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It's frightening to watch Harry rot. Peter never says a word, because it's what Harry has been claiming all along. He'll slowly decay and Peter will have to watch him do it. Has promised to sit through it. And, more importantly, Harry keeps regretting that he accepted the promise. Harry's attempts to try and still push him away taste like bile in his mouth. It's as though he watches him become another person. He watches him become Norman Osborn.
Harry can read it in his eyes. Each time he feels appalled by the sight and tries not to look too closely, Harry notices and each damn time makes him more bitter. He's snarling things he regrets and Peter always ends up curled up at his side in his sickbed, ear pressed tightly against Harry's chest so he can hear his heart thud-thud-thud steadily and he can find something that's worth to keep trying for. Slender-fingered, trembling hands run through his hair and sometimes he wants to tell Harry to stop, just stop, please, you're exhausting yourself, but he also knows that it would cause another fit of anger so he keeps his mouth shut.
Damn, Peter keeps trying.
There had been days, months even, when they worked on the cure together, when the search for it was a dialogue rather than a monologue. There had been days when Harry's laughter still rang through, that stupid, dorky hiccuping kind of giggle that the Osborn heir himself hated but that Peter adored more than anything. There had been days of them dancing, going out for dinner and then working again in the morning. Harry had become physically weaker, the visible symptoms of his sickness creeping up to his cheek. That was when they stopped going out.
But they never stop loving each other, and Peter would hold him through all the shaky nights, kiss him when he felt gross, encourage him when another attempt at finding a cure failed.
Slowly, the procedure takes something out of Spiderman. He concentrates so much of his energy on Harry that he begins to share it with him. He is his life. When Harry nestles up close to him in the night and whispers drowsy, teasing phrases into his ear, Peter always knows it was worth it. Every day of work is worth it. He is paid back in moments, and that is alright. Where Harry begins to lose all hope, he pays him back with more of it.
The room is dark.
There is no nestling up anymore.
There are too many tubes, too many apparatuses for Peter to get closer to Harry than to sit down at his side and hold his hand.
“Hey.” Peter says quietly, but Harry doesn't turn his head.
This is the room in which my father died. And I'm about to do the same. Harry thinks, lips knitting tightly, brows furrowing. His face is turned away so Peter can't see it. Maybe if it's hidden in the shadows it looks a little more like the face he used to have.
“Hey, Harry.”
I can hear you just fine.
“Well uh- I- I looked it over again and-”
“And what?!” Harry snaps so quickly that it makes Peter wince. While simply having been shocked at the sudden movement, it confirms what Harry had been thinking all along. He's hideous. “You want to give me another useless injection? Thank you, Peter, why don't you? Go ahead.” Peter's head drops and Harry thinks that he doesn't deserve this, doesn't deserve any of it, never has from the start as he watches him trying to find words to say.
“Would you, maybe, stop being a dick?” Peter asks and looks up again, and the expression in his eyes makes up for however harsh he tries to be. He reaches out for his hand and Harry pulls it away, but then he grabs it with more force. “I'm here. And I'm not going anywhere.”
“I wish you would.”
It's phrases like those that hurt the most, but Peter refuses to let them make him stop trying. “Not going anywhere.” He repeats and picks up the hand, skin gray and rough as he presses it against his lips. He can see Harry tear up, even in the dark, so he knows why he's being treated this way. Harry doesn't want him to be hurting even more, so he tries hurting him a little to shoo him away. He has seen through the defense mechanism by now. It doesn't work anymore.
“I've got it. I promise. This time is it. I picked up some research we made at the very start and, Harry, we just took a wrong turn. We should have kept going where we were. It all makes sense now. I tested it. It's going to work.”
Harry's smile is weak. But he's trying to pull it off, for naïve little Peter that still thinks he can be saved. Finally, he squeezes Peter's hand back, weakly so, but he does. “It's not. I'm dying.” His voice sounds thin. He can't control it. He can't cry, he doesn't know why, but his throat still feels just as sore, a slow headache beginning to thrum through his temples.
“Maybe. But I'm going to stop it.” Peter unwraps the syringe as he speaks, his own hands jittery before he takes a deep breath and calms himself down. He's a goddamn superhero. He can do it. He can give Harry this one shot, and everything is going to be alright.
Harry is going to be healthy, Harry is going to giggle like a dork again and try to get him to dance even though he can't and Harry is going to tease him again, he's going to be a fucking dick about how much he knows he can get you to do anything for him, and you'll do anything for him, and you'll be happy and you'll deliver your promise and you'll marry like you're just really boring normal people. He's not letting someone else die on his watch.
It's not really difficult to inject the serum. Harry keeps surprisingly still after offering his arm, even as the needle tears through his skin and he usually would have jolted a little.
“Harry?”
There's no reply and he pulls back. He doesn't understand why Harry doesn't react the slightest bit. His chair crashes to the ground as he gets up to grab his shoulders.
“No. No, no, no.”
Peter can't stand the thought of what might have just happened, but there's still no alarm to announce that his heart stopped beating, so he runs his fingers through his own hair, trying to will himself into believing in his own research. Harry sure as hell didn't believe in him anymore.
Then, after absolute immobility, Harry begins to shake. The spasms get worse to a level that Peter has to tie him to the bed for the safety of his own tongue, standing there in cold sweat, hoping, hoping, hoping, while Harry's eyes turn into the back of his head. No. He tested it. It can't have gone so wrong, he mutters to himself, trying to calm Harry down while it's clear that he can't even begin to hear him. Peter thinks of the last thing he said before the injection.
It's not. I'm dying.
Please, just this once, you jerk, stop being always right.
He was.
The alarms ring and medic personal joins him, crowding them.
It's when Harry's body turns absolutely limp that Peter finds himself stumbling out of the door and out of the nearest window, throwing himself into the air without thinking, without letting the information of what just happened get to him, trying to force the wind to wash his head free. He can't bare it. Not this time. Not again. Not after months and months of research. Not after Harry told him he loved him in the most terrible way and Peter couldn't help to force the real three words out of him, the ones that matter. I love you. Nothing that he ever knew he wanted to hear from Harry Osborn, but he did.
He's cold and clammy when he feels his phone vibrate. He's curled up against the back of Gwen Stacy's tombstone, fingers beginning to be red and puckered because he continues to mindlessly stroke them across the hard stone. “Remember how I told you I'd save him? How good everything was? How proud you'd be of him for...” He swallows thickly. Why has he even begun to tell Gwen all of this he now bets that she doesn't want to hear? Did he really think she'd approve? “I'm so sorry...” he says suddenly, and he can't control the words that follow, or doesn't know why he says them now, or who he says them to. “So...so, sorry.”
The vibrating has ceased a while ago. He continues his monologue. It's when he pushes himself upright to get going, go anywhere else but to a place of someone else he'd gotten killed that he looks at his phone. A voice mail from Oscorp, he thinks, and shoves it away again. He doesn't need to hear it confirmed.
His phone vibrates again a moment later, but it's the battery telling him that its about to shut down. Fine. Peter's fine with that. But looking at his phone, he remembers another voice mail that he wished he would have listened to earlier. The thought makes him stop in his steps, but it also makes him more afraid to listen to the message.
His face is sticky with dried tears when he presses the phone against his ear.
“Mr. Parker, we'd very much like to inform you that Mr. Osborn wants to see you as quickly as possible.”
He's never been so quickly into the air before.