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“What the hell - ? ”
“Oh, good,” Harry says mildly, setting the glass of water and painkillers on the coffee table. “You’re awake.”
Spider-Man pushes himself up on the couch and - well, it’s kind of hard to tell, all things considered, but Harry thinks he widens his eyes behind the mask.
“Uh,” Spider-Man says. “Uh.”
“Doc Ock fucked you up bad, dude,” Harry says, retreating to the armchair. “Swatted you three blocks east and flung you into the side of my wall, knocked you out cold.” He extends a hand. “I’m Harry Osborn, by the way. My father was the Green Goblin?”
“Yeah,” Spider-Man grunts - if Harry’s not crazy, he’s pitching his voice a little lower than it was before, almost like he’s trying to disguise it. “Trust me, I remember.”
“Take those,” Harry orders, indicating the painkillers on the table in front of him. “You’ll feel better. Hopefully.”
Spider-Man cocks his head in confusion, but he reaches for the pills and the water anyway. “You seem...oddly nonchalant about this entire thing, Harry. Mr. Osborn. Sir.”
“Harry’s fine. And honestly? When your dad was an insane maniac with a glider and pumpkin bombs, you kind of learn to go with the flow when it comes to superhero shit.”
“Fair enough,” Spider-Man says. He gulps the pills down. “I should probably get going.”
He only takes one step before listing to the side woozily, staggering unevenly on his feet. On impulse, Harry jumps up, dashes over and braces his arms on Spider-Man’s shoulders.
“Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa,” Harry says, pushing him back down gingerly. “Take it easy, dude.”
“‘M fine,” Spider-Man says weakly. “It’s ok, ‘m fine, just lemme go.”
Harry plants his hand on Spider-Man’s chest and holds him down on the couch firmly. “You won’t make it two blocks. You need to stay here.”
“But Doc Ock - “
“ - got away,” Harry finishes. “Sorry, man, it happens sometimes. But unless you want me to call you a cab or something, you’re staying here.” He crosses his arms. “So...like, do you want me to order a pizza or something?”
Spider-Man just kind of stares at him. And then -
“Uh...sure?”
So Harry orders a pizza.
Spider-Man doesn’t talk much unprompted. He seems sort of skittish, to be perfectly honest. Harry supposes he’d be pretty flaky too if he was in the home of his archnemesis’s kid, but Harry’s not like Norman. He really isn’t.
It’s strange, though. There’s something so familiar here, watching Spider-Man sit on his couch and eat pizza, but he can’t quite put his finger on it…
“Need a refill?”
Spider-Man picks up his empty glass. “Oh, uh - I can go get it.”
Harry swipes the glass from his hands before he can do anything stupid. “No way, I’ll do it. You don’t even know how to get to the kitchen, anyway.”
Spider-Man freezes. “Oh, right. I don’t. I have no idea where your kitchen is. At all. Haha.”
Harry raises an eyebrow.
It shouldn’t be bothering him as much as it is. It’s probably nothing. It’s definitely nothing.
The guy is bleeding from the back of his head. “Oh, shit,” Spider-Man mutters, bringing a hand back drenched in scarlet. “That’s not good…”
“It must have opened back up,” Harry says, standing up in a panic. “It looked like it was done before, I didn’t put anything on it. Fuck, I probably should have.”
“Don’t worry about it, man,” Spider-Man says dismissively. He presses his hand to his head again. “Say, do you have any gauze?”
“Let me do it.” Harry pulls the roll of gauze from his corduroy pocket, stepping forward. “You need to relax.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment,” Spider-Man says, backing up slightly. “But...uh...the mask?”
Harry blinks. “Just. Um. Just let me lift up the back of it? You can sit facing away from me, I promise I’m not gonna look.”
Spider-Man exhales. “Yeah. Ok. Ok, sure.” And then he shifts forward, and Harry realizes what he’s waiting for him to do; so he sits gingerly on the couch behind Spider-Man, nervous chest just nearly pressed to nervous back, and, breathing heavily, slowly unzips the back of the mask.
Brown hair. Just...brown. No highlights. No dyed parts. Not even teased up in a particularly crazy style. Simply short, straight brown hair, nothing remarkable about it at all.
It makes Harry’s heart catch in his throat. His fingers just barely skim the thick, soft strands, and he feels Spider-Man jerk slightly against him, shoulders tensing up.
“Sorry,” Harry murmurs. “Can I just - “
He cautiously rolls the back of the mask up and past Spider-Man’s ears, enough to see the wound at his temple, not enough to unveil his face.
“Is this good?” Harry whispers. He doesn’t know why he’s being quiet, but it feels appropriate.
“Yeah.” Spider-Man’s voice is hoarse. He’s breathing like crazy, in, out, in, out, and Harry wishes he would slow down. “Yeah, it’s - just go easy.”
“Ok.”
Harry carefully - carefully - grabs a gauze pad, gently tapes it to Spider-Man’s head. He doesn’t understand why this feels so tender. He doesn’t understand why his stomach is erupting with nerves right now. Slowly, he does the job. Slowly, he patches up a superhero.
Harry catches a quick whiff of Spider-Man’s hair, and almost all at once, warning bells go off in his brain. It smells like - like -
Peter?
Harry shocks back suddenly, and Spider-Man flinches.
“Whoa,” he says, pulling his mask back down again and spinning around. “Hey, you good?”
“No - Yes.” Harry shakes his head. “I’m fine, sorry. It’s nothing.”
He’d made it up. He’d just made it up. Tons of people use that brand of shampoo. Tons of people have brown, brown hair. Tons of people know where Harry’s kitchen is, have voices that sound familiar and eat prosciutto-pineapple-mushroom pizza like Peter. Tons of them.
Right…?
“Um,” Harry says, feeling slightly sick . “You should - You can probably go home now. If you want.”
Spider-Man rezips the back of his mask. “Oh...Yeah, sure. I mean, you're finished, right? Am I good to go, Doc?”
“Yep.” Harry swallows, stares anywhere but straight ahead of him. “Ship-shape. Totally...hunky dory.”
Hunky dory?!?!?!
Spider-Man laughs. “Hey, hunky dory, that’s great. Thanks, man. Seriously.”
“Yeah.” Harry clears his throat. “Yeah, uh, don’t mention it.”
Spider-Man crosses over to the terrace doors. “Well,” he says, a little awkwardly. “Um. Thanks again. Bye.”
“Bye,” Harry says, but Spider-Man’s already gone.
Harry sits down on the couch, hard, and puts his head in his hands.
He’s going crazy. He must be. Because there is absolutely no way that, out of all of the eight million people in New York City, Spider-Man just so happens to be Harry’s best friend. It’s all too much of a coincidence. Just one giant coincidence of epic proportions that was never supposed to happen, but did.
Harry stares up at the portrait above the mantelpiece, the austere and grim-looking one of his father that he still hasn’t had the heart to take down yet. To Harry, Norman’s painted eyes used to look sort of shifty, like they knew something Harry didn’t but weren’t keen on letting him in on the big secret.
As Harry looks at the picture now, he realizes that his dead father’s eyes look completely normal to him, not shifty at all.