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Peter's and Harry's dads' promo video about the spider research came to an end. If Harry didn't look so calm, Peter could've sworn that people all the way down in the basement of OsCorps tower could hear his heart pounding.
"They never made it to trials," Harry said, standing up and meandering over to the desk in the corner. "Fourteen years of research and nothing to show for it...except for this."
Peter flinched when Harry dropped the Bulletin spread onto the desk.
It was a few weeks old, but Peter knew it all too well.
A photograph he took was printed on the front page of one of Manhattan's biggest local newspapers.
Aunt May bought the newspaper from a stand to keep a copy of the front page. She was planning on framing it, his first photojournalism publication. He was already planning on using it in his college applications.
The Young Avengers made fun of him for it, but he was proud of all the same. Less for his ability to capture something on a long-lens, and more for his ability to capture something on a timed shot. Timer photography was a lot harder than people realized.
"Spider-Man," Harry declared, sounding almost smug.
Peter swallowed. "W-what about him?"
"He was bitten by one of those things and it worked!" Harry cried out, pointing at the screen where the video had just ended. "I don't know how and I don't know why, but...he can do everything else a spider can. Including self-heal. I need to find him. I need his blood."
"You need...Spider-Man's...blood?" Peter asked. His eyebrows rose as he fell into his seat, across from where Harry stood braced against the conference table.
Harry nodded. "It'll save my life."
God, no. Peter only knew a fraction of the biochemistry behind the spider bite, but he knew enough to know what happened to him was a fluke — one engineered by his father. Peter doubted it was a coincidence that the son of the project's lead research would be the only successful subject.
But Dr. Osborne had only sponsored the spider research. It hadn't been his specialty, not enough to mess around with his kid's DNA like Peter's dad must've done. His specialty was the reptile project, what Dr. Connors had shifted his focus to. Until...
"It may not, Har," Peter said, doing his best to not sound like he was speaking around a lump in his throat. "It may not be that simple. You saw what happened to Curt Connors, right?"
Harry chuckled, something dark and un-Harry-like that slicked down Peter's spine.
"Connors was weak," he said, as if that had anything to do with this. "This is me, Peter."
With the worst possible timing imaginable, Peter remembered the way Harry's dad had degenerated, during the few brief years he and Harry still played together and learned together after his own father's disappearance. He didn't know much — Mr. Osborne had little time for Harry, let alone Peter — but he remembered enough.
Some of that degeneration...
Peter wasn't sure how much was actually his memories, and how much was made up of gaps that he was filling in from research and reports and publications after the fact. But some of that degeneration had been neurological. Psychological. It might've been part of why he was such a crap dad to Harry — and why Harry had so many problems now.
Except it was starting to look like some of those problems were coming from within, instead of without.
Swallowing, Peter asked, "What do you want me to do?"
Harry stood up and turned to the desk again. This time, instead of a newspaper, he pulled over a tablet. Tapping it to life and flicking between screens, he brought up what looked like some gossip site. Peter's gut clenched, already knowing where it would go.
Sure enough, Harry set the tablet on the table, turning it around so Peter was faced with that stupid picture some paparazzi had taken ages ago.
'Black Hawk out shopping with old friends during Manhattan visit' the headline read. The gigantic text glared out from above the picture of him, Gwen, and Kate walking out of some fancy shoe store a few blocks off of Fifth Avenue.
"You know Black Hawk," Harry said.
"That...might be an overstatement," Peter said. "Gwen knows her, I just..." He shrugged. "I carry things for them when they go shopping."
Here, Harry smirked, scrolling down to the even stupider picture Kate had snapped when they'd gone to Victoria's Secret. He'd been holding several bras, staring in bewilderment at the letters and numbers on them. She'd posted it on Instagram and captioned it, 'Top 1% math student in New York, still can't figure out bra sizes.' It'd become a meme. People on 4chan and Reddit used his picture to make jokes about being smart, yet still confused about simple things. He was pretty sure the damn thing was going to get its own Know Your Meme entry soon.
Somehow, Peter Parker being famous was entirely different from Spider-Man being famous. At least as Spider-Man, his own face wasn't getting posted all over the Internet — especially not a stupid looking shot of his face.
(He was pretty sure Aunt May was one step away from framing this, too.)
"Still," Harry said. "You can put me in touch with Bishop — and she can put me in touch with Spider-Man."
Peter slammed down on the hysterical thought that Harry was going through multiple people to track down the guy he was already talking to. "I'll...see what I can do. But, uh — like I said, Kate is Gwen's friend." Which was technically true. "And me and Gwen haven't really been...um."
"You broke up?" Harry asked. It was eerie how he shifted from dark desperation to light amusement.
"...it's complicated," Peter muttered. "But — because of mine and Gwen's...complications, I'm not sure how much Kate will listen to me."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "You still call her by her first name."
Peter fought the twin urges to wince and swear.
"Look, I understand that you don't want to get my hopes up," Harry continued. "But Peter — I wasn't kidding when I said I'm dying. At this point, all I've got are hope and shots in the dark. I'm going to chase down every last one of them."
Peter stared, stunned, looking his first friend — and once upon a time, his best friend — up and down.
"You don't..."
"...Look like I'm dying?" Harry finished. He dropped into his seat. "Perks of being the inheritor of one of America's top medical research companies. One that's been studying the same disease in my dad — who, as far as we know, is the only other person to have had it."
"He lived pretty long, if he was dying," Peter pointed out.
Harry snorted. "Yeah, in a bed."
"Better in bed than in jail for being a homicidal lizard person," Peter said. "Look-"
"I'm not going to become the next Lizard," Harry said. "But I'm not going to just die quietly, either."
Peter slowly nodded, looking back down at the tablet.
He'd call Kate — and the rest of the Young Avengers, hoping someone would know what to do. Maybe there would be a cure, or at least a stop-gap measure, or...something.
He didn't want Harry to die — he just couldn't afford to risk other people's lives to save his own best friend's.
"I'll see what I can do," Peter said.
And he meant it.