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“Toss me the hot one.”
“But I already opened the sweet ’n’ sour one.”
Peter flops dramatically against the edge of the bed. “Aww, c’mon.”
“No, Peter, we will have none of your more-than-two-bags-open-at-once devilry.”
“But I need the spicy.” Peter gesticulates with the classic Italian May Parker hand, five fingers brought to a point. “Necesito lo picante.”
“Oh my God, you’re so dramatic. You can have it after you help me finish the salted one and the sweet ’n’ sour one.”
“Why can’t we just mix them all together in the bowl?”
Ned stares at him as if Peter’s just announced retirement from Spider-Manning. “That’s not how you eat this, you heathen.”
But before Ned can even react, Peter’s shooting out a web to grab the spicy-flavored bag of anchovies and opening it with a crackle of plastic. He dumps half of it unceremoniously into the bowl interlocked between their criss-crossed legs.
Ned’s wide-eyed look flattens into an unimpressed squint. “You’re an animal.”
“I mean, I’m half-spider, so. Thanks.”
“Dude, you’re not even supposed to be wearing the webshooters under your civilian clothes.”
Peter rolls his eyes at his best friend, who is obviously having way too much fun saying the words ‘webshooters’ and ‘civilian’ in one sentence. He seizes the other two bags of fried anchovies from Ned’s hands--ignoring the other boy’s offended splutter--and pours them out into the bowl as well.
“I let you into my house,” Ned starts, coloring his voice with that classic Butthurt Leeds tone. “I give you shelter. Protect you from the elements. Ply you with food and Lego and movies and this is the respect you show me in my own home--”
He’s interrupted by an obnoxious crunch as Peter shovels a handful of anchovies into his mouth, effectively drowning out the lecture. Peter casts him a goofy smile around the mouthful. “Thanks, bro. I respect you, bro.”
“Gimme the webshooters.”
“Whaaat?”
“If you’re gonna be crunching in my face like that all night, you don’t deserve to wear the webshooters.”
“Harsh.” Still, Peter unstraps the devices from his wrists and tosses them to Ned, who barely catches them in his lap. Peter starts mixing the different flavors of anchovies in the bowl with his hand.
Ned glares at him. “Just for that, I’m gonna need your mask.”
“What do you mean you need my mask? I don’t even--”
“Dude, I know it’s in your back pocket.”
Peter heaves a dramatic sigh, hesitates, and finally pulls the mask from the pocket of his jeans. Ned snatches it with a chuckle of unabashed glee and shoves it over his own head. A second later, he’s got one webshooter strapped around his right wrist.
“Oh my God, Ned, I can’t believe you.”
Ned continues to cackle. “Fooled you twice.”
“I hate you.”
The white lenses blink and then quiver into crinkly-eyed slits as Ned rocks backward in laughter. “This is payback for mixing all the flavors. You’re disgusting, you know that?”
Peter lobs an anchovy at Ned’s face and is rewarded when the other boy yelps, his reflexes not being up to par enough to catch the projectile. “You’re a thief.”
“Yeah, well, you’re Spider-Man. You should’ve seen it coming.”
“Just because I have a ‘spidey’ sense doesn’t mean I have common sense.”
“Ohh, you said it yourself. Self-burn. Nice.” Ned sits up again, glancing all about his room in hyperenergetic focus, no doubt having thirty-seven different heart attacks from all the cool blue clusters of information and alerts set up on the screen by Karen.
“Ned,” Peter whines. “Give it back.”
“Nah, I think I’ll finish building the set like this.”
“Great, so now I’ll have two hours of footage of you in there next time I need to look through Karen’s logs.”
“Yeah, right. You can’t get enough of me.”
Peter chokes audibly on an anchovy in the background. Ned smirks underneath the mask.
“Hey, Karen?”
“Yes, Mr. Leeds?”
“Holy shit, Peter, she called me Mr. Leeds! Karen the suit lady knows my fucking name!”
The tuft at the top of Peter’s head appears in Ned’s line of vision through the lens as Peter shoves himself up from the floor to continue munching more comfortably. “Of course she does. Mr. Stark probably runs criminal background checks on all my friends.”
Ned toes the inside of Peter’s leg a little harder than necessary. With their awkward position criss-crossing over each other, it’s not difficult. “You mean me. Because I’m your only friend.”
“And MJ,” Peter protests.
“You mean she’s, like, our watchdog. Or a bouncer.”
“I guess she is kind of our bouncer.”
“Not our bouncer. A bouncer. She intimidates us.”
“That’s not so bad. She could be like our Black Widow. Karen, please set MJ’s contact name to Black Widow 2.0.”
Karen’s tone is definitely colored with a robotic smile. “Already done, Peter.”
“That’s so long,” Ned complains. “But also so cool. What did you set me as?”
Peter shrugs. “Uh, just Guy in the--”
“Mr. Leeds,” Karen interrupts coolly, at the same moment that Peter’s eyes widen to the size of saucers and he makes a frantic, ineffectual ‘abort’ mission with his hand across his neck. “Peter has you in his contacts as ‘Leeds Feeds’.”
“What the fuck? Peter, our terrorizer gets such a cool name and I get saved as Leeds Feeds?”
Peter’s voice pitches up another two and half octaves. “What? It’s true. Every time we meet the first thing you do is shove a bag of shrimp crackers in my hand or something. Seriously. Before we even do the handshake or anything or say ‘what’s up.’ You’re like a human vending machine.”
“Not true,” Ned pretends to gasp. “I am not a vending machine. I give this shit to you free.”
“That’s why I love you, bro.”
“You’re just lucky my mom overpacks my lunch and I have the metabolism of, like, a snail.”
“Uh-huh.” Peter leans forward to reach out a curled knuckle and rap Ned’s nose with it through the mask. The outer frame of the lenses wobble as Ned goes cross-eyed.
“What was that for?”
“Nothing,” Peter says quickly. He retracts his hand as if he’s suddenly remembered something and starts to get to his feet. Doing so when you’re entangled up to your knees with your best friend’s legs around a bowl of fried anchovies, apparently, is easier said than done.
“Dude, what the hell!”
“I’m trying to go get us some drinks!”
“Yeah, try being the operative word.”
“Let me up, then!”
“Gimme a minute!” Ned whips off the mask.
“Woah, woah, woah, the bowl’s gonna--watch the bowl.”
“Yeah, and that’s my responsibility, because I was totally the one who decided to dump everything in there.”
“You were the one that brought the bowl up here in the first place!”
“For sorting the bricks, Peter, not mixing tiny fried fish into another Parker abomination!”
Finally they manage to disentangle themselves from each other with minimal spillage of the snacks. Peter dusts the salt and sesame seeds off his jeans and licks his fingers.
Ned rolls over onto his side where he’s slumped in the carpet with his head wedged precariously between the leg of his desk and the wheel of his office chair. “Dude, warn a guy next time. If I wanted to do gymnastics today I would’ve just signed up for, I dunno, a porn training session or something. That would have been more fun.”
“No can do, but I’m definitely remembering to order strippers for your birthday,” Peter quips back at him from around the doorway. “Got any strawberry kiwi left?”
“Uh…”
“Never mind, I’ll just raid whatever I can find!” Peter calls back over his shoulder.
Ned lets out a light huff as he pushes himself up on his elbows to survey the wreckage of his room. There’s nothing out of the ordinary for a typical teenage boy, aside from the piles of dumpster-diving junk which Peter dumped on his desk months ago and they’ve been working on in tranches in between school assignments and Lego building sessions. There are other traces of Peter scattered all about the room, and they are the details that arrest Ned’s attention most. Peter’s high-tops. A spare hoodie and NASA t-shirt slung over the edge of his bed. The poster of Iron Man he started drawing for Ned’s ninth birthday but didn’t finish in time, and so had given to him in its adorable state in limbo. The next year, for Ned’s tenth birthday, they both took to trying to finish the poster, resulting in various degrees of professionalism and squiggles across the poster paper.
Ned chuckles to himself when his eyes land on the backpack strap shoved under his bed. It started out as a crisis--Peter came swinging in all bug-eyed and motor-mouthed ranting about how some thug must have stolen his backpack in the alley by sawing through the webbing and in the process slicing off the left strap--but Ned couldn’t help himself from doubling over in laughter while his best friend shot him a tight-lipped, squinty look. Ned remembers taking the strap and hiding it under his bed so he could include it as a gag gift along with his actual present for Peter’s next birthday.
Speaking of which, now is the perfect time to pull out the other present Ned wanted to show Peter today. He doesn’t know why he picked today in particular--there’s no occasion, no decathlon victory to celebrate, no spectacular Spider-Man-and-hostage situation to party about--but all he can think about is how he made some god-awful pun about arachnids on their way walking home together from school, and how he turned his head at just the right second to catch sight of Peter throwing back his head in a snorting laugh. Peter wasn’t rolling his eyes, shaking his head. Not squinting at him or raising a brow with that unimpressed look. He was just laughing.
And Ned had made Peter laugh. That one tiny fact sparked a warmth inside him that only had the audacity to keep growing. And now he finds himself replaying the moment over and over, memorizing the flop of Peter’s cowlick from his forehead, how he exaggerated losing his balance, how his fingers loosened from around his backpack straps and his left index finger tapped over his own chest in that unique, unconscious way that Peter has when he’s laughing with his hands occupied around a bag. The crinkles that always seem deeper around the corner of his left eye when the laugh is real.
Clutching the fuzzy warmth of that memory close to his chest, Ned stands and crosses the hallway to his parents’ master bedroom where the album should be tucked where he last left it, under the spare linens in the bottom drawer of the dresser. Since Peter is around after school almost every day that’s not a patrol day, and he nearly discovered the project in its unfinished stages more than once, Ned thought it safer to chuck it somewhere in his parents’ room where Peter has never set foot before.
As it is, Ned barely even gets the chance to feel around for the familiar linen backing of the album, because his gaze falls immediately on the duffle bag lying there in the drawer in lieu of the bedsheets. It’s already half-filled. A nudge of the zipper peels back the rest of the opening to reveal all his father’s favorite sweaters folded in thirds inside the bag.
Ned struggles and fails to swallow down the lump that blossoms behind his throat. There’s no fooling himself: none of his mother’s clothes are there together with his dad’s in the duffle.
I work twelve hours a day and when I get home, all I expect is a little peace and quiet. Do I get that? No. What I get is you nagging and nagging and nagging. All. Night. Long. God, I can’t wait to get out of here!
I wouldn’t have to nag you if you were sharing the responsibilities with me just like you were supposed to!
What more do you want me to do?!
What do you think I want you to do? Grow up! Stop acting like a little sinyorito for once in your life!
Ned is normally the kind of boy that reacts to things. His family is Filipino, so he can’t help it: he’s expressive. People might jest about how Peter’s face is an open book, but anyone hanging out with him and Ned would immediately figure out that Ned is the one who is worse at keeping a lid on anything. It’s usually his mouth that gives things away, for one. He can’t seem to shut it when he’s amazed or trying not to spill a secret. Then there are his eyes, which go, in Peter’s words, “round as buttons.”
The thing that Ned reacts the least to, though, is pain. At least not on the surface. He is accustomed to meeting anything and everything with a smile or a sarcastic quirk of the brow--his only two moods, to be honest. On the visceral level, the pain doesn’t even strike him immediately. It takes several seconds, minutes, before the hit. Even then, it’s never the anticipated sucker punch to the gut, though he braces fully for the impact every time. It’s a sluggish and reluctant kind of sensation, as if his body can’t fathom the possibility of feeling anything but love or joy or amazement or mirth. It’s like dipping his hands in paint and not becoming aware that he’s being coated in it, working upward from the fingertips and over his wrists like a menacing glove, until suddenly he has a second awakening to the awareness that his chest hurts. He’s engulfed. His heart is squeezing, and his lungs are slowly forgetting how to breathe, and he’s whipping his head around in the darkness for any sign of the Joy that’s always tagging along with him. But she’s nowhere to be found.
Another conversation rises unbidden to his brain. Cindy, muttering to him over the library table about why her mom is moving out.
Dad said they’re getting a divorce.
Oh my God. Are you serious? Cindy, I’m so sorry…
It’s okay. I kind of knew it was coming, anyway. Not that it makes it any easier, but, y’know. At least they didn’t try to hide it from me.
Still, that sucks.
I guess, a little, yeah.
You get to live with your dad, though, probably.
Yeah, I do, because he’s the one that’s staying near the school. That’s the nice part.
They could have told him. They could have told him.
When Ned comes back to himself, he’s standing at the doorway of the kitchen with no recollection of how he got there. Peter is bent over the fridge, one hand on the handle, singing along off-key to Smash Mouth’s “All Star” playing on YouTube from his phone on the counter.
Ned doesn’t think. He doesn’t stop to consider his reaction. He simply skirts the island and crosses the kitchen to wrap Peter in the snuggest bear hug he can muster from behind.
Peter lets out a soft yelp, but he doesn’t tense or struggle like Ned initially worried he would. He just chuckles. Ned closes his eyes a little and tries to enjoy how the feeling rumbles through Peter’s back against his own chest.
“Hey, man,” Peter says a little breathlessly after a few seconds. He squirms around in Ned’s arms to get a better view of his best friend. “Miss me much?”
Almost as if he’s been burned, Ned releases him. If not for Peter’s inhuman agility and reflexes, Ned is pretty sure the other boy would have toppled against the open fridge with the force of gravity of being dropped from a bear hug like that.
“Nope,” Ned lies. “Missing the Capri Sun. When you took so long, I shoulda known you were memeing around again.”
“Was not. Here, catch.”
“Peter, you know I don’t catch things.”
“Too late.” Too late, indeed. Ned paws at the tropical fruit juice packet that landed on his chest and just barely manages to hang onto it by the straw.
Peter opens his mouth to say something, but when his gaze drifts back up to Ned’s face, he pauses. Ned doesn’t notice the stare as he concentrates on punching through the plastic hole with his straw.
“You’re not laughing.”
Ned almost says No shit, Sherlock.
“What’s wrong, Ned?”
Damn, how is Peter always able to clock his emotions that fast? Ned is fairly certain his face has at least been neutral since he entered the kitchen. This is what he gets for hanging out with his best friend every day, he supposes.
Ned doesn’t brush it off with an “it’s nothing.” Unlike Peter, he is not used to denying pain upfront. The only art he’s mastered is covering it up with a winning smile and a quip to steer the conversation back to the other person. When all that fails, he’s left unprepared.
Instead, he takes a vicious sip of his juice and then mutters: “It’s really stupid.”
Peter looks as though he wants to reply with a very serious monologue but thinks better of it. “Since it’s you, it probably is stupid, but I’ve got all the time in the world.”
Humor. Just a touch of it. Ned appreciates it more than Peter will ever know.
Ned hesitates.
Peter fiddles with the bottom of his own unopened Capri Sun. “I mean, you’re--you’re not that bothered with what I did mixing the bags, are you? ’Cause I swear, if I hurt your feelings that bad I can just run over and get--”
“Nah. Nah, you’re good. Wasn’t anything you did.” Ned could almost roll his eyes at the number of times Peter still blames himself for little things like this. “I, uh, um.”
“Oh, God. You’re stuttering. You’re Ned. And you’re stuttering. This can’t be good.”
That one sentence, of all things, is what suddenly springs the wetness into Ned’s eyes. A flare of anger makes him slap away the moisture with the back of his hand.
“Hey, hey, hey, dude. Ned. I’m right here. It’s okay, don’t cry. Don’t cry.” Peter’s hand is on his shoulder.
“I’m not crying. I’m--” Ned winces as he sucks in a deep breath and his nose rattles with a telltale sniffle. He manages to warble out: “I’m emoting, okay?”
“For fuck’s sa--shut up and just tell me what’s going on.”
“Not sure how I can do both,” Ned deadpans.
In response, Peter simply wraps his arms around Ned’s entire torso. Ned will later deny that he ever screeched, but he definitely lets out an inhumanly pitched squeak. “Dude. Dude! My juice! Let go of me!”
“Not until you tell me what’s going on. I’m not leaving, Ned. I’m gonna--I’m gonna hug it out of you if I have to.”
“More like annoy it out of me,” Ned mutters under his breath. “Okay, okay, okay, okay. I’ll tell you. Just...promise you won’t get too serious when I start talking about it.”
Pete leans back his head from the hug, still not releasing his grip on Ned. He frowns as if offended. “You are the weirdest person I’ve ever hung out with.”
“I’m the only person you hang out with. And you’re the one with spider DNA.”
“True. Okay, now you do the talking.”
Ned opens his mouth and he thinks he’s ready to spill it all, but suddenly there’s cotton there, hot and heavy and unyielding. And nothing will come out. And then, God damn it, the tears are starting up again. He sets his juice down on the counter behind him with one hand and drops his face into the other. “Dude, why am I so emotionally constipated.”
“I know you said not to get too serious, but I feel like you’re avoiding the issue with humor.”
“Ohh, I have no idea where I get that from,” Ned shoots back. “Just--fuck it. Here goes. I think--I think--it’s about my parents. I...think they’re getting a divorce.”
The tentative smile on Peter’s face, crinkling around his eyes and scrunching up his nose, is abruptly wiped blank. It’s apparent that all promises at keeping the conversation light have been tossed out the window.
“Ned. Oh my…”
“Please don’t cry, Peter. Please don’t. If you do, then I’m gonna start up again, and then that’ll set you off again, and it’s all gonna be one huge mess and I--I can’t--” Ned shocks himself when he suddenly can’t breathe.
Fuck.
When did he start to hyperventilate?
There’s a bubble around his head that won’t dissolve. He knows he needs to slow down to breathe, he knows this intellectually, but the tear ducts refuse to be stopped up and every time he pauses to regulate the air through his nose, a violent hiccup erupts from him and the wind is knocked out of him again and all he can do is cry, shake, gasp, cry, shake, gasp, cry shake-- He’s sick of the cycle but like a goddamn merry-go-round, he can’t get out of it.
“Ned. Ned. Ned. It’s me. I’m here. Please stop cr--I mean, let it all out, that’s it. Keep letting it out. But you gotta breathe, Ned. Slow down. Try to keep your chin up--or, or, look at me--follow my lead--oh, God, I’m fucking shit at this…”
There’s something wet and sticky all over Ned’s hand. He brings it to his face and only then does he realize it’s coated in juice. He must have squeezed the packet unconsciously. And again: when the fuck did that happen?
The next thing he knows, he feels as if he’s coming down from the cloud of fuzziness. The tightness knitting his ribs together has released him. He’s plummeting, really, at an almost fatal velocity back to himself. He tips forward and he would have sagged to the floor if not for Peter’s arms suddenly there to catch him. He always knew they would be there, he tells himself.
Peter doesn’t stop with simply lifting him back to his feet. He slides his hands under Ned’s armpits and quite literally lifts him up to set him on the counter. The coldness of the tile against his thighs through the jeans is enough to jolt Ned back to full alertness.
“Sorry,” he hiccups.
“You okay? You want some water?”
Ned hiccups again and nods. He doesn’t trust his voice with more than one word at a time.
He lets his eyes drift closed and just leans back against the cabinet behind him, absorbing the shuffle and tinkle of Peter fetching him water. Only when the cool glass, beaded with condensation, is pressed into his left hand does he allow himself to be tethered back to reality.
Well, now he feels ridiculously ashamed. He couldn’t even get more than one sentence out before completely breaking down.
“Thanks,” he croaks out.
Peter doesn’t say anything. Just watches him with wide, round eyes, shaded with worry. Ned tips back the glass to drink to avoid the eye contact for a minute.
“I’m sorry,” Peter speaks up. “That really sucks. Like, that--you know. You know what I mean. That really sucks.”
“I know.” Ned does know.
“Have they told you yet?”
Ned shakes his head. Peter turns pensive at that, fist rubbing at the side of his jaw, but whatever new thought it is that rose to his mind, Peter doesn’t share it.
“I’m so sorry,” is all he says again, instead. “Everything’s gonna be okay, Ned. It’s gonna be okay.”
“I know.” Ned’s neck hurts with how hard he nods. He knows. He knows. He’s not dumb, and he’s not depressed or having a panic attack over it (he was always too neurotypical to have to go through those things), but it’s still a struggle to transfer the knowledge from his brain to his chest where his lungs and heart are battling it out with an attack of drumbeats.
“But it’s not right now,” Peter goes on. “I get it. That’s how it is. It doesn’t have to be okay. You don’t--you don’t have to feel okay.”
It’s awkward and half-spoken and just on the edge of making no sense, and yet to Ned those few broken words on a loop mean everything.
Ned doesn’t mean to voice it--he knows he shouldn’t, because it isn’t fair, it’s cruel and selfish and he knows he shouldn’t--yet he finds his mouth working for him. “Peter...what’s gonna happen?”
The other boy steps forward to lean against the counter between Ned’s knees. Peter looks up at him then with the same knowledge burning in his eyes: why did you ask me that. Why would you ask me that?
I’m just a lost little kid like you.
“I’m gonna be here,” Peter says carefully. “And...so will your mom. And your dad. In different ways, but still there.”
“You’re gonna be here,” Ned repeats, almost like a question. Almost like a prayer. A concept he can’t imagine.
“’Course, Ned. Where else would I be?”
It’s stupid, what crosses Ned’s mind next. He knows better than this. But a small part of him always said that the most important thing he could ever contribute to Peter Parker’s life was happiness. Peter, who has been through three valleys of hell and back since he was little. Peter, who didn’t know how to cry when he understood his parents died in a plane crash, probably screaming for him and for God to take them home. Peter, whose tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth the day Ned asked him why he didn’t want his hair to be touched, who could hardly speak a full word, much less a sentence, when he finally revealed that Skip was behind it all. Peter, who held his bleeding uncle as he died. Who snatched fourteen-year-old girls from the arms of kidnappers on a weekly basis and webbed the gun from the murderer’s hand, and never once talked about the dark side of his nights swinging around Queens.
Peter’s the one in need of happiness, and Ned knows he’s the one who can provide it--in his own Ned-like way. That’s always been Ned’s role in his life. The one to find Peter when he’s lost. The keeper of Joy.
And if now Ned, too, is lost, how can he offer a sliver of that Joy that used to be so ready for him?
Peter’s gentle voice breaks through Ned’s thoughts. “Ned. Please don’t be upset.” He must have picked up on the other boy’s breathing spiking again. “I’ll always be here. I promise. This won’t change a thing.” He pauses. “If anything, this should make us even closer, right?”
Closer. Ned mulls over the word, brain too tuckered out to put more than one coherent reaction together. Closer. All he knows is he likes that.
“It’s stupid,” he whispers. Not a direct response to Peter’s heartfelt proclamation of loyalty, he knows, but he hopes Peter will understand.
And Pete does. “No, it’s not. I was joking before. It’s definitely not stupid.”
“All those times...I probably should have said something…”
Peter visibly stiffens. Ned curses himself. He should have realized sooner that the words inadvertently resemble the mantra Peter’s trained himself to forget, in the wake of Skip Westcott.
“This is literally not your fault. At all.”
“But, like, what if I talked to them sooner? Asked them to work it out and...I dunno, showed that I cared more.”
Peter looks at him hopelessly, helplessly, like he’s seeing the broken record of guilt in the mirror for the first time and thinking, God, this is what I put Ned through every day when I talk about all the things that are my fault.
“Ned...it’s your parents’ relationship. I mean, like, sure, you could talk to them again and express how much you wish they’d work it out and stay together, but...at the end of the day they’re the ones making the decision. Right?”
Right.
It stings. It hurts so damn much, letting go of the fault in lieu of the truth that it’s out of his control. Ned wishes he could just go back to blaming himself. It’s almost easier, less painful that way.
It’s a selfish thought, what rises up inside him next. Maybe even a barbaric one. But maybe--just maybe--Ned wishes his parents were like Peter’s. Dead, yes, but still together and still very much in love in their last days on earth.
Peter’s dreams are haunted by imaginaries of a plane in flames. Ned gets to be haunted by the shouting matches and the rejected kisses and the late-night screaming.
He wonders which is worse.
Ned pushes the thought away. The Joy, he chants to himself. Find the Joy. Be the solid one for Peter. “Ugh...I think that’s enough talking about this. Thanks, Peter. This...you really helped.” He sniffles again. He downs the rest of his water.
“You good?”
Ned shrugs with a noncommittal wobble of his head. “I’ll be good in a couple minutes. I, uh, had something I wanted to show you. That’s why I came over here in the first place. It’s back in my room.”
No, actually, I came over here to grab onto you from behind and never let go because suddenly I’m in a room I don’t recognize and I can’t find the Joy and you’re the only thing anymore that’s still real.
Peter doesn’t call him out on his lie.
“Cool. Lemme just wipe up the counter and we can head on back with the drinks.”
Ned ends up being the one to polish off the last of the sticky juice residue from the tile, because as brave as Peter seems to be as he brandishes the roll of paper towel, Ned can see the other boy’s fingers shaking.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Once finished, Ned jumps down from the counter and turns to head down the hallway with Peter trailing closely behind. They’re almost at the door to the bedroom when Peter’s hand on his arm stops him.
“Hold up. Be right back.”
Peter ducks into the living room and leaves Ned’s line of vision for just a few seconds. He returns with none other than the stupid brown fedora in his hands and a tentative, open-mouthed smile on his face.
“Here,” says Peter, and his voice cracks just a little. He reaches up to set the hat on Ned’s head and gives it a little pat to push it into place.
Nope. Ned’s eyes cannot be tearing up again now.
He opts for a watery laugh instead. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Just...wear it. And be yourself.”
Ned feels his lips quirking upward in the ghost of a smirk. “Dude, nobody wants that.”
Peter pokes at his chest with a finger. He avoids all eye contact with Ned, seeming rather interested in the string of the boy’s hoodie. “Trust me, Ned. Everybody wants that.”
“Everybody?”
“Well, me, for starters.”
Peter doesn’t have to say any more for Ned to crack into an unexpected, almost painful smile. Definitely not everybody, but Peter, for starters.
And at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.