Archive of Our Own

they can only love you imperfectly, you can only love them back imperfectly
you are an imperfect person

- dungeons and daddies, teen talk season 2 episode 10: dad me to hell

Somewhere across the room, there’s a leaking water pipe. 

He counts the drops when he’s coherent enough to do so. Not for any reason in particular, just because there’s not really much else to do here. With the lights off, his hands cuffed behind him, legs secured at both the ankles and the knees, he’s left with no other choice than to kneel on the floor, head bowed, listening intently to whatever he can. Maybe to distract himself. Maybe in the hopes of hearing something else. If there is a motivation behind this action, it’s not one he’s aware of at the moment. 

Being aware is too difficult. It requires thinking, and thinking makes his head hurt, and his head already hurts. He’d rather not make it worse. So, he doesn’t think too much. He just listens. 

475… 476… 477… 478… 

Drip… drip… drip… 

There’s been a few times that he’s had to start over—moments where his focus has slipped, where he finds himself blinking into bleary eyed consciousness and not having a clue if any time has passed, but knowing that he’s no longer counting and he should keep doing that, so he’ll start from the beginning. 

He’s not sure how many times he’s started over so far. He’s not sure about much of anything, really. 

How long has he been here? 

No, no, too much thinking—he winces as his head throbs, wishing he could bring his hands up to try and soothe the ache between his eyes by rubbing circles into his temples to ease the pain. There’s another drip—he stopped counting when he got distracted. What was he at again? Four hundred and… and something, wasn’t it? He can’t quite place what it had been. He’ll just have to begin again.

1… 2… 3… 

Drip… drip… drip… 

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Way back when—as in, before Norman Osborn died and Harry took over the company; as in, before Ben Parker died and Peter shouldered the blame, the guilt, and the responsibility of Spider-Man; as in, before Mary and Richard Parker’s plane went down, when Peter still had his parents around to teach him how to brush his teeth and make his bed—back before all that, Peter and Harry met. 

At the time, Richard was working with Norman, with Oscorp, on something that would one day lead to his own son stitching together a suit and creating a life as a masked vigilante. At the time, Richard pretended to be friends with Norman for the sake of having a stable work place where he could build his ideas with the proper interest, the proper funding—and maybe he wasn’t pretending at first, but as the years went on and Norman proved again and again how cruel a man he could be, often forgoing humane methods in the hopes of accelerating towards the wanted results, it became more and more of an act. 

Harry Osborn still had his mother around this time. He’d have her until he was ten. 

They were still toddlers, not yet old enough for preschool but definitely old enough to know how to, in one way or another, communicate from person to person. Mary had taken Peter with her while taking Richard his lunch at Oscorp, and Emily must have been doing something along the same lines, because there were two young kids who, upon seeing each other, were instantly infatuated with one another. Once the introduction was made between them, there was no going back. 

When one took a step, the other followed. When one ran, the other sprinted along with them. 

“Well,” Mary Parker had said, laughing bright and beautiful and lively, alive, alive, alive, watching her son excitedly toddle around with, of all people, the heir to Oscorp. “I think they found their best friend.”

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Sometimes, he feels himself jolt, and it’s like something in his brain connects. Clarity will wash over him so quickly that it scares him, and he’ll find himself breathing weird—too hard, too fast, afraid. He’ll pull at the cuffs binding his arms behind his back, whip his head up and peer around the pitch black room with a sense of urgency that makes his heart thunder in his chest. His stomach will curl—he’ll feel sick.

Various thoughts will start flying through his head, too fast for him to keep up with. Where did they take me? How long have I been here? What did they do to me? Is he okay? Did they hurt him? Is he safe? 

It lasts mere moments—eventually, something will drag him back into the fog. His eyes will close. 

The water drips. He starts counting all over again. 

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Sometime after—as in, after Ben Parker’s death and Spider-Man’s creation; as in, after Norman Osborn succumbs to his illness and Harry shoulders the weight of it; as in, after Gwen dies and Peter can’t find it in himself to blame Harry for it because he let both of them down—the two of them meet again. 

There was a pale shakiness to the way Harry stood on the Parker’s front porch, his chin held high but lower lip tucked between his teeth for him to gnaw on, only allowing himself to show his nerves in the smallest, most subtle of ways. Peter felt like he was on the edge of a cliff and Harry felt like he had already fallen off and the only thing that either of them could seem to do was stare, seeing it all while seeing absolutely nothing, waiting for the other to cave. 

Eventually, Peter’s shoulders slumped—tension bled out, and he became weary, became tired. “It worked,” he commented, gesturing vaguely in Harry’s direction. “You’re not all… green, and goblin-like, and actively trying to kill me anymore.” 

Harry brought up a hand, felt along the expanse of his neck on instinct and let out a slow, somewhat uneven sigh of relief at the smooth skin that greeted him. “Yeah,” he said. “I heard… I heard you had something to do with that, Spider-Man.” 

“Don’t—” Peter flinched back so hard, someone might have thought he’d been hit. “Don’t call me… I—I didn’t do anything for you as him, alright? That’s not what—” And he stopped, closed his eyes and sucked in a sharp breath and seemed to struggle with letting it out, knowing that Harry was watching. Harry, who hovered mere feet away with a sinking feeling and a growing expanse of confusion mixed with shoved down concern that he was trying so hard to ignore. Eventually, after seconds, or hours, or thousands of years, neither of them could tell, Peter managed to finish with, “I didn’t do—anything—as him. Not… Not for this. So, please, just—do not call me that. Okay?” 

Slowly, Harry shook his head and said, “I don’t understand.” 

Maybe this could have been a moment of opening up, trying to make sense of things, bringing pain and hurt and sorrow into the light and have it turned into a moment of clarity, of mutual understanding. Maybe this could have been so much more than it turned out to be—but, as it stands, Peter just shook his head, scrubbed a hand over his features, and said, “Nah, it’s—it doesn’t matter, don’t worry, just… keep it to my real name, will you? Unless I fucked something up and you can’t remember it all of a sudden.” 

“If only I could be so lucky,” Harry said—a sarcastic drawl, painted over uncertainty and the urge to ask are you okay? It worked well enough, at least, made Peter offer the slightest pull at the ends of his lips, clearly trying for a smile, even if it didn’t quite reach. The moment would have to be enough. 

It wasn’t the only moment they got, though. 

Harry settled back into life outside of the simmering anger he had been stewing in for so long—a front, of course, to hide the fear beneath, the fear of his own death, the very same demise his father faced. He learned how to run Oscorp without the influence of his father, sifted through the employees and got rid of anyone who made him uneasy, hired younger and more ambitious minds that aligned with his own ideals. 

(A letter gets sent to the Parker’s house during this time, inviting him to apply. Peter stared at it for a long time, considered taking up the offer, showing up and saying yes, I’ll work here. Yes, I accept. 

He couldn't make himself do it, though.)

For a while, they avoided one another—for one reason or another, whether they be good reasons or bad. Eventually, it became impossible to avoid the magnetism pulling them together—a life spent as best friends, from children to pre-teens to teenagers to young adults to this; how could they ignore something so significant, so vital to the very foundations of who they were? 

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He dreams of an angel, in the rare moments his mind allows him to dream. 

Images of rumpled up hair, an echoed snort of laughter—an elegance to each step and a nuance to every word and an indescribable beauty to each and every moment spent basking in warmth, in sunlight. There’s lapses, and flashes, and… skipping ahead in time. Kids, and pre-teens, and distant teenagers, and young adults so overwhelmed by bitterness and anger in their own respective ways. and then… 

Complicated. 

It’s ironic, but he can’t really remember why. 

He never ends up dreaming long enough to figure it out. 

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The first attempt was a series of text messages. A somewhat blurry photo of a magazine cover, followed by, Your hair looks dumb in this picture. And then, a few minutes later, I’m not being serious. I mean, I am, it does look pretty stupid, but I’m saying that in a funny way, not in a trying to be a dick kind of way. 

A few hours passed, but Harry responded with, You sure know how to flatter a guy, Parker. 

I’m insulting you, Peter said. 

I’m being sarcastic, Harry replied. 

Oh. That makes sense. You busy? 

Almost always, unfortunately. Don’t you have weird Rhino guys to fight? 

There was a good lapse of nothing, and Harry, sitting in his office at Oscorp and staring at the screen of his phone instead of looking at the pile of paperwork stacked on his desk, felt himself start to deflate. Until, of course, his phone then began to ring—and right in front of his eyes was Peter’s name and a picture of the two of them as kids, gapped teeth dimpled grins and all. 

He’s never answered a call faster.

It wasn’t perfect after that. Nothing about them has ever been perfect. Each text held an air of caution and uncertainty—every joke felt like it was sent with fear, with bated breath, scared that they might cross an invisible line and shatter the already broken foundation that they were trying to build off of. But the messages were consistent. The jokes were sent and were always given back. The occasional calls were stilted and tentative but never ignored.

Weeks went by. Daily texts, at least two or three calls a week. Peter was busy with classes and Spider-Man, though he never brought up his side-job and changed the topic whenever Harry made reference to it. Harry was scraping up the mess of a company that his father left to him. There was very little time that their schedules lined up. Still, they talked, and they talked, and they talked.

Harry was the first to offer a middle ground. There’s a cafe, he said in the message he sent Peter, where he tried to come across casual and collected and calm. His fingers shook as he typed it out. They’ve got good bagels and good coffee. He hesitated, worried—and then he added, I’ll pay.

The reply was faster than he would have guessed. I’ll pay for myself, Richie Rich. When?

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The thing is, he knows something is wrong. Even in the haze of confusion, even when he’s lost to floating time and counting dripping water pipes, he knows, somewhere within himself, that something is not okay. 

He can’t pinpoint it. He can’t make his mind kickstart into action and drag out all the details he seems to be missing. Hell, he can’t even make his eyes stay open longer than a few milliseconds at a time, lest he wants to succumb to rolling waves of nausea that only succeed in making the situation even worse. 

But he knows that something is wrong, and he knows he wants to fix it—he knows there’s a way to fix it. 

He just wishes he could actually understand, because—whatever this is? He’s fucking clueless. There’s a heavy fog blinding him, blocking off parts of his brain, keeping him stuck in this loop of nothingness… panic… nothingness… panic… where am I… is he safe… what did they do to me… did they hurt him…

34… 35… 36…

Drip… drip… drip…

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Meeting at the cafe became a regular thing. Once a week, every Wednesday—Harry put a long lunch on his schedule and Peter only had a morning class. Meet at eleven thirty, claim a table in the corner, order drinks and whatever food they felt like. Sometimes they spent the next hour talking, joking, laughing. Sometimes Harry was answering emails on his phone while Peter focused on highlighting the important parts of his notes for whatever test was coming up. The silence was never uncomfortable.

What became more obvious as the weeks passed was that Peter avoided Spider-Man like the plague. At first, Harry thought it was just a tentative subject—they were making progress, the two of them, but they were also treading on the uneven ground left from what happened between them, and Spider-Man was a large factor in all of that. It would make sense that the combination of Harry and Spidey would be hard, but the weeks of weekly meet ups turned into months of weekly meet ups, with additional hang outs thrown in here and there, and anytime Harry so much as hinted towards Spider-Man, Peter got a frantic look in his eyes and changed the subject. It would have been subtle, maybe, if it were anybody else, but Harry has known Peter Parker since they were toddlers. To him, it was obvious.

It was only made worse by the fact that Harry couldn’t manage to be upset about it.

Disappointed, sure—there was an entire section of his best friends life that he knew of but wasn’t able to talk to Peter about, an incredibly fundamental part of Peter, at that—but he couldn’t be mad. It was his own fault that Peter didn’t trust him. It was a miracle that they were even friends again, after everything that Harry had done. He’d been horrible and rash and vicious. He’d gotten Gwen Stacy killed.

The fact that Peter was willing to speak with Harry again was a miracle. That they were hanging out, were friends, had to be a result of some sort of divine intervention that Harry wasn’t worthy of. He couldn’t be mad about it. But it hurt, knowing his lifelong best friend didn’t trust him. Knowing he deserved it, too.

And Peter not talking about Spider-Man didn’t take away Harry’s knowledge of who was beneath the mask—which began a habit of Harry watching every news clip and reading every story involving the city’s protective web slinger. First hand accounts of people saved by Spidey, retellings of fights told by people who witnessed the whole thing, posts on social media, videos taken from sidewalks. Spider-Man was a force to be reckoned with in every clip, every story, every mention. Jumped headfirst into danger and saved everyone, then swung away before the press could corner him.

In almost every fight, however, Peter got hurt. And suddenly, it was all Harry could notice.

Bruises peeked out from jacket sleeves, faded remains of a black eye yellowed out at the edges, a subtle limp when he walked into the cafe for their weekly lunches. Harry saw it every day. He wondered what bruises he had caused, what pain he had inflicted on Peter. It made him feel sick to his stomach.

He wouldn’t push to talk about it—about Spider-Man. But he would worry about Peter being hurt, he would keep an eye on him. And he would not drown is his guilt, no matter how hard it tried to kill him.

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564… 565… 563—no, that’s not—where am I? where is he? what... 

Drip… drip… 1… 2… 3…

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It took a while for Harry to be released, even after Peter figured out a cure.

From Harry’s perspective, if anyone were to ask, he had been rightfully imprisoned for the damages and the lives his caused harm to, for the death of Gwen Stacy and the chaos he caused. He’d been locked up and mentally unstable—battling in his head between himself and the twisted influence of the serum that he’d given himself. A lot of time passed that he’s got no memory of.

From Peter’s perspective, it was a year and a half long struggle that he’d forced himself to see to the end because if he didn’t then he failed them both, and how could he live with himself then?

The first part of it had been a grief-stricken shut down, which he clawed himself out of thanks to Gwen’s graduation speech and the appearance of the Rhino, which had been enough of a shock to his system to set him in motion once more. And in true Peter Parker fashion, once he was moving, he became incapable of staying still—enrolled in classes for his first year at ESU and spent 80% of his free time patrolling the city. The other 20% of his time was split between spending time with Aunt May, making sure his assignments were done, and down in that hidden subway station that he found… before.

It took a good four months before he managed to figure it out—a way to reconfigure the formula his father created so that he could cure Harry of his… goblin… issue, as of his genetic disease. It took another month of running test after test before he felt certain that it would really work and be safe to use. Then he had to face the fact that Harry was locked up and Peter couldn’t just show up with a science experiment, so he tracked down the Osborn family lawyer, managed to score a meeting, and somehow talked his way into a legal battle to prove that Harry couldn’t be held fully accountable for his actions made whilst under the influence of the serum he had concocted in a desperate attempt to save his own life.

Peter’s involvement had apparently been significant, according to the lawyer, as some kind of character witness. The fact that Gwen Stacy had died in the crossfire between Goblin Harry and Spider-Man was never a secret, and the fact that Peter and Gwen were dating wasn’t a secret, either. He hadn’t played a large role in the actual proceedings, only providing the scientific evidence that helped their case, but he’d been in the room a couple times and was asked, at some point, why he was trying to free the man that had killed his girlfriend. Although he had been angry at first—although he had wanted to blame Harry for everything that had happened—his answer had been quick and honest. “That wasn’t Harry,” he answered. “I’ve known him since we were in diapers. What happened was a result of the serum.”

A serum that never would have been made if Peter had handled things differently. His fault.

Not Harry’s.

Peter wasn’t directly involved once the ruling had been made, but he was kept in the loop, able to get every update possible thanks to the lawyer that was acting as a middle man between Harry and Oscorp, preparing the company for when Harry would return as CEO. Peter knew when they administered the cure, knew when the outcome was reported back as hopeful. He knew when Harry went from being an inmate to being a patient undergoing intensive therapy, rehab, and receiving psychiatric help.

And he knew a week in advance before Harry was fully released, his record wiped clean and his mind entirely his own again. He hadn’t expected Harry to show up at his door. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. And he had waited for the anger—because he had failed Harry, he could have helped and could have prevented everything from happening, he had done it all wrong—but the anger didn’t come. They spoke, and then texted, and then started to meet at the cafe. It was something Peter never would have expected and refused to let himself take for granted. He refused to fuck it up again.

Harry knowing that Peter is Spider-Man was not something he thought about much, except for the moments when Harry tried to bring it up, and then Peter could feel his throat close, his chest tighten. Being Spider-Man was important—it was his only saving grace, his only form of redemption in the aftermath of his every mistake—but letting other people be involved was his downfall. Gwen’s father, and then Gwen herself, and the pain that Harry went through in the hopes to save himself because Peter didn’t save him…

Peter couldn’t let Harry get involved in it. He couldn’t let May know, couldn’t talk about it with Harry, because the moment someone become a part of Spidey’s bullshit, their very lives were at risk, and Peter couldn’t allow more people that he loved to suffer—to die—because of him. Never again.

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623… 624… 625… 626… 627… 628… 

Drip… drip… drip… drip…

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There was a bad guy, because there is always going to be a bad guy. The news called him Scorpion, though Harry couldn’t tell if it that was a name the guy chose or one that the media chose for him. Had to be both, he thought, since the guys suit was clearly designed after a scorpion, tail and stinger and all.

Some sources said poison. Some said deadly paralysis. Horrible sickness. Lifelong damage.

When he watched the coverage of Spider-Man—of Peter—fighting Scorpion, he felt frozen in place, unable to move, to think, to breathe, because it was not a very good fight. Peter held his own, as he always seemed to do, but Scorpion was ruthless in his attacks. Even with the attempted censorship provided through the live coverage, by the time Scorpion was being arrested it was visibly obvious that Spidey had taken more hits than usual. He waved to people standing by with one hand, the other pressed to his bleeding side, and maybe Harry was imagining it, but he could have sworn he saw Peter’s hand shaking when he reached out to web away before any of the reporters were able to approach him. There were shimmers to his suit—wet, Harry realized, soaked in blood.

They met up at the cafe the next day, and Harry couldn’t keep his concern to himself, no matter the fact that he knew it was a bad idea. He tried, at the very least, to bite it back, swallow it down—but after one too many flinches of pain that Peter kept trying to hide, Harry found himself asking, “Are you okay?”

Peter froze for half a second, and then smiled, tight-lipped. “Yeah, ‘course.”

Harry stared at him for a moment. There was a bruise hidden in his hairline and the scar of what must have been a busted lip the night before. By the end of the day, the scar would likely be gone, the bruises would be faded, the injuries healed, and yet that knowledge did nothing to comfort him, because healing faster did nothing to take away the pain. He leaned forward, pitched his voice low and said, “Look, I know you don’t want to talk about Sp—”

With a sharp inhale, Peter looked away, and Harry bitterly amended his wording.

“About him,” he said. “But I saw the news coverage, Pete. Are you really okay?”

For a moment, Harry thought Peter might give a genuine response, but when Peter looked back at him, there were walls up. “I’m fine,” he said—and his voice was gentle, was kind. “You don’t have to worry about that stuff, Harry. I’ve got it. You can stay out of it.”

And maybe, in Peter’s head, those words conveyed what he meant them to: I don’t want you to get involved and end up hurt. I worry about you, too. I worry all the time.

But to Harry, it was another sign that Peter didn’t trust him, and though he knew he deserved it, he couldn’t help but feel entirely dismissed in that moment. Did he fuck up so badly, break their friendship so deeply, that he couldn’t even show his concern? Was he not allowed that? And no, maybe he wasn’t, maybe part of him agreed that he was asking for more than he reasonably could, but his whole life he would often find himself falling back into anger when confronted with complicated emoton. It is a fatal flaw, and in that moment of worry and hurt, the instinct to rely on frustration like a crutch took hold. 

“Fine,” he said, a bite of snark sharpening his words as he gathered his stuff. “I’ll stay out of it.”

“What—Harry, wait—”

But Harry was already out the door.

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Complicated, right? How ironic that it’s always so god damn complicated.

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Peter thought about reaching out. He thought about calling, asking to meet, trying to explain himself better so that hopefully Harry would understand and not take offense to Peter keeping him out of Spidey business, even if part of him felt a bit miffed by the fact that Harry was upset in the first place. In fact, he planned out what he was going to say, just to make sure he didn’t fuck it up somehow, like he always did.

Of course, that was when the Spidey business started to get out of hand, like it always does.

Scorpion had been the first in a trio of people far more powerful than the usual muggers and drug dealers that Peter dealt with on a day-to-day basis, and he had also been the easiest to deal with after Peter got jabbed with the venomous stinger of his (admittedly kind of cool) suit and managed to figure out an anti-venom to it. It took two failed take-downs before the big fight that Harry apparently watched on the news, and yeah, Peter got knocked down and hit around quite a bit, but Scorpion—Mac Gargan—was locked up and facing trial, and Peter was fully healed less than two days later.

The second guy was an unnamed faceless force with some insane tech that was managing to disguise himself as random people while robbing various banks across the city. Almost every person had an alibi that proved they couldn’t have been the perpetrator, and yet they were also on camera with a gun stuffing cash into a duffle bag. With their alibi’s and the scraps of technology that Peter was able to found at the scene of each robbery, it quickly became undeniable that there was one sole person behind the crimes. It was baffling and intriguing and Peter went down a rabbit hole to figure it out, almost failing one of his classes because of how many days he ended up skipping to dig for more info. Peter was calling the guy the Shapeshifter in his head. The media called him Mysterio because of his true identity being a total mystery, which Peter didn’t want to admit sounded better, but it definitely did.

With the Mysterio bank robbing stuff, it felt kind of like an easter egg hunt, or a game of cat and mouse. The bank robberies were happening frequently and with seemingly no patterns, and Peter chased after them, dug for more details, felt himself getting closer and closer to figuring it out—

And then the guy stopped altogether, and with every one of his leads well searched, Peter was left with nowhere else to look and no idea of how to find out the dude’s identity.

It would have been more annoying had the third guy not been a fucking mechanical octopus, but seeing as the third guy was a mechanical octopus, Peter was too busy dealing with that to be annoyed about not being able to figure out who the hell Mysterio was. It lurked in the back of his mind, but between Mechanical Octopus Guy and his various classes, lurking was all it could do.

The issue with OctoDude (he had yet to settle on a name) was that he hadn’t really done much of anything yet. He’d been a looming presence captured in blurry videos and word of mouth. It could be nothing to worry about, but with every video posted online and every sighting shared, Peter got a worse and worse feeling. Being menacing with big scary robot arms didn’t inherently mean evil, but it didn’t spell out the makings of a hero, either. Peter’s senses weren’t loud, but they were insistent and ruthless, and his focus was completely shot as he tried to figure out who Robo-Tentacles was and what he had planned. It only made it worse when his senses started to fuck with him in classes. In one class in particular, actually.

He should have connected the dots faster.

He didn’t.

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Sometimes, in those rare moments of clarity, he registers pain and distant sound. His wrists ache, his knees are killing him, his head screams in a sharp, stabbing agony that matches with his pulse, and there’s a distant voice that he doesn’t recognize and can’t pick out any specific words from. It proves he isn’t completely alone, which he would care about more if he could think about anything for more then ten seconds at a time, but it does nothing to tell him where he is or why he’s so disoriented.

And then the clarity is gone, the pain fades, the distant voice is silenced, and he goes back to counting.

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Harry hated relying on the news to tell him if his best friend was hurt. He hated not being able to reach out and ask, hated that part of him was still angry, hated that most of him just felt guilty for the way he left. He didn’t want to push but he didn’t want to let the bridge they were building crumble away, either.  Give him space, he thought. Try to talk to him in a week. Things will be easier to say by then.

It wasn’t anything new, really—Harry Osborn ruining his own life and taking it out on others. But Peter Parker was never supposed to be a part of his life that he ruined, and certainly not twice. He was determined to fix it, but every cell in his body was convinced that any attempt would only manage to break it even more, and that fear of making things unfixable made him postpone the inevitable.  In a week, he thought, and then another week passed and he thought,  Next week instead, and he threw himself into being the CEO of a company he never wanted, and he religiously followed any news stories about Spider-Man, and he tried to figure out what he would say when he eventually gained the courage.

A little over a month later, Peter was nearly gutted on live television.

The guy had an odd mask and four mechanical arms that were far too big for Harry’s liking, clawed ends that were sharp as daggers. Spidey was on the scene in a matter of minutes, and it only took a moment of consideration before Harry realized the fight was happening only a few blocks away from Empire State and Peter was supposed to be in class. The fight was a brutal beat down that barely blurred out all the bloody details, but no amount of censorship could hide the way Peter crumpled in pain at one point, nor the shakiness in his legs when he got back on his feet to keep fighting. It was close call after close call and Harry genuinely questioned if he was about to see his best friend die on camera, but then it was over when the guy with the mechanical arms suddenly retreated and vanished, leaving an injured Spider-Man in his wake.

Harry debated his approach for all of three seconds before he had his phone in hand. Peter didn’t answer any of Harry’s calls, didn’t open any of his texts, and before he could talk himself out of it, he was out the door and heading towards the route between ESU’s campus and Peter’s house.

The timing was lucky—he heard people a few blocks away shout about Spider-Man before he saw Peter swing around the corner, and before he could stop himself, he shouted, “HEY! Spidey!”

Peter was in pain. Peter felt like he might pass out. But Peter could recognize Harry’s voice anywhere, and instantly found himself dropping onto the sidewalk. He pressed his hand into his bleeding gut and blinked at the twisted up look on Harry’s face and forgot, for only a moment, that they were in public and that there were people around. His voice was soft and confused as he said, “Harry?”

Some people were taking pictures. No one was approaching—maybe because it wasn’t a secret, the fact that Harry Osborn and Spider-Man once fought, and maybe they were waiting with bated breath to see if it was going to happen again—but the sound of photos being captured reminded Peter was where they were, and he could only hope his mask was enough to hide the way he flinched.

Harry seemed to catch it. His features became more pinched. “You’re hurt,” he said—quiet, insistent.

“Usually,” Peter replied. He was still bleeding. Quite a bit, to be honest.

That seemed to annoy Harry. “Usually?” he repeated. “You’re not even— You—”

Peter looked away—saw a gathering of people staring at them. One of them was recording the whole thing, and he sighed. “Too public,” he murmured, knowing that Harry knew that, could see how he was struggling to control his words. He reached forward—had to use the hand he’d been pressing against his gut—grapped Harry around the waist and said, “Hold on,” before swinging them away.

He picked a rooftop a few blocks away, one with no people and no cameras and no chance of being seen or heard. There was a bloody handprint staining Harry’s shirt when Peter let him go, though he didn’t get the chance to apologize for it before Harry was yanking off Peter’s mask and asking, “How bad is it?”

“I’ll live,” Peter told him. Harry scoffed, looking pissed, and maybe it was the blood loss, maybe it was the concussion he was pretty sure he had, or maybe it was just inevitable, but Peter felt a twist in his gut, a swoop in his stomach, and found himself wondering if the childhood crush he spent a long time ignoring was really limited to when they were kids. It wasn’t the time to think about that, though, not when Harry’s hands were shaking and his eyes kept dropping to where Peter was still bleeding. “Hey,” he said, and then another, “Hey,” until Harry’s eyes moved up to meet his. “It’s fine,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Harry laughed, something bitter and bewildered. “Do you think I have a choice?” he asked, then shook his head when Peter could only blink at him. “Jesus, Pete. I know I—I know I fucked up, okay? Everything that happened before, when my dad died and—when I was dying, when—when Gwen—”

Peter didn’t flinch. He saw it, though, when Harry did.

“I know I fucked up,” he repeated, looking away from Peter. “And I get it, not wanting me involved with all your Spidey shit. I wouldn’t trust me, either. But I just saw my best friend—my only friend—get profusely injured on the news, and then you wouldn’t answer your phone, and you—you think I can just drop it? You think I’m not going to be worried? How fucking heartless do you think I am, Peter?”

In this moment, Peter should have responded quickly. He should have explained his side, should have made it clear that he did trust Harry, that he never thought Harry was heartless—should have said something. But he found himself stuck, frozen, as he struggled to process Harry’s words, struggled to make sense of them. Because it never occurred to him that Harry might have felt like that. He’d been so caught up in his own reasons that he never realized how badly they could have come across.

And in Peter’s silence, Harry shut down, his features closed off, his eyes downcast and cold. “Whatever,” he murmured, turning away. “Glad to see that you’re alive, I guess.”

Before Peter could so much as blink, Harry was gone.

Again.

-

-

-

He sleeps, or something close to sleeping. The water leak lulls him into it, and pulls him out of it, too. Drip… drip… 1… 2…

-

-

-

The next day, Peter reached out.

He didn’t wait like he thought he should have before. He gave himself the night to treat himself and heal up a bit, just enough that he could use his brain to form actual thoughts. I’m sorry, he typed, and then deleted, and then typed again. Can we meet up? I think it’ll be easier to talk about this in person.

Harry left him on read. Peter felt like an asshole and he wondered for how long he was being an asshole and he thought about what he could do to stop being an asshole. 

The day after, he was planning to call. He had his phone in hand, Harry’s contact pulled up.

The Osborn family lawyer called him first. “Do you know where Harry is?” he asked, words heavy and tone tired. The call didn’t last long—Peter said no, and the lawyer sighed like he figured that was the case and explained that Harry hadn’t been seen since leaving Peter on that rooftop. “He’s in a very delicate position right now,” he said, as if Peter wasn’t already aware. “If anything happens that hints towards him being unsafe to himself or others, he’s going to be locked up again. Do you know where he might be?”

“No,” Peter said. “I don’t. But I’ll go look. I’ll find him.”

Less than an hour later and Harry’s status as a missing person was in the news. Peter was already in his suit and searching—had already hacked into traffic cameras and security feeds to try and track where Harry went, what could have happened, only to come up empty handed by a segment of the street with no working cameras. He searched that street, every alleyway and sidewalk and rooftop. He felt his heart in his throat and thought his stomach was about to collapse on itself.

This was his fear. This, exactly this—because there was no way in hell that Harry vanishing was a fucking coincidence, was it? Nothing was ever just a coincidence, not for Peter. Whatever had happened must have been related to him, to Spidey, to something that Peter could have known about or prevented had he just done something different, done something right. He always got it wrong, always fucked it up.

It was why he lost Uncle Ben. It was why Captain Stacy died. It was why Harry ended up in such a rough place and resorted to such irrational choices while sick. It was why Gwen died, too.

But Peter would not let his mistakes take Harry’s life. He refused.

So he searched, and he looked, and he felt like crying, and he kept going—

Until a mechanical arm grabbed him mid-swing and yanked him into a forceful stop.

-

-

-

He thinks he should be scared, or angry, or upset. He thinks that there is something blocking his ability to think much at all—it’s less a thought in his head, really, and more a muffled understanding in the back of his mind that he can’t quite acknowledge without feeling like his skull is splitting open. Something is wrong. He knows it and understands it. Get out of this. Get up. Do something.

His fingers twitch. It’s the most that he can manage.

-

-

-

There were three things that Peter was focused on during the fight.

One – How to end the fight as quickly as possible so that he could continue looking for Harry.

Two – Where the hell to look next when the fight was over.

Three – The fact that Doc Ock was his fucking professor.

It clicked frustratingly late, and once it did, it became painfully obvious. Professor Octavius was always a bit odd, that was clear on day one of class, but he was genuine and he was smart and Peter liked him, liked the way he taught and his passion for science and discovery. When his senses started warning him in class, he had been confused and started paying attention for suspicious behavior—maybe it was a classmate, maybe something bad was going to happen—but nothing ever did. For weeks. For  weeks.

And just like every other aspect of Peter’s miserable life, it caught up with him in the most inconvenient way possible. By slamming him face first into the concrete when he was still healing from the attempted gutting that had happened two days prior and while he was trying to find his missing best friend.

If it were a different day, it would have been an easier fight. With his still healing injuries and his brain so focused on Harry being missing, however, it slowed him down and left him uncoordinated. The brutal back-and-forth of it was tiring and frustrating and Peter found himself losing his grip on his self control just a little bit—and, frighteningly enough, he let it happen, even once his realized it was happening. He let himself hit harder than he had ever let himself before, leaned into using his own brutality just to wrap things up faster, and though the guilt of it tasted bitter on the back of his tongue, it proved to be effective when he finally got the upperhand enough to disable the mechanical arms and get Otto webbed up fully and properly, bringing the fight to an end. It still took too long, in his opinion, but at least it was over. He only waited long enough to hear the approaching sirens before swinging away to keep searching.

Every injury felt ten times worse—Otto had been intentional with every attack, targeting the places he had already managed to land hits on two days ago—but he ignored each twinge of pain, forced himself to breathe through every agonizing step. It hurt like hell. It didn’t matter how much it hurt.

When he heard Harry’s voice, he forgot about the pain.

It was distant—he barely caught it while swinging through the industrial area, listening in to warehouses and office buildings, trying to hear any heartbeats or conversations or anything else that may be useful. He was out of ideas on where to look and he was spiraling into a desperation that scared him. He had already loosened his control on his strength—not enough to cause serious harm, but enough that he could have—and in that moment, he felt ready to loosen it even more. He had to find Harry. He had to.

From where he was swinging, he almost missed it—coming from his left, where the warehouses began to have more space, more seclusion. Weak and feeble and warbled, but it was there. Harry, undoubtably Harry, calling out, “Hello? Is anyone out there? I need help, I… I can’t…”

Peter was moving towards the sound before he realized he’d switched directions. Whipping himself through the air at a dangerous speed, he followed the quiet murmurings that Harry kept making, like he was losing strength but still trying to call out for help, and Peter’s head was filling in the gaps in a terrifying way, wondering what he was about to find. Was Harry hurt? How hurt was he? Was the person who took him still there? Peter was exhausted but would happily ignore it to get Harry to safety. If he was about to swing into another fight, it would be a fight that he won. He would make sure of it.

Except, when he narrowed down which warehouse Harry’s voice was coming from and made his way inside, there was nobody there, and suddenly, it was silent.

Peter stumbled to a standstill in the middle of the dusty floor, hand pressed against his gut once more, and realized as he spun around in confusion that he was beginning to feel lightheaded. From the blood loss, most likely. He ignored it—ignored the cloudiness of his thoughts, the syrup-slow processing he was able to muster, and focused his hearing, closing his eyes to hone it in. He looked for Harry’s voice again, tried to lock onto a heartbeat, refused to give up. Couldn’t. He couldn’t.

And just as he managed to hear the approaching heartbeat-footsteps through the fog in his brain, just as his eyes shot open and he spun around to face whoever it was—just as he was preparing himself for the fight he refused to lose, something collided with his temple hard enough to send him crashing to the ground. Any other day, it wouldn’t have been a hard enough hit to crumple him. 

But as he laid there, struggling to catch his breath, he found his vision starting to go dim. It made no sense until he saw someone lean over him with some sort of gas mask on, and then it clicked. Something was in the air—it wasn’t just bloodloss making it hard for him to think. He was being drugged.

No matter how hard he tried to fight it, it was no use, and within moments he fell under.

-

-

-

When Harry grasps at consciousness, it’s slow. His head hurts, like it has this whole time. His knees hurt from kneeling. His wrists feel raw from being bound, shoulders aching from having his arms tied behind his back. Same with his ankles—tied together, immovable. The dripping pipe is constant. He feels too tired to open his eyes. He can’t figure out how much time has gone by or remember how he got here.

There’s a voice again, though, somewhere outside of this room. It sounds ten feet away and also miles away, somehow. He doesn’t understand the words, but this voice is different. Familiar. He can’t think clear enough to figure out why he knows the person it belongs to at first, but there’s a knee-jerk reaction when he hears them scream. Suddenly, he knows exactly who it is, and fear sinks into his bones. Peter, he thinks. His hands move—try to pull apart, but can’t go far thanks to whatever rope or shackles or handcuffs are holding them together. The pain in his head worsens. I have to help Peter, he thinks.

But it’s gone as quick as it came, and clarity washes away, and he’s counting the water drops once more.

-

-

-

Peter wakes up from a nightmare to find himself in an even worse one. Around him, there is fire and death and Otto and Curt Connors is the Lizard again and Max is blue and electrified and angry and it makes no sense, none of it makes any fucking sense.

It doesn’t take long for him to realize it’s fake—Mysterio’s whole thing is being fake, and the guy is apparently the dramatic kind of person to not only use his admittedly impressive technology to create illusions, but also the kind of dramatic person to make long, drawn out villain speeches that Peter would rather never have to listen to again for the rest of his unlucky life. Still, the whole thing is pretty fucking effective, leaving Peter flinching and struggling to make sense of what’s going on.

And then there’s Harry.

The chaos stops—the illusions, the fake bullshit, all of it just stops, and Harry is standing in front of him. Maybe it’s the concussion and the injuries, maybe it’s what remains of the drugs in his system, but Peter finds himself absolutely certain that Harry is here. He doesn’t question it. “Harry,” he chokes out.

Mysterio walks closer and Harry says nothing, only stares Peter in the eyes and blinks. And before Peter can do anything more than blink back, there’s a gun to Harry’s temple and the shot rings out.

Peter screams as Harry crumples to the ground. He screams like he’s the one who was just shot, screams until it feels like his throat is bleeding, screams because it’s all he can do—only stops when his body won’t let him, and finds himself gasping for breath between involuntary, choking sobs. He’s stuck watching his chest, willing for it to move, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t.

Mysterio crouches in front of Peter then, a sadistic grin and a self-satisfied look in his eyes. He isn’t wearing the stupid fucking fishbowl helmet anymore. He wasn’t wearing it when he knocked Peter out before, either. “Hello, Spider-Man,” he says, sounds almost amused. “It’s wonderful to meet you properly. Not quite face-to-face, but halfway there, hm?”

Peter grits his teeth, breathing heavy. He still can’t look away from Harry.

“Ah,” Mysterio says, pushing himself to his feet. He walks past Harry like there’s nothing there and vanishes from sight for a moment, and then Harry disappears. Peter jerks forward—finds himself stuck, somehow, arms tied behind his back, knees locked in place on the floor. He pulls on the restraints, tests them against his strength. They aren’t enough to keep him in place, but they’re tough enough that he’ll need to exert more than what he’s capable of at the moment. For now, he’s unable to do anything other than shift his glare to Mysterio when he approaches again, once more crouching in front of him with a nauseating nonchalance. “That’s better,” he says with a chuckle. “Now, let’s talk, hm?”

There are plenty of scathing things that Peter wants to say, but all he manages is a biting, “What the hell do you want?”

“Oh, many things,” Mysterio laughs. “From you, though, not much. Not right now, anyway. See, there’s a game happening, isn’t there? You were trying to figure out who I am, and got damn close to doing it, too. Couldn’t have that, so I switched gears. Now it’s my turn in our game to figure out who you are, my way. And then I’ll change the narrative, flip it around on you. The mastermind, you see? Double crossing the public to appear innocent, to play the hero. I have my fun now, and you end up with the blame.”

“Why not take off my mask?” Peter asks. “Get it over with now?”

Mysterio scoffs. “Where’s the fun in that? I like a puzzle, Spider-Man, and I like my revenge, too. This way I get both. And maybe, if you cooperate, your friend will live to see another day.”

Peter sucks in a sharp breath. “You have Harry.”

“Did I say that?” Mysterio questions, and then chuckles again. “Oh, no use denying it. I’ve got him somewhere safe, in the same drugged up haze that he’s been in for the past 24 hours. If you prove difficult, I’ll up the dose until he’s gone. Do you understand, Spider-Man?”

Peter does not plan to follow rules, but until he’s sure he’s got enough strength to break his restraints and take Mysterio down without risking Harry’s life along the way, he’s got to play along for now. “Yes.”

Mysterio’s grin is wicked and cruel. “Good. Let’s get this party started, shall we?”

-

-

-

Way back when—as in, after Peter and Harry were friends but before Emily Lyman died; as in, after Peter and Harry were friends but before Harry was sent to a boarding school far away—Peter and Harry were inseparable. They were attached at the hip, spent all of their freetime together, sat together in class and played together at recess and had sleepeovers whenever they could. Harry’s mother was a large part of why they were able to. Norman didn’t seem a fan, but despite his questionable morals, he loved his wife and he listened when she said that their son having a friend was good.

Way back when, Peter was six and his parents died and he moved in with Aunt May and Uncle Ben.

There was about a week where Peter said almost nothing, did almost nothing, only existed in a state of quiet confusion and uncertainty and sadness. He understood when he was told that his parents were dead. He understood that them being dead meant that they weren’t coming back and he wouldn’t be able to stay in his room anymore because his house would no longer be his house. And yet, despite being a smart enough kid to understand, he kept expecting his parents to walk through the door. They never did.

After that first week, though, Harry did. He’d listened when his mom said that Peter needed some time with family, and then he’d decided that enough time had passed and he needed to be there, and he showed up. Peter cried and hugged his best friend and laughed when Harry cried, too, which made both of them laugh and it still sucked but it felt better, too. It always felt better when he was with Harry.

A few years later, when they were double digits and still best friends, their classmates talked about crushes and giggled about kissing and secretly held hands on the playground. Peter didn’t get it and Harry made a face about it and they just kept playing together.

When Harry’s mom died, Peter showed up. Harry cried and they hugged and Peter cried and they laughed. It stil sucked, but it felt better, too. It always felt better when he was with Peter.

Two weeks later, Harry was sent to boarding school.

It wasn’t until Peter’s freshman year of high school, when he first saw Gwen Stacy and developed a crush on her that would last until they eventually dated, until his crush eventually turned into love, that he realized he’d had a crush before. It was far too late to catch on, he hadn’t seen or spoken to Harry since he got sent away four years prior, but that didn’t stop the realization. It only made him wish, for the millionth time, that Harry would come back. Soon, preferably, but any time at all would be good.

For Harry, he’d realized it was a crush on the playground, when people were secretly holding hands and giggling about kissing, because all he thought was about holding Peter’s hand and kissing Peter. It didn’t seem all too important at the time. It didn’t seem important until he was sent away after his mom died.

He only wished he’d one day have the chance to let Peter know.

-

-

-

Even though Peter knows that they’re illusions, he still finds himself screaming.

Mysterio has done his research, that much is clear. He may not know who is under the mask, but he knows Spider-Man’s history thoroughly well, enough to bend and twist and stab and dig. Enough to make it hurt. Peter is forced to watch every enemy he’s ever faced come back, every small time robber and big time threat to society. He is forced to watch Gwen die, again and again. Captain Stacy bleeding out. Buildings are destroyed and civilians are casualties and bridges burn and he fails every time.

What becomes clear, however, is that Mysterio is clearly catalogueing every illusion he creates and building off of them. He must take note of which ones causes a bigger reaction, which ones hit closer to home, because when the random robbers don’t even make him flinch, they stop showing up. When he calls out during Gwen’s fall, she shows up again. And when he screams his throat raw at Harry being shot again, it continues to happen, again and again and again. 

Harry dies. Harry dies. Harry dies. Harry dies. Harry dies. Harry dies.

Gunshot wounds, Otto’s mechanical arm piercing through his chest, Curt Connors throwing him from rooftops, Harry begging to be saved and yet he never is. Every other tragedy hurts him, but they are all tragedies he has already faced and lived through despite the pain. Losing Harry, however, is a tragedy he is determined to prevent, and having to face it—to witness it and live it, over and over again—even when he knows that it isn’t real? It’s agonizing. It chokes the air from his lungs. It quickly becomes the illusion that Mysterio relies on most, killing Harry in every imaginable way.

Peter doesn’t know what Mysterio is gaining from each one, other than confirming that Harry is someone important to Peter. He doesn’t know how Mysterio is gathering information to figure out who is under the mask or how close he is to figuring it out. But the illusions keep coming, an endless loop of death and screaming and worrying that maybe one of these will be real, maybe he’ll end up seeing the real Harry die and have no idea because it’ll be thrown into the middle of these mirages.

He doesn’t know how long it goes on before he passes out. His nightmares are filled with the same things, with the deaths of people he loves, only in his head he sees May and Ben and his parents, sees people from school that he hasn’t seen or spoken to since graduation. He cries himself awake and there is already another illusion in place, not even allowing him a second of reprieve. He knows it isn’t real, he knows it, and yet it feels more and more real by the minute. He is as human as much as he isn’t.

It goes on.

It goes on.

It goes on.

-

-

-

Harry doesn’t know much of anything in the state that he’s in.

He knows the pain, and the fog, and the dripping water. He knows he heard a voice that he didn’t recognize at some point, and he knows he heard Peter, which means that he knows Peter is nearby. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here or why he’s here in the first place. He doesn’t know why he keeps floating in and out of awareness or what to do to prevent it.

When he hears Peter scream again, however, he knows he has to figure it out, because something is wrong, and he has known that something is wrong, but now something is wrong with Peter and Harry cannot, no matter what, simply sit back and let it happen. He refuses. He refuses.

No matter how badly he wishes that was enough to make him capable of breaking out of this daze and going to save the day right here and now, it doesn’t. He is determined but he is not a superhero with superpowers and he is still in pain and foggy in the head and unsure as to why. He is detemined and he will figure it out. Still, he slips away and counts.

At least this time he is a little more aware.

-

-

-

Peter clings onto the knowledge of Harry being alive and the hope that he’ll be able to keep it that way. He suffers through the illusions and he passes out two more times, though for how long he isn’t sure. Time makes no sense and even the floor his knees are shackled to is starting to feel rubbery and fake, but in the face of his suffering is the knowledge of what matters.

Mysterio doesn’t show his face again, nor does he speak to Peter or purposely make his presense known. The only reason Peter knows that the guy is still here is because of the occasional chuckle and the heartbeat that Peter is able to catch when he’s able to hold onto reality enough to find it. He tries to extend his hearing, to use his senses, but without knowing where to direct them and with the constant distraction of the illusions, he isn’t able to scrape together anything else. He can, at the very least, pinpoint what direction Mysterio is in. That will help when he manages to break his restraints, and with the illusions not causing him any physical harm, he can feel himself healing.

Through the nonstop onslaught of mental torture, he just has to endure. He always does.

-

-

-

In the fractured moments of lucidity, Harry begins to piece together fragments of information, cataloguing the room in shattered segments that he starts to puzzle into one clear picture in his mind. There are minutes and hours that he loses in between each new bit of information that he gathers, but eventually he’s got a map in his head of his surroundings, stock in his position. Kneeling on the floor, he already knew—wrists cuffed behind his back and ankles tied together with a rope that’s looped around the leg of a heavy desk just to his right.

Moving is a battle all on its own. He can only manage small shifts, leaning over and shuffling his knees and battling the pain trapped in his skull and the nausea twisting his gut. I’m going too slow, he thinks at one point, hearing another warbled scream that undoubtedly belongs to Peter coming from outside of this cramped room. I won’t be able to save him. I’m going to lose him. I can’t lose him.

For a single moment, when the bitterness and the fear is coating his tongue like molasses, a part of his brain betrays him—wishes, if only for a second, that he still had the serum, still had the strength that the goblin had given him. He hates himself for thinking it, but he also can’t deny that he feels useless like he is now, movements slow and helpless and painful.

Despite that, he manages, eventually, to lodge his shoulder underneath the edge of the desk and uses it as leverage. He has to hold his breath to do it, tap into some of the tingling adrenaline buzzing beneath his skin, and pushes.

The rope slips free from the desk leg, and he lets himself fall to his side with a shuddering gasp. He doesn’t remember why he couldn’t do that before. His knees had felt stuck in place, but now he splays on the floor and feels his muscles cry out in relief. Eyes fluttering shut, he breathes greedy, heaving breaths. The water drips. Absently, he picks at the knot keeping the rope in place. The handcuffs will have to be a later problem, but if he can free his ankles, he can walk, and that can be enough.

If I lose him, I lose everything. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

-

-

-

Peter hears him.

It takes a minute for him to realize it isn’t part of the illusions—takes a minute for his senses to grab his attention and force him to listen, to really listen, and then it’s all he can hear. The scrape of metal against a concrete floor, the thud of something hitting the ground, and then—and then Harry. Actual Harry. Real Harry. Breathing, heart beating, coming from a room somewhere off to Peter’s right. Alive. Alive.

He knows that Mysterio had said Harry was okay, held somewhere safely and separately. He also knows that he’s watched Harry die hundreds of times and he thinks he’s a light breeze away from having a full blown breakdown because of it. Having the provable reassurance that Harry really is okay, not far away from him and, if Mysterio was telling the truth before, in some kind of drugged state—it makes something settle in his chest, and then send a fiery adrenaline rushing through his veins

Mysterio is to his left—stationed in the same spot he seems to always be in, occasionally laughing or typing away at a computer that Peter can’t see past the illusions. Harry is to his right, breathing and shuffling around. Peter isn’t fully healed, but he also hasn’t eaten in however long it’s been, and he thinks it might be impulsive, but he also thinks it’s now or never. Before the hunger slows him down.

Gritting his teeth, he looks past the pain and tries to ignore the illusions still playing around him, instead focusing on Mysterio, tracking him and trying to pinpoint a pattern or a weakness he can take advantage of. It doesn’t take long before he hears the typing again, and shortly after the illusion changes, which he thinks means it’s fair to assume that, if there is a moment where Mysterio is more likely to be distracted, it’ll be when inputting the changes for the illusions. He curls down until he’s able to hide his face and keeps listening, counting in his head until the typing starts again, then again, then again. 

On average, every five to ten minutes.

He keeps counting just to make sure, and then, after steeling himself and preparing himself to break his restraints and push past the nightmares still tormenting him, he listens for the typing and then moves.

-

-

-

The knot on the rope unravels just as the sound of a fight breaks out from the other side of the door.

It’s loud enough and sudden enough to send a clarifyiing shock through Harry’s system, and when he opens his eyes, he finds himself more aware than he has been since waking up in this place. There’s a haze in the room—something in the air, and a sweet taste when he inhales. No wonder he’s been so out of it. There’s something coming from the vents, a sedative of some kind, he thinks.

Doing his best to keep his breathing as light and limited as he can as he shakily pushes himself to his feet, an awkward fumbling of movements that’s made more difficult by his weak limbs and the cuffs keeping his hands behind his back. Once he’s standing, he leans heavily against the wall and carefully leans down to step through his arms, at the very least bringing his hands to his front. They’re still cuffed, but this way makes it less awkward when he stumbles over to the door and fumbles to grab and twist the handle.

The air outside the room is lighter, and he sucks in lungfuls of it, feeling more and more awake with each greedy gasp. There’s still a haze in his head, a fogginess to his thinking that weighs down his body and mind, but he finds each step easier than the last as he follows the sound of the fight, down a corridor and around a corner. Peter’s here, he reminds himself—remembers hearing the screams. I have to help.

Only he doesn’t come across an ongoing fight—he stumbles his way onto the end of one. Peter is in his suit, mask on, standing over a man crumpled unconscious on the floor, securing the guy with webs.

He’s going to say something. He’s going to—no clue what, but something, he’s going to say something, except he doesn’t get the chance before there’s a whirring, and then—then—

It’s like magic, or a hologram—sudden images filling the room, ones that look real and tangible.

And they’re all of him.

Harry feels frozen, stuck in place, unable to move as dozens upon dozens of images of himself surround him and Peter. Each one is brutal—blood, gore, screams and cries, ultimate death. No matter where he looks, it’s there, and he can’t do anything other than watch in horror.

Peter doesn’t seem to notice him, not yet, but Harry watches as he violently flinches away from the images. He moves fast—Harry watches as he makes his way to some kind of computer, something far too big for Harry to make sense of while he’s like this, but Peter has always been the genius out of the two of them, so he isn’t surprised when Peter immediately starts typing away at it. He just waits, figuring it won’t take more than a moment for Peter to get whatever this all is shut off, and then they can talk. Now that Harry is able to think a bit more clear, he can remember that they had argued, last they spoke. Harry can’t remember what about, but he’s sure it’ll come to him pretty quickly.

But a moment passes, and then another, and the images aren’t going away. Harry is trying not to focus on them—only watching as Peter starts to jab more furiously at the keyboard, and then when Peter starts to murmur angrily under his breath, and then when those murmurs turn up in volume.

“Stop it,” he says. “Stop it, stop it, stop, stop, stop!”

Each one gets louder. The last one makes Harry jump.

“He’s not dead!” Peter shouts—to himself? To the room? Harry isn’t sure, but he knows Peter is talking about him because the only thing surrounding them are images of his death, looping over and over and over again. “He’s not! I saved him! I can save him, I can—I can—I can!” The more he speaks, the more desparate he sounds, until his voice is so raw with emotion that it makes Harry feel dizzy. “I can do it,” he goes on, no longer typing and instead making a fist to punch at the screen, again, again, again.

The images start to flicker, and it sounds like Peter starts to sob.

“Please stop,” he cries. “Please. Please stop. Please. Not again. Please.”

With one more swing, the computer dies and the room goes quiet and still.

Peter is breathing heavily, hunched over unevenly where he’s standing—he’s injured, Harry can tell. The way he’s holding himself up makes it clear. He… had a fight. A guy with four mechanical arms. Harry can remember it now—being concerned, tracking Peter down to check on him. Feeling like Peter doesn’t trust him, feeling like Peter must think Harry is heartless enough to not worry about his best friend.

That doesn’t make sense, does it?

Maybe it never did, or maybe it’s only clicking now that Harry has seen… all of that. 

Peter is scared. That makes sense, because Peter has lost almost everyone he’s ever loved, and of course he’s scared of it happening again. They’re friends, despite the fact of what they’ve been through.

Harry took it all so personally, but it never was. Or… it was, but not how he thought.

“Oh my god.”

Harry blinks, and Peter is looking at him—reaching up and pulling off his mask, looking at Harry like he isn’t sure he can trust it, like he isn’t sure if he’s real. Harry feels woozy. “Pete?”

Peter flinches, then his eyes go wide and suddenly he’s rushing over. His eyes are red and he’s walking unevening—definitely injured—but he doesn’t seem to care, frantically checking Harry over for injuries and carefully breaking the cuffs off of Harry’s wrist. “Are you okay?” he asks. “Harry? Are you—”

“Yeah,” Harry cuts in, voice a rasp. “I’m okay. Are you?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Peter dismisses. “Are you sure? You were—missing, Har. You’re really okay?”

Harry frowns. “It does matter,” he says. “You’re hurt, Peter. That matters to me.” Peter looks confused and Harry is—Harry is grabbing Peter’s face, gentle but firm, and forcing them to meet eyes as he says, “You are the most important person in my life. It matters.”

“But—”

And maybe it’s the drugs, or the confusing concoction of thoughts and emotions filling his head, but Harry is tired of talking—they don’t seem to be good at it, always seem to confuse each other—so he moves instead. He acts on a childhood crush and he leans in, a mess of motion. Kisses him. 

Peter freezes, eyes wide when Harry pulls away. “Oh.”

Harry rolls his eyes and kisses him again. This time, Peter leans into it, and they’ll have to talk later, have to really talk, really explain themselves and make sure they understand each other, but for now this is all he needs. All he wants, too. Just Peter, Always Peter.

That’s more than enough.