Work Text:
“You got my letter,” Harry says when Peter sits down across from him. Peter notices the way his chest deflates when he says it, shoulders going a bit slacker than they were before. He offers Peter a small smile. “That’s good. I’m glad.” He pauses briefly, head tilting a bit to favor his good eye, which roves over every inch of his body not concealed by the table between them both. “…And I’m sorry.” He adds, his voice softened by regret.
Peter hadn’t been sure what he’d expected to be different about Harry after almost five years, but something about the sight of him now feels good. The scars that distort one half of his face are still present, distinct, harsh lines curling over the surface of his jaw and cheekbone, but the skin isn’t flushed an angry, bruised purple anymore. Maybe it’s just that they now match the rest of his skin, but they look a bit softer now, a bit less angry. Or maybe it’s just Harry that’s not so angry anymore. “Yeah, I think I figured that out from the letter.”
Harry chuckles a bit in response. Peter had always thought that him leaving his hair straight when he’d finally gone and tried to get his revenge had been a sign that his need for it had taken over him; he’d no longer cared enough to maintain his appearance as strictly as he once had. But looking at him now, and looking back, keeping his looks as tightly kept up hadn’t been good for him either. His hair is curled more loosely now, not pinned perfectly into place by layers of hair spray and gel. He seems to be a bit more filled out, but not in the same way he had in high school, like most every boy but Peter had. This makes even his jaw look a little softer. Peter hadn’t every really thought that the way Harry was before was anything other than his default, but seeing him now makes it somehow suddenly obvious that this is how he should have been, prevented by self abuse he’d never thought too deeply about. He looks better this way; Peter can only describe him as looking warm, almost homey. “Yeah,” Harry echoes, glancing away for a moment.
Peter’s eyes drift downward to find his own hand has reached across the table between them to grasp one of Harry’s. His skin is warm beneath his fingertips, softer than it had been when he’d thought Harry had died. Back then, years ago, his palms had gone somewhat stiff and leathery from whatever it is he’d done to prepare for his revenge. Now, they’re very much the sort of hands some would say hadn’t worked a day in their life. It’s a relief.
Harry’s attention snaps back to Peter as he pulls his hand towards him, drawing slender fingers outward and briefly squeezing them in a feather light embrace. He’s solid beneath the grasp, flesh and blood. “You probably have questions.” He says, flashing a wry smile.
“I…” Peter misses the contact between them the moment Harry draws his hands away, his cheeks dusted red. “I can’t believe you’re really here” Harry blinks, shoulders falling completely. “I-I mean, of course I have questions, but you’re actually here. You’re alive.”
“I’m sorry.” Harry repeats, staring at him with eyes stretched wide that glance away for just a moment, his lips drawing against each other for a moment.
He can still feel the last buzzes of his skin against his fingertips. “You said that already.”
“No, no.” Harry shakes his head, leaning forward. “I thought you’d be angry with me. You should be, Pete. I went and vanished for five years and let you think that I was dead.” His words are a soft murmur, either in genuine wonder or to keep their business out of any nearby ears.
It hadn’t so much as occurred to Peter to feel that way prior to him saying it. “Oh.” It does make sense now that he’s said that. Yeah, anger is a response to finding out your best friend who you thought died saving you, who you had more nightmares over the death of than anyone else, has actually been alive and chose not to tell you that makes sense. But ever since he got that letter, he’s been anything but. He grabbed onto that flicker of hope with an iron grasp and hoped it would lead him away from all the panicked doubts that were shouting that it couldn’t possibly be true. Let himself enter defenseless to the attack he’d thought must have been coming just in case it was really him. And here he is. “...Well, I mean, I think MJ will be angry at you enough for both of us.” He says with a wry smile. “I just can’t believe you’re really here. I dunno, maybe I’ll be angry with you later, but how could I be anything other than happy? Besides, if you did it, you must have had a good reason.”
When he says that, the look on Harry’s face changes from a wince at the mention of MJ to a look of complete shame. His mouth opens for a moment but no reply comes.
It had been one of the things he twisted to every possible angle when he’d gotten that letter. Why? If Harry really was still alive, why did he let them think he was dead for so long? The thing he had wanted to cling to was that Harry hadn’t wanted to, that he’d been taken away from them, but Harry looks too healthy, too well put together. He’d thought that maybe there was just some important thing Harry had needed to do in secret for the good of everyone like in the movies, but, well, this wasn’t the movies and Harry didn’t look like he himself thought his reasoning was noble. “...Why didn’t you tell us you were alive?” He says eventually, trying to sound gentle.
“At first, it was because I didn’t want to be.” Harry admits. Peter’s mind, constantly whirring with things to do and things to worry over and things he can’t identify as either the spider sense or just anxiety goes silent. Serious indeed, even if not in the way he’d expected. “I’d sort of gone there hoping I would, because I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do with myself otherwise. I’d spent my entire adult life trying to do what my dad would have wanted and suddenly that was just… gone.” He pauses. “I’m glad I did go now. Because that would have still been true if I had stayed. I don’t know what I would have done to myself.”
“We could have helped you if you stayed. MJ and me.”
Harry’s efforts to avoid his eyes intensify. “I know that now. But then I really wasn’t in my right mind, a lot of what I was doing barely makes sense to me now. I guess I was just twenty one and a little panicked and stupid, because that was the point where suddenly I couldn’t find a way to tell myself that I was doing the right thing--or I guess not the right thing, but the thing that was noble in my mind. It wasn’t justified and I was suddenly aware it never had been. And I was dumb and… and I’d spent my entire life doing one thing and that sort of meant I was still the same person I was when my dad died, still sort of seventeen, and I thought I must be the worst person in the world for convincing myself of it and doing all those things regardless of the evidence and without hearing you out. And I didn’t really think or care that I was young and I could do something about it, or even if I couldn’t make it right that didn’t mean my life was over.” He hesitates, chewing on his lip, contemplating whether or not he wants to say something.
“I’m not angry.” Peter repeats, not sure of what else he could say that would be reassuring. “And I won’t be, I promise.”
When he continues, his words are slow and soft, too lacking in courage to raise his voice and carrying a fear that, somehow, not saying this piece the perfectly right way will carry consequences. “...After I found out about your identity, I started seeing my dad places. Usually in my reflection. He’d talk to me. And after that I started getting really paranoid, would make up ridiculous things to justify why he’d…still deserve vengeance when I found his whole stash. None of it makes any sense now. Most of the time it felt like I could barely think. And after that all happened and I realized that it was all bullshit, it was the clearest I could think in years and I guess that means I was… thinking too much, maybe? I guess I sort of spiraled. Got overwhelmed by all that stuff and couldn’t really process any of it so I was really rash. And I thought that either I was turning into my dad, even though it started before I took that stuff, and I was going to end up more dangerous than I was or I was just crazy and the same thing was still true.” He looks down at himself, a bit self conscious, but in a way that seems a bit more ordinary. “It was, um, more the second thing. It’s a lot better now. Took a while but I’m medicated and know how to manage it. It hasn’t gone away, it won’t ever do that.”
“Oh, shit.” Around that time, Peter had rapidly grown so self obsessed that he probably wouldn’t have noticed that even if they were still friends. But even when Harry was on his mind, his thoughts were on how to prove Harry was wrong, how to force him to believe him, that he didn’t really care to wonder about Harry’s problems, to treat that issue with anything but aggression or to find out what it was that prevented Harry from listening.
Despite his curiosity, despite how badly he wants to be able to now fix his errors and show he does want to notice the ways Harry is hurting, Peter decides it’s best not to push him. He was hesitant enough to talk about it to begin with. “I still wish you would have stayed or told us. We--I would have wanted to help you. It had to have been a lot harder on you if you were doing it alone.” He can’t deny his own… anxiety at hearing what Harry was experiencing. His mind goes to the same exact sort of crazy it seems like Harry himself had assumed, but… but it was Harry, who Peter could have handled in a way nobody else probably could have if he ended up that bad. And it was Harry, who was sitting across from him looking so much more healthy than he had the last time Peter had seen him, who, even through his nerves and shame, looked relaxed, didn’t have the weight of the world leaving him constantly tense, looked actually happy. Every horror movie that had a person that had things like that wanted to say they were a lost cause, and Peter hadn’t ever really thought of that as something to ask questions about, but Peter would like to think him good enough of a scientist to accept the evidence across from him that you could get better from that.
“...I’m glad you did, though. You look good.” He says, finding himself wishing suddenly that he could have held Harry through it all. Peter thinks that in high school they had only had each other and they’d acted like it; if one of them had a problem, it wasn’t Harry or Peter’s problem, it was their problem, both of them. It had sort of been Peter who’d been the first to change that, not letting the spider bite be their problem, then pushing Harry away far too much for his grief to be theirs. Maybe if some of those things changed, Harry would have allowed him that.
Harry laughs softly. “...I guess in reality, the actual reason is that I’m a coward. I could have come back when I’d had the time to realize I was being ridiculous. But I was still all the overly emotional and rash that I was before, so then it had felt like I was at the root of most of the bad things that had happened to you and MJ. I’d dated her just because I knew you liked her, I had accidentally told my dad the right things to help him target her. Then with Dr. Octavius he’d only ended up that way because of a project I had funded, that maybe if I was smarter I would have been able to notice the things that had caused all that. I’d let you end up in danger at that demonstration because I…” Harry hesitates for a moment, but powers through his reluctance. “Because I really wanted to impress you. And I made that deal, gave him tritium, got you kidnapped and MJ held hostage. And that was before I sort of lost it. And then there’s all the other shit, everything I did to try and hurt you, hurting MJ for no reason.” He doesn’t do anything to move away this time, when Peter takes his hand and pulls it towards the center of the table to hold it tight in his. “I think I just sort of wanted to feel like I was awful then, so I eventually just started thinking that maybe if my dad hadn’t been stressed over me and how bad I was doing and had been able to focus on his work without me bothering him, maybe he would have perfected that serum stuff and none of it would have happened at all. None of that was really what it was about, though.”
“I don’t think that really makes you a coward.” Peter says, but it doesn’t seem as though Harry finds that to be the cowardly part.
Harry shakes his head gently. “Not that, maybe. But I think it was when I kept not going back because I thought you’d both be better that way without me doing anything to ruin it. But thinking about it now, I think I mostly thought that you both thinking I was dead and that I had died for you meant that maybe you’d see me as good and love the memory of me, and I thought that if I came back I would have the chance to destroy it all. The person that memory would be was probably a good one, and I felt incapable of really being that. It… it wasn’t enough for five years, but it kept me from running back after a month.”
“I can’t really speak for MJ, but I know I would have let it go and forgiven you. I mean…” Peter takes his free hand and gestures to all of Harry. “You weren’t well. And I hope I would have known that even if you wanted to be a better person, you couldn’t just flick a switch in your brain and become better overnight. You would have made mistakes but… god, even if I just thought you were dead a little while? I think I would have done anything just to have you.”
Harry swallows, the already warm-seeming tones of his face suddenly significantly redder. Even his fingers feel a bit warmer under Peter’s hand. “I know that now. Then it just felt that growing up rich and with my dad meant I had never really endured any real consequences. So it was like… either there was no way that you’d both be willing to deal with me and whatever it was that had broken in my head, because I was spoiled and that wasn’t really how the world works, or I had to make sure I was punished myself.”
Peter is reaching out across the table and brushing the scarred side of Harry’s face with his fingertips before he can stop himself. He retracts his hand, staring at it for a second. Why does he keep doing things like that? He doesn’t think he felt like this about Harry before, or if he did it was something a bit more innocent than wanting to touch him this much and catching himself staring at the places where his clothes are the tightest against his skin and feeling his stomach grow warm in response. “I think you experienced plenty of consequences. And you didn’t need to do anything.”
Harry chuckles softly, his free hand raising to brush where Peter had just touched. “I know that now.”
“You said that wasn’t the thing, though.”
“There wasn’t any one big thing that kept me. It was just a sequence of things.” At the least, Harry seems more comfortable now that it’s a certainty Peter won’t react poorly. “I hadn’t really done anything about all the things that were happening in my head, so it all came back pretty quickly, and that was all really bad. For a while I was convinced I actually was dead and that meant I couldn’t go back. I wasn’t eating a lot because of it, most days I just sat or laid in once place because of it.” He pauses, reaching out and taking the hand Peter has atop one of his, holding it both of his own. “If I didn’t feel nothing, I was just really, really sad. I would just sit and cry if I was dead I couldn’t do anything that I thought qualified as… living, that was all over, and because I thought it meant I was just going to be alone forever.”
“Oh, shit.” He says again. Again he finds himself yearning for a world where he could have held him or helped him and a little confused by how badly he wants to touch Harry now. “That sounds scary. All of it.” Peter wants to fix it. He’s not good at saying things, especially not saying the right things. He’s not his Aunt May, he’s probably got a good forty years before he begins inheriting that, if ever. When someone wants words, he usually finds just the right wrong thing to say. That’s why it’s good to be Spider-Man, to be strong and fast and powerful. Because that means even if he can’t say the right things, he can fix a lot of things himself. And if he can’t, he can try, which normally says all the things he can’t on his own.
But he can’t fight something that was in Harry’s mind.
“I think at some point one of my neighbors must have realized that I hadn’t left my house in days. Or something like that. I don’t really know how someone found me, just that someone did and that was the first point I was actually getting better.” Harry frowned for a moment. “And then I just… was really angry at myself, really didn’t like myself. I kept telling myself I didn’t deserve to be around you both until I was doing better, but it wasn’t as though I had an idea of what would be enough. I just needed to be more.” Harry shrugs somewhat feebly. “That was probably… a little less than four years of it.”
Harry falls backward, impacting audibly against the padded seat. His eyes shut as he takes a deep breath, relaxing. The relief that comes is immensely satisfying for Peter to watch--wow, that sounds sort of voyeuristic. It’s only that Peter likes that struggle can be theirs together again. It’s only that Peter is more than caught up in the fact his best friend, his Harry, is breathing and living and safe. “I’m sorry, Harr, I wish I was better at knowing what to say. I’m--god, I wish you didn’t have to deal with that, but I’m not… I’m not upset, I don’t think. It would be sort of mean to get mad at you, wouldn’t it? You were gone because you were sick, basically. You needed to get better.”
He can see the soft smile that forms at the nickname. “You know, I never really thought about it like that. I guess I’ve been afraid that if I gave myself an excuse, I’d never come back. God, even the past year or so, I’ve been mostly fine. I’ve started working again, I’ve been mostly good mentally, the meds have been working great, I’ve been painting again, it just took so long because I didn’t know how to tell you. It feels sort of silly now that I know it would be so easy.”
“Where have you been?” Harry looks a bit confused, and Peter realizes that’s a dumb way to word that question. “I mean, physically. Where have you been living?”
“Oh!” And suddenly, the conversation feels almost ordinary. Two friends catching up. Once upon a time, they were the sort of friends who never had to catch up, for whom visiting wasn’t company, wasn’t something to prepare for. They were hardly two separate people. It was something Peter had never found before then or in the years after but had missed severely, concluding eventually that he simply never find another person like that again. It aches to fall out of sync and to see that it has happened, but perhaps this is the first step to finding that again. “I have a house upstate basically right in between Rochester and Syracuse. It’s small--or, well, smaller than what I’m used to, anyways, but it’s nice. Kind of the middle of nowhere, but I think all the nature did me some good. You aren’t still up in that shithole apartment, are you?”
“No, that building got condemned a couple years ago. I would have been in a lot of trouble, but--” He can’t help but smirk at Harry. “You see, I have this dickhead friend who went and died and left me a bunch of money. So I was okay. I’ve been teaching middle school science for a few years. Still the bug, which is definitely a lot easier over the summer like this.”
“You’re teaching?” Harry sounds surprised. “I thought you’d be starting your own company or dong some sort of world changing research. You’re so smart!”
He shakes his head. “No, I don’t like the person I am when I’m the center of attention.”
“Yeah, it did make you a bit of a jackass.”
Peter can only laugh at that. “Yeah, that’s what MJ said. Using what I’ve been gifted to help others was the whole reason behind the bug stuff to begin with. So I thought I would prefer to give it back to other people rather than just do what would be most beneficial to me.”
“That does sound like you, Pete.” Harry’s begun to subconsciously mess with Peter’s fingers, his eyes firmly set on Peter. It doesn’t quite feel like staring, it feels too soft, too overwhelmed with warmth and honey sweetness. And suddenly Peter’s thinking back to that letter, something that had been squeezed into it so briefly it had been obvious Harry hadn’t been sure he wanted Peter to read it. Peter had sort of thought that it was supposed to be a past tense thing.
“What about you? You said you’d just started to work again.” Well, it’s not like Peter minds if it wasn’t past tense. He likes the touch. Sort of wishes there was more. Maybe Peter just isn’t capable of being upset with Harry anymore.
Harry nods for just a bit too long. “Yeah, they don’t want me doing too much to start but I’ve begun working a bit. It’s…” He laughs softly for a moment. “It’s not that impressive, really. Just a few days a week. And I’ve done art for people a few times too. I’m not even living off it, just a bunch of Dad’s money.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” He questions.
“My shrinks.”
“Oh.” It feels obvious once he says it. “I thought that part would stop now that you’re better.”
Harry’s head tilts, his eyes narrowed to slits as a familiar smirk forms on his face. This one is less smug and more a bit self deprecating. “Yeah, that’s the really fun part. I’m not. Won’t ever really be. They’re stuck with me forever in case I lose it again. Probably will at some point. Which is great.”
“Oh.” Peter says again, not knowing what else he could say. That he doesn’t know what he’s talking about? Harry probably figured that out. “That sucks.”
“Yeah. Really fucking sucks” Harry agrees, and Peter thinks he can hear the resentment of someone who’s still grieving a normalcy he won’t ever entirely have. Peter guesses he can’t entirely understand that part. “Sorry, it isn’t your problem.”
“I want it to be.” He responds, something he can’t identify lacing his own words. He wants to feel like they’re not entirely two different people again.
Harry is silent. It seems like several times he tries to open his mouth and respond, but he doesn’t determine any of it to be worth being spoken. It’s a moment before Peter realizes Harry actually won’t be responding at all. “It’s not a problem if it means I get to have you in my life, Harry.”
“Are you with MJ?” Harry says suddenly.
“What?” Peter blinks. “Oh, no. After everything that happened we both thought we weren’t ready for that, and then she got picked up by some teen drama thing and she’s only in New York for a little at a time, so… it just never happened. Haven’t dated much at all, just short term or barely committed stuff. Why did you ask?”
And then, all at once it sort of clicks together. Why Harry asked. Why things felt different with him than they have with anyone else. Why he keeps staring at his biceps and chest, tight against his shirt. Why he wants to touch him so badly. God, why is Peter always so dumb about these things?!
Before Harry can respond, he continues. “Harry, do you still feel that way about me that you mentioned? In the letter?”
Harry seems to only realize then that he’d been playing with Peter’s hand. He doesn’t drop it, but the gentle touches stop. “I think I do. It’s been five years, I guess I can’t know for sure when this is the first time I’ve seen you.” He admits, his grip loosening as though he thinks Peter will withdraw.
“...Um, I really do want it to be my problem. If you want that.” He says.
Harry looks him up and down, body going lax. He wets his lips with his tongue. “I’ve got a hotel in the city for a few days. In case we want to go catch up privately.” He murmurs. “A good one. Someone should take care of the spider, hmm?”
It’s nice to see Harry as confident as he used to be, and Peter, just as unchanging in certain ways, blushes at the thought. Peter is good to the point of simplicity, a churchboy sort of good when he hasn’t stepped into one in years. Peter desperately needs to be simple, or to feel as though he is--Spider-Man is too complicated. He needs to be simple enough to be scandalized at the thought of sleeping with his best friend, just like he is in the moments before every time he’s had a one night stand. It has never changed whether or not he’s done it, never changed how he felt during one, but knowing he’ll still be embarrassed by the thought of it makes him feel like he’s still himself in some small way.
Like always, he lets himself be comforted by his scandalization before he looks at Harry and comfortably knows that yeah, he does want to have sex with him. And like that, all the shame goes away. “I’d like that.”