It's Ned's turn to swing. Peter has attached his webbing securely to the top of the bathroom's doorframe and wall above, four layers of it with two cords descending. Between these, a seat was there, one that had been detached from its legs and back, found at Midtown. Mr. Harrington was about to throw it out, but Ned had been the one to see its potential as a swing.
Aunt May was out visiting the neighbours in the next apartment. With the privacy they needed, Peter and Ned could get creative with his webbing.
Ned wiggles himself onto the seat then kicks off. Peter watches the smile that was already on his face widen as he swings backward into the bathroom, then forward into the hallway. Like Peter had done earlier, he lets his feet clunk against the wall ahead of him to save his knees from an impact that would have been more painful.
"This is awesome, man!" Ned says.
He has enough speed so that his dark bangs blow back a little. He keeps smiling big and Peter's happy to see it, and when it starts fading, Peter feels the need to bring it back as soon as possible. He does this by pushing the side of Ned's thigh so his whole body goes off to the side a few inches during the backward descent.
"Hey!" Ned says in surprise and his back ends up thudding into the side of the doorway. He's a good sport about it, someone quick to laugh.
From a nearby shelf, Peter's phone rings. His aunt.
"Hey, what are you two doing over there? Building an ark?" Aunt May asks in the most motherly kind of exasperation. "We can hear you from this side of the wall."
"Oh, sorry, May, sorry. Didn't realize," Peter says.
"Settle down, okay?"
"Yep, sure thing!"
Peter shoves his phone into his pocket. "We're being noisy," he tells Ned.
"Oh, oops."
"It's my turn now, I think," Peter says, gesturing for Ned to get off.
"Hey, I'm your guest, Pete. I get to do this a little longer."
"You practically live here, man."
"I'm still a guest."
"Let me try this out before my aunt gets back."
"Just let me do a little spinny trick."
Peter sighs. "Okay, fine, do the little spinny trick."
Ned turns himself clockwise, letting the two lines of web twist together above his head. He extends his short legs, and lets the twist undo itself. He's spinning surprisingly fast, which is probably the main factor that leads to his foot to catching the corner of the shelf in the hallway. The shake makes a stone figurine on it wobble precariously. Accompanied by an agonizingly loud thump, the figurine lands on the hardwood floor.
Peter and Ned instantly have horrifying visions of Aunt May's fury, and Peter says, "Ned, put that back! I'll take the swing down!"
Peter yanks at his webbing and to his horror, it peels off a tragically noticeable region of paint on the wall above the frame, the size of a dollar bill.
Ned glances up at it. "Oh neat, that's in the shape of Idaho. What are the chances?"
A minute later, right after Peter had chucked the seat of the swing into his bedroom, Aunt May comes in, scanning the vicinity with great suspicion. Peter and Ned stand rigidly in the kitchen, eyes wide and fearful.
Finding nothing amiss but still unconvinced that nothing is wrong, Aunt May asks, "Okay, what'd you knock over and how?"
"Just, uh, that statue thing in the hall," Peter replied, voice hesitant. "No damage or anything. We were, uh… we were wrestling and got too crazy."
"Wrestling?"
Ned clears his throat. "Yeah, wrestling - you know - as teenage boys are wont to do."
If Peter wasn't getting third-degree burns from Aunt May's stare, he'd chuckle at the weirdness of Ned using the expression "wont to do." Whenever Ned got nervous, he was inexplicably susceptible to fourteenth to eighteenth century English phrasings.
Aunt May narrows her eyes. "Okay, well, none of that in the hallway," she says. She then takes something out of the pocket of her jeans. "Anyway, Melinda has these spare movie vouchers. Here, go see a movie. Tonight preferably - you're too hyper to be in the apartment."
"Oh, sweet!" Ned remarks, eyes brightening.
Peter takes the tickets and sees it's for the theatre three blocks away, the one that plays older movies. "Say thanks to Melinda for us."
Despite it being Friday evening, there's only an elderly lady with her adult daughter ahead of them at the box office. Before making their way here, Peter and Ned had decided upon, no questions asked, the 6:45 showing of Return of the Jedi.
In the auditorium, there's an audience of five, Peter and Ned included. They choose the last row of seats to park themselves in, spilling a few pieces of popcorn during their route. As nice as a near-empty theatre could be, the downfall is that Peter and Ned had long ago established that they space themselves apart in this situation. They'd leave one seat vacant in between each other so they could lean over the arms of the chairs freely, and maybe indulge in some guilt-free manspreading.
As of now though, Peter's feeling a little bit disheartened. A little bit. For whatever reasons he's abstracted into the overall desire to be around Ned as much as possible. So he finds himself waiting for Ned to seat himself and once he does, Peter slips into the seat immediately on his left and hopes nothing goes noticed.
Ned goes on as normal, shaking his popcorn bag, putting his legs up on the seat ahead, getting comfortable. The two of them chat a bit about just how many times they've seen this movie before, and Peter gets a ribbing in – whenever he can, he brings up that on the first day they met, Ned took a metre stick from the front of the classroom and pretended it was a light saber. As he took a grand stroke to his right, their teacher had come up from behind and was swiped across the cheek.
During the movie, they mouth some of the lines and sway in their seats to the score, hamming it up for each other. Wanting a bit of contact and another smile from Ned, Peter presses his leg onto his friend's, who still has them extended onto the seat in front. He tries to push Ned's legs off completely. Despite Peter's spider-derived strength, it's a difficult task. Ned has muscle, something Peter likes quite a bit. Peter takes notice of his shoulders a lot too, is guilty of looking at them a few seconds too long as Ned turns away from him in the school hallways. There's something to the solidity of them, that they're unyielding against someone's grip, that's appealing and comforting.
Ned makes some sounds of struggle as Peter slowly manages to slide his leg over. "You suck," Ned mutters in defeat.
"As the winner, you gotta share some of that Snickers bar you snuck in."
When the most emotional scene comes, the part where Vader has Luke take his mask off, Peter and Ned exaggerate how sad they are by sniffing and whimpering.
"It's okay, Luke, it's okay," Peter whispers, deliberately making his voice warble.
Ned reaches behind him, and then he feels Ned's fingers grip him gently around the back of his neck, then slide up into his hair. Mock comfort; an extension of the joke. It's too bad that's all it is.
Before Peter can flip the moment on its head, render it thoroughly awkward, Ned takes his hand away and chuckles.
Peter steps out of the theatre's washroom.
"Pete, look at this!" Ned says, sticking his phone into his face.
Peter had to watch the video three times to understand what he was looking at. Prowling the street is a counterpart of him, a hellish version, web-work black and overly tenacious. Whatever it was, it had muscle, too much of it, but not as extreme as the Hulk.
"Stark Tower Attacked by New Threat: Venom," the caption of the video read in bold. The footage shows the chaos that happened at street level. Venom webs the security guards to the pavement, some over their mouths so they'd suffocate. Black Widow then appears from the side of the screen, just a blur specked with red. She's been seen by the public more as of late, and of course, nobody has been sharing any details about it with Peter.
She gets a few hits in, even after getting flung against a van. Venom soon strikes her back with a thick fist, but before she meets with the ground, he webs her at the waist, lifts her back upward but not quite to her feet, not enough to regain her balance, and it's intentional because the move allows Venom to heave his arm to the side so the web goes taut. She's thrown sideways through a window.
"The reports online are saying everyone's okay, no deaths," Ned explains. "Tony Stark was at the tower too and got him away from everyone. But apparently this thing completely disappeared, there's no sign of him at all."
"I should try and find him," Peter says and begins a brisk walk out of the theatre.
"Peter, hold on, dude! You know I'm all into you being a hero and stuff, but this doesn't seem useful," Ned says from behind him. "You know how much surveillance Stark Tower must have around it. If they can't find him, what are the chances you will?"
Peter sighs in frustration. "You're right, you're right… Wait it out. More information's needed."
Ned's sleeping over. They hole up in Peter's bedroom as usual. They check for news about Venom every ten minutes, but otherwise they just lounge around, the sound of Aunt May's shuffling in the background.
Lying on his back on the top bunk, Peter knocks his knees together a few times. He's restless with the need to get something done about this new threat in town. What he hadn't ever realized about being a superhero is that the majority of the time is spent in anticipation and stagnation. He watches the online footage a few more times, analyzing Venom's movements, where his weak spots could be.
"Hey, you wanna play a tabletop game?" Ned asks, rocking back and forth in Peter's desk chair, getting bored.
"Let me guess – you wanna play Battleship."
"Yeah. It's simple but entertaining."
"You don't like simple things. You like Battleship because you win all the time."
Peter hears a grunt then a chair creaking. A second later, a chess piece – the white bishop – comes sailing towards him. His senses are keen enough that he catches it with his hand before it hits his torso.
"Hmm," Ned says. "I'd be annoyed that I didn't hit you if it wasn't so damn cool."
Peter lifts himself into a sitting position and smiles down at him. "I know." He throws the piece back down at Ned and jumps from the top bunk. Still restless, he's in the mood to get some superpower practice in. He's been trying to improve his reaction times lately, and the video of Venom gave him an idea of how to work on it.
Peter scrounges around in his closet for a tension rod he broke two years ago. It's still in one piece, but the rubber part at the end had fallen off.
Once he's uncovered it underneath an old school bag and cardboard box, he sticks it upright on the floor.
"Ned, can you hold this at the bottom?" Peter instructs.
"Oooh, what are we doing? Training? A method Tony Stark taught you?" Ned asks as he kneels to the floor.
Peter knew these questions would come. His friend's enthusiasm was incessantly endearing and reminded him to be excited about his abilities rather than let them turn mundane. "No, something I've come up with myself," Peter replies.
The instructions Peter has for Ned is to let the rod fall without any warning, but always aim it away from Peter rather than off to the side or forward. The idea was that Peter could shoot a line of webbing at it to hoist it upright, then to cast it gingerly to the side. In reality, the rod would be a person, and the move would be a benevolent rendition of what Venom did to Widow. He'd prevent a civilian from concussing their head on the ground this way, and if they were in the line of fire, he could pull them to side.
Eight out of ten times Ned lets go of the rod, Peter catches it at the middle before it makes contact with the floor. The two instances he hadn't, it was that he overextended his web so there was too much slack for the distance of the fall. Despite the statistics, Peter believes he's ready to make it more challenging.
"Okay, you're the replacement for the tension rod now," Peter says.
"What?" Ned asks, his amused expression dropping instantly.
"We'll pile up my laundry behind you if you're that scared," Peter says teasingly.
"I think I'm more scared of landing in your underwear though."
Peter scoffs. "I'll take the underwear out."
After arranging the laundry in the middle of the bedroom and Ned's requisite testing of its softness, they're ready to go. Ned stands in front of it, facing Peter who's placed himself a few feet away and out of arm's reach.
"Alright, man…" Ned mutters. "I'm counting down this first try."
"If you have to."
"This is one of those trust exercises for me," Ned explains. "Okay then - one, two, three - go, Spidey, go!"
It's too easy for Peter. Ned gets to what must be no more than a thirty degree angle before Peter webs his torso and gets him back to his original position.
"See, I'm very trustworthy," Peter says emphatically.
On the next try, Ned doesn't count down. His fall deepens because of this. The nerves he has about it makes him laugh once he comes back up. It's same reaction he has when he's on a rollercoaster, so Peter knows that he's having fun with this. Peter would stop if that wasn't the case.
They do the same thing a few more times, always ending with a quick laugh between them because this is pretty ridiculous even if its purpose is serious. Ned doesn't wind up amongst the laundry once.
They get goofy about the practice at some point. Ned does some dramatic fainting, and Peter does a cheesy fairy-tale hero voice and says, "I've saved you, my fair damsel!"
This is one of the reasons why Ned and Peter have stuck around in each other's lives. For the silliness they get up to. A late night with Ned is always bound for it, and tonight in particular, Peter is feeling not just goofy but a little impulsive. In this room, in the smallness of it, its orange light, between the knick-knacks on the shelves, and through the window, a city that's become one notch quieter, nothing much could go wrong with any decisions he makes.
"Let's ramp this up more," Peter says after a while. "How about you close your eyes?"
"What's the point in that?"
"It's all about the trust you have in me, Ned. If you're gonna keep being guy-in-the-chair, we have to keep building it," Peter says.
"And you find it fun to freak me out."
"That too," Peter says. "Probably my main reason."
Ned sighs. "Okay. I'll do it."
To make sure he'd fall perfectly onto the laundry were Peter to fail, Ned takes a few extra glances behind himself and adjusts his angle appropriately.
"Ready," he says.
Peter tries not to grin too much, thinking he might come across too impish, resulting in Ned refusing to go through with the challenge. Ned's eyes close and five seconds later, he has the bravery to tip himself back.
Once again, the catch is smooth and Ned's balanced perfectly on his feet. He looks at Peter who's still standing some feet away from him, and nods his approval.
"One more time," Peter instructs.
"Sure."
With that agreement, Peter feels his limbs warm, and if he didn't know any better, he'd think it was from working out the muscles in them. That's not what is though. It's his impulsivity and the vision he has in head intensifying.
Ned closes his eyes and falls for a second time, then gets pulled him forward, no trouble whatsoever. Now Peter begins the extra maneuver: He grabs the web between them and tugs it swiftly towards himself. It forces Ned over to him, and his friend would have toppled forward epically were it not for Peter being a barrier.
Ned's whole body, big-boned but not enough to knock over a superpowered being, presses into Peter's. Laughing, Peter puts an arm around Ned's shoulders to steady him.
Before Ned can process what's happened, before he can laugh it away, Peter uses the new proximity he created to its intended purpose – he pecks Ned on the lips. He pushes Ned off of him straight after and scurries back up the ladder to the top bunk and resumes laughing.
Ned's a bit disoriented by the quick succession of events, standing there by himself rather stupidly, but luckily he sees the humour in all of it and joins in Peter's laughter.
Peter's successfully disguised the moment as just two friends goofing off. It could be considered sad that this is the best he can do, that he's not brave enough to be sincere, but he's fine with that right now; first he needs to learn the delicacy of initiating that kind of involvement with a friend. He's not there yet.
From the bottom bunk, Ned starts a conversation about drones. He's been passionate about this topic lately, so it's not as much of a conversation as it is an explanatory monologue. Peter doesn't mind this at all. He gets comfortable on the mattress, and while he gazes at the shadows of buildings beyond his window, listens. He's glad Ned can't see the expression on his face.
Author's Note:
Credit goes to my kool kidd friend Miles for the suggestion of doing this one-shot in the first place and who laid out the basic plot points and character arc. And a thank you for informing me about certain aspects of the MCU I had forgotten.
Another thank you to ThatSchwayWriter* who was very pushy for me to include Venom and it turns out that went okay. But fuk u if you don't read this whole fic to the end.
* u/8178621/ThatSchwayWriter