Fic: Tread Softly (Part 2)
He packs up every picture of Gwen but one. He leaves all of Harry’s where they are.
He can’t give up. There must be something he can do.
He reads up on genomics. He returns to Roosevelt.
Finally, he climbs the new Avengers Tower.
Maybe Mr. Stark can help. Maybe Dr. Banner knows a thing or two about turning green and mad. He doesn’t think they would use the knowledge for evil.
He ends up telling them almost everything and begging them to save Harry. He doesn’t dare take any risks with the formula this time. He’s failed enough of his loved ones already. He can’t lose Harry too.
Mr. Stark says he knows someone who might be able to help and seemed rather apologetic about being off-planet when the mess with Max and Harry went down. Dr. Banner only suggests to tread softly (there it is again; if only he knew how) and try not to provoke any intense emotions to keep things under control.
On his way home, he stops a few crimes, rescues a few people, and visits Gwen’s grave. Hope, she said. In the five months he’d wasted wallowing in his grief, how many people’s hope had been taken away? She would never have wanted that. He can’t stop walking. He's been paralyzed for too long already - first by indecision, and then by grief. And in all the time that he'd stood still, he’d hurt so many people - Aunt May, Gwen, Harry…
He wants to visit Harry again, but it will probably only provoke “intense emotions” and trigger the mutation. He flops back gracelessly on his bed, staring at the wall of papers that make only some sense on his best days. Things had gone okay the last time though. Perhaps he could bring another distraction?
He heads back to Fifth Avenue, gets fruit crepes and a hot chocolate to go before going to Ravencroft. The place still looks more like an army base than an asylum, and he longs to get Harry out, back to his silk sheets and down pillows, to the luxuries his friend is accustomed to. As usual, the personnel search, but don’t stop him, and he’s allowed into the visitors’ chamber with his treats.
Blue eyes brighten at the sight, and once upon a time, it would be him and not the desserts that cheered Harry up. He can’t bear to think that those days are forever gone. Harry seems frailer as he reaches for the hot chocolate, his already fair skin a little paler under golden hair that could use a trim. His hands shake as he holds the crepe, and his long nails show traces of rust-colored flecks and stains.
Again, Harry seems content to ignore Peter as he eats, but where he had avoided eye contact before, he meets brown eyes head on now. To his surprise, instead of the usual anger, Harry seems haunted now, afraid. He’s about to ask what’s wrong when the other takes his hand.
“Peter,” Harry murmurs, rising as he finishes the crepe. “You seem better.”
He should be glad for the pleasantry, Peter thinks as he stands as well and laces their fingers, but it only fills him with worry. “As do you,” he hazards, searching the blond’s face for the barest flicker of a clue.
“What do you know,” Harry enunciates bitterly, stepping slowly closer with a sweet smile. “Perhaps all I needed was therapy, after all.”
“It seems to be working out for you,” he offers, taking a step back in turn. It’s a little like the dance Harry tried to teach him as a kid, only he’s taller than Harry now and doesn’t have two left feet anymore.
The other sighs, dropping his gaze. “I wonder when they’ll give up on me.”
“Isn’t it their job not to?”
It comes and goes, Harry said. He vacillates between resentment and amiability, between the madman he’s become and the friend Peter remembers.
“Not all that is broken can be fixed, Parker,” he spits through gritted teeth. “And wouldn’t you know best?”
“But you can be, Har,” Peter insists as his back hits the wall. “I’ll find a way.”
Harry leans forward to rest his head on the brunet’s shoulder. “You won’t give up on me, will you?”
Wrapping his free arm around the older boy, Peter answers, “Never have and never will.”
“They experiment on people in here, Parker,” Harry hisses into his ear, raising his free hand to Peter’s neck in a chokehold. “And you put me here.”
“Harry…” he wheezes as the hand wrapped around his throat tightens. “I-”
Abruptly, Harry lets go as the guards rush to the door. “Help me, Peter,” he whispers, caressing a lightly tanned cheek and guiding Peter’s jaw so their eyes meet again. “Save me from them.”
And then he presses their lips together.
It’s strange, surreal, but Peter is kissing back before his mind has even caught up to it. Harry's lips are soft, and he tastes like fruits and whipped cream from the crepes and traces of some kind of chemical.
Like water in a desert, it makes him feel alive.
All at once, it is everything and nothing like kissing Gwen.
But then Harry pulls away with a gasp before Peter can put any further thought into that.
“Harry?”
The blond falls to his knees with a sharp cry of pain. When he wraps his shaking arms around himself, Peter sees the other’s hands are green and clawed. Slowly, he kneels as well.
“Harry, what is this?”
Bloodshot blue-green eyes dart to him, then drop to the floor. “You don’t want my money, so I was hoping I could offer you something else instead.”
He’s not prepared for the pain, for how easily the words reduce him to tears. “No,” he sobs, burying his face in Harry’s shoulder like he always used to. “No, no, no.”
“Is it so unwelcome?” Harry asks in a small voice.
Peter shakes his head. “It’s not like that, Har. It’s nothing like that. I-I’d- not like this, Har. Not like this. You don’t have to offer me anything.”
“Then you won’t help me?” The blond’s voice is chilling. “You’ll abandon me again?”
“Of course I’ll help you, Har. I just… I just need a plan.”
“Sure you do.” Harry shoves him away. “To keep me here or somewhere else forever!” He lunges at Peter with sharp claws, and only the spider reflexes allow the younger boy to roll away in time. “You put me in here!!” he screams as he attacks again, and the guards grab him but he throws them off effortlessly. “You don’t want me out!! You don’t really even care about me, onl-aahhh!”
“Harry!!”
The guards shot him, and he whirls on them. They’re just tranquilizer darts, thankfully. “You fools. You don’t know what you’re playing with.”
More guards arrive. He sways, and they quickly grab him. He struggles, but his movements are weak, sluggish. What kind of tranquilizer could work so quickly on even a failed spider venom mutation?
“Harry, no!” Peter runs toward them, but they slam the gate in his face.
“You’re a fraud, Peter!” Harry yells weakly as they haul him away. “I hate you! Keep your false affections! Where were you whenever I needed you?! You were never there for me, Peter! Never!!”
~*~
Harry’s leaving to Europe in two hours. They’re at the airport, and he keeps scanning the crowd.
His father isn’t here.
Peter doesn’t think Norman will come, but he can’t bear to dash Harry’s hopes. Instead, he takes a gift box out of his backpack.
“This is for you.”
Harry brightens, and he’s glad.
“May I open it?” His excitement turns teasing. “Or are you the type that believes you shouldn’t open gifts in front of the giver?”
“Um… You can open it,” he mumbles. He hopes Harry will like it. But maybe Harry only buys designer brand photo albums handmade from Italian leather or something.
The other lifts the cover and carefully takes the bright blue (like Harry’s eyes) album out, but doesn’t say anything as he opens it and turns a few pages.
Nervously, Peter adds, “You asked me once what I do with all the photos I take of you…”
“You made this?” Harry asks at last.
He nods. “It’s n-”
“I love it.” Harry dives forward to throw his arms around Peter. “I love it, Peter. It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
“Will you visit?” he asks, returning the hug.
The older boy sighs. “I don’t know, Pete. I don’t know what European boarding school is like. We’ll see.”
Peter bites his lip. He won’t cry. He doesn’t want Harry to cry too. “I wish I could go with you, Har.”
Harry strokes his hair. “Me too. Maybe in a year or two?”
“Sir, I hate to interrupt, but we must be going,” Bernard says quietly.
Harry nods, pulling away reluctantly. “I’ll miss you, Pete.”
Peter blinks back his tears. “I’ll miss you more.”
Harry shakes his head, but doesn’t argue. Instead, he wipes the rim of tears off Peter’s bottom eyelid with his thumbs. “Goodbye, Peter.”
Peter only shakes his head as well, and he turns to follow Bernard to the gate. He wishes he were as thoughtful as Peter, that he’d gotten his best friend some kind of farewell gift too.
“Wait,” he tells Bernard as it occurs to him, and he runs back to where Peter is still standing. “Take this,” he says breathlessly, removing the ring on his left middle finger and pressing it into Peter’s hand.
“A-are you sure?”
It’s platinum with small aquamarines set at evenly spaced intervals around it. It was his birthday gift from his father last year, but he’s pretty sure it was actually from Bernard, and his father didn’t even know he’d paid for it, since he asked why Harry was having a party when they ran into each other in the hall that night. At least it will have fond memories for Peter - his best friend always said it matches his eyes. And Father would probably rather buy Peter a gift anyway.
“Yeah. I want you to have it.”
He needs to give up and stop being bitter, forget all about this life. Father isn’t coming, probably doesn’t even know his flight departs in an hour, probably wouldn’t care if he was never seen again. It’s Peter who doesn’t need anything to remember him by, who will revisit all their favorite places in his memory, whom the ring will comfort whenever the distance seems too great to bridge - a validation and a promise.
“Thanks, Har.” The brunet presses it with Harry’s hand to his heart. “I’ll take good care of it.”
Someday, Peter can sell the ring for a better life, but Harry knows he will instead cherish it among his favorite things. He smiles, squeezing that smaller hand one last time. “I know you will.”
~*~
Peter gets a call from a Dr. Elias Wirtham, a friend of Tony Stark’s. He suggests, as Peter himself had considered, synthesizing an anti-venom from the data in Roosevelt to neutralize the side effects, which might have some effect on the failed mutation itself. However, he worries that if it is successful, Harry’s illness will kill him soon after. Hope, Gwen reminds him, so Peter says they have to try.
They meet up for coffee along with Dr. Wirtham’s assistant, Anna Maria Marconi, a tiny girl beside the 6’5” doctor, and they seem like good people. Eli (as he insists Peter call him) says he agreed to help because he doesn’t want Harry to die needlessly like his brother, Joshua, had. Deciding he can trust them to a point, Peter suggests the theory he’s been going over in his head - if they can isolate his father’s DNA in the spiders or their venom, and then replace it with Harry’s, it may work as a proper cure on Harry. Anna Maria says it’s possible, but that they’d need a sample of his father’s DNA as a reference.
He searches Roosevelt, but there’s nothing. So he returns to them the next day with a small tube of his blood. When they ask him whose it is, he shrugs and says he found it frozen and unlabelled in his father’s hidden lab, so he’s guessing it’s either his father’s or an early test subject’s. They don’t question it, but Anna Maria says that they’ll need some time to analyze and use it.
That night, as Spider-Man, he breaks into Ravencroft.
He knocks a few guards out and checks their records. Harry wasn’t lying. They do experiment on humans here. He finds, among other evidence, files and videos on the late Electro.
The other guards rush in, and he waves at them, continues reading. “Don’t mind me,” he says, dodging attacks. “Just reading up on an old friend. No trouble at all. Yet. You guys were mean to Max, man. That’s so not how my last therapy session went.”
Just then, the alarms go off. A patient has escaped.
“Uh-oh.”
They look accusingly at him, and he shrugs.
“Don’t look at me. I just dropped in to read a few files.”
That night, Harry Osborn escapes from Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane. Someone else broke Harry out while the guards were distracted by Spider-Man’s break-in.
The next day, reporters flock to Ravencroft after an anonymous tip accuses the institute of human experimentation. A week later, the place is bombed to the ground. Spider-Man glimpses a metallic figure leaving the scene, but doesn’t manage to capture it - the other had too much of a head start.
Eli calls. The anti-venom is ready, but there’s no way to test it without poisoning someone else, which is neither ethical nor feasible. They need all the spider venom they have to create and test the cure for Harry. The doctor gives the anti-venom to him in an autoinjector.
He tries searching for Harry, but the other hasn’t been back to either his mansion or his penthouse. He looks around to see if he can find any clues that point to other hideouts, but instead, in a drawer full of expensive watches, he finds a dusty gift box. Inside is an old photo album, the edges and binding worn from years of being flipped through.
He recognizes it - page after page of photographs he’d taken of them both and handwritten captions, little messages that seem so corny now that he’s nineteen instead of nine. His vision starts to swim, and he blinks to clear it. Harry kept it all this time.
Suddenly, his phone rings. It’s Anna Maria - she’s succeeded at isolating the human DNA with the given sample, but now she needs a sample of Harry’s from before the mutation.
Glancing around the penthouse, he steals a toothbrush and a cushion cover he’s sure Harry has used recently. He takes the album with him.
He searches his things, turns his room upside down.
It must be here. He knows it. He only put it away when they fell completely out of touch. And God knows that’s his fault too. He should have tried harder to stay in contact, gone to visit when the letters stopped, switched to e-mail when he got his laptop or something. Heck, he should have at least tried to get a hold of Harry when he saw his friend in that magazine with the models, maybe tease him about finally having a reason to buy the other half of the store, but no. There had been school. And work and bullies and money, and he’d let his best friend slip away, let the world trample their childhood dreams and promises.
Maybe Harry was right - he’d never cared enough until it was too late.
Harry and Gwen, he should have cherished them both when he had the chance. And maybe if he'd just kept all his promises, Harry would be fine, and Gwen never would have had to die.
At last, in the third box under the bed, he finds a padded case. It’s his first camera, the Nikon Harry gave him nearly a decade ago, and the pictures can’t compare to the camera he has now, but he could never bear to give it away. The only part that looks worn is the strap, and he runs his fingers over the camera lovingly. The lenses are still good - it’s a pity they won’t fit his current model.
Among them, in a little plastic bag, is a ring, long since too small to wear even on his little finger. The gems match Harry’s eyes, and he’d worn it everyday until he couldn’t anymore. Looking at it now, it’s probably worth more than his entire family’s possessions, and maybe if he sold it, Aunt May wouldn’t have to work for him to go to college, but he can’t.
Maybe if he’d worn it, even on a chain around his neck, when he went to see Harry that time, things could have been different. Maybe if he’d just told Harry the truth and made him take Peter’s blood sample for a test before using it, they never would have come to this.
Harry, Gwen - he feels like a fool now. How long had he wasted not realizing how much he loved them both? How much he'd always loved them both?
Sometimes, his life just feels like mistake after mistake. Gwen, George, Harry, Max, Uncle Ben - he keeps doing it all wrong, and he can’t fix any of it.
Just then, he hears emergency sirens outside the window, and his heart leaps as he puts on his suit and grabs the autoinjector. Harry. Maybe it’s Harry.
But when he swings out into the night, he hears about a winged man dropping police choppers after a robbery spree over the radio and can’t help his disappointment.
He’ll find Harry, he swears, and save him. For once in his life, he prays he’ll get this one thing right. He owes Harry that much.
~*~
”Wow…” Peter breathes as he steps into the mansion. He’s never been to Harry’s house before, and it’s gorgeous, enormous, overwhelming. He can’t believe Harry only lives here with his father, Bernard and a few other servants - it looks like it could house an army.
“This is the main hall,” Harry explains with a smile, leading him past a decorative marble table inlaid with many different stone rings to a door on the right. “Here’s the living room.” It’s spacious and inviting with its plush leather sofas and elegant wooden panels, and they have a huge television surrounded by speakers of varying size and shape. “That’s the dining room, which you will see at dinner, and the kitchen is behind it.” He indicates the doors across the hall from them. Taking Peter’s hand, Harry leads him up the marble and wood staircase (they even have those pretty crystal chandeliers he’s only seen in movies) to a carpeted corridor lined with windows overlooking a perfectly landscaped garden. They go straight to the door at the very end, which Harry opens with a flourish. “And this here, is my room.”
It’s big and airy with billowing white curtains and a private balcony. The bed is massive, enough to fit five comfortably, and they could probably swim in the adjoining bathroom’s tub. Several rugs adorn the shiny wooden floor, and there’s a glass case filled with figurines -robots, superheroes, planes and the like- in the middle circled by a train track. Harry even has his own desk, couch, computer, Playstation 2 and television set. Given a food supply, he wouldn’t need to leave his room at all.
“It’s beautiful,” and Peter almost can’t believe he’s spending the weekend here.
Harry smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Here.” He indicates the black leather couch before Peter can ask. “Set your things down, and let’s play some games before dinner.”
They play a few rounds of Guilty Gear (Peter only wins one), then move on to Baldur’s Gate for a few quests before they are informed that dinner is ready. They head down to the palatial dining room with its framed paintings and wooden accents to match the tables and chairs. Harry sits at the head of the table with Peter to his right; Bernard pours them each a glass of water, folds a napkin onto their laps and nods to a lady who then leaves through a door Harry says leads to the kitchen.
Seconds later, cream of asparagus is served in an expensive-looking dish with an even more expensive-looking spoon on a thick white placemat. Next, the servants bring them a strawberry and walnut salad with grilled chicken and raspberry vinaigrette, and Peter is so glad Bernard is introducing the food because he would otherwise have no clue what he was really eating. Harry keeps asking whether he likes the food and, when he assures his host this is better than some of the restaurants he’s been to, smiles, a bit knowing, a little proud. When they finish, they are served halibut in a sauce of lemon, butter and chives, accompanied by some spaghetti tossed in truffle oil and broccoli tossed in garlic butter. Finally, there is some kind of coffee dessert called tiramisu, coffee with hot cream for Harry and hot chocolate with marshmallows for Peter.
Everything is delicious, and Peter doesn’t think he can eat anymore after all that.
“Oh Harry, do you eat like this everyday?” he sighs, leaning back in his chair.
“Only sometimes,” the other replies, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “I think I’d get sick of it if I ate like this all the time.”
“Really?” Peter yawns and stretches. “It’s so good though, all of it.”
Harry slides off the chair and extends his hand. “C’mon. Let’s take a bubble bath and then you can help me with that homework you claim is so easy.”
Peter beams at him and takes his hand. “We’ll be done in no time, I promise,” he declares cheerily as they head up to the room together.
Bernard runs the bath as they get all the books they need out on Harry’s desk. Peter explains the problem to Harry, and for a moment, the older boy envies how much cleverer Peter is despite the age difference. His friend could probably be in high school now if he really wanted. Then Bernard calls them in for the bath, and they wade around in water scented with expensive fruits. The built-in jets come on and Peter giggles - it’s ticklish. Harry enjoys it though, finds it relaxing, so he slides next to the blond, presses his back up against a jet just like Harry does, and oh, it really is very comfortable like this. He links their hands, and they recline side by side with their eyes closed until the water cools. Then they rinse off under the shower and dry themselves in large fluffy towels. Peter dresses quickly and watches Bernard dress Harry with some amusement before leading the blond back to the desk to finish their work.
Half an hour later, they’re done, and Peter is tired. Harry says he’s heading downstairs to get something, and that Peter should wait here for him, so Peter nods and sits on the couch to wait.
Some minutes pass before he checks the clock, yawning. He wonders what Harry is getting, what’s taking so long. Bernard could probably help him get whatever he wants in a jiffy, unless it’s not in the house. Surely Harry doesn’t plan to go out now? He gets up and goes to the door. Harry didn’t say he couldn’t leave the room. Quietly, he opens the door, slips out and shuts it behind him. From afar, he hears some commotion, seeming to come from downstairs, so he hurries down the dimly lit corridor, bare feet soundless on the carpet. It’s when he reaches the top of the stairs that the yelling begins in earnest.
“What did I tell you, Harry?! You’re always like this!!” It’s Harry’s father, and he doesn’t hear Harry’s response, but Norman Osborn just continues his tirade. “Why can’t you be more like your mother?! The only thing you got from her is your face. You don’t understand anything!!
Harry cries out then, in obvious pain, and Peter is running down the stairs without thinking.
“You want this, you want that, but you can’t do a thing I say!!” Norman is hitting Harry with his big metal walking stick every few words, oh God. ”It sh-”
“No, stop!!!” Peter dives in front of Harry, wraps his arms around the curled up blond tightly. “Agh!!!”
“Peter!!!” Harry screams, sitting up and clutching the younger boy.
“Parker’s…?”
Father had been midway through delivering the next blow when Peter jumped in, so he’d borne the brunt of that last brutal hit to the back of his left shoulder. God, Harry hopes Peter hasn’t suffered a fracture.
“Harry, why didn’t you tell me Peter was here?” The old man’s voice is deadly calm over the sickly sweet stench of scotch in the air.
“I-I tried,” Harry barely manages to mumble. “You wouldn’t listen.”
Norman strikes his walking stick on floor, and Harry flinches. “I’m sorry you had to see this, Peter,” he says stiffly before heading up the stairs without another word, his heavy footfalls and the thump of his walking stick echoing throughout the large house that suddenly seems so cold and empty.
"Peter? Peter. Why did you do that, Pete? Are you okay?" Harry runs his hands over the smaller boy's body, making sure he’s all right. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
Peter lifts his tear-stained face and cups Harry's cheeks in his small warm hands. "He hurt you, Harry. He hurt you."
"It's okay. It's okay." Harry sniffles, taking Peter’s face in his hands too. "I made him mad. It's my fault."
Peter shakes his head vigorously, gripping the blond's pale wrists. There are dark bruises all over his arms and legs where he braced against his father's assault. "This is too much, Har. This is too much."
"I-” Harry gasps, collapsing in on himself. He can’t- He can’t. Oh God, he usually makes it back to his room before he starts crying, but with Peter, and the ugly truth staring him in the face, he just…
“Harry, Harry, Harry,” Peter murmurs, pulling him back into thin arms, tears still falling freely from his sweet brown eyes. “It’s okay. I’m here, I’m here. God, I wish I could protect you.”
The older boy shakes his head, choking back his sobs in Peter’s pajamas. “No. No, it’s fine. Father, he- he wasn’t himself. He’ll apologize in the morning like he always does, and-”
“Harry.” Peter takes Harry by the shoulders, feeling anger rise up in his throat like hot bile. “Always? He always hurts you like this?”
“No!” Harry covers Peter’s hands with his own. “No, no, no. It doesn’t happen often, I swear. I-It’s not like I see him much anyway.”
“Oh Harry,” Peter sighs, burying his face in messy blond hair and cradling his best friend close.
Maybe his parents didn’t want him anymore, but they never hurt him like Norman hurts Harry. Uncle Ben and Aunt May have spanked him in anger too, but they don’t leave bruises like these. He can’t bear to see Harry like this, his beautiful friend covered in tears and swelling blue-black patches. Maybe Aunt May can tell him if parents are supposed to do that. He doesn’t know how anyone can bear it.
“C’mon,” he whispers, carding his fingers gently through golden silk. He likes Harry’s hair better like this - natural, instead of that perfectly coiffed style Bernard helps him set every morning. “Let’s go put some ice on these bruises, okay?”
Harry nods and lets Peter help him up before leading the way to the mansion’s incredibly well-equipped kitchen. The servants appear to all be asleep - no one’s around. They find a clean napkin in one of the drawers before making their way over to the large refrigerator. The left door is the freezer, and Harry helps him pull it open. They wrap some ice cubes in the napkin before heading back up to Harry’s room and sitting on the king-sized bed. Harry winces when Peter presses the ice pack gently to the bruises on his forearms, but doesn’t complain. Bernard usually does this too. Then Peter moves the ice pack to the next bruise and leans down to touch his lips to the first one.
“P-Peter? What are you doing?”
The brunet grins. “Aunt May says that makes them better. She always does that when I get bruises.”
That reminds Harry. “You have one too, don’t you?”
“Just one. It’s not a big deal. I’ve had worse falling from my bike,” Peter answers before kissing the next bruise, but he flinches when Harry touches his shoulder.
“Let me see.”
Hesitantly, Peter removes his pajama shirt and turns. There’s a growing bruise on his left shoulder blade, visibly darkening even in the dim illumination of the nightlight. Harry takes the bundle of ice and presses it to the spot, eliciting a soft sound of pain.
“If… If um… it’s more than just a bruise, and you go to the doctor, I’ll pay for it, all right?”
“Harry-”
“No. No, I insist. You did this for me, Peter. You shouldn’t have, but you did, and I can’t- I can’t let you suffer for helping me, okay?”
“Okay,” the younger boy agrees reluctantly. “Okay. I just… didn’t want him to hurt you anymore.”
“I know,” Harry murmurs, lifting the ice pack away. “Thank you.” He kisses the bruise tenderly, winding an arm around Peter’s bare waist to hold his friend close and rest his head on the back of Peter’s neck before kissing it again. “Hope it’ll heal faster.”
“Um…” Peter shivers, then laces their fingers and turns. He’s blushing, and it’s the cutest thing Harry has ever seen. “Your bruises.”
Harry lets him resume icing and kissing them, and when Peter finishes, they leave the ice pack in the sink and curl up under the luxurious covers. Peter molds his smaller body to Harry’s, and for once, the bed is warm, comforting.
“Promise me,” Harry whispers after several moments, clasping their hands.
“Hm?”
“Promise me you won’t tell anyone what you saw tonight.”
Oh. Asking Aunt May for advice is out of the question then. “Okay,” Peter sighs, tightening his hold protectively on the older boy. He’ll just have to stay here or take Harry away more often.
~*~
He’s delivering Vulture to the police when the first bombs fall, and he’s not sure how many dived for cover quickly enough. He doesn’t have time to worry about that though. He needs to lead Harry away from the city center, from civilians. Vulture has already done enough collateral damage.
“Listen, Har,” he pleads when he’s close enough to be heard. “We can still fix this, so-”
“You had your chance, Peter! Harry’s dead!!”
Peter dodges several razors and swings around Harry, leading the other further away from the city. “Harry, please,” he begs as he blocks another blow now that they’re back in close quarters. It’s too late for Gwen now, but he can still save Harry, and he has to believe. “L-”
“Stop talking about fixing me, Parker!” Harry snaps, a sinister hiss in his voice as he presses the attack. “There’s nothing to fix! I’ve never been better!”
“Not better, Har. Normal. Like you wanted. Like you deserve.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me about what I deserve!” He rams the glider violently at Peter, who narrowly evades around a spire.
“No, Harry, listen. I-”
“I’ve always hated you, you know? Deep down inside.” He grins, feral, as they continue trading blows. “Everyone’s favorite little boy. Father liked you better. Bernard liked you better. Even the girls.”
“What? Harry, c’mon, you know that can’t be true. Bernard adored you, girls didn't know I existed, and your father didn't care about anyone.”
He ducks under the swing of the other’s arm and tries to trip Harry off his glider, launching some web into a wall to hold on, but doesn't quite succeed. He grunts in frustration. He needs to inject the anti-venom, but the suit Harry is wearing means the only viable place is the neck, and he only has one shot at this.
“But you tricked me.” Harry throws Peter into the wall, darts in and slides his hands up to strangle. “You tricked me with your sweet little lies, then left me behind, and oh, I hated you so much even then.”
“It was never a lie, Har,” he gasps, pushing at Harry’s hand with effort.
“And then you have the gall to waltz back in just to tell me you’ve found someone more important!”
As soon as Harry’s chokehold slips, he kicks the blond back and swings around him to strike again, but Harry backflips away, dropping a pumpkin bomb. Peter leaps for the next building to avoid the blast, but Harry knocks him out of the air, laughing maniacally.
"So I killed her. Pretty Gwen Stacy. She fell just like this, didn’t she?”
Peter twists to avoid the falling debris, sends one flying at the other as a distraction and uses his web to sling him back up onto the roof of a nearby tower. “It was never like that, Har! Stop this. This isn’t you.” Gwen believed too.
“Oh, but it is!” Harry flies up higher, spreading his arms. “I’ve never felt so free! All those thoughts I pushed away, all those things I didn’t say… If only Father could see me now.”
And this is it, Peter thinks, the heart of the problem. Maybe it’s all true, and he’d just forgotten. Harry told him before that he should have been Norman’s son instead because Norman approved of him, but nothing Harry did was ever enough. Maybe all those little things they did growing up led Harry on to the added disappointment of their lost friendship. He should never have stopped writing, should have saved up to visit, should never have left Harry alone. He’d forgotten the fragility hidden under that veneer of spoilt arrogance, how lonely and unloved Harry had always felt. “Everyone wants my money!” Harry screamed that day, and instead of reaching out when he saw that tightly wound desperation, he ran away. He didn’t know how to deal, with Harry or with Gwen, so he went to chase ghosts. That he could do, that he understood. Maybe he’d always been selfish with the people he loves - every time he couldn’t deal, he ran. From Uncle Ben, from Harry and from Gwen. And this is how it ends.
He needs to stop. He can’t run anymore. If he hasn’t learned any better, then Gwen has died for nothing.
“And your lady, she deserved it,” Harry snarls, charging at him. He evades, and Harry throws more razors - one grazes Peter’s left shoulder, giving him the opening to close in and throw a punch, which Peter parries. “She let you be selfish." Another punch. “She took you away from me!”
He backflips to avoid the last punch and throw his opponent over the edge of the roof with his legs before diving after his friend. He lands heavily on the glider as Harry tries to right himself, and moves in before the other can react.
He kisses Harry.
It’s a little awkward through the mask, but the moment of shock is all he needs.
“Agh!” Harry flinches and shoves him away as the autoinjector stabs into his neck. “You-”
“I’m sorry.” He clings to the nearby wall to stop his descent. He’ll hold on to hope, hope that he can still reach Harry through the wreckage that lies between them. He's not lost anymore.
“Wh-” Harry screams in what sounds like excruciating pain.
“Harry!!!”
He dives after the blond as Harry suddenly drops. This time, he grabs his target before flipping them over and crossing his arms behind the other’s back to shoot two strings of web at the nearest building. They attach, and he swings into the wall, breaking the impact with his legs and Harry’s glider.
Faint and dismayed, Harry cries, “What have you done?”
~*~
Harry always believed his father brought him along to the Parkers’ to distract their son, so the adults could talk business. So he endeavored to do just that. Maybe if he served his purpose well, Father would be proud of him for a change.
It wasn’t hard to focus on Peter though. With his bright brown eyes and excited chatter about the little inventions he put together, truth be told, Peter was the one doing the distracting.
He’s brilliant, “just like his father,” Father kept saying, and Harry couldn’t help but envy that.
Maybe he wasn’t a distraction. Maybe Father hoped Peter will rub off on Harry.
So he tried to be more like Peter - studied harder, read more, spent more time with the boy. Father didn’t notice, but Peter did and showered him with affection. It's hard to resent someone who adores him so much. Even if Father still wishes he were more like Peter.
Peter doesn’t have many friends even now - he’s shy, so he doesn’t talk to others much. When Peter started attending the same elementary school, Harry found him being bullied at the bus stand outside the gates after school, but the bullies fled when Harry and Bernard approached. He didn’t let Peter take the bus that day, nor any day after. Peter would rest his head in Harry’s lap on the way home to avoid car sickness, and in spite of everything, they were content.
Then Peter’s parents disappeared.
Days later, they found the bodies in a plane crash. Peter was distraught and grew even more withdrawn than usual. He didn’t go to school; he barely left his room; he wouldn’t even talk to Harry.
Today is Peter’s parents’ funeral.
Peter can’t stop crying. Harry is terrified.
He’s terrified Father will try to adopt Peter, and he’ll never hear the end of how much better the younger boy is. He’s slightly relieved to see Ben and May doting over the boy when he approaches with Father to pay his respects. Father asks to speak to Peter though, and Harry would give anything to prevent the conversation, but he’s frozen to the spot, and he doesn’t know any words that would convince his father of anything. For all he knows, he’s invisible to the man anyway.
“Peter?”
“M-Mister Osborn,” the boy sniffles.
“I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“T-Th-Thank you.”
“Richard and Mary, did they tell you why they left?”
Peter shakes his head violently, and May Parker looks about to protest, but Father turns to the remaining Parkers next.
“Did they say anything before they left at all? To any of you?”
“Just that they needed to leave for a couple of months and they couldn’t take Peter with them,” Ben answers, squeezing his wife’s shoulder. “That’s the last we heard of them until the plane crash.”
Father looks from Ben and May to Peter. “Are you sure? Not even hints?”
To his surprise, Peter suddenly runs to him, burying his face in Harry’s shoulder. “I don’t know!” he wails, clinging to Harry’s black Armani jacket as he ruins it. “I don’t know why they went away! I don’t know why they didn’t want me anymore!”
“Oh Peter,” May sighs, wringing her hands, and Ben squeezes her shoulder.
“What did I do wrong? Harry, what did I do wrong?” he sobs. “Why wouldn’t they want me anymore?”
“I don’t know,” Harry whispers, wrapping his arms around his friend. “I think you’re perfect.”
“Really?” Peter leans back to look up at him, hopeful brown eyes peering out of his tear-stained face. “Mom and Dad used to say they love me. Maybe they went away because they don’t love me anymore. Do you love me, Harry?”
He wipes Peter’s face with his thumbs. “Of course I do, Peter.” He pulls the younger boy into a tighter hug. “You’ll always have me, I promise.” He knows what it’s like to be thrown away. But even if no one else wants them, they’ll always have each other.
~*~
Harry Osborn wakes to a familiar ceiling. He hadn’t wanted to come back here after the requisite deathbed visit. This house is too big for him, too empty even when there were people milling about. Maybe it wasn’t like this when Mother had been here, but he can barely remember that.
It’s warm though. He’s not alone.
“Mmngh, Harry?”
It’s Peter Parker lifting his head to look, blinking sleep out of concerned brown eyes and running a hand through sleep-mussed dark hair, but the increasingly familiar hate doesn't surge. He remembers the fight, but there are no marks on his neck, no voices whispering of betrayal in his head, no twitching and no pain. In fact, he feels healthier than he’s ever been. He’s naked as the day he was born though, wrapped only in a thin sheet, but somehow, the location of his armor seems somewhat less important than the fact that Peter is at least shirtless too and had, until a minute ago, been cuddling him in bed.
Maybe this is another dream.
“Peter,” he says hoarsely, trying his best to sound dignified despite his sandpaper throat. “If all you wanted was to get between my sheets, you should have just asked.”
To his surprise, Peter starts crying before laughing and throwing his arms around him. “Oh Harry. Thank God. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.”
Then they're kissing, and after the last two times, Harry doesn't bother pretending he hasn't always wanted to. It’s different this time though, more like an old fantasy he’d tried to deny. Peter’s wiry but muscular body slides warm and wanting against his own through the sheet between them, and the kiss is slow, deep and gentle. There’s a tenderness that had never been there before, and he doesn’t dare to hope.
“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” he asks when they part for air, and he doesn’t want to wake up. “Peter, what is this?”
The other pinches his arm, then holds up the chain around his neck for Harry to see. The aquamarines glimmer in the moonlight from the window, and he never thought he’d see that ring again. Of course, Peter never would have sold it unless he was truly desperate, but still, he never could quite silence his doubts. Far too many dreams lying in ruins at his feet, after all. Peter presses their foreheads together, and oh, perhaps he hadn’t only imagined this.
“A promise, Har,” Peter says with an adoring smile. “My promise to you.”
Part 1 | Part 2