AN: This completely turned into Peter & MJ & Ned trash.
I regret nothing.
"-he awake yet?" says a distinct voice, and keeps talking as Ned tries to make meaning out of it. "It's been twenty-eight minutes, the drug thing was supposed to knock him out for ten minutes, not thirty. You didn't kill him, did you?"
"I don't know, okay? He's breathing, so not dead. I- he should wake up soon." an equally frantic voice answers. A light groan escapes from him as a response to his headache, but the pair is too busy arguing to hear him.
"What did you use?" asks the first voice (probably a female), followed by silence. "I mean what did you use to knock him out?" she clarifies.
"Oh," the other person says in realization and answers with something too long for him to understand in his current mental state.
"It doesn't even seem like you screwed up, like that really is supposed to knock him out for ten minutes." The female one answers thoughtfully.
Ned knows this voice.
And the other one.
Kidnapping? Seriously? Kidnapping?
He's going to kill them.
As soon as he can open his eyes, of course.
"Of course I didn't screw up," scoffs Peter. "…and MJ?"
"Hmm?"
"How exactly do you know this much about drugs?" he asks warily. "I mean, I know because Mr. Stark told me about it when he gave it-"
"Hol' up," Ned half talks half slurs as he tries to straighten up, startling MJ and Peter who rushes to help him. "Tony Stark gave you a drug to kidnap me? What the fuck?"
"Where does this excessive use of fuck come from?" a smirking MJ asks.
Peter takes a break from "examining" his body for a moment. "MJ he said it for literally one time."
The girl rolls his eyes and mumbles something that suspiciously sounds like a "shut up".
"Your eyes are going to fall out if you keep doing th-" a big eraser headed for his head interrupts him, but Peter catches it with ease.
MJ crosses her arms. "What are you, my mom?"
"Will you stop for a second?" asks Ned as he rubs the sides of his head, causing the duo to stop bickering. "First, answer my question. When did Tony Stark turn into a pedo kidnapper?"
Peter grimaces at the remark. "Dude, just… just don't. That's gross, like real gross – especially considering the time I spend with him."
Ned just looks at him pointedly, and Peter leans back (not really) aggressively in response. "Yes but not really? He gave me the drug because he thought I might need it one day – and turns out he was right!"
MJ and Ned shot unimpressed glares in his way.
"Um, okay, maybe that isn't how he thought I would use it? Anyway, doesn't matt-"
Ned looks around as he talks, to see expensive-looking leather seats across him, and black-tilted windows to complete the look. "He gave you guys the limousine?" he interrupts. "Why would he give you a self-driving limousine if he isn't trying to kidnap me? Why would he even try to kidnap me?"
Peter opens his mouth to answer but MJ beats him to it. "Okay, first, he is not trying to kidnap you; we've already covered that. We're the ones who are trying to kidnap you, give us some credit."
"I think what MJ is trying to say is," Peter says right after she's finished. "Why would we use a shiny big black limousine to kidnap someone in the daylight?"
Ned blinks a few times.
"Also," Peter continues, "he gave us the limousine –which is very much not self-driving by the way– because I told him that I wanted to surprise you for your birthday – which is the truth, technically."
Ned doesn't really listen to the parts after Peter tells him that the car, in fact, has a chauffeur. Instead, he takes a look at the driver seat, which is empty.
"Peter, what do you mean that the car isn't self-driving? There's no one in the driver's seat." Ned interrupts the boy's rambling, causing MJ and Peter to snap their heads to the front.
Silence fills the air for a few moments before MJ breaks it. "Peter if you made him partially blind or caused brain damage or memory loss or anything else, I swear to god I-"
Ned stays silent, confused. What is MJ trying to say? Is there anything wrong with him – now he thinks about it, his head feels kind of… weird?
Peter frowns. "You agreed, and actually encouraged me to do this – so if anything's happened it's your fault."
MJ gives Peter a look, and even when it isn't directed at him, Ned can't help but shudder.
"I… I take that back." Peter finally manages to say and mutters something about having déjà vu. "And there's nothing wrong with his sight, watch." he says as he raises his hands. "How much is that?"
"Two," Ned answers, still not really sure what's going on.
Peter looks at him unbelievingly as MJ buries her head into her hands and groans. "Great, he's blind."
Ned scowls, there were two hands and he said two, didn't he? "I'm not blind."
"See, he's not blind." Peter agrees instantaneously.
MJ lifts her head up and arches one of her eyebrows. "Then can you please explain why you answered two instead of ten, Ned?"
"Well, because there were two han- oh," the realization dawns on him after he sees Peter biting his lips not to laugh and MJ burying her head into her hands again. "You meant fingers, didn't you? Not hands."
"No shit Sherlock," mumbles MJ, and stops for a second (Ned is ninety-nine percent sure that it's for the dramatics). "Well I was wrong," she sighs. "it's not blindness; it's brain damage."
"Will somebody explain what's going on instead of insulting me?" Ned asks as Peter suddenly smacks his forehead.
Ned watches as Peter searches for something since MJ doesn't look like she's going to bother telling him.
MJ pulls out a tiny bottle after a good twenty seconds. "You looking for this?" she asks casually – Peter's head snaps up, and he snatches the bottle in the blink of an eye.
Peter holds the bottle tightly, like he's afraid that MJ is going to take it again. He narrows his eyes. "So that's how you know about it." He places a hand on his heart. "Where did your morals go, my beloved girlfriend?" he asks dramatically.
MJ shrugs. "There are still where I left them when we decided to kidnap our best friend."
"Fair enough but-"
He doesn't get to finish as Ned interrupts him. "I'm truly sorry to interrupt your bonding time, but can we get back to the topic please?"
MJ huffs out a breath as Peter scratches his neck embarrassedly. "Yeah, right." he says and starts reading something from the back of the bottle. "Instructions, no. Warnings?" he mumbles. "Aaaand, here – side effects." he says and keeps reading them.
"Headache, short term memory loss, trouble understanding, sleepiness, lightheadedness, hallucinating, loss of concentr-" he suddenly stops and checks something. "Hallucinating? Well, that explains it, I guess. See, MJ? It's completely normal." MJ crosses her arms and scoffs, but Ned can see the tension between her shoulder blades easing.
"Soooooo?" asks Ned.
MJ snorts. "Seems like 'trouble understanding' is showing its effects. Why did we use that on him, again?"
Peter very pointedly ignores her and turns his gaze to Ned. "Ned, look at the driver's seat again, is it still empty?"
A "Well, yeah." almost escapes from his lips before he looks.
After looking, a "Holy shit!" does the trick just fine.
There is a man sitting on the seat (one that looks suspiciously like the one who knocked him out), and Ned could've sworn that it was empty when he last looked.
"W- what? How?" he asks, shocked.
"Dude, Peter has literally just said 'hallucinating', which part of it didn't you get?" She looks at Peter. "We're never ever drugging him again."
Peter can only agree but he's not about to show it. "MJ, please stop roasting him. And I also said trouble understanding and loss of concentration. What did you expect him to do, solve equations on par with the ones Bruce Banner solves?"
MJ scoffs, but doesn't bother answering.
"And who's that?" asks Ned while pointing at the giant bodyguard/chauffeur in a suit.
"Hmm?" asks Peter as he stops reading the warnings written on the bottle and looks up. "Oh, that's Dylan, one of Mr. Stark's bodyguards –God knows why he needs one– and my ex-chauffeur-new-partner-in-crime.
"Sup boys and girl!" says the man, using the wing mirror to look at them.
"Thank you for helping us," beams Peter, and Ned can see a hint of a smile on MJ's face as well.
Huh, so now they are thanking someone because he helped them to abduct their best friend on his way home.
Okay.
"Yeah," Ned says dryly. "Thank you so much."
The man gives him a genuine smile. "You're welcome, young man!"
Okay.
Too weirded out to keep the conversation going, he turns his attention to his friends. "Well, why are we here, exactly?"
"Because we kidnapped you." answers MJ casually.
Okay.
Maybe he really is the most normal person in the car.
Which honestly says a lot.
"Yeah, for some reason I noticed too. Why, exactly?" he asks, instead of crying in frustration like he wants to.
Peter shrugs. "Why not?"
Ned's one tiny step away from facepalming.
Thankfully MJ, who decides to act normal for a minute from the looks of it, elbows Peter ("MJ, what are you trying to do, kill me?"). "It's for your birthday, loser."
So, they kidnapped him because of his birthday which is tomorrow.
"MJ, my birthday is tomorrow, remember?" he says slowly, after another awkward silence – which for some reason happen a lot today.
"Yup, but that's the boring one; ours will be awesome."
"Wait – so, two parties, one with the team?" asks Ned, bitterness about the weird situation forgotten.
"Of course," Peter pipes in, "Did you really think that we would just drop it?"
Well, yeah, that's what normal people do.
Which is why Peter's right.
He will finally have a party with her friends. After all these years, finally.
Ned loves these idiots.
The boy's happiness almost vanishes when he thinks about his mom, who didn't let him throw a party in the first place. "But my mom didn't let me throw a party with you guys, wouldn't she be, I don't know, mad?"
"Yeah, she would be," answers MJ.
"If you were the one throwing the party." continues Peter.
"But you aren't."
"You're just the guest of honor."
The duo high-five and Peter punches the air with his free hand. "We did it!"
"Seems legit but you guys are seriously creeping me out with all that 'completing-each-other's-sentences-thing' right now. Like, who are you, the Weasley twins?" questions Ned, dead-serious, as he rubs a hand through his face.
"That's another thing that would be gross." MJ points out, face just as serious as Ned's. "Since we're dating and stuff."
Ned wants to bang his head repeatedly on a wall.
The only thing that stops him is that there's no wall.
He settles on asking a question instead. "But… why fighting me and then kidnapping me? I'm honestly kinda traumatized now."
Peter scratches his neck awkwardly. "Um, yeah, sorry about that – but hey, at least now you know what not to do in order not to get kidnapped, right?" he asks nervously, earning himself a blank look from Ned.
"Also," he continues hastily. "It's your early birthday gift, a valuable experience."
"So… basically a kidnapping as my birthday gift?"
"Exactly."
Ned blinks. "…couldn't you… I don't know, just ask me instead?"
"Yeah," MJ answers, and Ned knows that she's smirking even without looking at her face. "We could've – but it's not fun.
"Okay."
Okay.
