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1.
Peter and Ned met in third grade. May remembers the day vividly - she’d just gotten on her lunch break and was walking to meet up with Ben at that sandwich shop around the corner when she got a call from Peter’s principal about her nephew (well, nobody knew he was a he , yet, but still) instigating a fight that he’d been injured in.
She knew it was bullshit from the moment she heard it.
Ben ended up driving them both in his squad car, trying to get through the midday rush of Queens traffic before giving in and turning on his siren. It didn’t calm May down one bit. By the time they finally arrived at Peter’s school, she was out of the car before Ben was done parking. She knew how she must have looked - an angry, middle-aged Italian woman marching through the doors with her left hand in a fist and her right holding her purse strap in a death grip while the look on her face forced the children around her to clear a path down the crowded halls. Ben just trailed behind her.
“M’am, you have to sign in,” said the front desk secretary. “M’am, hey!” May ignored her, leaving Ben to handle it as she walked straight to the nurse’s office. Peter was sitting on a plastic chair, holding an ice pack to his arm with his head hanging. The moment May walked in, he snapped his head up, staring at her with wide eyes. He sniffled.
She just sighed and pulled him into a hug. After a few moments, May pulled back and took a seat beside him, shifting her bag to her other shoulder to wrap an arm around his shoulders. Ben came in at that point and squatted down in front of Peter. “What happened?” he asked. Peter hesitated, but Ben just placed a hand on his knee with an encouraging smile. May was so grateful for his patience in moments like those.
Peter went on to explain what had happened: he’d been getting his lunchbox from his locker when a crowd formed down the hall and he went to see what was going on. A well-known bully cornering a kid from his math class against the lockers, calling him names and making him cry. When the kid (“His name is Ned and he’s super nice, we both like LEGOs and he let me try his sin-ee-gong one time and then we shared some peanut butter crackers-”) quietly told him to stop, the bully just slammed his books and lunch all over the floor before pushing Ned against the lockers, hard. None of the teachers did anything. So, of course, Peter stepped in and shoved the bully away because it was all he could think of doing. Then the bully shoved him back, making Peter fall on his wrist, which was swollen and aching at this point.
Only then did the teachers finally intervene, but when the bully brought on the waterworks, their fingers pointed at Peter and Ned as the instigators.
“Are you mad?” asked Peter after a few moments, looking at May with watery eyes. She’d clenched her jaw so hard her teeth ached. She quickly reassured him that of course she wasn’t and Ben told him how proud they were of him standing up for another classmate. That settled, May kissed his forehead before leaving Ben to carry on things from there as she stalked towards the principal’s office just a few doors down. As she got closer, she heard someone yelling, and opened the door to find another woman tearing apart the principal while a young boy tried to make himself look as small as possible beside her.
May quickly learned that this boy was the Ned that Peter had defended and that the irate woman was his mother, who had only come alone because her wife was a very busy attorney but would be more than happy to come in at a moment’s notice if her experience was needed. They soon established that they were on the same page; by the time that Ben walked in with Peter hunched over beside him, May and Irene Leeds had successfully threatened the principal enough to free their boys of all bullshit charges.
As the parents all signed their kids out, May overheard Peter’s and Ned’s conversation behind them. “Sorry about your arm,” mumbled Ned, painfully earnest. Out of the corner of her eye, Peter frowned at it before shrugging.
“It’s okay. Uncle Ben says I probably just need a cast.” He paused. “D’you wanna sign it first?”
“You want me to sign it first?”
“Yeah! I mean, we’re friends, right?”
“...Yeah. Yeah! We can be friends.” He sounded so excited it made May want to protect him a little bit. “You hit Flash for me.”
Peter shrugged again. “You’re really nice, and he’s a jerk. Someone had to help. That’s what friends are for.”
There was another pause. “You’re a really good friend… and really cool.”
“You’re cooler! You have two moms and, like, all the Exo-Force LEGOs!”
Besides the nice dent Peter’s fractured wrist caused to her and Ben’s wallets, the day turned out pretty well. May ended up spending her Tuesday afternoons with Irene drinking wine and watching bad sitcoms, while Peter went on to spend every second he could with his new best friend.
They became inseparable after that. Peter never had close friends before, so it was a welcome sight to see him get along with another kid so quickly. Irene and Aliza, her wife, could relate. The rest of elementary school came and went without much incident besides Ben leaving the force for a desk job that had considerably less corruption and stress.
Middle school was much more eventful. Peter joined band in sixth grade and became an honors student by seventh while also attending robotics club regularly. His interest in technology had May and her husband excited for his opportunities, yet worrying about how he’d do at the local high school that they both knew would chew him up and spit his dreams right back out. So when Peter excitedly handed them a pamphlet for Midtown at the beginning of eighth grade, they were ecstatic. It was extremely hard to get in, but Peter was so excited, and he already had plans with Ned to study together to pass the entrance exam next spring. It all looked so bright.
Maybe that was why May let Peter’s slowly souring shift in mood go on for as long as it did. At first, she chalked it up to puberty - he’d gotten his first period over the summer and was definitely not been excited for the wonderful world of monthly cramps or general growing pains. May couldn’t talk to him about it, though. He spent most of his time at school these days, either studying or focusing on extracurriculars. The rest of the time, he was either hanging out at Ned’s or sleeping. It got to a point where May couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Peter for more than five minutes awake.
She blamed herself afterwards for not noticing how bad things had gotten sooner, but there was no way of her to know. Peter never hinted at his feelings around her and Ben. It made her really question if they failed at building the loving, accepting home they always wanted for him. Peter never blamed her, though. She hoped he wasn’t just being extremely forgiving.
Peter ended up telling Ned, first. He was the one who held Peter’s wrist - the same one that he’d broken defending him years ago - as he stood in the middle of their living room and said, crying, “I’m a boy. Please don’t be mad.”
By the end of the night, they were all crying and hugging each other tight as they could.
So besides buying Peter new clothes, scheduling appointments for his T-shots around school, and having Ned come around more often instead of Peter running away to his friend’s house all the time, life went on as usual. They both got into MSST, to absolutely no one’s surprise, though Aliza and Irene insisted on taking them all out for celebratory ice cream anyway. With Peter’s name change and therapy, the summer flew by in a flash of excitement as it paved the way for his freshman year.
Then they lost Ben. May tries so hard not to think about that part. Still - throughout it all, Peter was so strong. His grades slipped, but he found the strength to get them back up to the tune of all-A’s by the end of the year, and he even found his way onto the Academic Decathlon team. May just spent five and a half sleepless months on the couch because she couldn’t sleep alone anymore. She was so proud of her boy, but sometimes she wondered how he bounced back like that.
She didn’t find out why until the middle of July. She’d finally moved on enough a few months ago - or maybe she was just so tired that she had to try acting like it, at least - and had cleaned the dusty sheets before sleeping in her own bed again. She no longer counted the days since she became a widow. She could look at her family photos again without tearing up everytime Ben’s face showed up, now, and she was even casually talking about him again. It was one of these occasions that Irene had gotten emotional as she told her how proud she was. May was happy to say that she was proud of herself, too.
It was a few days after this that Ned had escaped to their apartment as his little sisters had, according to him, taken over his house in a glittery, cupcake-fueled rampage. He made a point by shaking his head every few minutes and pointing out all the glitter that kept falling onto their carpet while Peter rolled on the floor laughing.
Before long, the boys had retreated to Peter’s room, where they spent the rest of the evening doing whatever two nerdy teenagers did. May was all too happy to claim the living room to herself, watching Hallmark movies as she did her nails and scrolled through Facebook. Occasionally, she heard Peter and Ned screeching with laughter from behind their closed door, making her smile a little each time. It was nice to hear Peter just being at peace.
May was several movies in when she checked the clock again and decided to get a head start on dinner. Several cracks and pops could be heard as she stood up, making her groan a little as she stretched. She may still look not a day over thirty (maybe thirty-three on a bad day), but damn, was she getting old.
She realized Peter and Ned had been pretty quiet for a while. She decided to check in on them as she walked over, trying to come up with actual food to make but figuring she’d just ask if they wanted anything specific. As May got closer to Peter’s door, she could hear the hushed tones of their conversation through the crack, making her pause just as she began reaching for the handle.
“...and sometimes I just don’t see the point, y’know?” said Peter. His voice was a mix of frustration and dejection that made May feel all the worst emotions. “Like... I tried so hard to get into Midtown, and I just want to do well here so I can get as many scholarships I can to actually afford to go somewhere like Columbia, but that’s what literally everybody else is trying to do.”
Ned, in what May could only assume is an attempt to lighten the mood, said, “I’m aiming for M.I.T., personally.”
Peter laughed a little. “Yeah, you’ve known that since we met in third grade.” He paused. “Things were easier back then. And I know it makes me sound like an asshole, but back in elementary school - middle school, too - I actually felt…”
“...Felt like what?” Ned’s voice was gentle.
“I felt- I felt smart, I guess. Don’t say anything, and don’t look at me like that, I know what you were gonna say. I know I’m not stupid. But back then, in comparison with everybody else, we were just… really smart. They treated us like little geniuses while everyone else was, like, average.” Then, muffled: “Oh, god, I sound likesuch an asshole.”
“Hey- you’re not an asshole. And I get what you mean.”
Peter didn’t reply. Someone sighed.
“I felt the same way, okay? I was the guy everybody picked on. You were my only friend for almost seven years. Grades were the only thing that made me feel like I was doing something that actually mattered- that I mattered, I guess.”
Peter spoke up, his voice so soft that May strained to hear it. “You do matter. You matter a lot to me.”
“Same to you, dude.” They were quiet again. “But, yeah. Things just changed at Midtown. There were way more people when we were younger who didn’t really try that hard, who were ‘average’, I think, and now our school is full of people who’re just like us. We’re all the ‘special’ kids who wanted a challenge and weren’t totally ready to be competitive about it. But, hey! We both got all A’s last year. We got this.”
There was silence again. Then there was some shuffling as Peter started to giggle before going “Okay, okay!” and apparently high-fiving Ned. May felt the weight that had been growing along her shoulders ease a little. God, she was so grateful that they had each other.
“Well,” said Peter, voice much lighter, “just so you know, you’re definitely getting into M.I.T. You’ll probably invent life-saving nanobots, or code the world's first electric heart, or something.”
Ned was laughing. “I stick to the hacking, you do the biotech.”
“Shut up! You could totally do that shit, though. Then you’d change the world and get famous and give inspirational TED talks.”
“Yeah, well- you’d be up there with me, ‘cause we’re a team. I’m always gonna be by your side.”
May couldn’t take it anymore. The last few moments had been a rollercoaster of emotions and her maternal instincts were taking over. She only hesitated a moment before throwing Peter’s door open, trying to look as “chill” as possible.
There was a moment, though, that made her stop. They were both on the floor with their backs against Peter’s bed, leaning against each other like they had a million times. Ned had been looking at the door, so he noticed May come in first and was already smiling at her. Peter, on the other hand, didn’t seem to notice at all. No; he was too focused looking at Ned with the softest expression that May had ever seen. In a strange moment, she thought about all of the bad romcoms she’d just binge-watched, but tried to shake that thought away when she realized she’d been standing there a few seconds too long.
“Oh, food!” she said, then realized that didn’t make sense when Peter whipped his head around and blinked rapidly. “I mean- food for dinner. Do either of you want something specific?”
“No, not really,” said Ned, happy as can be. Peter needed a few more moments to collect himself before saying, “Uh, I- that. Yeah.” His cheeks were quickly turning red. May - with no real prompting - suddenly remembered all the times where she would just look at Ben when they were still dating and everything was so new. He’d just be talking, or laughing, or doing something utterly innocuous yet mesmerizing at the same time and May would be lost in watching him. Eventually, Ben would catch her in the act, looking at her all fond as she blushed just like Peter was doing right now.
Oh. Oh.
“Oh,” said May out loud. Then, “I think I’ll just order pizza.”
“Sweet!” said Ned, while Peter said in a strained voice, “Sounds good.”
May gave them an awkward thumbs-up before rushing out of the doorway - though she made a point of leaving the door wide open. She wasn’t going to leave her baby boy completely unsupervised with his crush, after all. At least he had good taste.
2.
Tony has made plenty of mistakes in his life. A lot of them could be attributed to age, sure, but he knew he used up the “young-and-dumb” excuse a long time ago. His biggest regret - albeit one of an infinite many - was that he realized it a good forty years or so too late. Still, Tony’s spent the last decade making up for his past mistakes where he could and trying not to make any new ones for the rest. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start. He’s getting better. He is better. He can live with that.
The problem is that he’s now a role model for a growing young Spider-Man who’s both just stubborn as he is and dangerously more optimistic. Despite all the progress that Tony’s made on his personal journey, being a fifty-year-old work-in-progress (and god, he’s old, now) is not what Peter needs if he’s gonna keep going down this path. Hell, it’s not even an “if”. Tony would sleep much better at night if Peter actually had enough common sense to reconsider the whole superhero thing. Alas, that’s not to be, so Tony just has to do his damndest to look like an adult who actually makes good decisions that can serve as some kind of example for Peter to follow.
He can confidently say that he failed fucking spectacularly during the whole Vulture-mess. Peter was quick to forgive him afterwards, but Tony can’t say the same about forgiving himself. After taking down the Vulture single-handed (which Tony would have done anything to go back in time and make sure never happened), Peter had mostly told him the truth of what went down that night. It wasn’t until he got a call at two A.M. on a Wednesday morning in January and spent nearly three hours talking Peter down from a nightmare-induced panic attack that he found out about the kid getting stuck under a pile of rubble that he had to save himself from. Eventually, Tony was able to calm him down by either sharing anecdotes about his own trauma or just being someone to vent to. Peter kept apologizing for keeping him up, but Tony wouldn’t have it, insisting that he would always be just a phone call away before hanging up and immediately throwing up on his nice Taipei penthouse floor.
The rest of the day went as well as he suspected. After cleaning the mess up, cancelling his flight to a very important business meeting in Munich, calling Happy, screaming at Happy, apologizing to Happy, and trying very hard not to break his nine-month sober streak, he packed his bags as he scheduled an immediate flight back to NYC. He was passed out the whole sixteen hours home.
Peter had needed him, but Tony hadn’t been there. He promised himself that he was gonna be better. He had to be. For Peter.
His first order of business in the Be-A-Better-Mentor-Slash-Father-Figure Program™ was making time to be with Peter in the flesh, which was easy enough. It only took a few well-placed phone calls before his schedule was cleared for the next six weeks while General Ross was given the proverbial bird in a strongly-worded voicemail. He’d already found a condo close enough to the Parkers and had it ready by the time he landed.
The second step - which, in hindsight, should have been the first - was coordinating his plan with May. That was the hard part. Their relationship had essentially taken a nuclear bomb once she found out what her nephew’s “internship” had actually entailed. She threatened Tony with everything from public exposure, to a lawsuit, to a punch in the face, and Tony let her. He may have been trying to mentor Peter, but May was his aunt and legal guardian; he wasn’t about to go around acting like he knew what was better for Peter than the woman who raised him. It took Tony saving a curfew-breaking vigilante from another hotshot with Chitauri weapons and May watching it all on late-night television for them to realize that coming to some kind of truce was in Peter’s best interest.
That didn’t mean they got along particularly well. Still, four painful hours after Tony landed, they finally agreed on a set of rules for the next month and a half. Tony didn’t feel unlike a divorced father being granted partial custody.
Part of the agreement was that Tony got to spend Tuesday and Thursday afternoons with Peter as long as they stayed squarely within city limits and updated May every half hour. Luckily, it happened to be Thursday, so Tony fled from the apartment as soon as possible to pick Peter up from school. His face when he saw Tony standing by the doors made the past day and a half worth it.
Then the kid he’d been talking to screamed, “HOLY SHIT IT’S IRON MAN,” which is how Tony met Ned Leeds.
He felt like he already knew the kid, since Peter talked about him all the time . Not that Tony minded. Sure, the fact that there was a random teenage boy who could not only hack his tech with a laptop and knew Peter’s deepest secret gave him a migraine, but the fact that he had someone to talk to evened the scale. It helped that they were best friends who seemed to joined at the literal hip, if Peter’s constant anecdotes about him and their most recent escapades were any indication. It was still interesting to meet him in the flesh.
Besides picking Peter up every other day, Tony didn’t see much more of Ned during his six-week ‘vacation’ (which, with Peter around, was anything but). Tony mostly divided his time between working in his makeshift lab at the condo or video calling Rhodey, who kept telling him to actually go outside and “give everyone a head’s up the next time you decide to fall off the face of the Earth for a month.”
(“Aw,” said Tony, placing a hand over his heart. “Miss you, too, Rhodes.”
Rhodey just glared at him through the screen. “Why did I marry you?”
“For my rich personality, obviously. And my literal riches.”
“And your extraordinary communication skills.”
“Hey, I’m getting better!”
“I know you are.” Then Rhodey’s face went all soft. “But seriously. This is a huge step. I’m proud of you.”
“...I’m proud of me, too.”
“You’re still sleeping on the couch when you get home.”
“Yeah, figured.”)
Tony treasured the time he gets with Peter in the lab. The kid was just a little ball of curiosity and excitement, eager to learn what he could. When he first saw the lab that Thursday, he spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out what every little thing did before tackling Tony in a bear hug because he couldn’t come up with the right words to say ‘thank you’. He’d take it.
Despite their bi-weekly quality time, as well as having pretty much moved to Queens just to be with Peter, Tony spent most of his time alone. He wasn’t bitter, no matter what Pepper said (she definitely could not hear him pouting through the phone), because he was glad that Peter had a life of his own when Tony eventually left. He had school, clubs, friends, and an aunt who loved him more than life itself. That kind of semi-normalcy had to do some good for him.
It’s not like Tony was just sitting around his condo in the dark everyday, either, waiting for his quality time with Peter. He worked on pet projects some days and walked around the city on others. Peter sent him bodega and hole-in-the-wall recommendations, which Tony greatly appreciated, because he legitimately knew nothing about Queens. He spent his childhood being carted around from upstate NY, to Europe, to LA, to the Upper East Side, and back upstate again. Here, he didn’t have to worry about kissing up to other rich assholes or being misgendered by ugly old Wall Street shitbags who thought they were better than him because they spent twenty seconds reading his Wikipedia page; here, people may want a picture with him at every block, but that was pretty different than harassment at a networking event.
It was still nice when Peter sent him updates on his daily escapades. At first, it was just short texts about school or May or something notable from his patrols. After the first week, though, he started sending multiple texts detailing funny moments or what his friends were up to lately. That’s how Tony first heard about Michelle Jones, the latest addition to Peter’s friend group, which formerly consisted of Ned and nobody else. She sounded nice enough. It wasn’t until a few days later that he had his first interaction with her. Through texts.
Underoos (P)
sup this is michelle i’m peter’s friend
i stole his phone btw
damn you guys text a lot
What’s happening?
He Speaks
right now? gym class
real talk though
are you really tony stark
or is this just a nerdy friend thing
You sent a video.
haha nicekhbKFJHbkjgfVGHEVDkwLJENDF
ITS PETeR IM SO SORRY AbOUT TH AT OH MY G O D
Maybe Tony was a little concerned in Peter’s choice in friends, but between Ned’s nerdiness and Michelle’s whatever-her-deal-is, he’d take them over whatever the alternative would be. Besides; it’s so clear that he really loved them whenever he talked about them. That kind of friendship was pretty rare in their line of work, so Tony left them be.
He didn’t find out about what kind of love that entailed - or for who - until a little after the middle of his stay. It had been so peaceful for the past few weeks that he knew it couldn’t last, so it only made sense that a group of Chitauri-weapon-wielding robbers began cropping up around NYC. The whole situation quickly turned from a nuisance to a nightmare when they all ended up having a personal vendetta against Spider-Man, forcing May to ground Peter while Tony advised him to lay as low as possible until the situation was under control. That went about as well as they could expect.
Tony, for his part, tried to keep Peter somewhat occupied. It said a lot about either how much their relationship had improved or how desperate May was that she allowed him to keep his Tuesday and Thursday Father-Figure Bonding Time while her son was being hunted by a scorpion man and Cthulhu wannabe. It was probably the latter; May could ground Peter all she wanted, but if he didn’t have a sufficient enough distraction, it was practically like tying him to hot air and expecting him to stay there.
Tony just gave him some pet projects to tinker around with while he worked on improving Peter’s suit until literally nothing could kill him. Throughout the whole thing, Peter was bored at best and teen angst-y at worst. The only thing that Tony could think of to cheer him up was asking about school, which then turned into stories about his friends,and then became stories about Ned that had Tony looking at Peter a little more closely.
Sure, he talked about Ned a lot, but somehow Tony hadn’t noticed the way he talked about him until that was the only thing they had to talk about. Peter would start off talking normally enough as someone would about their best friend. Then he’d get caught up in a story and go back in time until they’d gone over every time Ned had beaten him at Mario Kart since they were in fourth grade or some other innocuous thing that Ned did on a regular basis. Peter would also have this look on his face that could only be described as “90s teenage romcom lovestruck”, which was a somewhat disturbing thing for Tony to witness.
He wasn’t sure until he went to pick Peter up a few days later. When he and his friends came out of the building, they were so caught up in conversation that Tony wasn’t noticed at first. While it was only for a few moments, it was long enough for Michelle and Ned to have a heated little debate about what sounded like something Pokemon related, to which Peter was just loudly yelling about some kind of sighing duck. It was only a little bit after this that Michelle noticed him on the sidewalk and punched Peter in the arm to get his attention, but not before Tony saw the look on Peter’s face as he watched Ned passionately explain whatever his position was on the duck-thing. It was worse than the romcom face he’d seen him make before.
This one was just so much softer and fonder - so fond that Tony felt his heart ache a little at the sight - but Ned couldn’t have been more oblivious if he tried. That was the painful part.
When Peter basically hopped over to him, still unable to not look like a lovesick puppy, Tony felt that ache in his heart swell up to fill his entire chest. He had the feeling that it was trying to claw its way out of him somehow, so he stamped down on that by pulling Peter close and giving him a nuggie in the middle of a busy NYC sidewalk because he’s an adult who can do what he wants. What he wanted right then was to give this kid some kind of physical manifestation of just how much he fucking cared about him without using words.
When Tony eventually released him, Peter’s hair was a travesty, but he was laughing with the biggest smile on his face.
(As they rode to the lab, Tony slowly lead up to asking him about any crushes he could possibly have. Peter had looked at him like he grew a second head before saying that no, he definitely didn’t have any and if this was Tony trying to give him dating advice, he didn’t need any at the moment, but would get back to him on that.
And Tony thought Ned was oblivious.)
3.
Michelle is good at being subtle. She may not act like it, sure, but it’s a conscious choice. She could “tone herself down” like her teachers sometimes asked her to, but why should she? That was part of her whole thing. Besides, it was just really fun to mess with people.
The problem is when people are just unsubtle because they can’t be anything else even if they tried. Michelle’s current problem was that Peter Parker is so painfully bad at it that she is in literal pain everytime she watches him try to do his Spider-thing or hopelessly-attracted-to-my-BFF thing.
Michelle had figured out the Spider-Man bit pretty early on sophomore year. She was never really interested in Peter before then, to be completely honest; he was sort of cute and nice enough, but she had bigger priorities, like staying on top of politics and figuring out her on-again-and-off-again Thing™ with Liz. She really did like her, but they fought too much about Liz’s ironclad closet for them to have an actual relationship, though Michelle made a point of keeping in touch when she left. Their relationship somehow improved when they went long-distance.
Peter’s crush on Liz was what actually piqued Michelle’s attention. She wasn’t jealous - she wasn’t an asshole and Liz was literally so gay , no matter what the stories about her fictional crush on Spider-Man said - but after seeing how funny his obviousness about it was, she kept paying just a tiny bit more attention. That was when she realized how often he cut Decathlon practice and even classes before showing up later with a limp or random cut on his face. Michelle maybe got a little concerned at that point; sure, they weren’t friends, but he was a good guy and him getting into fights or whatever was such a sharp turn from the Parker that she’d known for the past year that she couldn’t help wanting to know what the hell was going on.
Which is how, one day, she followed him as he cut class and saw him lift a set of lockers. With his bare hands.
Then she followed him out to an alley, watched him put on Spider-Man’s suit, web his backpack to a trash can, and then swing away to be fucking Spider-Man. So, yeah, she was still very much fucking concerned.
That was when she started interacting with Peter more, and - by extension - Ned. The two had always been joined at the hip as far as she knew. While she’s definitely seen Ned walking through the halls and chatting with other students, Peter honestly only ever talked to Ned or Liz, who took pity on his loneliness. Everyone knew Flash was a dick, but his constant bullying of Peter made everyone treat him like a goddamned leper. It was pretty gross, especially considering how transphobic it was, but Michelle knew that Flash had only left her alone after saying some transphobic shit about her because she kicked him so hard in the balls he cowboy-walked for a week and her dads threatened to sue the school. As of last year, Michelle knew that Peter only had his aunt, so he didn’t get the same protection.
Still, it boggled her mind that he was Spider-Man and seemingly refused to shut Flash up the only way he understood. After watching Peter for a few weeks, it became clear why he wouldn’t:
He was literally the nicest yet least confrontational guy in their whole school.
Ned, in contrast, was awkward yet so weirdly self-confident that Michelle was surprised it hadn’t spread to Peter yet. In fact, their whole dynamic was a mystery to her. Where Ned was outgoing and extroverted, Peter was a quiet wallflower who’s happy to just sit in a corner and doodle in peace. Besides the nerdiness and Peter’ keeping his thoughts to himself, their dynamic actually reminded Michelle of herself and Liz, which she was just honestly terrified of while Liz found it hilarious. Especially because - in this scenario - Michelle was Peter. That was just offensive for multiple reasons, most notably because Peter was painfully straight.
It wasn’t until Liz moved after her father turned out to be not only a homophobic asshole, but also a literal alien arms dealer, that they all start hanging out together and Michelle learnt that she was very wrong.
“Okay, first of all,” said Peter after Michelle called him the straight friend. “I’m- I just- I’m offended. I’m offended! I take offense to this!”
Ned was still wheezing next to him, rolling around his bedroom floor like that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. “She called you the hetero friend,” he whispered, before breaking out in another fit of laughter. Peter was losing it, waving his arms around and just making the whole thing funnier. Michelle laughed louder.
“Also, second of all, I am pansexual! I am a proud pan man! How dare you!”
From outside Ned’s door, his mom called, “We’re all very happy for you, Peter, but could you tone the pride down?”
He blushed. “Sorry, Mrs. Leeds,” he yelled back. Ned continued to giggle and wipe tears from his eyes.
“Besides,” said Ned, “Did you really think my best friend would be a straight boy? I’m a gay guy with two moms. I am the gay agenda,” which just lead to another round of laughter.
First semester ended and winter break passed by without much fanfare. Michelle got pretty much every gift she asked for from her dads, Ned was ecstatic about the ridiculously expensive Star Wars box set he got, and Peter got them both ugly Hanukkah sweaters because it came before Christmas that year and - while Peter could care less about a holiday he doesn’t celebrate - he cared about both of them very much. It’s such a sweet gesture that Michelle did put it on and tolerated one photo from her father before ripping it off. Peter failed to hide his giggles.
(When they video chatted later, Liz thought it looked really cute on her. Michelle’s face totally didn’t get hot.)
Second semester started off a little weird. Besides his usual Spider-Man stuff, which Peter still thought she didn’t know about (even though he and Ned are so painfully obvious when they talk about it), he was suddenly busy every Tuesday and Thursday. He may not have been skipping Decathlon anymore, but the uptick in mood made Michelle wonder just what he was up to, especially since Ned was being very secretive about it as well.
She gave into her curiosity after a while and stole Peter’s phone in gym class. It should’ve probably surprised her more that he had Tony Stark as a contact and that was who he was hanging out with every other day, but nothing could surprise her anymore. (The short video of him going, “Nice to meet you, Michelle, now please give Peter his phone back,” still made her day.)
Another thing that didn’t surprise her was finding out how far gone Peter was for Ned. There wasn’t any specific moment where she figured it out, honestly. It was probably a little bit after she found out Peter was about as straight as those weird spiral pens Liz always used because she was secretly twelve and adorable. After that, Peter’s crush on Ned was just so obvious that Michelle had no idea how she hadn’t noticed sooner, even before they became friends. She wasn’t sure how Ned hadn’t noticed, either.
It wasn’t until she caught Peter trying to change out his costume in an empty classroom that she confronted him about it. She’d had a pretty bad day - she’d failed a test she knew she had aced, her dads were threatening to limit her technology time, and she’d spent the better part of the morning trying to help Liz calm down on the phone because her dad broke out of prison last night - so she was looking for some alone time to calm down. When Peter stared at her in shock as he froze, holding his mask just above his head as he moved to jump down from the window, Michelle had hoped that her simple “Don’t freak out, I already saw you do that months ago,” would calm him down. It really didn’t.
They had a fight. That was the only thing Michelle could call it. It was all a bit surreal - Peter in the suit up to his neck, Michelle still with her unread copy of Huntress in her arms - but there they were with Peter yelling about how she never told him when he had to keep it such a big secret while Michelle yelled back how she was hurt he and Ned never thought to tell her.
“What, you don’t trust me?” she said, sounding more hurt than she intended.
“It’s not that!” Peter was running his hands through his hair frantically. “Ned only knew because he found out on accident! Everyone who knows found out on accident! I never wanted to tell anybody!” Then, “Wait, how did you know Ned knew?”
Michelle rolled her eyes. “Really? You two aren’t subtle about it. Anyone could put two and two together.”
Peter blushed in what was probably anger and embarrassment. “We are not.”
“Yeah, you are! You’re obvious about everything! There’s you Spider-Man shit, your crush on Liz, then your crush on Ned-“
“I don’t have a crush on Ned, what are you even talking about?”
“No, okay, don’t change the subject! I see the way you look at him. And talk to him! Or about him. Thank god he’s oblivious because you’re not subtle!”
Peter was still just staring at her. “No, I- Seriously. Seriously, what are you talking about?”
Michelle stared back a bit as she caught her breath. Then, “Holy shit, you’re both so stupid.”
“What?” yelled Peter, but Michelle was already storming out, looking for another place to escape to. She’d gone through such a whirlwind of emotions in the past five hours that she decided to just skip her last two classes and go home.
Ned walked by her as she headed out and beamed. “Hey, MJ! What- Hey, what happened?” he said, smile falling once he saw her. Michelle threw her hands up and laughed.
“I don’t even know!” she said, exhausted and stressed and not knowing how she felt. “Go ask Spider-boy!”
Ned just gawked at her as she sped out of the building before practically sprinting home. She didn’t bother addressing her dad’s “Michelle, what are you doing, you should be in school-“ as she ran up the stairs and threw herself into bed, almost crying like a girl in a Disney Channel movie.
Her dad eventually came in and stroked her back when she started crying.
She’d never missed Liz more than now. She couldn’t have made the situation any better, but at least Michelle wouldn’t feel alone. “I miss Liz.”
Her dad hummed. “I know you do, baby.” He pulled her in for a hug.
She finally looked at all the texts that Peter and Ned had sent her the whole day, apologizing and asking her to please call them back so they could make up for it. There were around a hundred texts altogether.
“I’m sorry,” said Michelle when she called Peter. It was around eleven at night.
“I’m sorry,” he said, very quietly. “You’re our friend, but we kept you out of the loop. Then I got mad at you for what I did. That wasn’t fair.”
“It’s fine. I get why you didn’t tell me.” She picked at a loose thread on her blanket. “Just- no more big secrets, okay? You can trust me.”
“I know. I already do. We both do.”
They didn’t talk about the crush again, but Peter did let her try on the mask that weekend, so that was pretty cool.
4.
Peter and Ned had a sleepover tonight. It was a normal thing they’d been doing since the beginning of their friendship, whether it was planned or one of them was at the other’s place too late to head home. It shouldn’t have been weird.
The problem was that he couldn’t get MJ’s words out of his head. They’d both apologized after the fight and, besides having another person who knew his secret, things had mostly gone back to normal with his friends. But with Toomes out on the loose with Peter’s secret identity under his belt, the same couldn’t be said for the rest of his life. Tony and Aunt May had basically put him under house arrest for the past week: Peter was only allowed to leave the apartment to go to and from school, Tony was keeping tabs on him at all times, and Aunt May had even taken the week off from work by claiming a highly contagious, made-up stomach bug. Tony didn’t confiscate his suit, but he and his aunt made it clear that it was for emergencies only, and that he would be grounded far longer after this if he tried to sneak out or do anything even remotely breaking the rules.
Peter tried not to be bitter about it because he knew they were scared. Still- He handled Toomes before. Tony had tried explaining that it wasn’t just Peter’s own safety he should be worried about, it for May’s and Ned’s and MJ’s. The thing was, he already knew that. Toomes’ words in the back of his car (“I’ll kill you and everybody you love-”) had been the first thing to come to Peter’s head when Ned had grabbed his arm in homeroom to show him the headlines. He’d immediately tried to go out and find Toomes himself, but Tony had tracked him down and forced him to go back to school, which was when that whole argument with MJ happened.
Now, more than a week later, Peter couldn’t stop thinking about that one thing she said. He still felt guilty about keeping her in the dark, but she’d already forgiven him for it. So, no, that wasn’t what he was obsessing over. He just kept thinking about what she said about him and Ned. He didn’t want to, but that was pretty hard when the only other things he could do were go to school or do homework (Tony wasn’t even letting him play video games or use anything but his phone and a heavily-monitored computer because anything not designed by him was apparently at a “hacking risk”, as if Toomes didn’t already know where Peter fucking lived).
Ned and MJ had tried to help him feel better as much as they could. He appreciated it, but giving him a space to vent or trying to distract him only went so far. MJ couldn’t do much, either, since her parents had also grounded her (though it was over her grades instead of her life being in danger). Ned ended up being Peter’s only tie to some kind of normalcy. He came over basically everyday since Toomes got out, but considering the current train of thought Peter went on concerning pretty much anything involving Ned, that just stressed him out even more.
Which had brought them here, in Peter’s room, during the sleepover that Ned had come up with and he had willingly agreed to. Now, though, he didn’t regret anything more. He knew he was being weird - he kept avoiding eye contact and laughing too loudly and not saying enough - but he couldn’t help it.
He’d been thinking about MJ’s words a lot and… he still didn’t know if they were true. He didn’t think he looked at Ned weird or anything. He just looked at Ned like he was… Ned. Then again, Peter had gotten lost looking at Liz enough times to know that he wasn’t always aware of that kind of thing, which lead to his other sub-problem: he just kept comparing this hypothetical crush he could or could not have on Ned with his crush on Liz.
A little part of Peter that sounded suspiciously like May knew that him even thinking this much about it meant that MJ had some kind of point. The rest of Peter disagreed. So what if he looked at Ned maybe more fondly than he did at other people? Or if he talked to him differently than he did other people? Ned was his best friend and they acted like it; that was all.
And, sure, Peter maybe talked about Ned a lot. That didn’t mean anything. They’d grown up together - hell, Ned had been the one to help Peter come up with his name when he came out to him back in seventh grade, that was how well they knew each other - so of course Peter might talk about him more than other people. The only person who Peter spent more time with was Aunt May and they lived together.
So. Yeah. None of that meant anything.
Except. Well. Ned did mean something to him.
The thought made Peter’s palms get sweaty as he tried to remember what Ned was currently talking about. He’d missed a few subject changes at this point and was too lost to actually make any additions, so he just kept nodding along with his mouth shut. Ned either didn’t notice or was nice enough to pretend he didn’t, going on to talk about something funny his little sisters had gotten into the day before, waving his arms around as he got into the story and wrinkling his eyes at the edges whenever he thought something was particularly funny.
Oh. Ned was cute. Oh, he was cute.
No, that didn’t mean anything, either. He was just cute in the adorable way. He’d known that since they met in third grade, when Ned was just that shy kid who loved LEGOs a lot and Peter was the “girl” who stood up to Flash’s assholery for the first and only time. Ned was just… sweet. It didn’t mean Peter found him attractive.
Okay, no. That was a lie. A barely pubescent Peter in middle school who was dealing with his confusing new feelings would definitely disagree with that. Hell, if he was being honest, Peter still disagreed with that. He was cute in the attractive way and that still didn’t mean anything.
Then Ned - who had apparently finished his story already, and shit, Peter had just been staring - reached for his definitely overstuffed duffle bag, rummaging around a bit before pulling out his literal xbox and two controllers.
Peter knew he was staring, now, but was too shocked to even do anything about it. Ned smiled sheepishly.
“So,” he said, slowly, “I know Mr. Stark said no video games, but, like… I’m not gonna tell him if we play Battlefront for a little bit.” His smile turned back into a grin. “You in?”
Peter, before he could respond, realized two things in that moment:
One - he didn’t deserve the literal angel that was Ned Leeds. Seriously. Ned was amazing and wonderful and kind and Peter had no idea what he did to deserve him. He wasn’t sure he ever would.
Two - he liked Ned. Like, he might’ve been in love with him a little bit.
When Ned handed him the controller, Peter took it with a small smile because that was all he could manage in terms of pretending to be normal during what was probably one of the biggest game changers in his mess of a world since the spider bite over a year ago. As he does it, their fingers brush, just like they had a thousand times before. This time, Peter is so hyper-aware of it that it feels like he’s touching a live wire. A very nice live wire.
He died barely ten minutes into the game because he couldn’t think straight, but Ned’s gloating right before he died, too, shocked a laugh out of Peter. Before he knew it, they leant against each other, with Peter laughing harder than he had in days while Ned was warm against him.
It might not matter whether Toomes gets to him, first, he realized.
He was already utterly fucked.
+1
Ned remembered his first crush only vaguely. It had been fifth grade, where Hugh L. had bright blue eyes and sat behind him in history class. They chatted in the mornings and, at some point, Ned was smitten. Before he could do anything about it, Hugh’s dad - who was probably in the Air Force - had to go to California and Hugh was gone by January. His little heart had been broken, but his moms let him eat a lot of ice cream when he told them and he was over it quickly.
His second crush was a bit more vivid. David López was another cute boy who sat behind Ned, but this time, it was in math class and they were in seventh grade. He lived with his dad in an apartment complex next to their school, but his mom lived in one of the Brooklyn barrios, where David would bring Ned sometimes to help sweep up hair at his mom’s salon or play with his younger cousins. Ned was jealous of how big his family was - most of his extended family didn’t talk to his moms or them, something he’d only begun to understand - and maybe that was what made Ned like him. He figured there didn’t have to be a specific reason, though.
What made that crush so vivid now was how it abruptly ended when Ned, without thinking, kissed David’s cheek before being shoved away hard. David moved to the back of the class after that and wouldn’t talk to him anymore. That hurt a lot more than Hugh moving.
Peter threw an arm around him afterwards and said that Ned deserved better, anyway, which did help lighten the blow a little. Honestly, just having Peter around made everything better. He was sweet and made Ned feel normal and loved.
It wasn’t until the summer before freshman year that Ned realized he loved Peter back in a very different way. They hung out together a lot, as per usual, but something changed a little. At first, Ned just thought his sudden notice of Peter’s attractiveness was just him getting used to his friend’s transition. The problem was that it didn’t stop as summer ended and school began. They were able to coordinate their schedules to get in all the same classes for once, but as Ned’s feelings went beyond just thinking his friend was hot to getting all warm when Peter got close, he started to regret not getting a break from all of that.
By Halloween, Ned realized that those feelings weren’t going away and had finally psyched himself into talking to Peter about it because- Well. They’d been best friends for six years. If Peter didn’t like him back, or wasn’t willing to give it a chance, they’d work past it and Ned could finally get over it. If he did like him back, Ned would probably have to stop himself from kissing Peter on the spot like his life was some romantic drama. Of course, none of their lives were.
They all got a sharp reminder when Mr. Parker died.
The man had taken Ned in as basically one of his own, inviting him and his family over all the time for dinner and to play. Ned loved his moms and he never needed a father figure, but Mr. Parker was basically like the dad he never had. His own grief was nothing compared to Peter’s.
Things never really went back to normal after that. Sure, his and Peter’s friendship eventually went back to some of the way it was, but Peter had started cutting class randomly and cancelling plans last-minute as he just started disappearing for hours at a time. He was even kicked off of marching band for missing too many practices. Ned was really worried, but what was he supposed to do about it? He’d never lost a family member, let alone a someone who was basically a parent to him. That could’ve been just how Peter was coping.
Among all the chaos, Ned never ended up telling Peter how he felt. It just never seemed the right time; when Peter started off sophomore year with a sudden crush on their new Academic Decathlon captain, Liz, Ned gave up hope and resigned himself to becoming that guy who fell in love with his best friend and would never tell him and die alone, probably (he knew he was being dramatic, but he was sixteen and in love, he had the right!). Eventually, Peter’s flakiness and apologies became the norm, but his new STARK internship didn’t calm down Ned very much. It wasn’t until he saw Peter climb on his ceiling in the Spidey suit that everything finally made sense.
At first, it was cool and Ned calmed down a bit, knowing that his friend was a superhero with superpowers who could handle himself. Then everything with Liz’s dad happened and he was even more worried than before. He knew Peter wasn’t sleeping from the dark circles around his eyes - not to mention how many times he fell asleep in class. Peter had mentioned nightmares a few times, but he kept changing the subject after that without giving Ned a chance to get deeper. With MJ turning their duo into a trio, she also seemed worried, but Ned had to act just as clueless as she was. It wasn’t too far off from reality.
The whole thing was starting to stress him out - his mom even mentioned one day that she was worried he wasn’t sleeping well. Ned knew he wasn’t. When he tried to sleep, all he could think about was Peter, running around Queens at night as he tried to save their little bit of the world. When he was at school, he’d wait for Peter to text him to let him in, running back and forth from class to meet Peter with an extra change of clothes in the alley nearby. It was all he could do and it wasn’t much. He knew Peter was different after taking Toomes down and not in a good way, but he had no idea how to fix it.
Apparently, Tony Stark himself had a few ideas, as he showed up in the flesh in their own school after winter break and made Ned honest-to-god shriek . Mr. Stark still smiled at him afterwards and shook his hand when Peter introduced him. So. As far as first impressions went, it was far from the worst.
The rest of the month flew by pretty fast. With Peter seeming to get better, Ned was able to worry less and focus more on his own stuff (because they may be joined at the hip, but “I still have my own life, MJ.” “Sure you do, nerd.”). He focused more on robotics club and his hacking, as well as finally applying to a few summer tech internships to get his moms off his back. Everyone seemed so happy and at peace for once. Peter, especially so; despite the two new animal-themed villains now roaming the NYC streets, Ned hadn’t seen Peter this relaxed since that fateful summer before freshman year.
And maybe, just like back then, Ned was considering telling Peter about how he felt. After the stress of the prior year, he’d tried so hard to just wait for his crush to go away. It had only gotten stronger. It was so strong that Ned felt like he would burst, but he never saw Peter looking at him the same way. Now, with this brief moment of calm, he wanted to just let it out and finally move on.
Then Toomes escaped prison, MJ turned out to know Peter’s secret all along, and it all went to hell again. After beginning to fix things with MJ, Peter got put under house arrest, forcing the other two to try coordinating strategies to make him feel a little less shitty about the whole situation. They could tell it wasn’t working, but it was all they could do. Ned hated seeing Peter act all weird again, especially during their most recent sleepover, where Peter seemed to barely focus on anything and wouldn’t look him in the eye. Ned had left the his apartment on Sunday with the promise of showing up early to school the next day to study for a math test.
When Peter didn’t show up at to school at all, Ned quite frankly freaked the fuck out. MJ had tried to be the calm one at first as Ned frantically texted into their groupchat with no response, but by third period, she was finding it hard to keep her cool. By lunch, MJ had resolved to cut class to run to Peter’s apartment and Ned was very close to following her, when Peter finally texted them back.
Peter Parker
i’m fine im srry
i didnt have my phone
W H Y
MJ
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN
Peter Parker
safe house with may & mr stark atm
thats all i can say i gtg
but i’m ok i promise
MJ
okay. dont fucking do that again
what she said!!!
we were so worried
send updates?
Peter Parker
i will! see you guys soon
“Why is he like this?” asked Ned, head in his arms as they sat at their table in the cafeteria, food untouched. MJ patted him on on the back before going to call her girlfriend.
After they struggled through an Academic Decathlon meeting, Peter did send them an update, but it was really nothing more than a simple ‘hey i’m still alive!’ text. Ned could tell that MJ wanted to talk more about it, but her dad honked on the horn from his car very pointedly (Ned had never been more glad not to be grounded because both of his moms would make carpool hell), so she just told him to get home safe before they parted ways.
A few minutes later, the only thing that Ned thought as he was wrestled into a dark car with a chloroform-soaked rag on his face was that MJ totally jinxed him and then nothing at all.
The next thing he knew, he was blinking his eyes open as he struggled against a pounding head. He went to touch it, groaning, only to realize that he couldn’t. He froze, squinting at the black tile floor below him where his feet were currently stuck at the ankle with a copious amount of duct tape. It took some more struggling for him to realize that his hands were tied up behind him and onto the chair he’s sitting in.
“Oh, god,” he said, and then, “Oh, god, oh, god, oh god oh god ohgodohgod-”
“Hey, the kid’s awake!” said someone in front of him. Snapping his head up, Ned saw that he was in some derelict abandoned building with a wall of glass to the right showcasing the evening NYC skyline. The room around him was empty save for the five men standing across him and a bloodied, tied up Adrian Toomes who was watching him with vague horror. The others were holding either normal guns or weapons that were definitely not of this Earth.
If Ned could find the strength to speak, he would have been spewing a litany of f-bombs at that moment. Or maybe he would’ve just screamed.
As fear and dread and confusion filled him up, one of the men stalked forward, somehow attempting to hide his weird pulsing arm gun behind his back. It wasn’t working. The creepy smile and scar on his eye were not helping Ned’s nerves. Finally, he broke.
“What’s going on?” he choked out. God, this was not how he thought today was gonna go.
The bald man, still smiling, said, “Don’t worry, it’s not gonna go on for much longer,” and pointed the weapon at Ned’s head.
“Look,” said Toomes, sounding very desperate. Ned could barely hear him struggling over the sharp pounding in his ears. “He’s just a kid, alright? What do you think he’s gonna know about Spider-Man?”
Oh. That explained some things.
“I dunno.” The man in front of Ned shrugged like this was a totally normal conversation that everyone had an equal amount of freedom in. “But considering how we caught him crawling in and out of a high school, I doubt we could call him a man, no could we?” The room was suddenly very quiet. Ned went cold as the man’s grin turned predatory. “We also caught you two talking quite a bit. We may have never gotten Spidey’s face, but we certainly got yours. And kid?” The man leaned closer, alien gun now whirring with energy. “We know you know who he is.”
Ned had pins and needles literally everywhere. His brain was just a tornado siren.
Toomes started to struggle again. “This is all so unnecessary, just listen to me-”
There was a loud, “Shut up!” and the sound of skin hitting skin. “We gave you a chance when we asked you nicely, but that doesn’t seem to work with you, so here we are.”
Toomes didn’t continue.
“Alright, so, here’s how this is gonna go down,” said the man, gun still at the ready. “You get two choices. One - you can tell us who Spidey is and you don’t get shot. Or: two - you don’t tell, I shoot you, and Spider-Man comes running in just in time to see how dead you are before we blow this whole place up.”
“Because bombs,” said one of the goons excitedly as he waved his alien gun around. Ned was still questioning whether he just tripped on the walk home and was having a concussion-induced nightmare.
“Wait,” he said, voice shaking as his mind raced. “You could just kill me either way, though. Also, how does… Spider-Man know I’m even here?”
The man rolled his eyes, pulled pulled out his phone, swiped around a bit, and dropped the gun from Ned’s head to shove the phone screen in his face. It currently showcased a tweet with a photo of an unconscious Ned and a taunting caption directed at Spider-Man already at over 20k retweets. “Oh. That’ll work.”
“As for the first question,” said the man, putting his phone away, “you’re right. I could just kill you either way, but wouldn’t you rather have a chance of getting out alive?”
Ned was terrified. He’d never been more terrified of anything else in his entire life because he could literally die tonight. He was in a room with a bunch of bad guys and no way out. Peter had been in his position and hadn’t backed down no matter what. Ned was finally gonna repay the favor.
“I’m not betraying my friend,” he said, voice trembling but clear as day.
The man sighed. “Wow. You’re a fucking idiot.” He pointed the weapon back at his head and it started whirring again, glowing bright purple as Ned shut his eyes tight and just thought of his moms and sisters and he didn’t even get time to beg before-
The glass wall shattered as Iron Man fired a round of blasts into the room, hitting three of the bad guys and sending them all flying against the wall, including the one that had nearly killed Ned in his very real life. They all hit the wall with a few cracks and, while they were still probably breathing, were not getting up anytime soon.
That still left two other guys, but they only had normal handguns. One of them tried shooting at Iron Man’s armor, somehow dodging the blaster fire as he zigzagged across the room, but Ned realized it was a distraction as the other guy ran for the first three knockouts and was trying to grab their alien guns. “Hey!” he screamed, trying to get Mr. Stark’s attention. “Hey, look out for-”
Before Mr. Stark could react, the man had gotten the gun originally aimed at Ned and was pointing it in Mr. Stark’s direction just as a flash of red swooped in beside him. In a few swift movements, the man about to fire was knocked back by a string of webs, one of them knocking the gun off course just in time to create a smoking hole in the ceiling before falling out of the man’s hands as he was webbed to the wall. In the chaos, the guy with the handgun and the guy who had been threatening Ned ran out of the room, but no one made an attempt to go after them. Everything got quiet after that.
Finally, Ned just said, “Uh. Hey, guys.”
Peter’s head shot up. Before Ned could even register what was going on, he raced forward, tearing through his duct-tape restraints like they were nothing before hugging him tight. “Oh my god, Ned,” said Peter, sounding absolutely wrecked against Ned’s ear. “I thought- when I saw the photo- Shit-”
Ned was already hugging him back. “Peter, I’m okay, I’m okay. Nothing happened, you guys saved the day, I’m fine.” He wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.
They stayed like that for a while, both of them recovering, until Toomes cleared his throat. “So, in case you all were unaware-”
Ned looked up just in time to see Mr. Stark send a blast to his legs that made him cry out and knocked his chair over. “What the fuck was that for!?”
The helmet of Mr. Stark’s suit opened up to reveal his very annoyed face. “You provoked me!”
“How?”
“You’re still alive.”
Toomes scoffed. “Speaking of being alive, you did se those two guys who were basically the masterminds of this whole thing and just ran out of here and who are getting out as we speak.”
“The FBI is literally surrounding this building and- Oh, update! They’re both very much under arrest, thanks for playing, you win nothing.”
“Well, for the record, I’d like it to be noted that I didn’t break out. I was kidnapped for information on Spider-Boy-”
“Spider-Man,” Ned corrected as Peter helped him to his feet. Peter was probably smiling beneath the mask.
“-and I didn’t tell them anything, so if you could help me out both here and when you inevitably turn me back over to the police, I think I’d call us even. Oh! And before I forget-”
Mr. Stark just said, “Do you ever shut up?”
“-there are bombs laced throughout this building that are about to go off as we speak. Thought you’d like to know!”
“Wait, what,” said Peter, as Ned went, “Oh, yeah, that’s a thing.”
Mr. Stark went quiet in the suit before quickly going, “The agents just confirmed it and- Oh, okay, we’re all getting out of here right now.”
Peter had already lead Ned to the side of the room he’d come in, where the glass wall was now just gone. Cold wind whipped around them as he realized just how high up they were. Then Peter was wrapping an arm around his waist and their faces were very close and he had no idea what the fuck was happening anymore.
“Put your arms around my neck,” said Peter, all serious and very urgent. Ned, head still spinning, did so.
“Okay, yeah, lock your hands. Yeah, like that.”
“Hey, Underoos, you sure about this?” said Mr. Stark. He floated by with an untied Toomes clutching desperately to his arm and the other two goons unconscious over his shoulders.
“I got it, Mr. Stark.”
“What’s happening?” said Ned at that point.
Peter just pulled him tighter. “Do you trust me?”
There was a moment where Ned just stood there, processing the question. Then he laughed, partly hysterical and partly at how ridiculous that question was. “When have I not?”
Peter was definitely grinning behind the mask. Ned imagined the face he always loved to see, with his eyes crinkling at the edges and two cute dimples making his stomach ache. He was so into that thought that he didn’t realize Peter was moving until they literally fell of the building and-
Suddenly, they were flying through New York just as the top half of the former Avengers tower exploded and collapsed in on itself. Ned didn’t actually see it; he just heard the cacophony with his eyes were shut tight and arms holding onto Peter for dear life.
Peter held Ned just as tightly. Honestly, his arm around Ned’s waist was the only thing keeping him from totally losing his mind. As it was, he tried to focus more on that small comfort instead of the rush of wind and scary feeling of constantly falling. It wasn’t until Ned’s feet hit solid ground that he opened his eyes to see that they were on a rooftop far away from the smoking building in the distance.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” said Peter, wrapping both arms around him again. Ned realized he was shaking and breathing way too fast. Peter didn’t sound much better. “It’s okay, Ned, you’re okay now.”
It took Ned a moment to get his voice back. “Yeah.Yeah, we’re okay.”
Peter nodded against his shoulder and stroked his back. Ned knew he was still reeling from the events of the past evening, but after speaking those words, he realized he wasn’t convinced. He knew he was fine physically if not a total mess emotionally, but the whole thing still felt so surreal. He just- He needed to see Peter’s face. Maybe that’d calm him down.
He opened his mouth to ask, but what instead came out was, “I need to see you.”
Peter’s hands faltered on his back. Ned, before he lost his cool, pulled back and detached his arms from around his friend’s neck to pull the mask off with trembling hands. He didn’t protest. As he pulled it off, though, Ned noticed how it felt a little damp against his hands. Once it was off, he saw the tear tracks on Peter’s splotchy face. “Peter,” he said. He dropped the mask and cupped his face without thinking.
Peter leaned into his left hand with a watery smile. “I know you’ve had a worse day than me, but I’ve been kind of a wreck since I saw that photo.” He sniffled and went back to holding Ned’s waist. “I was just- shit , Ned, I’m so glad you’re okay. If you hadn’t been, I-” He choked up, shutting his eyes tight as they teared up again.
Ned- Ned felt so many things. He felt guilty for being the cause of such worry (even though he knew it wasn’t his fault), touched at how much Peter cared, still so scared of the whole situation and maybe crying a little himself, and just… so much love. He had so much love for this boy who’d been by his side since third grade, who still punched bad guys for him, who still was such a good person and friend, and… God, he fucking loved Peter so much.
He’d also nearly died about fifteen minutes ago without telling Peter that. The nearly dying part was a whole other issue that would probably require a lifelong series of therapy, but in that moment, he could only think about how he’d been waiting for the right time to tell Peter something that he may never have been able to
If he didn’t do it now, would he ever? Was he just going to psych himself out of it for the rest of all time?
That couldn’t happen. Ned couldn’t keep that inside forever. He had to. So he opened his mouth.
He took a deep breath.
Then, he finally, finally whispered, “I love you,” just as Peter did the same thing.
Peter’s eyes shot open and neither said anything for a few moments, simply staring at each other, wide-eyed. Ned eventually broke the silence with a “Holy shit” as Peter went, “Okay, that’s cool, that’s cool, could we just- Can I-” He laughed and it sounded oh so happy. “I really wanna kiss you right now.”
Ned would have responded with a louder, more enthusiastic “Holy shit!”, but it seemed better to just yank Peter forward and put their lips together. Which he did.
Considering it was both of their first kiss, it went about as well as expected.
“Hold on,” said Peter once he drew back, eyes half-lidded and eyebrows furrowed in concentration. “I think I…” He cupped Ned’s cheek as he leaned in again, thankfully taking the initiative, which was good because Ned’s brain had been reduced to mush. This time, Peter’s head was tilted more to the right and- Oh, yeah.
Second kisses were way underrated.
(Mr. Stark came in a few minutes later, giving them enough of a warning with the suit to at least let them make some distance between themselves so that it wasn’t as awkward when he congratulated Peter on not needing his flirting advice after all and clapped Ned on the back. It was still very awkward, no doubt about that, but Peter’s hand in his made the embarrassment a little more bearable.
Once his moms - who had held him tight for hours as they cried and kissed his face once he came home - finally let him out of their sight again two weeks later, the first thing Ned did was go to Peter’s apartment. Peter had already told May they were together, of course, but Ned was still a little nervous as she opened the door for him. It ended up being totally unfounded as the very first thing she did was hug him nearly as tightly as his own mothers did before shooing him and a very red-faced Peter off with the reminder to “Leave the door open, boys!”
Ned’s first day back at school went better than expected. While a few too many people were desperate to hear his story of his heroic rescue by Iron Man and Spider-Man, Peter and MJ held them off. Even without being super open about it, the whole ordeal seemed to have given Ned’s social status a boost; Flash’s attempt to make a snide comment about him ended with half the cafeteria shouting at Flash to shut the fuck up. Even Peter, by association as Ned’s best-friend-turned-boyfriend, didn’t hear the words “penis” and “Parker” in the same sentence for months.
That day also saw Liz coming back for a few days to see her dad and all her friends again. Peter and Ned met up with them after school at a tiny cafe, where MJ unashamedly held a bashfully smiling Liz in her lap as they whispered, giggling occasionally.
“Aw, you are soft!” said Ned as they walked up to them, Peter currently torn between running off at the sight of Liz and hugging her to death. Ned held his hand to stop him from doing either.
Liz took one look at their joined hands, grinned, and turned back to MJ as she said, “You owe me $40.”
As they argued, Peter groaned, hiding his face in Ned’s neck. Ned laughed and kissed his cheek.
Peter just continued to smile against his skin.)