Chapter Text
It starts with a handshake.
“We should have something secret,” Ned remembers saying– remembers, now in a way he hadn’t a week ago.
“What do you mean?”
“Like something between us. Something cool, like a super secret spy handshake,” he’d said, laying on his back of the floor of the Parker living room. It was the middle of the night of a sleepover– sometime between 8pm, 4am, and forever– hearing Peter’s laughter to his side, laying in the same way but in opposite.
Parallel, and yet– removed.
(Ned in hindsight, would think there was something poetic about that.)
“It’s not really a secret spy handshake if everyone can see it.”
“You know what I mean,” Ned remembers insisting– remembers now like he does what he had for dinner last night, remembers in a way that makes him wonder how he ever could’ve forgotten, “we’re best friends.”
“Okay?” Peter had asked, voice sounding younger in his memories.
“Best friends are like, connected.”
Peter had laughed again, but then sat up– Ned remembering– remembering, remembering, remembering– that he’d done the same, looking to Peter who had a smile on his face and his hand extended out.
“Let’s try it.”
Ned doesn’t fully remember the details of how they figured that out– whether that was some remnant of the spell or just, being twenty-three and not twelve anymore he isn’t sure– but he remembers the first time they’d tried it out in front of people, May watching in amusement in the kitchen as she nearly burned their pancakes.
“Nice work fellas,” she’d said with a grin and a laugh and Ned remembers feeling so proud, beaming and light and unburdened because he was twelve with a best friend and a handshake and a successful sleepover.
It was a good memory, all told.
Sucks that until an hour ago, he hadn’t realized it was gone.
“I think I’m mad at you.”
Peter looks up, arms resting on his knees from the chair he’s sitting on. He’s not in the spider-suit this time, but it’s the same place he’d been almost a week ago– more tense this time and no Lego set in front of them.
Ned’s sitting on the couch this time, hands not quite folded together and tapping his feet.
MJ isn’t there.
“Whatever this is, you two have to sort it out,” she’d said, not unkindly– Ned wanting to push only to stop when he saw the look on her face.
“You really don’t remember him,” he’d said, not a question but a statement. He knows her know– knows her even better, old memories now intermingled with the– not old but different ones they’ve made in the last few years.
MJ got irritated when she was stressed and quiet when she was sad.
She was neither of those things now, eerily calm or maybe just determined as she had sighed and shook her head.
“No, and I… I don’t know what she was to him, but she was important,” she’d said, looking to the living room– the two of them knowing Peter was on his way. “Whatever this is, I… I think it’s better that you two talk. Alone.”
Ned had held her gaze for a beat, a dozen different things now that he could say but doesn’t– like how he remembers now, how much Peter had loved her, remembers Venice, and Prague, and London, remembers the hell they’d gone through after they’d come home– running away from paparazzi and wannabe journalists and Mysterio defenders.
He remembers everything, even some of the things he wishes he didn’t but Ned can see it clear as day in the look on MJ’s face.
MJ doesn’t remember at all.
“Text me, after,” she’d said as she’d grabbed her coat. “I’ll be around.”
At Pour Over probably or maybe Adel’s, though whether that relationship was going to last after this was another thing entirely– MJ giving a quick smile before she’d left, leaving Ned alone with his thoughts, with his memories.
With him.
“I get it,” Peter said, bringing Ned back into the present moment, watching as Peter wrings his hands together.
“No, I don’t think you do,” Ned says, sighing as he moves his palms against the fabric of his jeans. “I’m– I’m so fucking mad at you but I also…”
He trails off, fingers tapping against his knee before he stands– feeling Peter’s eyes on him as he goes to grab the minifig off the shelf.
“I lost my Palpatine,” he said, holding Chewie in his hands then turning to Peter. “You remember, when we built this?”
Peter presses his lips together, giving a pained smile. “Yeah, um. He– he’s with me.”
“He’s what?”
“I have him,” Peter says, clearing his throat. “I didn’t steal him or– or anything, I just– I had him in the apartment, back when–”
“You had to move to Happy’s,” Ned intones, remembering now in a way he hadn’t then. In the move to Boston, Ned had looked everywhere for Palpatine to go with the Deathstar that he’d carefully packed up to take with them. He’d figured he’d lost it somewhere in the depths of his teenage bedroom, unable to figure out how or why but he remembers now– the two of them sitting in Peter’s apartment and reconstructing it as they often did when they needed to think, remembers Peter fiddling with the Palpatine as he’d talked about their shitty day in gym.
“Keep it,” Ned had said at the time, “let the Force guide you.”
Peter had laughed and stuck the minifig in his pocket and that had been that– until it was gone, lost in the ether of wherever else all his memories had gone, until now.
Peter isn’t laughing now, wringing his hands again as he shakes his head.
“I’m really–”
“Please stop saying you’re sorry,” he says, putting Chewie back on the shelf. “I know.”
“But I am, really, I– just wanted to keep you–”
“Safe,” he says, at the same time Peter does. Peter has the decency to look a little shamed by this and despite everything, Ned doesn’t hate him. He wants to, a little bit because that’s his fucking best friend and he forgot about him, but he can’t– not least of which because his tablet beeps from the coffee table.
“Spidey Tracker,” he says on autopilot only to stop and huff out a laugh, “must be bugged.”
“Could be George,” Peter says, Ned making a face as he grabs his tablet– looking through the chat and notifications.
“George?” He asks, scanning to see the chatter as someone laughs at “Spider-Man” falls into a dumpster.
“Some actor from Times Square that got his hands on a suit that looks a lot like mine, or well, the old one. One of them. Anyway,” Peter says, sounding tired and older and different as Ned scrolls through, “he likes to try and do trick shots sometimes, make the tourists happy.”
“He’s not very good at them,” Ned replies, watching a live video of “Spider-Man” who must be George landing awkwardly on his ankle before hopping away.
“Try does a lot of heavy lifting there,” Peter says, with a faint smile on his face. “Good guy. Doesn’t give any trouble, you know. Just, trying to make a living.”
Ned keeps the tablet in his hand as he goes back to sit, fingers tapping against it before he asks, “and you?”
“Huh?”
“How do you do it? You know. Make a living,” he says, looking at him up and down. “I mean it sounds like you have a place?”
“Yeah, yeah, I do,” Peter says, looking around the apartment they’re in. “Nothing as nice as this, but you know. Keeps me warm.”
“Can I see it?” Ned asks before he can think better of it, because he thinks he’s angry and he’s maybe upset but he’s curious more than anything– a best friend and memories returned that make him recognize just how much life they’ve missed.
Peter blinks, taken aback for the briefest of seconds before he nods and says, “yeah, of course. Um, yeah whenever.”
“Can we go right now?”
“Sure,” Peter replies and he knows him– knew him– that he’s going along with anything now, like he did back when they were kids and Ned got pissed about him for stupid shit.
It’s an instinct that Peter seems to catch too, Ned tapping his finger against the tablet before setting it back down.
“Alright then. Let’s go.”