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“The guy in the chair…”
“Don’t do that.”
“C’mon!”
The Tuesday after Homecoming, Ned’s the guy in the beanbag chair.
He’s sitting in his bedroom, googling Steve Rogers’ super-healing abilities as Peter naps on his lower bunk. Peter’s spending the night after a spontaneous patrol, and although he’s still sleeping on his stomach due to the deep cuts the vulture guy left in his back, Ned has been amazed to track the impressively quick improvement of his burns and bruises. Peter, it seems, wasn’t lying when he said most injuries more or less take care of themselves.
It was intense for a moment there, but in the end, Ned can’t deny everything worked out for the best. The vulture guy had to be stopped, after all, and Mr. Stark sure as hell wasn’t doing anything to stop him on Saturday. If Peter hadn’t saved the day, those weapons would only have become more dangerous.
Ned’s positive he crushed it as Guy in the Chair last weekend. He’s proud. But he’s also not sure he did the right thing, back in D.C., when Peter asked him to remove the training wheels protocols and help him sneak around. As he looks back on the events of the past few weeks, there were just too many close calls. It was kind of awesome, and it was mostly terrifying.
Peter got crushed by a cement building. Peter almost died.
When Ned asked to be the Guy in the Chair, he hadn’t considered that possibility.
It probably wouldn’t have made a difference whether he’d enabled Peter’s D.C. plans or not. He can’t predict how anything would have played out if he’d refused Peter’s plea, and he doesn’t want to.
But he does want to listen to his gut from here on out.
Ned’s been thinking about his mom’s insistence that he stick up for himself every once and a while. That his people-pleasing tendencies can get out of hand, that he’s allowed to make up his own mind and just say “no.”
As a middle child, he’s never been very good at that. He’s not sure where to start.
Maybe it starts with his self-appointed role as Spider-Man's righthand guy.
Ned looks up from a page detailing Steve Rogers’ enhanced healing timeline as Peter mutters in his sleep, then abruptly wakens and stands up. His hands are curled into fists and he’s staring down the wall like it’s a threat.
Ned closes his laptop and cautiously leans into Peter’s eyeline.
“Peter? You okay?”
He flinches at Ned’s voice, but blinks and looks over to the beanbag, eyes still unfocused.
“Ned.” He looks back at the wall. “The vulture guy. I need your help.”
Peter’s been one of those sleepwalker kids since the first grade, so this isn’t too out of the ordinary, but Ned’s never seen him this articulate before.
“The vulture guy is here?”
“Yeah, right there. Call Happy, call the Avengers, need backup…”
Ned feels like he read somewhere that you shouldn’t wake a sleepwalker, so he just plays along. “I can’t call them right now, dude. Why don’t you go back to sleep?”
“The vulture guy, Ned. I need—”
“Okay, backup’s coming. You should lay down to wait for them.”
Peter sways on his feet. “Gotta fight—”
“No fighting,” Ned says, “wait for the backup.”
“You can help me fight,” Peter says, “c’mon, be Guy in the Chair!”
“Nope,” Ned says with more authority than he had in D.C., “I’m not doing that tonight. Let’s wait for backup.”
Peter accepts defeat and mumbles incoherently on his way back to the bed, flopping onto his stomach and passing out again within seconds.
Ned closes his laptop and shakes his head.
As weird as all of that was, he’s successfully stood up for himself. And sure, it’s easier to firmly argue with someone who’s not actually awake, but Ned’s going to see the moment for what it is:
A start.
Ned always looks forward to the spring science fair.
He and Peter have teamed up since the 3rd grade, and their complex projects have placed highly more often than not. In middle school, Ben and May called them “The Dynamics Duo,” and Ned’s parents honored the team’s ridiculous request for screen-printed button-ups sporting the name.
But this year, Ned’s been developing anti-hacking software and conducting experiments within the creation process that he thinks will pass as a proper science project. All he needs to do is get it cleared with the teachers who run the fair, and then—well, then, he has to break the news of his idea to Peter.
Peter isn’t great with coding and programming in general, so Ned’s planning to go it alone this time around. He’s sure a strong performance at the fair will look good on college applications, and he’s pretty sure Peter still isn’t thinking about college much at all.
He doesn’t know why he feels so guilty about going solo. It’s highly possible Peter’s not thinking about the fair at all, considering he’s been spending every waking hour outside of class being Queens’ Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. And even if Peter did plan to team up like usual, it’s not like Ned can’t just tell it like it is—they’re fifteen, after all, not five.
“Hey Ned!” Peter says over lunch a few days before sign-ups open, “Have you thought of what we should do for the science fair this year? Because I was thinking that electric motor thing you offered to help me work on is really doable—and I didn’t see anything like it in the archives of past projects, so it’d be original too. What do you think?”
Ned shifts uncomfortably, eyes glancing up toward an unusually interested MJ before focusing back down on his lunch. He wishes he hadn’t told her about his anti-hacking project before he told Peter.
“That sounds great, but um…I was thinking that this year I’d like to…” he clears his throat. “I’d like to do a project myself, if that’s okay.”
Peter doesn’t reply right away, forcing Ned to look up for his reaction. Peter has a mouth full of chips, but Ned can’t deny he does look a bit shocked and disappointed.
Peter swallows and smiles unconvincingly. “No, yeah—that’s, um—that’s great, that’s—”
“It’s just that I have an idea for an anti-hacking system,” Ned blurts out, “and it’s going to integrate physical and digital elements, and I have these experiments, and I thought that this might be the year to go solo because I wasn’t even sure if—I mean with your parto—” he glances at MJ again, who’s feigning intense concentration on her novel—“with your Stark Internship, I wasn’t even sure you’d have time for another extracurricular thing, so I…yeah.”
He nervously searches Peter’s face, who’s become preoccupied with his phone. “Sounds great, man, you should totally do it. I just—um—” He scrunches his eyebrows and looks up. “I need to run to…my locker. For something…” he looks over at MJ “…internship related. See you guys later!”
He snags a granola bar before hurrying out of the lunchroom and into the hall.
Ned exhales and focuses on his lunch again, bummed that Peter made a Spider-Man related exit before he could really find out how he feels about the collapse of the “Dynamics Duo.” Making a big deal out of this wouldn’t be a very Peter thing to do, but then again, Peter hasn’t quite been himself since he started dedicating all of his time to Spider-Man, and Ned can’t help but wonder if, after all the changes Peter’s been through in recent years, he shouldn’t be taking away yet another constant.
“Hey. Ned.”
MJ’s still holding her book open, but is looking across the table at him with surprisingly earnest eyes.
“I think your project idea sounds cool. And smart. So…”
“So…?”
“So go for it or whatever,” MJ concludes with a nod, then looks back at her novel with a small smile.
“Thanks.”
Ned makes up his own mind and decides to go solo.
Ned’s heading up the stairs to the Parker’s apartment, anxious to see how Peter’s doing after having broken a bunch of ribs on last night’s patrol. Peter once had a single broken rib heal fully in only twenty-four hours, but Ned’s guessing it can’t be that simple this time around.
He uses his key to let himself in, expecting to see Peter propped up on the couch and taking it easy. Instead, a flash of red and blue launches onto the ceiling just as he cracks open the door, followed by a stifled groan.
Ned frowns as he shuts the door behind him. “Peter?” He looks up at the crouched superhero on the ceiling, “what are you doing?”
“Oh good,” the mask-less Peter crawls to the edge of the wall. “I thought you were May.” He gingerly makes his way down the wall. “I could really use your help with something.”
Ned folds his arms. “You’re clearly still very injured. Please tell me you’re not about to go patrolling.”
“I’m not.”
“Then what’s with the suit?”
Peter’s back on the ground now. “Okay, so I already went patrolling.”
“Dude—”
“Look I know I probably shouldn’t have, but I don’t need a lecture.” Peter lowers himself onto the couch carefully, one hand holding his left side.
Ned knows there’s no point in arguing against that ‘probably,’ so he lets it go. “Okay, sure.” He unzips his backpack. “I brought you Chem notes from yesterday, so I guess here’s something to do while you’re laying around.”
Peter shakes his head. “I’m not laying around, I’m going back out for just one thing—that’s what I need your help with, Karen’s been glitching and—”
“Dude—look at yourself,” Ned says, “I thought you were going to take the weekend to rest!”
“I am, this will be a short thing, I saw something suspicious and I wanted to check real quick—”
“Peter, May will kill you,” Ned says, remembering her stipulation upon the Spider-Man reveal that any serious injuries require a pause on superheroing.
“Yeah, that’s why we’re not gonna tell her.”
Ned’s phone pings a notification, and he opens his News App.
He laughs under his breath at the headline revealed and holds the screen up for Peter. “You’re on the news.”
Spider-Man Intercepts Semi, Prevents Disastrous Collision.
Peter’s eyes widen. “Shit.” He stands up with a grimace, holding his side as he heads for the dining table to grab his mask. “Well, guess I’ll have to be sneakier this time around. So can you help me with Karen?”
“No way,” Ned says resolutely. “I agree with May on this one, you should not be Spider-Man-ing with broken ribs. I’m going home.” He heads for the door, annoyed to find Peter is following him.
“Ned, c’mon.” He rocks on his feet a bit and catches himself with a hand on the wall. “Okay,” he squeezes his eyes shut, “you know what, you’re right, I’m not going out again. This is pretty rough. But can you just stay here until May gets back?”
Ned pauses with his hand on the doorknob. “Why?”
“Well because, she’s gonna be pissed when she sees the news and I—”
“You want me to stay here and watch you get yelled at?”
“May doesn’t yell,” Peter says with a hint of indignation.
Ned rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean.”
Peter winces as he shifts himself from one foot to another. “I’m just saying she’ll be more chill if you’re here, and I don’t have the strength to be chewed out right now, dude.”
Ned stares at him blankly. “And yet you had the strength to Spider-Man on ten broken ribs.”
“Nine.”
“I’m leaving.”
“Ned, c’mon—Guy in the Chair?”
And he’s doing that stupid puppy-dog eyes thing again—the same look he pulled in the hotel room in D.C. Ned almost, almost considers saying yes, he’ll stay.
He shakes his head. “No, dude. You’re not dragging me into this one. See you at school.”
Ned is sick.
And not the type of sick that you can totally see coming with a sore throat for a day or two before the more annoying symptoms kick in. He is truly, honest-to-goodness, violently ill in a way he hasn’t been since he was in elementary school—he’s fallen prey to the “Midtown Yuck.”
The 24-hr flu has been going around school for the past few weeks, and Ned’s family was convinced it was only a matter of time before it hit him, but he’d be lying if he said his mom loading him up with vitamin C and recipes with extra ginger hadn’t made him feel at least the tiniest bit invincible.
He’s gotten over the vomiting stage for the most part, and is now just laying in bed praying for sleep. He’s nearly there, too, just starting to drift off into dreamland, when his phone rings.
He sees Peter’s face appear on the screen and groans, nearly letting it go to voicemail. But then he considers how rare it is to receive a phone call rather than a text, and panics this might be an emergency.
“Hey,” he answers the call, “you okay?”
“Yeah,” Peter says, but the definite sound of swinging makes it difficult to hear clearly. “Just need a favor. I’m in the middle of something and Karen can’t seem to hack into this security system that I need to—ack!” Some sort of scuffle occurs for about ten seconds, and then—“Sorry, Ned. This is nuts. I just, um—something’s up with Karen I think, can you be the Guy in the Chair for me for a bit?”
Ned puts a hand to his hair, keeping his eyes shut to off-set the pounding in his head and playing his options out in his mind.
He could say yes, obviously. And from what he’s heard, he should say yes—Peter sounds like he’s really in deep, not just on a friendly neighborhood mission he can easily handle.
It would only be fair to help. After all, Ned was the one who begged to be the Guy in the Chair back in the day, right?
“Yeah I can help, just give me a second.” He sits up with anguish and reaches for his laptop.
“Thank you so, so much, man, I really owe you one,” Peter’s saying, but he’s sounding more and more distant, and Ned’s not sure if that’s because the call quality is still shit, or because Ned’s head is pounding and he feels like shit.
He opens the screen and props a pillow behind his back. He tries to enter his password, but it’s somehow wrong every time—is it because his hands are shaking, or because he can’t focus on anything?
“Ned? Are you there?”
“Yeah,” Ned answers, “yeah I’m—” the fifth attempt at inputting his password falls through, and he’s over it.
He closes the screen. “Actually Peter, I can’t help right now. I’m sorry.”
“Oh! Um, okay.” The thwip of a few webs fills a pause. “Everything good?”
“Everything’s fine, I’m just on my literal death bed here…”
“Wait, what??”
“I’m just sick,” Ned says quickly, not wanting to instill panic.
“Oh, no—you got the Midtown Yuck??”
“Yeah and I’m literally about to pass out, so I gotta go.”
“Okay, feel better Ned, I’m sor—”
Whatever Peter says next, Ned doesn’t hear it.
He wakes up several hours later to multiple unread messages from Peter.
hey man
may and i brought you some ginger chicken noodle soup
it’s in your fridge
sorry i called when you were sick
next time i ask for help while you’re on your literal death bed just say no lol
text me if you need anything else ok?
Ned grins at his phone. Just say no. It’s like Peter and his mom had a conference about him.
He carefully gets up to search for that soup.
The knowledge that Peter’s got his back just like Ned’s got Peter’s already has him feeling better.
Ned turns seventeen today, and even though he’s lucky enough to have a weekend birthday this year, the day’s kind of a bust so far.
Of course his family’s been great as always. He woke up to lots of hugs, his favorite waffles, and a promise of a new gaming laptop coming in the mail next week.
But now everyone’s scattered across various places—his mom’s running errands, his dad had to go into the office, his older sister Rena is still at college in New Jersey, and his little sister Mia’s at play practice.
Ned feels a bit lonely after lunch, so he calls Peter to see if he wanted to hang out. He isn’t surprised he doesn’t get an answer, as Peter’s usually out Spider-Man-ing all day on the weekends.
What does surprise him, as he zones out playing video games a few hours later, is Peter’s failure to send a “happy birthday” text. He’s not trying to be needy, but it’s already 4pm and his best friend hasn’t acknowledged his birthday yet—and when your best friend is Spider-Man, that can only mean he’s fully wrapped up in some sort of world-saving activity. Ned hopes he’s okay.
At 4:30, with his family still out of the house and boredom taking its toll, Ned makes his way to the Parker’s apartment. Even if Peter’s not there, May should have an answer for him about whether Peter’s okay out there as Spider-Man—and he can’t text her since she lost her phone at the market a few days back.
He’s made it to the Parkers’ street when his phone starts buzzing. It’s Peter.
“Hey,” he answers, “what’s up?”
“Hey Ned,” Peter replies, sounding a bit rushed, “how’s it going?”
“Fine, thanks,” Ned can’t help but feel this is a weird conversation for a birthday, “how are you?”
“Good, good, but uh, listen—can you help me out with something?”
Ned frowns. “Like what sort of help?”
“Just, uh—some Guy in the Chair stuff, I’m out doing, um—” Ned hears some voices in the background and some hastened footsteps on a creaky floor—“some mission stuff, and I need—uh…I need you to get your laptop and track something.”
Normally, Ned would be all over this. But right now, he’s a little pissed.
“Yeah no. Not today.” Not on his birthday, for shit’s sake.
He’s made it to the apartment building’s entrance when Peter starts sounding panicked.
“Oh yeah, okay, that’s totally cool, it’s just—um—can you maybe not come to our apartment? At this moment?”
Ned freezes. “Are you—are you tracking me right now??”
He hears a door close on the other end of the line before Peter begins speaking more softly. “Okay, yes, Ned, I’m tracking you—and it’s for a good reason, I promise! It’s just—you can’t come upstairs yet.”
“Are you…is there some sort of surprise going on up there?”
Peter sighs defeatedly. “Yeah there is, and um—shit Ned, it was going so well, everyone was saying I couldn’t do this since I’m a bad liar, and now—well can you maybe give us until 5 and then come up and act surprised?”
Ned chuckles. He can’t believe he didn’t see through this plan earlier. “Yeah, I can do that. Who’s ‘us?’”
“Okay that can be the surprise. Yes! Crisis averted. Just come back at 5. I’ll tell everyone to hurry up.”
At 5:07, Ned enters through the door to a loud chorus of “SURPRISE!!” from a small crowd of his people—his parents, Rena, Mia, his three buddies from Robotics Club, MJ, May, and Peter.
He looks across a display of balloons, streamers, pizza, cake, and—most impressively—a ridiculous amount of LEGO carefully built into the words, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY NED.”
After he’s bombarded by hugs and well-wishes, he learns that his parents had planned the party and May had offered up her apartment to cut down on suspicion. Peter had asked the Robotics Club friends to come hours early and enlisted them to help create the LEGO décor. Mia was supposed to be home with Ned, keeping him occupied, but the last-minute play practice had messed up that plan, and, consequently, the surprise.
It doesn’t matter. Ned’s never felt so loved.
“This is so awesome,” he says to Peter as they’re chatting over cake, “but you know, for a second there, when you pulled that Guy in the Chair stuff, I kinda wondered if you’d forgotten my birthday or something.”
“Sorry, man,” Peter shakes his head, “it was a bad cover. Listen, I promise I’ll never directly ask for Guy in the Chair stuff ever again.”
“Doubtful,” Ned responds, “but I’m gonna hold you to that as long as I can.”
Peter and Ned are heading back to Queens after a successful college visit to MIT. Ned is driving—Peter doesn’t have his license yet, and even if he did, Ned wouldn’t trust him to navigate a snowstorm like the one they’re currently braving.
In hindsight, they shouldn’t have started back at all, should have found a hotel and driven home the next day after the forecasted flurries had passed. But they’d checked the radar before leaving, and it looked like they could beat the storm no problem—plus Peter insisted they get home in case he’s needed, already feeling guilty that he’d left Queens without its Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man for a weekend.
Ned tries not to think about how that guilt is going to hinder Peter’s MIT plans. It’s certainly not a conversation to be had in a near white-out, anyway.
“We should pull over somewhere,” Peter says after a long period of silence in which Ned tried to concentrate on the road, “at least take a break until the snow lets up a bit.”
Ned hums in agreement, hands gripping the steering wheel a little too tightly like they have been for the last hour. “You’re gonna have to help me find an exit—is your phone any closer to getting a signal?”
Peter sighs. “Not really, my texts to May still haven’t gone through. Looks like it’s not just the snow, we’re kind of in a dead zone. I have Maps up but it’s going in and out, so—oh, here we go! I think there should be an exit in about a mile?”
Ned slows down—surprised he can manage to go any slower—and squints through the flurry of white, praying for an exit sign to reveal itself soon.
“There!” Peter nearly shouts with exuberance, “There’s the exit—shit man, I can barely make out the road—do you see it?”
“No,” Ned admits, “but here we go.”
It’s a precarious maneuver, and Ned tries to ignore Peter white-knuckling the dash as they slide a bit going around the curve. After what feels like an eternity, the exit lane merges onto a straight road.
“We made it,” Peter says with relief, “nice job, Ned.”
“Still need to find a parking lot or something,” Ned says, upping his speed a bit as he grows more confident.
“Looks like we can pull over on the right up here, maybe that gas station’s open? I kind of do have to—oh shit, Ned!”
“What? What??” Ned asks a moment too late as headlights emerge through the flurries. There’s a vehicle sliding directly into their lane, or into what he thinks is their lane. He panics, forgetting anything he ever learned in Driver’s Ed, and yanks the steering wheel to the left.
It was the wrong move, he’s immediately sure of that, but he doesn’t have time to process the decision further before the car is spinning out on snow and ice, both of them shouting as the car makes impact with something—Ned’s not sure what—and the airbags activate.
He coughs for a good thirty seconds as the bags deflate, his head pounding. “Peter?” Ned turns to see him slumped over, eyes shut and head bleeding.
Ned tries not to panic.
“Peter! Peter, are you okay??” They’ve hit a tree on the passenger side, and as he looks closer, he sees some sort of metal—a bit of frame from the shattered car, maybe—lodged in Peter’s abdomen.
Peter coughs up blood.
“Peter!!” He unbuckles himself and reaches for his phone, hands shaking. “Peter, can you hear me?”
Peter opens his eyes and turns agonizingly slowly toward Ned, his face colorless.
“I’m calling an ambulance, okay? Just—just keep breathing, I—”
“Hey!” A voice calls. Ned sees a man and a woman rush over across the road, through an ironically dwindling snowfall. “My wife’s already called 911,” the man says, “I am so, so sorry—are you both alright?”
Ned rocks in his seat, looking at his phone, then at Peter, then at the couple. “I’m okay I think, but he’s—my friend Peter, he’s—”
The man steps forward. “We’re both nurses,” he says, “let us see if we can do anything.”
Ned nods and stiffly lifts himself out of the car. The woman situates herself in the front seat and starts looking Peter over while the man opens the back door on the driver’s side and addresses Ned—“What’s your name?”
“Ned,” he manages through the shock.
“Okay, Ned, is there someone you should call while we check on Peter?”
Ned nods again, pulling out his phone and finding May in his contacts. He still doesn’t have service, so he steps away from the car and begins pacing, knowing it won’t do any good toward finding a signal but holding onto a frantic hope anyway.
The call isn’t going through, and maybe that’s for the best—what on earth is he supposed to say when she answers? “Hi, May, I crashed into a tree and possibly killed your kid, just thought you should know—”
No. No, not killed, definitely not, Peter is Spider-Man, Spider-Man doesn’t die from a car crash, he fights super villains, he recovers from bullet wounds in a week, he gets hit by trains and walks it off. This won’t kill him. This sort of thing can’t kill him.
The third attempt at a call doesn’t go through, and Ned’s starting to feel desperate. The snow’s settling even more now, and he tunes in to the voice of the man in the car.
“I’m hearing ‘May’—his girlfriend maybe?”
“I think he’s trying to say ‘Mom,’ poor thing,” the woman says.
Ned snaps back into focus as he rushes over. “May,” he breathes, “he’s asking for his aunt May, his—his mom,” he nods at the woman, “she’s his mom. You’re both right.”
“Ned…” Peter barely manages through gasps and ragged breaths, the words difficult to decipher and yet all—too—predictable, “tell May I lo—”
“NO.” Ned hears himself say before Peter’s plea has even registered. “We aren’t doing this, Peter, you’re not dying, you can tell her yourself.”
Peter’s pained expressions worsens. “Pl—please.”
The man steps out of the backseat where he’d been sitting, putting a hand on Ned’s shoulder as the woman wraps Ned’s emergency blanket tighter around Peter’s wound. “Hey, Ned,” he speaks softly, “hear him out, okay? Comfort him.”
Ned’s throat dries up as his chest feels it might burst from the weight of the situation. He can’t do this. He can’t.
“N—Ned. Guy in the…Chair.”
The tears finally rush out, all at once, as he ducks into the backseat and gives his Peter his full attention.
“I’m here, Peter. I’m your Guy in the Chair. I’m listening.”
“Tell May…”
“I will.” He swallows an intensely shaky breath. “I’ll tell her you love her, I promise. I’ll tell her.”
Peter’s gaze becomes unfocused as he takes increasingly haggard breaths. Ned grabs a hand that has no strength left to grasp back and watches his best friend fade out of consciousness.