ataraxionlogs | [ closed ] she knows what I think about.

"It wouldn't even be rude if all of this wasn't going on. I'm from New York, everyone drops in on everyone else unexpectedly."

Peter shrugged, trying to be easy going about this whole thing even if it continued to be awkward with... pretty much everyone. Even if he knew, logically, it was no one's fault, it was still a strain on his emotional wellbeing. A fact that he was keeping buried because nobody needed to care - needed to know - but being stuck with memories that practically twisted in around his own made it that much stranger. As if it was suddenly had to decipher who he was amongst all the other things he had to keep track of.

"Besides, it's not like I don't know why you're here." Trying to be evasive was stupid. Peter just stretched his legs out in front of him, looking at Ned - he'd passed the proverbial talking stick along. Now it was Ned's turn.

"New York." How he missed his City home. Ned's chest tightened with it then. But he was grateful for Peter's more direct nature, nodding when the other man got to the issue at hand.

"Yes, I know you... know. But how much - do you know?" His eyes went a little wide, thinking of his conversation with Nathan, but he merely waited for Peter to answer the question, leaning forward a little.

Peter carefully looked at Ned for a few seconds, before glancing elsewhere, thinking to himself about how exactly to go saying things about one more person's life. He hated this part, the one that was none of his business; it wasn't his place to give people back their memories.

But Ned had asked.

"I saw your brothers, for one thing." Peter's expression turned near apologetic - brothers who he didn't understand; Peter could relate. "Your dad leaving you at school?"

He managed a nod, though he was frowning; almost scowling really. In light of the conversation that had just transpired between himself and Nathan, he wasn't exactly expecting to have to rehash his own family feelings. And yet he didn't know how to breach the subject. We both have abilities, want to talk about it? had never been Ned's strong suit, even when everyone he knew had a power of one kind or another.

"I met you once, on another world," Ned blurted out suddenly, eyes widening to at least twice their normal size. He hadn't meant to say that, not at all.

That... was not the response he was expecting. Not that Peter knew what to expect when he didn't really know Ned all that well in the first place, but Peter was left blinking widely in shock. Shock was maybe an understatement.

"Another world?"

What the hell did that mean? His life kept getting progressively more confusing - he'd been here far longer than he knew as an entirely different man - and this was just one more step towards things Peter felt would make him lose his mind. How was he even supposed to ask for more information about this? How was he supposed to wrap his head around something that made no sense?

But how could he not ask? "What do you mean- You met me? Somewhere else?"

He swallowed, throat feeling overwhelmingly dry at the line of questions. How this was better than just talking about what he could do, he didn't know. Ned had just needed Peter to know, to understand why this place was so frustrating; so heartbreaking for the pie maker.

"It was... for all intents and purposes, an alternate New York City. You were dating a vampire slayer." Yeah, he really needed to never speak ever. But he couldn't lie to someone who asked him a direct question, not unless life and death literally hung in the balance for it. And he didn't fear Peter despite the power Ned knew he possessed. If anything, it likened him to the more nervous of the two.

Peter nearly choked on Ned's words, not sure if they were ridiculously amusing or horrifying, or if they managed to be both at the same time. After everything with Spike, he was fairly sure he knew what 'vampire slayer' he'd been supposedly dating and Peter became silently convinced that Spike might actually murder him in his sleep if he said a word about it. If it was even him, that is. But he'd never gone to an alternate New York. He'd never done it- but he didn't remember months he'd spent here, either.

This was agonizingly uncomfortable, to put it mildly, and Peter shifted, leaning forward into his further line of question. "Do you... know anything else? Because I was here before I actually remember being here, and none of that- what you just said, is anything I remember doing. I've never dated a vampire slayer before but it could've been a different, I don't know- a different future?"

Peter was trying, really he was. But a conversation about abilities would have been far easier, considering how off balance this put Peter. It was one more thing he couldn't wrap his head around and didn't want to have to think about, but if Ned knew him there... "Were we friends?" Are we?

"No one else remembers. But I don't remember being here, so--" So I'm not crazy he didn't say. Couldn't say it, or it might make it true.

Had they been friends? Acquaintances, certainly. Commiseraters extraordinare. But friends? Ned had never been very good at making friends - and even after two years in the City he only had enough to count on one hand, without even using all his fingers.

"I'd like to be," Ned said instead, fixing Peter with a more solid gaze than he'd managed since coming to the man's strange room; the conglomeration of weird clothing and items suddenly making more sense. If he could go out on a limb this one time, maybe he could do it again.

And again.

Peter lifted his eyebrows, not entirely sure how to go with that. It meant they hadn't really been friends, but they hadn't been... well, the opposite of friends, either. But where to go from there, Peter wasn't entirely sure. Not when things had suddenly been tipped slightly on their sides - everything had been as of late. Why was this any different?

"Maybe we could be." Peter managed a faint smile, apologetic because he didn't know anything better to say.

"I don't know how some people deal with it so well." Peter said it abruptly, but it was still true. Some people acted like it wasn't that big of a deal that they'd come and gone with the snap of a finger, but Peter still hadn't gotten over it. Unsurprisingly. "I mean the- forgetting everything. But what do I know, maybe it's not that big of a deal. I'm guessing you already know what I can do and I never thought that was worth worrying about."

The pie maker's lips twitched upward at that, and it was more hope than he'd been expecting from the other man. Perhaps he could have a friend here after all. Ned opened his mouth to start in about how other people had always coped better than he himself did, but Peter had said something far more interesting, and far more to the point.

He did know what Peter could do, and he was assuming that Peter knew, too, what Ned could do. But had he seen the caveats that Nathan had? Did he know the full extent of power that he now undoubtedly possessed only by being a few feet away from the other man. The beginnings of Ned's smile dropped, replaced by unmistakable worry.

"I know what you can do... which means." He swallowed. "Which means, you can do what I can do."

It was one of those things where Peter wasn't sure if he was supposed to stay hush-hush about it (how many secrets is a guy supposed to be able to keep?), watching Ned carefully to try and figure out where he stood when it came to what exactly they were talking about.

Because Ned could do something. Peter just didn't know what it was.

Pushing a hand back through his hair, Peter brought one of his knees up against his chest, resting against it and almost leaning closer in the process. He was always intrigued when it came to what other people could do, and if he'd picked it up - it meaning absolutely anything - maybe he should find out what it was he could do sooner rather than later. And find out how long it'd take before he'd figure out how the hell to control it. Or just keep it entirely under wraps. If he'd... even gotten it at all, he didn't know how all this worked with people from other universes.

"I don't know, I might be able to do what you can do. It'd help if I knew though- what you do, I mean. I didn't get to find that one out."

Oh, well. That complicated things, didn't it? If only because he had never had to make this speech to completion. People either found out or they didn't, but this... this was a whole new ball game. "You don't know?" escaped his lips, knowing how dumb it sounded, and yet he'd been unable to stop it.

He shook his head to clear it and hunkered down into the chair as much as possible, almost entirely opposite from Peter's receptive, yet protective, body language. "Your brother - he called me. He saw my... ability for himself."

Ned placed a hand on either one of his thighs and squeezed before looking up through unruly bangs at his unlikely ally. If he could only push the words out, maybe the aftermath wouldn't be as catastrophic as he assumed.

"H-he said, you're. You're a nurse?"

[ closed ] she knows what I think about.

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