Chapter Text
“Harry!” Peter picks up his pace ever so slightly to a brisk, almost-jog, leaving behind Max and the rest of the Horizon High group to catch up with the lone pair walking a sizeable distance ahead of them on the winding path through the cemetery. “Wait up!”
Both Harry and Anna Maria halt their leisurely stride, pausing whatever casual conversation they seemed to have been in the middle of, and look over their shoulders at Peter approaching. Harry turns his body around more fully when Peter comes to a stop in front of him, smiling faintly as he says, “Yeah?”
“Uh,” Peter’s mind stalls for a moment, realizing now that he’s standing here initiating this, he didn’t think through how exactly he’d word things. “Are you…um. Doing anything after this?” He tries but fails miserably to maintain eye contact for more than two seconds, and his hand comes up restlessly to scratch at the back of his head. “I mean—” an awkward clear of the throat, “I thought we could…sit down and talk for a minute.”
Harry’s smile falters, “Oh, well—” he lifts his currently only functional arm up, turning up his wrist to glance down at the face of his watch, “I do have this meeting with the Oscorp PR team in about an hour…”
“Oh—right. Yeah, of course. Yeah.” Peter is quick to force a smile and nod along, shoving both hands in his pants pockets. “That’s fine. I-it’s not important or anything. It can wait—”
“But I can reschedule it,” Harry talks over Peter’s fumbling with a somewhat amused look. “That’s kind of a perk of being head of the company, you know.” He flashes a grin as he pulls out his phone from an inside jacket pocket, “Give me a sec.” And then he’s turning to walk a handful of steps away while punching in buttons with a thumb.
Peter watches him go, watches him put the receiver to his ear as he finishes dialing, and it’s while he’s speaking to the person on the other end of the line that Anna Maria clears her throat at Peter’s side.
“Well…I should get going,” she smiles gently, her eyes still a little red and puffy at the edges, but there’s a serenity to her expression that certainly wasn’t there before they were joined by the others at Otto’s grave. “Take care of yourself, Peter,” she adds with a comforting touch to his arm.
But before she can completely withdraw her hand back, Peter takes it with both his own, turns towards her, and gives it a reassuring squeeze, “Thank you,” he says firmly, for all the gentleness in his smile, “for all your help.”
Anna Maria’s smile flickers a little wider at that, and she looks down a bit bashfully, blinking back what is quite possibly the threat of more tears. “…I was happy to.”
Peter gives her hand one firm shake before letting go, his own hands sliding themselves back into his pockets, “Maybe Spider-Man could use your help again sometime in the future?”
The woman’s smile grows warmer, and she wipes something away from her eye before replying, “If he thinks I can be of any assistance…I’d like that a lot.”
They smile at each other in quiet understanding, and then Harry is coming back while tucking his phone away into his back pocket. He says they’re all set, and after they both exchange final goodbyes with Anna Maria, the two boys part ways with her and start walking their own route through the grassy knoll of headstones.
“…How long’s that on for, by the way?” Peter breaks the silence after a time, motioning with his head and a shift of the eyes to the cast and sling encasing Harry’s right arm.
“Oh, this old thing?” Harry jokes with a slight lift of said arm. “It looks worse than it is, actually,” he continues more seriously, with a somewhat wry smile. “But at least six weeks, just to be safe.”
“Well, hey,” Peter goes on, easily falling into step with the other as they approach the iron gates that mark the exit to the cemetery, “If you ever need help with anything, just let me know, okay?”
Harry’s smile and eyes go soft at that, prompting a sudden flutter in Peter’s stomach. “Yeah… Thanks, Pete.”
Peter can’t help mirroring that smile, though he’s sure it’s already gone wider and brighter, “Anytime, Harry.”
They keep walking for a while until they reach Central Park, brimming with far less activity than would usually be expected on your average late morning. But with construction scattered about the whole of the city in attempts to rebuild the most recent supervillain-caused destruction, there are less people out on the streets in general, leaving most public places such as this oddly barren.
But all the better for them, Peter thinks, pointing out an empty bench he and Harry can claim for themselves. Peter takes up the left side of it, while Harry lowers himself gingerly to his right. At Peter’s concerned look at Harry’s wincing, Harry smiles strained but reassuringly and answers before anything can be asked, “It’s just the bruises.” He sets a careful hand at his ribcage as he adjusts his seating position slightly, making sure to keep his spine straight. “That’s what I get for sacrificing durability for mobility on my goblin armor,” he adds with a dry chuckle. “Anyway.” Quick to change the subject, he looks over at Peter expectantly. “What did you want to talk about?”
Peter straightens up in his seat, “Oh—um.” He’s noticing a pattern here. He had all that time walking to think of how he was going to phrase things, and he’d wasted it just being caught up in the glow of Harry at his side, with the two of them still able to converse together normally. Still with Harry able to smile in his direction. “Right. Well…” Peter looks away and fidgets with a crease in his necktie that isn’t really there. “I just thought with…everything that’s been going on—me helping out with arranging Otto’s funeral, you in and out of the hospital—I haven’t had a chance to…you know. See how you’re doing.” His fingers abandon the tie in favor of running restlessly through his hair, and only then does he chance a glance at Harry. “Make sure you’re okay.”
Surprise briefly filters through Harry’s facial features, and all too soon it shifts to a grimace of a smile as he turns away and casts his gaze to the ground.
“…I guess…” he begins quietly, rubbing at the back of his neck with a hand, “…I’m as okay as I can be, all things considered.”
Peter doesn’t speak up again right away. He takes a moment to collect his thoughts, in order to choose his next words carefully—a skill he feels he’s in desperate need of practice in—and only then does he disrupt the stillness.
“Look,” he starts off gently, echoing Harry’s downward stare, though instead he focuses on his hands fiddling with each other in his lap, fingertips pressing into and easing away from each other. “We…don’t have to get into anything right now. I know this probably isn’t the best time for it. I just…” he trails off, losing some of his nerve. He forces his hands into fists to keep them from fidgeting, then takes a breath to re-center himself, and continues on decisively, “I just wanted to let you know I’m here to listen. If or when you want to talk. About anything.”
Peter is met with heavy silence, and that alone is enough to churn his stomach with a bout of immediate regret at ever opening his mouth. But when he glances over at Harry it somehow makes the feeling even worse. While Harry doesn’t seem particularly angry or upset, he’s not smiling, nor is he looking any less downcast as he avoids looking Peter’s way.
But he does seem to be thinking something over, so Peter waits. And then, finally—
“…I appreciate the sentiment, Pete,” Harry murmurs, at last lifting his head up, but still not looking in Peter’s direction. “Really, I do.” And there is sincerity in those words to lighten the sullenness of his tone. “But…” He turns his head completely away, so Peter can only gauge his emotions by the sound of his voice. “There’s nothing to really talk about, is there?”
“Harry…” Peter starts, turning in towards him. “That’s…not true. I mean, if anything—” he huffs a frail laugh, “—we don’t talk enough. At least, not lately. Not without—” he gestures vaguely with his hands, “—being interrupted by spider monsters or missiles and lasers or teched-up vigilantes trying to kill us. Oh—!” His gesticulating freezes. “Or burning buildings. What is up with that anyway? Like, did the both of us insult the same fire witch or something and now we’re cursed to get ourselves stuck in a sea of flames at least once a month?”
Harry abruptly makes an odd, stifled noise, his shoulders trembling with the sound, and it quickly becomes apparent that he’s trying to suppress laughter. His one hand goes to his mouth as he stubbornly doesn’t turn around for Peter to see his face, but Peter is already beaming ear-to-ear in delight.
“Aww, and here I thought you didn’t like my jokes?” he coos playfully with a light elbowing into Harry’s side.
“I don’t—” Harry immediately retorts, whirling back around to impressively glare at Peter even while his mouth contorts to fend off a smile. “That’s not funny and you know it—” A snicker makes it through his defenses and he slaps a hand back over his mouth.
“Then why are you laughing?” Peter grins.
“Because you’re such a freakin’ doof,” Harry says through a chuckle as he gives up the fight and shoves at Peter’s shoulder without any real force to it.
Peter is so easily pulled into laughing along with him, and he pushes sharply against Harry’s shoulder with his own in retaliation. “Hey— I’ll be the biggest doof around if it makes you smile like that.”
That was maybe more honesty than Peter meant to let slip, and his stomach does an anxious somersault at the way Harry stumbles over a short laugh while his cheeks turn a sudden pink. But although he does look away, the smile that remains seems sincere.
“…Listen,” Harry says after a pause, voice dipping back to solemn quiet, and Peter retreats back a few inches to give him his space within their shared seating arrangement. “If there’s one thing I want to tell you…” he speaks to the ground, frowning, and takes a breath before continuing on, “…it’s…I’m sorry. For everything.” His hand comes up to rub at his right upper arm. “For lying to you. For not trusting you. And all that stuff I said before, back with the cyber goblins…”
“I’m sorry too,” Peter cuts in gently, leaning into his palms as they press into his knees, “Looking back, I…said some things in the heat of the moment that…I really didn’t mean.” He sneaks a glance at the other’s face, “…I know I can always trust you, Harry.”
That does pull a faint smile out of the boy in question, and he looks over too, “And you know I’m not actually still mad about the whole Spider-Man thing…right?”
“Well…” Peter averts his gaze and rubs at the back of his neck, “…you probably still are,” he admits with a smile. “But that’s okay.” At Harry’s slightly puzzled look, Peter goes on somewhat anxiously, “Well, what I mean is—uh. How do I put this…?” he mumbles the last bit under his breath.
After taking a moment to organize his thoughts, Peter speaks up again, focusing on a nearby tree across from them, and the way the breeze rustles the healthy green of its leaves above, “…I guess there’s always been this part of me that thought…I was in the right. Keeping my superhero identity a secret from you. Because I was only doing it to keep you safe.” His gaze lowers along with his voice, thumbs twiddling in his lap. “So…I could deflect some of the guilt I felt. Even after you found out. As if what I’d done…wasn’t so horrible a thing.”
He can feel Harry’s steady gaze on him, but Peter doesn’t dare glance in his direction until he’s finished.
“Then I come to find out…you weren’t out of the country all these months,” he breathes out like a confession. “Building this huge, dangerous mech all by yourself right here in this city where you’ve always been.” A weak, somewhat bitter laugh. “And it wasn’t until that moment that…I realized how much it could hurt to be lied to.”
Peter sees in his periphery vision Harry look away uncomfortably, so he resumes quickly.
“But that’s not a dig on you—” Peter stands from the bench, finally feeling too restless to stay seated, and he paces slightly back and forth while talking with his hands, “It’s on me. I started the whole keeping secrets thing. And I just—” he comes to a halt, standing in profile to Harry as his face sinks into his palm, “I just felt…so stupid. Like I should have known all along, or—” His head comes back up, and a sigh escapes him. “Or—I don’t know. Like…like I wasn’t…”
“Like you weren’t the best friends you thought you were,” Harry finishes quietly with a forlorn sort of half-smile, speaking to the concrete ground.
Peter turns back to him, eyes widening in some surprise, and then, slowly, he echoes that lonely smile.
“…Yeah,” Peter replies gently, “…Exactly.” He takes a step towards the other, smile falling, “And the fact that I ever made you feel that way…believe me, Harry, it—” absently his hand finds its way to his chest, and he clutches tight at the fabric there, “—it hurts worse than anything a supervillain has ever done to me.”
Harry doesn’t say anything in response to that, and averts his eyes even further from Peter, but his brows remain unfurrowed, which is probably a good sign.
“…So…I honestly don’t expect you to have forgiven me completely,” Peter goes on as he makes his way back to the bench. “I could talk about all the good intentions I had until I’m blue in the face, but it doesn’t make what I did any less terrible.” He settles back into his seat, palms pressing into the worn, painted wood below. “But I’m…trying to do better. I want to do better,” he quickly amends, and then, with an uneasy glance to his right at Harry, “So that hopefully…you can start to really trust me again.”
Another bout of silence hangs in the air. Harry is quiet, but his facial features are composed. Pensive. Almost like he’s been chewing over a different thought in his mind while Peter has been talking for the last minute or so. It’s just when Peter is considering speaking up again, that Harry does so instead.
“…So then,” he starts off calm. But it’s an eerie sort of composure. With an obvious, ominous something lurking just underneath the surface. And when Harry turns to look at Peter, it’s with the slightest wrinkle in his brows to indicate just a touch of resentment. But at its core, his question is almost pleading, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Peter isn’t sure he understands the context of what he’s being asked, but that doesn’t stop his body from reacting as if he’s just been caught in some unforgivable act. His voice stalls, and he swallows to clear the sudden dryness in his throat, “Tell you what…?”
“About your plan to stop Toomes,” Harry clarifies without missing a beat.
“What? I…” Peter still doesn’t understand where this is going, “I did tell you—”
Harry interrupts him with a huff of a laugh that carries no mirth whatsoever, and in the next instant that smile is gone, “No,” he says firmly, shaking his head. “No you didn’t.” And then he’s standing from the bench, taking a few steps forward before he stops, and doesn’t turn around, leaving Peter with nothing to observe but the hunch of Harry’s shoulders and a back that’s never looked quite so frail to him before, “You told me…you had something that would disrupt Toomes’ mental interface with the goblin mech. And that it was dangerous. But I—” his left hand clenches into a tight fist at his side, “—I trusted you. I bought you the time you needed. And what you didn’t tell me—” He spins around, and his face is a mess of anger, horror, and a tinge of hysteria that draws his voice high and nearly cracking, “—was that it would KILL you!”
“I didn’t know the probability of survival until later!” Peter is quick to defend, standing up from the bench as well, but while he intended to sound firm and unwavering in his justification, against the heartbreaking expression twisting up Harry’s features, everything ends up coming out guilt-ridden and panicked. “And by then there wasn’t any time to—”
“I would have figured something out!” Harry hollers obstinately, now settled on anger as his primary emotion, “If you had just told me what you were doing—!”
“Harry you know as well as I do you weren’t in any condition to keep fighting—” Peter is retorting back, feeding just a little bit off the other’s frustration.
“THEN IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME,” Harry abruptly screams, and it feels like a physical blow to Peter as he takes a startled step backwards, especially when Harry starts striding forward. “Why should you—” he stabs an index finger into Peter’s chest, “—have to die for my mistakes!?” he seethes, withdrawing his hand back to his own torso. “Why do I have to be responsible not only for my dad’s death, but my best friend—?!” and his voice suddenly catches on something in his throat, cutting his sentence off at the heel. Immediately he retreats a handful of steps back as his hand flies to his face to cover his contorting features before turning completely around.
Peter is left standing speechless and hollow, a chilling realization slowly dawning on him that he can’t believe didn’t hit him sooner.
“…H…Harry,” Peter takes a cautious step forward, as if he were approaching a wounded animal, “What happened to your dad… That was an accident—”
“Don’t,” Harry instantly snaps, his voice only trembling slightly, “Just— …Just don’t.” The hand falls from his face, but his back is still facing Peter, “I don’t need you to sugarcoat it for me. I know what I did. I’ve been living with it for the past year!” His shoulders hunch further with each forceful word, and his left arm comes up to wrap protectively around his middle. “…Why do you think…” his voice goes quiet now, losing all its previous ire, so that’s there’s nothing left but defeat and self-deprecation, “…why do you think I built that stupid thing…?”
Peter blinks a few times as he feels his eyes go glossy on unformed tears, and his vocal chords feel like they’re in a vise. But Harry keeps talking.
“I just wanted—” he stutters through a cynical laugh, “I just wanted to do something good to make up for it. Something to help people. Something to help you—help Spider-Man—” He finally turns around, with a wide, sweeping gesture of his hand, as if to motion to the entirety of the city, “And look what happened?” His smile in no way holds any humor, and he doesn’t meet Peter’s gaze for long, looking away as he runs an agitated hand through his hair, pulling hard towards the end as if he intends to rip the strands right out of his skull, “Half of New York City is blown to pieces, Otto Octavius is dead—and it is literally. All my fault. From building the mech to leading Toomes straight to it every step of the way. Handing it to him on a silver platter—”
Harry’s voice starts failing him again. His breathing is ragged from shouting, and it’s easy to see the building tears in his eyes are about ready to fall. But in that pause he seems to calm down considerably, his body turned slightly away from Peter as he focuses downward at nothing in particular.
“And I just…” Harry shakily breathes out, the hand in his hair—now trembling—moving to partly cover his mouth, “…I’m so sorry…”
Peter moves without saying a word, almost without even thinking, as if he were being magnetically drawn to the other. When he gets close enough for his approach to be noticed, Harry’s head tilts back up and he looks at Peter—questioning and teary-eyed—when he comes to a stop in front of him. But even then, Peter can’t find anything to say, not really knowing what expression he himself is making, aside from how much his eyes are burning from unshed tears, and simply takes a half-step forward to encircle his arms around Harry in a careful embrace.
It’s a little tricky at first, considering the bulky cast around Harry’s right arm that creates an awkward buffer in between them, but Peter manages an angle that shouldn’t put too much pressure against it, while still maintaining the definition of a hug.
Harry unsurprisingly stiffens up like stone in Peter’s hold, but still he doesn’t speak. He waits. And he waits. Until a sob eventually breaks free from the confines of Harry’s throat, the entire span of his shoulders shuddering with the sound, and a moment later Peter feels a face hot and wet with tears bury itself into his shoulder.
It takes a little while after Harry allows himself to cry that his left arm starts to move, curling around Peter to grab a fistful of the back of his suit jacket. Harry weeps quietly but openly, and close against him like this Peter can feel every hiccupping sob, every stuffy sniff, every quiver that runs through his body as they stay like this for what seems like an eternity.
The rest of the world seems to fade away in that time frame, leaving just the two of them in it. So it feels like waking up from a dream when Harry finally settles down. Peter has to consciously release his hold around the other as Harry’s grip around him loosens and falls away, and immediately Peter feels that loss of warmth.
But he smiles anyway. Careful and soft. Even as Harry avoids making eye contact, clearly embarrassed over the spectacle he made of himself.
“…Feel better?” Peter asks gently.
That prompts an involuntary tug at the corners of Harry’s lips, and he sniffs hard, bringing his hand up to wipe away at his tear-stained cheeks, “…Yeah, actually,” he answers with a slight rasp, gaze shifting shyly to Peter’s face, “I do.”
Peter can feel his smile growing to a grin, “Good.” And then he’s slipping a hand into his inner jacket pocket. There’s a crinkle of plastic wrap as he digs around, before pulling out a travel-sized packet of tissues, tugging open the resealable tab, and offering them out to Harry.
At the sight of this, a bright laugh is startled out of him, to which Peter raises a brow in confusion.
“I remember you used to always carry one of these around when we were little kids,” Harry explains fondly, pulling one tissue out of the package to wipe away the lingering wetness at his eyes.
Now on the same page, Peter smiles somewhat smugly, “And you always used to make fun of me for it, right up until winter came along and you’d get runny noses every morning on the walk to school.”
Harry grins, unabashed, then blows his nose with his second tissue. “Yeah. That sounds about right.”
They burst out laughing together at the distant memory, the light coming back to Harry’s eyes, while the knots in Peter’s stomach gradually unfurl. When Harry is done drying off his face—and Peter takes the time to dab at his own eyes—they walk together to the nearby trash can to toss the used tissues, and that’s when Peter speaks up again.
“…Hey,” he says lightly, trying not to bring the mood down again by sounding foreboding, “Let’s make a promise?” As Harry turns to look at him, confused but intrigued, Peter smiles and raises his fist up in an all-too familiar motion, “I promise no more self-sacrificing stunts, as long as you promise not to hide any more technologically unstoppable fighting machines in your basement.”
With much relief, Peter made that last bit sound ridiculous enough to coax another small laugh out of Harry, and he matches Peter’s raised fist with his own.
“Yeah,” he smiles, “I think I can manage that.”
Their fists bump against each other, and for this one small, quiet moment, at least, everything seems alright with the world.