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Harry stares at Peter’s hand on his shoulder. His best friend’s grip is firm, unyielding.
It was Peter who almost slipped away from the world, from him, an hour ago. Now, it’s Peter with life coursing through his superhuman limbs, Peter who’s fierce with the determination to reverse nature and time and all the months they’d lost while Norman was preserving all that was left of his family in a tank.
Skinny tendrils strain from the exoskeleton that armored itself around the Spider-Man suit. Peter’s jaw clenches and his shoulders square, ready for an uncomfortable expulsion.
“Pete,” Harry says wearily.
“This thing’s almost off,” he says tightly. “Hold on, buddy.”
The tendrils had barely moved. While Peter’s fingers dig into Harry’s shoulder blade like his touch is all that’s keeping him floored to their office in Emily May, the suit appears scandalized at the mere idea of reinitiating contact with its old host again. Harry’s cheeks warm with embarrassment.
“Pete,” he pleads. “Please stop.”
“I just have to focus–“
“That’s not how it works.”
Peter lets go of him, gasping as the suit hastens to fully reform itself around him. “Then how? Tell me. Whatever you did for me back at the zoo–“
“I–“ Harry’s eyes squeeze shut. “I didn’t,” he whispers. “I didn’t do anything.”
He wishes he could accept full responsibility for saving Peter’s life, when Kraven’s dagger nearly carved it clean out of him. A cocktail of fresh grief and fury and heartbreak broiled in his soul when he cradled Peter’s head in his lap. All of it potent, all of it strong enough to rupture Harry from the inside out.
But what followed wasn’t the noble effort of a sacrificial friend because Harry had barely been whole enough for that. He’d curled over his unmasked friend like a wilted flower and silently begged the universe for a miracle without any real expectation of it following through. It failed his mother, after all.
Or maybe the universe did hear him, sensed his desperation to cling to the life he was just starting to get back. A life where he was healthy, strong, capable of carrying his mother’s vision into a future unfettered by a ticking clock and being a hero with his best friend who happened to be freaking Spider-Man.
The universe peeled that strength from his body when pain lowered his guard. And it gave him Peter back.
But it wouldn’t promise him the future he’d been depending on. The two of them, healing the world.
Shame is like lead in Harry’s veins. He‘s relieved. He is.
But he had started to forget what it felt like for pain to be the default.
No such amnesia nurtures him now.
“So it’s…was it a subconscious thing?”
Harry nods slowly. He supposes it was. Maybe it was the only brand of heroism he was capable of. Too weak to save his best friend on his own unmistakable accord.
The suit had done what he couldn’t do alone. He has no right to–to mope over that, does he?
His gaze falls on that white-spidered emblem of resilience splayed over black, then shifts up a few inches. Peter is staring at him with concern melting puddles in the hazel of his irises.
For him, Harry musters a wobbly smile.
“Listen, I’m fine. Just…keep the suit warm for me, alright? I…” He braces his body against a wave of dizziness and lowers himself onto the sofa. Peter immediately holds his hands out to steady him and Harry sighs. “I’ll survive. But you needed it tonight. Nothing else matters.”
Nothing, he reiterates harshly, a scolding to himself. So he’d gotten reliant on the suit. It’d been a stroke of luck he admittedly had never expected his father to land on, for nothing had saved Harry’s mother from her fate. But he’ll get it back. How can he mourn a temporary loss when he’d almost lost Peter?
He might have even tried smacking sense into himself if the man at the core of his mental tumult wasn’t watching him like a hawk.
“What can I do?” Peter asks. His body resolutely tenses beneath the black suit, preparing for whatever physically strenuous task Harry may send his way.
“We need to find Dr. Connors, who’s currently…” Harry rubs his face. “Out of commission. You’ve cured him before, right?”
“After a lot of trial, error, and tail-whips straight to the gut.”
Even after fending off a disaster at Coney Island, after saving the criminal-turned-mechanic Tombstone from the collapsed foundry, Harry hasn’t quite dismantled his disbelief. That the larger-than-life hero he had seen in aerial news footage and blurry glimpses over deafening city streets had always been his endearingly awkward best friend. The guy who got shoved into lockers hard enough to knock his glasses askew when Flash had a hankering for cheap entertainment.
Peter’s eyes soften the longer Harry studies him. He steps closer to the sofa, his fingers flexing like every moment of inaction was killing him.
No, he thinks with a clarity that surprises him in his exhaustion. It makes perfect sense.
He wishes Peter had told him. But he’s also the fool for not seeing it sooner.
“Okay.” This time, the smile he offers is more genuine. “Plan for tomorrow, then. I think now we–“ He clears his throat. “You should, um, call it a night.”
“How about you? I’ll swing you home.”
Possibly the last thing he needs right now is to be pressed up tightly against Peter for the second time in the span of the last, head-spinning hour. Realizing he was Spider-Man was different then…realizing it.
Realizing was clinging around a broad set of shoulders out of instinctive preservation for life only to quickly understand that all Peter needed was an arm secured around Harry’s waist. Realizing was having the Hudson River swarming beneath his hanging feet while Peter maintained swinging momentum from the columns of the lit-up George Washington Bridge. Realizing was being close enough to hear every hitch in his friend’s breathing when he’d hike them up higher to avoid getting too close to the post-five-o’clock traffic.
Peter frowns, misinterpreting his stupefied silence. “But tonight was a lot, right? Why don’t you come with me to May’s? We’ll have wheatcakes in the morning, like old times.”
Old times. When Peter and Harry would cram themselves on his creaky twin, even though May would always set up an air mattress with a freshly washed comforter and a generous heaping of mismatched throw pillows. He couldn’t stand sleeping in the penthouse after his mom got sick.
If he does go with Peter tonight, and the bedroom’s charm withstood the cruel test of time the way Harry himself had always been unable to, well…then, he would really break.
“Thanks, Pete. Maybe I’ll drop by in the morning, if you’re still around. But I think I’m just gonna crash in the office tonight.”
“Oh. You sure?”
“Definitely. Picked out everything in here myself, but I was especially selective with this.” He pats the cushion beside him. “So it’s like sleeping on a cloud.”
“You’re not wrong,” Peter mumbles, eyeing the sofa with a bit of longing. “Your dad was pretty pissed last time, though.”
Harry snorts, recalling the incredulous expression on his father’s face when he walked in on a tuckered out Peter and Harry in a wreckage of their own making. “He was mad about the mess we made, not that we crashed here.” He looks over Peter’s sheepish expression and smirks a little. “A mess you left me to clean up.”
“It wasn’t just a mess, it was–you know–the culmination of our experiments on this thing.” He gestures at the black suit. “Why would I clear out good data like that?”
“The way you talk yourself out of the hot seat, I can’t imagine why you got fired from Visions.”
“Travel on the side of optimism, would you? Forces super beyond our understanding nudged me away from Visions so I could be here.” He smiles down at him. “With you.”
Harry’s heart thrusts into his ribcage like it’s trying to clear an unobstructed path to Peter. He instinctively splays a hand over his chest and sinks deeper against the sofa, eyes darting away.
“Hey.” Peter sits beside him and clasps his shoulder. “Seriously, though. You good? Need me to get you anything?”
Harry lets his head fall back onto the top of the sofa. “How is it that you almost died tonight and you’re sitting here mother-henning me? It’s all backwards.”
“Harry.” The admonishment is gentle. Harry was serious about the sofa being cloud freaking nine but Christ he’d set it on fire if it were possible to set up camp in the lilt of Peter Parker’s I’m-scolding-you-but-I’m-too-damn-nice-to-be-forceful-about-it voice.
“I’m fine, buddy,” he says in a hoarse voice that has nothing to do with the shit night they both had. “You’re hovering.”
“This is half my office, too. I can hover if I want.”
“Psh. Not if I fire you.”
“And I used to say I couldn’t see the Osborn in you.”
Harry snickers. The joke makes the atmosphere feel a little less brittle, so he looks at Peter and, as objectively as he can manage, examines the way the suit’s adapted to him. It molds to existing muscle and brazenly shows off a perfect rendition of the spider symbol it had tried to recreate for Harry in a clumsier fashion. No excessive shoulder padding, so little of the armored style Harry proudly wore in his first feats of heroism, because why would Spider-Man need any of that?
Harry may have had yet to shuck off his training wheels but Peter had power rooted in his bone marrow. The suit’s always sensed that, hasn’t it? Since that night at Coney Island, when it lurched for his best friend like it wanted to devour him.
Harry was too embarrassed to admit that he’d also thought that the suit just…understood what he wanted a little too well.
“How’s the suit feel?” he asks lightly.
Peter shrugs. “Different. Kind of a weird texture.”
He recognizes the dismissiveness immediately. Sees how Peter pairs it with another worried look at him.
“Come on,” he teases. “Just different? We have a chance to collect data on the suit’s behavior with a second host and that’s all the feedback you’ve got, professor?”
Peter rolls his eyes. But Harry knows the possibility of advancing their research reels him right in, because this time when he glances down at the suit, he’s contemplative.
“Its healing factor’s superior to mine by an insane margin. The second it woke me up, I felt…not only whole but energized. Like a live wire. I’ve kept up fights after being stabbed before but with this, I didn’t even register it anymore. And the limb extension has an effect I was gunning for when I made the iron arms, but the suit’s execution is way better than anything I would have been able to build. It’s–it’s what we were saying earlier. That a lot of the action’s triggered by the subconscious. Do you know how much time–“ Peter stops, as if remembering himself, and his face flushes. Harry can practically hear the self chastisements whirling through his friend’s brain. “Sorry.”
“What the hell are you sorry for?”
Peter pointedly frowns at him. It’s Harry’s turn for a dramatic eye-roll.
“Listen. Curing Connors is a walk in the park for you, isn’t it?”
“I mean I’ve done it but I still wouldn’t say that.”
“Well, I would. Spider-Man’s fought a damn octopus and a rhino and a scorpion–a lizard’s the most unimpressive thing in that category. Like bottom ranking with no hope of being nudged up unless an evil mouse hits the town tomorrow.”
Peter snorts, rubbing at his nose and doing a piss-poor job of hiding his smile. Harry doesn’t realize that he’s gravitated closer until he feels that puff of a laugh near his own mouth. His train of thought almost spins away from him, never to return, but miraculously, he catches it by its tail end.
“So you’ll have him back in his lab coat by lunch tomorrow, I get my suit back, and we…we sing kumbaya. But until then, stop apologizing. You can tell me it’s the greatest thing you’ve ever worn, that it’s better than sex–“ He stumbles on his words a moment when that comparison tumbles out and Peter’s cheeks are a telling shade of crimson. Of all the ways to put it, Osborn. “And it’s fine. Because I get it, I know exactly how it feels. Christ, Pete, you probably wanna scream it from the rooftops.”
The slow, soft curve to Peter’s plush mouth makes Harry feel faint. Or, no. He was already faint because his suit’s currently detached from his body. And if he’s putting too much thought into the rosy color of his best friend’s lips, well, that’s just an unavoidable side effect. Dr. Connors probably even has it in his insanely meticulous lab notes: in the event of the suit’s removal, host is prone to intense but entirely CLINICAL rumination about oral cavities.
*Inexplicable longing may persist. Likely to be tamed when suit restores an equilibrium among the senses.
“It does put certain things into perspective,” Peter muses. “Like why you ran head or, uh, tendrils first into the Steel Foundry to help me rescue Lonnie. This thing doesn’t believe in waiting around, huh?”
“No, it doesn’t,” Harry says through a chuckle, remembering how he’d weaseled a location out of Peter so he could make it to Brooklyn and crash the party in record time.
Peter wears a faraway smile that distracts Harry thoroughly enough that he doesn’t realize his gloved fingertips have slipped down to caress his bare forearm.
Harry’s breath hitches. He plays it off with a cough, which just makes him more conspicuous. “What’re you…”
“Maybe I was forcing it too much before,” Peter speaks lowly, his brows knitting together. “Trying to transfer the suit under stressful conditions probably only inhibits its cell communication pathways and increases the risk of an inflammatory response.”
“Pete.” Harry’s tongue feels heavy in his mouth, but he thinks his best friend’s name slips out of it. He can’t be sure.
“But it knows you,” he continues. His hand presses more firmly to Harry’s arm and glides up his bicep, bunching his short sleeve against his shoulder. Harry doesn’t breathe. “It knows how to bond with you. If I just initiate contact without straining myself, without straining the suit, I…I think it might go willingly? Maybe all it needs is a bridge.” Peter delicately smooths out a stray curl near Harry’s eye and brushes his thumb against his temple, pondering. “And some time. I can give it both. I mean, we have all night.”
For–for what, exactly?
Harry so desperately wants to follow Peter’s logic but his brain malfunctioned somewhere between initiate contact and all night.
He needs to say something. Peter is watching him quietly with that little tick to his head that he gets when he’s on the precipice of a breakthrough but is smothering all premature urges toward celebration until he gets his obligatory peer evaluation. Harry was never necessarily the genius of the pair, but he’s competent. He works hard to involve himself in EMF’s operations with the same vigor he applied to his mom’s research.
Right now, he’s not sure he can define inflammatory response if he was under duress. And isn’t he? Under duress? Because this feels terribly like something that’s only going to blow up in his face and leave him scrambling to make something of the least damaged parts.
“Pete, it’s bonded with you now, too,” Harry forces himself to speak levelly. “It brought you back to life. Any removal at this point is–it’s not impossible, but it’s going to take more than time and…contact.” Did his voice just break on that last word? Jesus. He’s going to pretend it didn’t. “And I’m not dying tomorrow, I can wait on Dr. Connors. Don’t burden yourself with this.”
“It’s not a burden. You called this a chance to collect data. So I’m trying to be cooperative.”
By trying to make my heart give out faster than any illness will?
Harry looks away. He rubs his clammy hands over his jeans and squeezes his knees. “I don’t think I have the energy for experiments right now.”
“Nothing strenuous, I promise. Just look at me for a second?”
That is so going to make this worse but if Harry says as much, it will be official. His best friend will think he’s a loon. And then, he’ll ponder some more, because he’s smart, and he’ll realize Harry can’t look at him because 1) …long periods of stasis in a tank have made him a little loony, 2) he’s painfully attracted to his best friend and 3) spends inordinate amounts of time in his presence sneaking glances at the shape of his pink, Cupid’s bow mouth.
And, fine, number three is not new. Connors won’t have shit in his notes because Harry’s full of shit. He’s thought about kissing Peter since their first sleepover at May’s, when he shook him awake after a harrowing dream. Peter woke up with a sleepy noise buried in his throat, smiled at him blearily in the dark, and fumbled for his glasses. The frames sat crookedly on his nose and he pushed back his middle-parted messy hair that Harry would later tease him for in their college years (but he loved it. He loved it). Words failed Harry when Peter asked him, in a thick-with-sleep voice, what his dream had been about, because he could no longer remember.
More than words will fail Harry if he looks at Peter now. His system will probably shut down, lights off, nobody home. Not even his highly resourceful father will be able to bring him back from that.
“…Har?”
The nickname is uttered like a term of endearment; the sound loops around Harry and pulls taut until he’s staring at his best friend. All his mental defenses are currently fortifying against the urge to do something extremely irresponsible, like throw himself into Peter’s lap, so there’s not much he can do to effectively obscure the longing on his face.
Peter frowns. Harry’s heart beats with panic. Jesus, he sees it, he sees exactly how much Harry wants things that a friend shouldn’t fathom, and this is the part where he’s going to excuse himself–
Gloved, rubbery hands gently cup Harry’s face. Fingers flex along his cheeks until they’re brushing the trimmed sides of his hair. Blood tornadoes through Harry’s veins and swarms his face, and he can’t play off a second of it with a cough or a yawn or a fucking one-eighty toward the exit because Peter’s not letting him go. Or–or Harry’s not trying to break free. Actually, he might be weightless right now. Like the tank, where he’d once likened himself to preserved jelly although Dad didn’t find much humor in that comparison.
“You were holding me when the suit left you,” Peter says thoughtfully. “You didn’t expel it. I can’t either. But I think making sure it has that access, if it wants to use it, is the first step. Is this okay?”
“Yeah,” Harry breathes in a voice that is barely his own. “Okay.”
No! Not okay! Rationality is slamming cymbals together angrily. Tell him to leave. Tell him you’re exhausted, that you need to be alone.
Peter smiles crookedly. Does he look a little nervous too? Harry can’t trust his eyes. He can barely hear his thoughts. The cymbals die out and his heart picks up the discordant harmony.
“You look a little feverish,” Peter notes. He presses the back of his hand against Harry’s forehead. “Your body’s working overtime to account for the suit’s absence but it can’t achieve homeostasis without it. I think it’s good.” He realizes how that sounds, then backpedals. “To, um, let the suit feel these effects, I mean. Its instinct so far has been to protect you. Let’s see if we can awaken that again.”
Harry nods. He supposes the logic is sound, but he doesn’t really care about it right now.
Hazel eyes roam his face intently, occasionally darting to the suit slicked over his body. Peter’s waiting patiently for a reaction, but silence looms like an anvil. Harry’s breaths are shallow puffs that waver when he mistakenly looks at Peter’s lips and sees his tongue swipe through the seam of them.
Suit or not, he’s not strong enough for this, he never was.
“Pete,” he breathes. “I don’t think–“
“Give it a little longer. I’m not sure how conclusive Connors’ research is about this thing but it definitely seems sensitive to emotion, so…try to relax? Open yourself up to it.”
“…how?”
Peter’s eyes pierce his and he’s thankful they’re sitting or he thinks his legs may have buckled. “Focus on me. Just me. You gave me the suit when I was in danger but I’m okay now. You see that, don’t you?” He leans in with concern crinkling his brows. “You did your part. You can take it back.”
Harry does want it back but he wants so much more right now, and greed’s never been something he was good at indulging in. He was always more like Emily than Norman, after all.
He tries to pull away. No, he’ll leave this to Dr. Connors, like Peter should’ve agreed to in the first place. If Harry takes matters into his own hands, he’ll ruin everything.
“Harry.”
Peter’s grip is firm and, stubborn as ever, he moves his head to keep himself in Harry’s eye-line. They’re almost nose to nose now. His gloved fingers interlock at the nape of Harry’s neck, ensnaring him in the worst and best possible place.
“If it doesn’t work, I’ll leave. We’ll wait ‘till Connors is cured. But can you be patient for me, for one second?” A plea weaves through his rushed words. “It’s a viable alternative. Why won’t you trust me? What’s the worst that could happen?”
Harry makes the monumental mistake of showing him.
He kisses Peter before the word happen is fully removed from his tongue, crushing the question between them in a desperate maneuver.
He’s only tasted his best friend indirectly before, like in shared sips from a peanut butter banana milkshake that Harry used to find disgusting but Peter’s lips wrapped around the red straw triggered his curiosity anyway. But this is straight from the source, a sparkling well of Peter Parker after years of wretched wonder. He kisses him like he knows this will be the last time; it turns out he is capable of greed and it’s shattering everything in its wake. Harry doesn’t know who they’ll be when it’s over, so he presses on for as long as he can.
Shocked into stillness, Peter doesn’t stop him. But his fingers loosen around the nape of Harry’s neck. His mouth is soft and pliant, but this isn’t the reciprocity that Harry imagined when kisses invaded his dreams. He can’t keep this up on his own.
He pulls away. Peter’s eyes are wide like they’d never closed in the first place and it makes Harry’s face hot with shame. He uselessly tries to enact damage control but it’s like putting a band-aid over a fucking dam. “I’m-I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Pete, I don’t know why–I–please understand, I wasn’t thinking–“
“Wait. Wait.” Peter’s eyes are drifting down, sparked with disbelief. “Look.”
Harry follows his friend’s line of sight. The faux fabric along Peter’s arms is slithering down from bicep to wrist to the fingers around Harry’s neck. He jumps, startled, when he feels it–cool tendrils touching his flushed skin.
But they stop as soon as he flinches. Then they start to retreat.
“Damn it,” Peter mutters, then his gaze locks onto Harry’s. “Kiss me again.”
“What?”
Peter’s face reddens but he firmly repeats his point. “The suit didn’t so much as twitch until you did. That’s the contact we need to facilitate a transfer. Harry, kiss me.”
Peter has that mad scientist gleam in his eyes, the kind Harry’s witnessed when there’s finally a break in the experimental monotony. Run another diagnostic. Replace the copper with graphene for greater conductivity. Kiss me again.
Harry swallows hard. “Pete…”
The tendrils recede further up Peter’s arms and he sucks in a quick breath. He looks at Harry. There’s a split second where he seems to debate his next move.
Then he pulls Harry in and captures his mouth in a fervid kiss. Stars pop behind his eyelids as several of his neurons die an explosive death.
This…this is more than the reciprocation Harry hungered for. Peter’s taking the lead. He tilts his head like the right angle will make all the difference in this little experiment and takes dragging tastes of Harry’s bottom lip. He mumbles something about energy transfers and catalysis and Harry means to ask him to repeat it, but then Peter heatedly strokes his tongue right into his mouth and Harry forgets his last name.
“It’s working,” Peter rasps, a note of amazement in his voice, and Harry doesn’t dare pull away to check but he feels it. It’s creeping across his shoulders and teasing the top of his spine.
Harry falters in his kiss. That’s why he’s doing this, his cruel brain barks. To save you. But he doesn’t want you. Not like that.
As if he feels Harry’s reactions wither, Peter makes a noise in his throat and pushes him down to the sofa. That hand stays like a collar at his neck, anchoring the ongoing transfer, and a knee sinks into the cushion beside Harry’s hip. Peter’s free hand caresses his jaw and slips to his chest, pinning him. Spider strength can be a subtle thing when Peter wants it to but the message is still clear–Harry’s not going anywhere, not until the suit is his once more.
Christ. Fine. Harry’s so tired of denying himself.
He grabs at Peter’s shoulders and is, unabashedly, greedy in his pursuit of mapping every ridge, every mouthwatering muscle. The thickness of the suit frays beneath his fingers as it makes its apprehensive return to him. Harry should be more invested in that right now, being as his life literally has come to depend on it, but his relief is much more rooted in the fact that with every unraveling thread, he can feel more of Peter through the original Spider-Man suit.
“Keep doing that,” Peter huffs.
Harry barely breaks free of the kiss to utter a strained “do what?” right before Peter sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. Harry actually whines. His dick is hard and, and–how. The hell. Does it make an iota of sense that this is both too much and way too little? Harry supposed he needs to figure out if he wants to starve or drown.
“Touching me,” Peter whispers. “Multiple points of contact are encouraging it to accelerate the transfer. Can’t you feel it?”
“Y-yeah. I think? Totally feeling…something…”
Peter chuckles. Harry has always loved the sound but feeling the vibrations of it is an intoxicating experience.
“Don’t worry.” Peter drags his mouth away from Harry’s and he instinctively turns his head to follow his. But his friend has merely gone for his neck instead, latching his soft mouth and slick tongue to the sensitive flesh near his jaw. Harry whimpers. “S’almost there.”
It’s not reassuring. Harry doesn’t want this to end.
The textured suit slips from beneath the death grip he has on Peter’s shoulder and back muscles, and a hazy glance downward puts red and blue webbed fabric in view. The black strands left sticking to the hero are sparse, as the massive majority of the goo skitters over Harry’s torso and legs and his arms, his–his hands. Gloves morph back into place and he grunts out a protest because there’s already too much fabric on Peter’s end and he wants to feel him.
There’s never been a worse time for him to be shielded. He’ll take being on the brink of death if it means he can have his best friend in an unlimited capacity. Just for the night. Or maybe forever.
Peter pulls back to look over the progress made and his eyes brighten when he sees Harry’s mimicry of a white spider reformed across his chest. The suit’s merely adding in extra padding now. Harry tries to share his enthusiasm, but he stares harder at the wet sheen to Peter’s mouth.
“Yes,” he laughs in breathless relief. “I can’t believe that–“
“It’s not done yet,” Harry grits out then grabs Peter’s face, pulling him back down. His strength has returned, the pain’s subsided, but after this, he’ll grapple with another loss. One guaranteed to cut much deeper.
Peter’s sigh fills his mouth as the last of the fabric slots itself against Harry’s limbs. They’re matched in power now, but Harry wanted to be devoured. He kisses Peter through every last second of this, their tongues stroking, arrhythmic breaths mingling.
When Peter has nothing left to give him and Harry no longer has the excuse to keep taking, they both pull apart.
Dazed eyes peer down at him. “Wow. I didn’t think…” He clears his throat. “How was–how do you feel?”
Empty. Hungry.
“Like I don’t have one foot in the grave.”
It’s said like a joke even if it isn’t, but Peter doesn’t laugh. He just nods, then slowly eases himself off the couch. And backs up several feet. His eyes dart to the walls, then to the windows exposing the lower floors, then the exit. Harry’s heart plummets to an abyss.
He sits up. He can’t fully look at his suit right now. Life-saving side effects considered, he really wishes it’d fucked off a little longer.
But however he feels right now, he still owes Peter a real apology.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. He clasps his fingers together and stares at the space between his knees. “I know I said it before but I’m serious, Pete.”
“Harry…”
“You don’t have to say anything. I mean, you can yell at me. Give me an earful or whatever, but if you’re just going to try to comfort me right now, don’t. I-I was out of line. I never should’ve done it.”
“Harry.”
Reluctantly, he looks up. Peter’s arms are crossed tightly over his chest and he’s glaring at him. Okay, here comes the earful.
“Please specify what you’re apologizing for because I’m really, really not following.”
He tries not to shrink into the sofa. “For…kissing you.”
Peter’s eyes narrow. “You’re apologizing. For something I also initiated tonight?”
Harry blinks. “Well–“
“Do you want me to apologize too?”
“What? No.”
“Fine,” he says calmly and uncrosses his arms. “Then I don’t need your apology either.”
“But–but it was me who started it.”
“Sure. And I finished it.”
“Pretty sure I finished it,” Harry mutters. Peter arches a brow at him and he clears his throat. “Pete, I know you were just trying to get me my suit back. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”
“That’s not–“ Peter bites his mouth, then shakes his head, his shoulders loosening. He makes his way back to the sofa and sits beside him, leaving a few inches between them. “Of course, Harry.”
It’s quiet for a moment. Harry twists a hand over a closed fist as he debates whether to try the apology thing again, because he’s not sure it went quite right.
But Peter speaks first. “What were you trying to do, then?”
Harry looks at him quickly. “What…what do you mean?”
“If I only kissed you to save your life,” he says quietly, “what was your excuse?”
Harry blanches. He averts his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he lies and Jesus, he can’t even keep his voice steady. “But I almost lost you tonight. Barely a few weeks after getting you back. I was so–so pissed off at Kraven, and devastated over you, and even after all that, I was selfish enough to miss the suit because it gave me time I didn’t think I had and there was so much to make up for, so…” He exhales sharply through his nose and turns to Peter. “So maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly. But I promise I’ll forget it. I wanna keep helping you out there. I swear you don’t have to worry about this being weird.”
Peter’s face softens. Harry’s dearest friend bleeds empathy and he can’t handle being the focus of it right now.
“You really want to forget it?”
The question takes Harry off guard. “Don’t you?”
Peter heaves a sigh. He leans back against the sofa and rubs his hands over his face. “My God,” he’s muttering to himself. “I knew I was out of practice but I must be a worst kisser than I thought.”
“Pete, what the hell are you talking about?”
His hands drop to his thighs. Harry keeps his hands fixed on his friend’s face, determined not to study the leisurely way his legs are spread apart on the sofa.
“I didn’t think I could get more forward than that, Har.” He laughs a little nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. “I liked kissing you. And I’m really glad you got your suit back. But maybe me being Spider-Man’s skewed your perspective on just how noble and self-sacrificing I am. Because that? Was just as much for me as it was for you.” He clears his throat, then mumbles, “Maybe more for me, actually.”
Holy shit.
Harry needs a bucket of ice water dumped over his head. Or a time machine, so he can shake his fifteen-year-old self’s shoulders, then, with the best of intentions, scream at him to stop sneaking all those pathetic glances at his best friend and actually do something about it. Because Harry actually did and the world hasn’t only not imploded but Peter’s still sitting beside him and he’s telling him their wants weren’t so different after all.
But Harry’s learned to appreciate thoroughness just as much as his avid scientist best friend so he needs more from this. And he ever so eloquently seeks it–by blurting out, “You like me?”
Crimson tinges Peter’s cheeks and floods down the collar of his Spider-Man suit but he still flicks Harry a look of disbelief. “I don’t love the oversimplification but…” He snorts. “Yes, Harry. I like you.”
“Good,” he breathes. “Great. I’m really glad we got that cleared up because I wasn’t done.”
“Done with wha–“
A tendril lashes out from his arm and suctions to the front of Peter’s suit, yanking him forward. Harry kisses him with a smile spreading his lips because he’s not operating by a ticking clock anymore. He can savor this.
“Still crashing in the office,” Peter gets the words out between kisses, “or are you coming home with me so I can make you breakfast tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Harry says distractedly, his fingers raking through Peter’s hair.
Peter laughs, kissing the corner of his mouth. “Which one, genius?”
“Oh, uh, the breakfast. Totally.”
“Mmm. No need for me to swing you this time?”
“I never said that.”