She knew one thing for sure: her business with Peter Parker was far from over.

Chapter Text

Peter isn’t really sure how long he remains sitting frozen at the picnic table in the park after Ned and MJ leave but it’s long enough for the sun to set behind the clouds and for his fingers and ears to go numb and tingling.  His phone is still clenched tight in his hand from when MJ shoved it back at him, plastic packaging cracked from his grip.

He had never planned on talking to them again.  He had never wanted them to remember him.

Or so he had thought.  So he had convinced himself.

He had spent years getting over his friends.  Spent years making new acquaintances through FEAST and his dual jobs as Daily Bugle Photographer and as Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.  He had never let anyone get quite as close as them.  Had never let anyone know who he was.

And maybe that was a little bit because he wanted them back.  Maybe it was a little bit because he, misguidedly, hoped that MJ would make good on her promise to figure it out again and that they would find him.  He knew it would never be like it was before but he had thought that maybe…

His heart thumped painfully in his chest as he remembered the look on Ned’s face when he realized Peter’s betrayal.  His breath hitched low in his throat and he had to rub his eyes firmly to keep from crying.  

That was it then.  They knew about him now and they had shut the door forever.

How did it work that in the past day both nothing and everything had changed?

“Hey Peter!” Travis called, poking his head over the top of the reception desk at the Queens FEAST location.  “What are you doing here buddy?  We never see you this… late…”

But Peter wasn’t absorbing anything he said, he was too busy reeling from the warmth that suddenly surrounded him and the deep feeling of safety he got from being inside the closest thing to home he had now.  He was able to stumble away from the doors just barely before his back hit the wall with a thump and he started to slip down.

As quick as all this seemed to happen, Travis was somehow quicker.  Spry, even in his old age.  In seconds, he had rushed from behind the desk, or maybe over it Peter wasn’t sure, and had him in a firm grip by the elbow before Peter had managed to sink a foot.  Distantly, Peter recognized the fact that he should probably stand up and shake himself out of whatever this was.  Maybe see if there was anything for him to do for a few hours while he warmed up.

He should do all of those things and probably more but he felt like his strings had been cut.  Like every word Ned had said to him was a knife that slashed through the few cables that kept him tethered to Earth.  So he let Travis take nearly his whole weight when the older man hauled him up and slung Peter’s arm over his shoulders.

Christ kid,” he swore, as he dragged Peter in the direction of the employee break room.  “You’re practically frozen!  How long were you outside?”

It was dark outside now so Peter thought it was safe to say hours at this point but he didn’t know an exact time frame.  His phone vibrated in his pocket angrily again - another message from Jameson he presumed, the thought almost humorous.  He was so going to be fired.

Again.  He wanted to laugh at the absurdity.

“Sit here,” Travis ordered, dropping him down on a futon that was probably older than Peter himself in the tiny side room that doubled as FEASTs electrical room (partially wired by Peter and Ned in high school - a sepia toned memory now tarnished) and break room for volunteers.  The fleece he wrapped around Peter’s shoulders a second later may have been just as old but it was warm and smelled comforting so Peter burrowed deeper into it, fingers pulling it shut around himself clumsily.

In the opposite corner of the room Travis was using the electric kettle to heat water and was rustling through some cabinets until he pulled out a couple dusty hot chocolate packets that he emptied into a cup.  Peter let his eyes unfocus and must have lost some time because, the next thing he knew, a styrofoam cup was being shoved into his stiff fingers.  “Drink that,” Travis ordered, pulling a mis-matched chair from the single table in the room and sitting across from Peter, “you’re shaking like a leaf kid.”

Was he?  Peter obediently took a few small swallows of the rich drink, not bothering to care when his shivering made him shake a few droplets loose onto his jacket beyond the recognition that he was shivering.  Travis just watched him with narrowed eyes until Peter had finished half the drink and wasn’t shaking as much anymore.  “Want to tell me what happened?” He asked carefully and Peter winced.

“I fucked up,” Peter admitted, eyes focused on the swirls of chocolate in his drink and voice hoarse.  He cleared the lump in his throat uncomfortably.  “I broke a pretty big promise a few years ago and my friends found out about it and they aren’t really… pleased with me.”

Travis nodded in understanding.  “And this promise you say you broke - it hurt them right?”

“They think it did,” Peter answered bitterly.  “But I broke it to keep them safe!  I know it was morally incorrect to do it but I was doing it for them and they don’t seem to get that.”  Travis was quiet for a long minute and Peter huffed at himself, at Ned and MJ at the world in general and voiced the point he thought was the most pertinent: “I didn’t mean to hurt them.”

“But doesn’t matter that you didn’t mean to,” Travis chided gently, quick to correct him “ you still did it.  Did you apologize to them?”

Peter’s brain fuzzed out.  Had he apologized?  He was so busy trying to defend himself from the accusations Ned was lobbing at him had he even thought to…?

“That’s what I thought,” Travis nodded.  “Even if you did something for your friends and had the best intentions, if it hurt them you still owe them an apology.  They may not accept it when you give it but you still should - words have meaning and so far yours haven’t had the best.”

Peter picked at the edges of the cup, his ragged nails digging little grooves into the soft foam as he considered Travis’s words, the man sitting patiently and letting Peter mull things over.  He was conflicted - he wanted Ned and MJ back in his life more than anything.  They - Ned especially, his once oldest and closest friend, his brother - were his family and he missed them.  He missed their pizza trips and their dumpster diving excursions.  Video game nights where MJ soundly beat the both of them.  Fights over the Monopoly board.  Loud family style dinners with all of their parents.  Quiet movie nights in an almost pillow fort with popcorn littering the floor from impromptu food fights.

He missed them but could he insert himself back in their life when they were both happy?  When they were safe and succeeding and doing just fine without him.  Would it be okay to continue to avoid them and take their choice away again when it was the thing that made Ned so angry in the first place.  Or would contacting them again now be forcing himself in when Ned had made it pretty clear he didn’t want to see Peter again?

Would Michelle even let him do that now that she knew?

“You’re right,” Peter finally admitted.  “I should apologize to them at the very least.” They were owed that much.  He still had a lot to consider beyond that but an apology he could manage.  In fact, Ned and MJ were probably not the only ones he owed an apology to now that he thought about it.  He’d need to make the effort to track down Johnny soon too.

“Of course I’m right,” Travis joked.  “I’m old and wise, you know.”

“You’re maybe fifty,” Peter snorted, drinking the rest of the hot chocolate that was closer to tepid than warm now.  

“Still older than you,” Travis smiled, pointing a stern finger at Peter.  “Now, since you’re already here, the TV in the rec room is on the fritz again.  Think you can get it back online?”

“Yeah of course,” Peter nodded, appreciating the distraction.  “Lead the way.”

The next few hours were spent doing some little repairs around the shelter and talking to the residents that he knew.  Travis was always quick to find him with a new task to keep him moving and Peter appreciated the extra work.  Helping people he could do and something in him settled when he was able to make himself useful, especially at FEAST.

The building was a little more rundown than it had been when Peter had first started volunteering with May but it felt more like home than his own apartment felt now.  The volunteers and long-time residents were his friends.  He knew about their lives and families and hobbies.  He had been to a few of their parties or dinners and he felt better being around them.  Being back in the thick of it again made him wonder how he was ever able to step away for any length of time.

Hours after he had come in, calm and feeling much better than he had and firm in his decision, Peter found himself back in the small lobby staring at the framed picture of May.  It was a candid of her sitting at a table playing cards with a few other people in the rec room and laughing.  It had taken years and, while he would doubtfully ever be over losing her, he could look at the photo now without completely falling apart and could remember happy memories instead of only the sad ones.

He wondered what she would think of him now.  Would May approve of his life and his choices?  Was he doing enough to live up to her legacy?

Would she even recognize him anymore?

In his pocket, Peter’s phone vibrated hard again and he winced.  Jameson must be pretty pissed with him to still be texting him this late - he’d need to find a temp job to get him through until JJ got irritated with his staff photographers and hired him back.  Taking a fortifying breath, Peter pulled out his phone to face the music.

As suspected, he had about twenty angry texts and two emails from his boss filled with all caps curses where he was fired at least three times.  It seemed like Jameson still wanted his photos though so maybe all wasn’t lost.

At the very top of his notifications though was a single text from Michelle.  It was short and to the point - a request for a follow up meeting with a date, time and location.  Peter chewed his already ragged lip before biting the bullet and replying with a short acceptance, locking his phone back.

He had two days to figure out what to say.  Two days before that chapter of his life was likely to truly end.

He didn’t acknowledge how painful that thought was.

The next day found Peter steadfast, more put together than usual, and on a mission to find Johnny Storm.

He had been patrolling Manhattan for a few hours now, stopping the crime he caught but always on the lookout for the tell-tale flame trail the other hero tended to leave through the sky on his daily fly-bys.  He’d had to work up the nerve to put on the suit this morning to look for the Human Torch but he knew if he didn’t make the effort now he was unlikely to ever try to find him.

Peter was perched on the Chrysler building when he finally saw Johnny and he dove off the skyscraper, flinging out a web to catch and propel himself quickly forward.  “Hey Storm!” He called once he was in earshot.  Johnny flipped around and hovered for a second, his face blank under the flames, before he dropped onto a nearby apartment.

When Peter landed, Johnny was standing with his arms crossed and his face closed off.  “Hey,” Peter said, lifting a hand in an awkward wave.  “Thanks for stopping.”

“What do you want, Spidey?” Johnny asked and Peter winced a little at his tone.  He probably deserved that.

“I owe you an apology,” Peter said, one hand coming up to scratch at the back of his head in a nervous gesture.  “I kind of… blew up at you when you were only trying to help.  It wasn’t cool of me and you were… right.  My chickens have come home to roost as my aunt would have said and I made a pretty big mess of things.  I should have listened to you.”

Johnny’s face didn’t change for a long moment but, finally, he snorted.  “How did those words taste in your mouth pal?”

“Bitter,” Peter admitted with a little smile under his mask and relief coursing through his veins.

“I’ll bet,” Johnny said with a smile of his own.  “So you fucked it up pretty hard with your friends then?”

“Massively,” Peter agreed.  “I’m not sure if they’ll ever forgive me or if I even deserve their forgiveness.  It’ll never be like it used to even if they do.”

“Probably not,” Johnny agreed with a shrug.  “But that’ll be their choice.” Peter could hear the undercurrent, the ‘ as they deserve’ and he nodded along.  “And change isn’t always bad, you know.  You’ve all grown up some, it’s natural that your relationship would evolve anyway.  Hopefully for the better now that everything’s in the open.”

“Yeah,” Peter muttered, not nearly as optimistic.  “Anyway, I just wanted to say that I was sorry,” he paused, took a deep breath and decided it was time to stop punishing himself for what had happened.  He thought about the picture of May, about what she would have wanted for him, and he extended his hand, feeling like he was jumping off a cliff without a safety net.  “Friends?”

Johnny looked gobsmacked for a moment and Peter felt a momentary fear that Johnny would reject him but he didn’t need to worry.  Johnny stepped forward and grasped his hand firmly.  “Friends,” he agreed, a mischievous look crawling up his face.  “Does this mean I get to see you without the mask now?”

“Nope.”

“Know your name then?”

“Definitely not,” Peter answered with a full body laugh and Johnny shrugged, good natured.

“I had to give it a shot,” he joked as he lit back up with flames and hovered over the roof.  “See you around?”

“Yeah, I think you will,” Peter said before jumping off the building, feeling lighter than he had in a long time.

The next day, sitting in a cramped tea shop with Michelle Jones-Watson across from him and stony-faced with determination, Peter couldn’t say he felt the same.

Chapter Text

Ned’s house, filled to the brim with 7 people on a good day, was never quiet.  Which made it a little difficult for him to come to terms with all of the memories he had forgotten he had.

His brain felt full, like it may burst.  Like it was swollen at the seams with actual years of school days and coffee trips and endless hours of legos and video games and sleepovers.  Having dinner with Peter and May and Ben.  Hugging Peter as he cried himself to sleep after Ben while his mom was doing the same with May.  Sticky summer days spent in the blessedly cool AC of museums and libraries.

And, starting in their sophomore year, endless nights of being Peter’s ‘Guy in the Chair’ while he was swinging around as Spider-Man.

It was all there.  How could he have ever forgotten?

“Ned?” Ella asked, pushing open the door to peak in.  His sister looked a little wary and he felt guilty for snapping at her earlier when she came to get him for dinner.  With a drawn out sigh, he leaned back in his desk chair and waved her in.

“Hey El,” he greeted, his heart clenching a bit when she passed him the dinner plate she had clearly snuck upstairs for him risking the wrath of their mother.  His mom was firm about the ‘no eating in their rooms’ rule after she had found a rat in the twin’s closet.  Ned had found it hilarious but his parents hadn’t and neither had the twins once they found out they had to work off the money their parents had paid the exterminator.  The warm scent of cumin wafted up and made his stomach growl.  “Thanks.  And… sorry about earlier.”

She just shrugged a little and fidgeted against the closed door.  “It's okay.”

“It’s not,” Ned told her.  “You can call me out on my bullshit next time.”

Ella snorted.  “Don't let Lola hear you curse like that or she’ll wash your mouth out.” Ned nearly choked on his bite of rice and had to cough to get it up.  Ella was totally right about that.  “Are you and Michelle okay?”

Ned blinked.  “Yeah of course,” he said, bemused.  “Why?”

“She looked upset when she left,” Ella said.  “And you’ve been mad ever since you got back from your walk.  I just thought that maybe you guys had a fight.”

“No fight,” Ned assured.  “We both just found out something about… an old classmate of ours.  It shook us up a little but we aren’t mad at each other.”

Ella shifted against the door again and then walked across the room to perch on Ned’s bed, grabbing a pillow to hold in her lap and squeeze against her middle.  “Is your friend okay?”

“He’s not my friend,” Ned hissed out in anger, flinching and then giving his sister an apologetic look.  She didn’t seem upset though, just curious.  “We aren’t really… friends anymore I guess.”

“What did he do?” She asked, picking at a corner of the pillow.  Ned sighed and took another bite of rice, chewing slowly to keep from answering while he tried to figure out what to say.  It tasted like chalk in his mouth.

“He lied to us.  And kept something pretty big that affected MJ and I a secret for a long time,” Ned finally settled on.  How was he supposed to explain what actually happened?

Ella wrinkled her nose in distaste.  “That’s shitty,” she said bluntly, knowing better than to ask more details.  “Did he at least apologize?”

“No,” Ned scoffed.  “He still thinks what he did was right.” And Peter had never really been the apologizing type if he thought he was right.  It had led to a few disagreements in their youth but Ned was easy going enough to usually let bygones be bygones.

Not this time though.  This time was too far.  Ned had trusted Peter and Peter had broken it.

“I’m sorry,” Ella said, interrupting his meandering thoughts. 

“It’s not your fault,” Ned assured, pushing his food around with his spoon, no longer hungry.  

“I can still be sorry it happened,” Ella told him, hopping off the bed and heading for the door before pausing.  “You know I’m here if you want to talk about it right?”

“I know El,” Ned confirmed, unable to hold in his fond smile for his sister.  “Thanks.”

Turning back to his desk, Ned pushed aside his chilled dinner and booted up his laptop.

He had a lot of research to do.

“You haven’t been answering my texts,” Michelle said accusingly when Ned finally picked up after her third phone call in a row (he didn’t want to talk about the ignored texts).

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, as he rubbed his tired eyes.  They felt far too dry but the pressure he put against them helped to alleviate some of his growing headache.  The cursor on his screen blinked back at him, another blank google screen taunting him like the hoards of others he had opened through the night.

MJ hummed and he could hear the clacking of her own keyboard in the background.  “I get it,” she said, absolving him of guilt.  “It’s been a lot to process.”

“Yeah,” Ned agreed, if only to break up the dead silence between them.  “Do you…?”

“Remember anything?” Michelle asked ruefully before letting out a sigh.  “I remember… some things.  I think we might have dated?”

“He doesn’t seem like your type,” Ned joked.  He and Michelle had both had some terrible partners over the last few years and some good ones too.  But Michelle tended to go for bookworm, homebody types that participated in, like, poetry readings or she went for party boys and girls.

From what Ned remembered of Peter, he wasn't either.  Peter from freshman year of high school might fit but post-bite Peter who was Spider-Man?  Mostly a flaky dumpster fire of a human - something Michelle normally didn’t tolerate well.

Maybe that explained MJ’s tastes now.

In the background Ned added another question to his list of Questions About Peter and Life Post Memory Spell.  Was Ned the same person he was before the memory spell?  Was MJ?  Knowing Peter had to have changed them both in little ways but had they kept those little changes?

Ned thought about their handshake and how he had gotten caught in the loop with people randomly and thought maybe they hadn’t quite lost everything.

“Probably for a reason,” she mumbled back and Ned had to wonder if she remembered more than she was letting on.  Ever since they were kids MJ would clam up if she was processing something - she wasn’t like Ned who would comfort the problem head on.  She had gotten really good at confiding in him over the years and he was sad that this was clearly going to be a setback for her.  Maybe she had been having the headaches and the confusion and the deja vous just like he had.  He wants to ask her.  “I just wanted to let you know I messaged him.  Peter.”

Ned wanted to be upset but he kind of got it, the feeling of needing to sit down with him again.  He’d had his moment to blow up and he thought that would be enough but Ned wanted to hear Peter’s answers.  Or excuses.  The seventeen year old in him wanted to reconnect but he wasn’t a kid anymore.  He had friends and an on-again-off-again relationship with Betty and closer relationships with Flash and Michelle than he ever thought he could have.

He was satisfied, happy even.

So why was he still so upset?

“Are you going to talk to him?” Ned asked, trying to keep his voice as blank as possible.

“Yeah,” MJ replied.  “Tomorrow.  I didn’t know if you wanted to come with me?”

Ned looked at his computer again.  At all the searches he had done on Peter Parker - basically non-existent - and all the ones on Spider-Man and the multiverse.  Above his desk, his Death Star loomed over him, missing the Emperor Palpatine piece he realized now was probably with Peter.  Or gone.  He didn’t know what happened to their apartment after May had died - he would need to look it up.

“Not tomorrow,” Ned finally decided.  “But can you send me his number?  I have some… questions I guess.”

“Of course,” MJ agreed and his phone vibrated immediately with her text.  It included Peter’s phone number, different from the one Ned remembered him having before, and a time and location. It seemed that Michelle planned for every possibility.  Either that or she was hoping he would change his mind.  “If there’s anything you want me to pass on…?”

“I’ll let you know,” Ned said.  “Let me know how it goes?”

“I’ll come by after,” Michelle told him and then hung up.  Leaving just his computer for company.

Ned wasn’t sure what possessed him to wander out of his family home the next day around the time that MJ was meeting with Peter but here he was.

It was cold outside but not windy and it was snowing lightly.  Queens looked like something out of a postcard - little piles of pristine snow and barren trees, streets virtually empty.  It should have been calming, relaxing, pleasant even.  But Ned could only feel conflicted.

MJ was only a couple of blocks away interrogating the person who used to be his best friend.  The person who he used to tell everything to.  The person he saw daily and texted unhinged memes to in the middle of the night.  The guy who could finish his sentence and who was just as happy to sit in silence.

Michelle was his best friend and the person he could count on above all else now (and maybe she always had been).  Could he leave her to do this alone?  He knew she could one-hundred percent do it without his support, but was it fair to make her?

“Fuck,” Ned muttered, with feeling.  He needed to be there.

A quick check of his watch showed that their meetup had started about forty-five minutes ago but if Ned knew Peter, and he used to but he didn’t think he would have changed too much, he was late.  He had always been late to events after the bite.  They were probably still there.

Determined now, Ned picked up the pace.  He was a little out of breath when Clutch Coffee and Bakery came into view and he stopped for a minute to catch his breath and mentally prepare.  After a minute he felt ready and he opened the front door, the little bell jingling merrily.  Peter’s head snapped up to look at him from the back corner table he was sitting at with Michelle.  His face was pale and his dark eyes were ringed in red.

MJ looked much more composed to the layman but Ned could see the little stress lines around her eyes and could make out the tense way she held her shoulders.  There was naked relief in her expression and Ned knew then that he had made the right choice.

He took a fortifying breath and marched over, sliding into the chair next to MJ and bumping shoulders with her.  They’d do this together.

“What did I miss?”