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Peter Parker was 14 years old sprawled across the floor of his best friend’s house, though with the strained smile stretching on his cheeks in the family photo displayed above the mantle he wasn’t quite sure the place felt like a home. Sure, the place was bigger than any house he’d ever dreamed of being inside, but there was no warmth like the kind he’d grown so accustomed to within his aunt and uncle’s house. Maybe it was all the wide empty spaces, or maybe it was that even all that money couldn’t fill the void in the Osborn family.
“Do you think your Dad approves of me being around so much?”
Harry’s head jerked suddenly from staring up at the ceiling over to Peter.
“What do you mean?”
“I just mean, I kinda like loiter around here all the time, and don’t get me wrong I’m more than happy too, I just I mean I’m not like rich or important, you know?” Peter was sitting up now face turned to look in Harry’s general direction, but not meeting his eyes.
“What? Listen I’m sure he’s thrilled your around so much with you being a whole science genius or whatever, he’s probably hoping you’ll rub off on me, so I can continue the Osborn legacy,” his voice switches to an over-exaggerated impression by the end, but despite the laughing through it the twinge of some kind of resentment in Harry’s voice bleeds through. Peter doesn’t mention it.
“I’m not a genius.”
“Yeah whatever,” Harry rolls his eyes, it’s playful and teasing, whatever emotions bubbling up at the mention of the Osborn legacy receding like the tide, “and I mean what do you care, it’s not like we’re dating or anything, it’s not like he’s going to make you have dinner with him and ask about your intentions with me.”
They laugh when Harry says it, stiff and awkward, a heaviness to the air that wasn’t there just a moment ago. Before either of them can make a move to discuss it though, Peter asks another question.
“Even if your dad didn’t like me, would we still be friends?”
Harry ponders for a moment before he speaks, his tone simple and final.
“Always.”
-
Peter was 16 years old at Uncle Ben’s funeral, and suddenly he’s six years old again, wrapped around Aunt May’s leg, too young and confused to understand what was happening, he looks up at her asking her over and over with a splotchy red face why this happened. She never could give him an answer other than “I don’t know.” Except he’s not six anymore, he’s a whole decade older, and he still doesn’t understand why.
Ben’s final words rattle around in his head, “with great power comes great responsibility,” he wonders if he’s even worthy of that power, or if it should’ve been set on the shoulders of a 16-year-old in the first place. If he couldn’t save his uncle how in God’s name was he supposed to save anyone else?
He had his right arm wrapped around his aunt, she was always trying to be strong for him, even now, silent tears running down the curves of her face, she doesn’t acknowledge them just letting them fall off her chin further darkening the black of her funeral clothes. He squeezes her tighter in a silent scream, “I’m not six anymore,” it cries out, “you can scream, and shout, and yell, I won’t break if you do.”
As May goes to lay a flower down on the casket before they lower it, Peter feels his left hand being squeezed. He doesn’t have to look; he knows it’s Harry, he always knows.
The warmth of his hand lingers in Peter’s even after he lets go so Peter may place his own flower on the casket. He was scared to do it alone, half of him wishes Harry hadn’t let go.
-
“You’re going to pay for what you did, and I’m going to watch the life leave your eyes as you do.” Harry’s voice is stern and low when he says it, before Peter can even yell for him to stop his mask is off.
Betrayed. That’s the only way Peter can describe the look swimming in Harry’s eyes. He remembers how Harry looked like he had been stabbed when he had told Peter that his dad was dead, it looks like he just had the knife twisted in his chest.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Harry is backing as far away from him as he can until his back hits the glass of the window behind him, “this wasn’t how this was supposed to,” his words catch in his throat, “Peter?”
All Peter can manage to muster is a quiet and breathy, “yeah.”
A million thoughts race through Harry’s head all at once, it’s not abnormal for Peter to be so many of them, the abnormalness comes from the sheer hatred towards them.
“How could you,” he asks, his voice small and barely over a whisper, he repeats himself louder, again and again, until he is no longer containing the scream that tears its way out of his throat, “how could you!”
Peter knows in the grand scheme what he did could have very well been for the best. The green goblin is dead, but so is Norman Osborn, and so is his best friend’s dad. But god if the way Harry’s voice cracks and the way his face crumbles looking at him doesn’t make him question every goddamn decision he’s ever made.
“Harry I,” Peter doesn’t get to finish.
“You knew! You were at the funeral, you were at the fucking funeral Peter,” Harry’s chest heaves with sobs, “and you stood right beside me knowing what fucking you did!”
“Harry, he was hurting people! Good people who didn’t deserve it!”
“And he deserved it, Peter? He deserved to die?”
“No, no of course not, Harry I swear to you I didn’t mean to kill him! He was, he was trying to kill me and I got out of the way and it killed him instead!”
Peter remembers Norman Osborn’s death, not because of the green goblin, but because of Norman himself. Those last moments of his life, not as the goblin, but as the father that butted heads with his best friend but ultimately still loved him in the end. That’s how he remembered Norman Osborn, a businessman, a father, and a scientist who flew too close to the sun, not as evil.
Harry knows Peter’s not lying and hates him for it, and he loves him for it, all the same, it’s always been like that with him, that push and pull, a game of tug of war where they both fall in the end. Peter is thrashing around trying to break free of his bonds, a web flies from his wrist striking the window behind Harry, it doesn’t stick, it goes right through. And just like that Peter won the game of tug of war. Harry is falling.
A gasp tugs its way out of Harry’s throat as the glass shatters before he tumbles backward.
“Peter,” and with that, he is falling backward.
Harry never believed in your life flashing before your eyes when you were about to die, and he was right, he didn’t see his whole life, just moments.
He saw himself taking that family picture above the mantle, his father’s grip a little too tight on his shoulders.
He saw his sleepover with Peter from eighth grade when Aunt May came to check on them at around 3 A.M. and they pretended to sleep, he saw them trying desperately to laugh quietly when she left.
He sees his father staring at a picture of his mother late one night, he was seven, and he could’ve sworn his father was crying.
He sees himself standing by the wall at prom pretending not to care, Peter is dancing with MJ, he shouldn’t be upset, that’s his best friend he should be happy for him, he had been dancing with girls all night why was he only unhappy now, he remembers wondering if he had a crush on MJ.
He sees his first day working under his father to eventually take over Oscorp, and at the end of the day even though he didn’t say it, he almost swears he saw pride in his father’s eyes.
He sees his mother’s gravestone.
He sees himself mourning a mother he never knew.
He sees himself mourning the father he did.
He sees flashes of moments that felt so big to him at the time, but through the distant lights of the city and the stars of the night sky, it all feels so small now. He thinks that's how he’ll die, feeling small under stars and city lights, but the cold feeling of concrete never comes.
Peter had wrapped his whole body around him before that could even happen. He didn’t trust his webs to do it for him, he couldn’t save his uncle, no, his father, and he would be damned if he let another person he loved die.
“Why,” is all Harry can croak as Peter unwraps himself.
“Harry, I couldn’t let you,” he can’t bring himself to say the word.
There is a thick, heavy silence as they stare at each other, much heavier than being 14 and being scared of falling in love.
Peter is the one to break it.
“Harry, I promise I didn’t mean,” Harry cuts him off.
“I know.”
Harry stands up, facing Peter, arms wrapped around his sides, “you know Peter, I really fucking hate you right now.”
He flinches at the venom in his tone, “I know.”
“And you know what the worst part is?”
Peter stares before he slowly shakes his head.
“The worst part is despite how a deep part of me still screamed to kill you up there I can’t, because I still fucking love you.”
Peter feels his breath stop in his throat, “what?”
“I said I fucking love you, you piece of shit, and I think a part of me always has even if it took me forever to figure it out.”
And with that Harry is walking away, and Peter knows better than to follow him.
-
Peter doesn’t reach out to Harry, even if every bone in his body screams for him too. It’s a week before Harry even leaves his house again, it’s longer before they see each other again, they don’t linger and they don’t speak.
It’s three months before Peter reaches out.
Harry is ducking through a crowd to see what everyone is staring at as he leaves the coffee shop. There on the Brooklyn bridge spelled out in webs are the words: “I love you too.”
He drops the coffee in his hand and breaks out into a sprint. He hears someone yell at him for getting it on their shoes but he can’t find it within himself to care.
He’s out of breath when he makes it to the bridge and his legs feel like jello but through labored breaths, he finds it in himself to yell up at the man in the spider costume.
“Hey, Spider-boy!”
“It’s spider-man,” he can hear Peter laughing under the costume as he swings down and scoops him into his arms.
Peter takes off his mask as they sit down on top of the bridge.
“So, you too?”
“Yeah.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“Hey, you didn’t tell me till you like almost died and I saved your ass. Oh god is that too soon? That’s too soon isn’t it?”
And Harry just starts laughing and takes his hand again, except this time, he doesn’t let go.