Chapter Text
“Peter!”
That voice saying his name in that way and with that look lights up something in Peter Parker that’s been dark for a very, very long time.
He feels a smile spread over his face even as his throat tightens. “You remember,” he whispers, knowing it’s true just by the look on Ned’s face but desperate to confirm it anyway.
Ned shakes his head, but not in a negatory sort of way, more of a wow, what, how, huh, WOW sort of way that causes Peter’s eyes to sting and his fists to ball up against an onslaught of emotion.
He’d gotten really good at shoving it all down. Compartmentalizing. Hiding. But after everything that’s happened with Jean and Frank and getting shot and now there’s this, this thing that he’s wanted for so long, to have someone look at him and see him, really him…
Honestly, it’s all a little bit too much.
“Sorry,” Peter gasps, turning tail and fleeing. He realizes what he’s done even before he reaches the street. Ned remembers. That means he’ll be back in Peter’s life, and with all of the wonderful good that that entails, it also entails what got them into this mess in the first place. Ned in danger. Ned risking his life. Ned possibly dying because of him, one more person in an increasingly long list, and Peter doesn’t think he could take it if Ned got ripped away from him, not again, not after seeing that look on his face and hearing his name in his best friend’s voice.
“Peter! Peter, wait!”
Peter ducks into an alleyway, trying to catch his breath. The overflow of emotions is putting his Spidey Senses into a tailspin—not the first time this has happened. It seems like his newfound abilities expect him to be as balanced and zen and in-control as he was when he first accepted them, and they expect it all the time. The horns on the nearby street feel like train whistles, Ned’s nearing footsteps like boulders hitting the pavement.
His head throbs. Also not new. He’d thought that once he accepted his metamorphosis, they’d finally go away. Then he thought that he just needed to heal up from his nearly-fatal spinal injury. But it’s been over a week now, and still, pain splits through his head like something’s about to hatch out of there.
Peter really, really hopes something isn’t about to hatch out of there.
“Peter,” Ned repeats, panting, as he careens around the corner and into the alley. Peter’s head snaps up and he resists the urge to back away and flee. “Just—just wait a second, okay? Don’t freak out on me.”
“You should be the one freaking out,” Peter counters, pressing the heel of his hand to his right eyebrow. He’s gotten so used to only ever speaking to people through the mask that he feels strangely naked right now. “You just—do you really—?”
“I remember everything,” Ned confirms, approaching slowly. “I—I don’t see how I ever forgot, Peter, I’m so sorry, all of these years—and MIT—and after May…”
He’s close enough to carefully put his hand on Peter’s shoulder. All of Peter’s senses hone into it: the weight, pressure, temperature, smell, structure of that hand.
Ned’s eyes well, filled with grief and sympathy and pain. “You must have been so… alone.”
Peter’s face crumples, the weight and height and breadth of it all crashing into him like a fist to the gut. He grabs Ned and pulls him into a hug, pressing his face into his best friend’s shoulder, and sobs. It’s like hugging Michelle on the rooftop, except even better, because he knows now for sure that this is real, that it’s actually Ned who’s hugging him back, arms familiar and strong around his middle.
“You’re okay,” Ned soothes. “I’ve got you. I’m back—you’re back. And everything’s gonna be okay now, right? You’ll move in with me and MJ, and we can do movie nights, and, ooh! they just released that new Lego kit that—”
Peter lets him ramble on. He should probably stop him, tell him that none of that is going to happen (except, perhaps, the Lego kit. It depends on Ned’s budget because his is pretty small), but he’s tired and it just feels so good to cry it all out while someone else is there to hold him up.
“So you’re not mad?” he asks tentatively when he feels Ned’s grip start to loosen.
“Mad?” Ned echoes. “Oh. About the whole not-telling me thing? Yeah, you were kinda supposed to do that, man. You promised.”
Peter draws away and wipes at his face. His headache has dulled to a manageable level and his senses are no longer about to swallow him whole. “I know,” he sighs. “Trust me, I know. And I wanted to, I really did, but it was just… you guys were okay, you know? You were finally okay. And with me back in your life, everything was just going to get complicated again.”
Ned exhales, his eyes still soft and sad. “Yeah. I guess it is a little complicated. And, yeah, we were happy. But I’ll be way the heck happier now that I’ve got you back, buddy!”
Is that really true? Peter wishes he could know for certain that it is, but he doesn’t. Ned doesn’t.
“I made a lot of friends at MIT,” Ned admits, before he lifts his hand for another handshake. “But they’re not—they never—no one could ever be you, Peter. Not to me.”
“Thanks, man,” Peter croaks out, another wave of tears threatening to drag him under. He slaps palms with Ned, their arms moving in a way that’s truly ingrained in their muscles, in their hearts. Corny, wow. Michelle really would gag over all this spell-breaking stuff.
“Hey, come back to my apartment with me!” Ned suggests as they head out of the alley and down the street again. “We’ve gotta tell MJ the good news!”
Peter pauses, heart sinking. “What do you mean?”
“That I know!” He shoots Peter a grin, so wide, so bright, so Ned. “Come on, Pete, I’ve got my memories back now. There’s no way I remembered you before Michelle did.”
He must see something on Peter’s face, because he stops walking in the middle of the sidewalk. “Wait. I did?”
Pedestrians flow around them. Peter searches for a way to explain. “She—she knows about the missing memories,” he says. “She found this letter that… it’s not important. But she knows. She found out the afternoon that I saw you as Spider-Man for the first time. Second-first time.”
“Right, okay.” Ned nods along, brow furrowing. “So she does remember.”
“No,” Peter mumbles. “She knows, but she doesn’t remember. It didn’t happen with her like it did for you.”
I don’t love you. Because I don’t even know you.
The street grows quiet. Ned’s face falls, but then it pinches in thought. “Okay. Okay. That’s okay!” He wraps an arm around Peter’s shoulders and leads him off down the sidewalk again. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll get them back. And then it’ll be just like it used to be.”
“Right,” Peter replies with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes this time. “Just like it used to be.”
He’s not so naive to think so little has changed between then and now that that can actually be true.
They crash on the couch in Ned and MJ’s apartment, just the two of them—MJ is out running errands, which makes Peter feel an odd mix of relief and disappointment. For a while they just talk, catching up and filling in blanks. Ned gets a little teary when Peter tells him that he’s been watching his videos this whole time.
“I always knew I had to keep going with those,” he says, voice choked. “I thought it was just, like, I wanted a video diary to look back on, but now I know it was all for you.”
They’re halfway through an order of pork fried rice and the fight against the Sarlacc Pit and Jaba the Hutt’s crew when the apartment’s front door unlocks and Michelle clomps in. It’s been so long since Peter’s seen Return of the Jedi, or any movie at all, really, much less with his favorite person, that a childish part of him just wants to keep the movie playing. But Ned immediately pauses it.
“MJ!” he shouts, scrambling off the couch. “Look! Look who’s here!”
Michelle has half taken off her coat. Her purse dangles off of one shoulder. Her hair is up in a ponytail and she looks tired and stunning.
Peter imagines what it would be like if things had never gone pear-shaped the way they always do for him. He imagines that they did get that apartment, went through college, grew and changed, all together. He would get right off that couch and kiss MJ, take her coat from her. Heck, she’d probably have a ring on her finger. If nothing else, the last four years have shown him that there’s only one woman he’s ever been made to love.
He’s lived in this pretend-world so many times since the Spell that it’s hard to believe that this whole scenario isn’t some deep fake, instead of just the piece in his head where he still gets to be in love with Michelle Jones.
Is he being ungrateful? He’s got Ned. That’s so much more than he ever dreamed he could have again.
“Oh.” MJ eyes him, carefully peeling the coat off her arms and hanging it up without breaking eye contact. “Uh. You.”
“I remember everything!” Ned goes on, effusive as always. Peter almost wishes he’d tone it back a little, let him do the explaining. “Whatever Peter’s told you about the memory thing, it’s totally true! He was our best friend, MJ! Well, he was your boyfriend, but the three of us were kind of like a platonic threesome. Well, maybe threesome is a weird word to use, even with platonic there, but you know what I—”
“I didn’t think he was lying about it,” Michelle cuts in. She turns her back, busies herself with straightening the coat. “I just didn’t remember. Don’t remember. Still don’t remember. But, uh… good for you.”
Without another word, she walks into her room and shuts the door.
“Oh.” Ned deflates and plops back down on the couch. He shoots Peter a nervous look. “Uh… I expected that to go differently, to be honest. You okay?”
Peter has thought it would be easier to hear her say that she doesn’t remember him the second time around, but this time she barely even seems to care about it. Which might mean she cares a lot? MJ has a habit of doing that, getting more detached on the outside the more attached she is on the inside.
Or. She used to have a habit of doing that. Maybe she doesn’t anymore. Peter hasn’t known her for a long time, not through anything except a screen.
Even with all of his dreams about growing and changing alongside his friends, he never considered that they might have changed separate from him. Michelle had spoken about the girl that used to love him like she was a different person. Maybe she is.
He realizes Ned is still waiting for an answer, watching him with tentative concern. That’s fair—he kind of bawled his eyes out into his shirt earlier. “Oh! Yeah, I’m, uh… I kind of expected that, honestly. She really doesn’t remember.”
“Crazy,” Ned whistles. “Well, want to keep watching?”
Peter nods, swipes a mouthful of rice, and they sink back into the couch cushions to continue the film. He won’t be greedy. He can appreciate the gift that he has right here in front of him, and that can be enough.