#lorvstyrell

Yet, the knowledge did nothing to quell his rage, to calm him or to make him forgive. It did nothing to halt the ever growing madness inside of him. Instead, his brain felt on fire. Everything was worse, stronger, angrier, crazier. The closest thing he could get to calm was detached. It was like it was someone else’s life, someone else’s best friend. 

This was his fault. He wouldn't have known at all if he hadn't used his father's resources to release Doc Ock to bring him Spiderman. Bring him to me and you're free. And when the supervillain brought Spiderman to him and Harry unmasked him… It was an indescribable feeling that had easily been the worst of his existence. His shock had been what led to Peter leaving to find and stop Doc Ock, as Harry hadn't been able to stop him, hadn’t even been able to voice anything but Pete’s name. And then Harry had started to drink.

Hours later, however, Harry had stopped (honestly, only because he had sat in his living room and found time passing without noticing at all) and was nearly sober when the curtains started flapping from a rush of movement. It wasn't wind, he could tell that quickly. Which meant it could only be one fucking thing. He turned quickly, spotting Spiderman standing against the wall opposite said window. They stared at each other for a moment before the masked “hero” collapsed in a heap on the floor.

Part of Harry said good, and wanted to leave him. Wanted to walk away and make another drink while he watched him struggle. And it was in those moments of rage that Harry realized that Peter was bleeding profusely from his abdomen, that he could possibly die. Let him die on the carpet. Watch him struggle for breath until he gives up, whispered Norman's voice in his head.

But he couldn't ignore the memories in his brain. Sneaking their first beers on his roof, talking about girls even when Harry had only wanted the boy in front of him, sitting outside Peter's room for a whole day after Uncle Ben was shot until Pete finally let him inside. Whatever Spiderman had done, it was still his Pete in that goddamn suit. Isn’t it?

He didn't remember making a decision, but the next thing he knew he was kneeling on the ground by the man in a heap on his floor

Harry removed the mask, almost tentatively, still finding himself somehow surprised at who was underneath the mask. His eyes went over his friend's exhausted and sweaty face, and then down his body and over the bleeding wounds. “Fucking hell, Pete.”

“Didn't know… where to go,” the brown haired man murmured under his breath, and, even as Harry wanted to not care, the weakness in his voice hurt.

“Get out of the suit,” Harry said stiffly. If he was going to help him, he sure as hell didn't want to do it when he was dressed as him.

He watched as Pete got to his feet slowly, swaying a little as he stood as if he might fall. Good. Let him,  he could hear Norman’s voice whispering. But hat was only one part of Harry, and the rest of him, the parts of him that had gotten his own ass kicked to keep Peter safe from bullies, felt differently. Groaning and grumbling to himself, he got to his own feet and slid an arm around the waist of Peter, ignoring the furious yelling in his head. As usual, his own eyes meeting Peter’s was enough to drown his father out (mostly). But it didn’t take long for his eyes to register the suit on Peter’s body and he pressed his chapped lips together in a thin line. Harry despised the suit he was touching, hated who was under it almost as much as he loved him.

“You killed my father.” Harry's voice was flat, empty, not at all accusing. He stated it like the fact that it was, not anything else.

Peter only groaned. “You don't know…”

“Oh, shut up or I’ll let you die.” 

It was an empty threat, and they both knew it, but Peter shut up none the less. The walk to his bedroom was long, longer than it had ever felt. And it wasn't until they reached his bed and he set Peter on it that he realized he probably should have left him where he was and helped from there since he didn't know just how bad it actually was. But it was too late now. Dumb as it was, he'd moved him.

Following Peter's instructions, Harry proceeded to help him pull the stupid suit off until they reached a point where Peter could get the rest off himself. Watching him pull it off his legs and then toss it to the ground, Harry let his eyes rake over his nearly naked form, to check his wounds of course. There was a deep cut across his stomach, along with several lighter, though not shallow, cuts over the rest of his chest. The chest that Harry had seen a thousand times, getting dressed for gym, or changing after food had spilled on his T-shirt. His brows furrowed as he looked over him again.

“How didn't I know?” he finally whispered. Even with as well as he knew Peter; every line in his body, his lanky shape, his voice and all of its tones, his brown eyes, his smile, he had had no idea at all who he was. He'd obsessed, deeply, over Spiderman for years, and he had still not made any connection. Hardly surprising. You never were one for noticing anything of any importance, came the ever present voice of his father, bringing Harry to squeeze his eyes shut for a matter of seconds while he tried to push it away.

When his eyes reopened, Pete was looking at him. Pain was written over his face, and Harry couldn’t tell if it was from his wounds or the disaster between the two of them. “No one does. And.. Harry, it has to stay that way. No one can know.” A favor. He hadn’t even started cleaning him up and he was already asking a goddamn favor. He was starting to see the resemblance between Spiderman and Peter Parker,

Harry’s eyes hardened instantly as he got to his feet. “Don't tell me what to do,” he said as coldly as he could possibly manage. “You're lucky I’m not letting you bleed out on the floor.” As he turned to get supplies, he could have sworn he saw Peter wince at the words. Good, he thought bitterly, unsure what he was even angriest about. Oh, he hated Spiderman for killing his father, and he hadn't figured out yet if that spread to Peter or not; but that aside Pete had also lied to him for years about this, about something that had started as just being important to Peter but had quickly spread to Harry when his father had been murdered. And those lies had led him down this path, down the path of finishing almost an entire bottle of whiskey just to sleep, of talking to himself and his dead father several times a day, of obsessing over catching Spiderman. Overall, it now seemed that Peter had set him on the path of losing his mind.

Shouldering his way into the bathroom, Harry grabbed every bit of first aid he could find. What are you doing son? He killed me, your own father. And you're helping him? You should be driving a knife further in that wound. You disloyal little rat. Kill him. Or are you too weak to manage that? Another thing Peter’s better at than you- killing. His hand was gripping the edge of the sink, ragged breaths coming from him as he tried to ignore his father's fury. He ran the same sentence through his head again and again before finally whispering it out loud. “You aren't here.” You were never here as far as I was concerned. Peter was.

He slammed the cabinet closed and went back to the bedroom, kneeling down in front of Pete. His eyes raked over him again, taking in the damage (and maybe a little bit of the lean muscle of Peter’s chest). “So Doc Ock did all this? You must have been distracted. Or you just fucking suck.”  Once upon of time, that would have been a joke and he would have looked up with a wolfish grin and Peter would have affectionately rolled his eyes. But things weren’t simple anymore, and it was something bordering on sardonic contempt in Harry’s voice instead of jest.

He could tell Peter was annoyed without looking up, even before he spoke, “Yeah, gosh, I wonder what distracted me. Not my best friend wanting to kill me right before I had to go stop Doc Ock from destroying the city. So, gee, what does that leave?” If he wasn't so pissed off himself, Harry would have cracked a smile at the very least. He had always thought Peter was cute when he was annoyed. He got all antsy, and that got him going on his rambles. But Pete wasn’t rambling, and Harry wasn’t fucking with him. So instead, he bit back the first retort that popped in his head, focusing on pouring the alcohol on a rag.

“Thought heroes were above getting distracted.”

“Thought you didn't consider me a hero.”

Harry cast an irritated glance up at Peter then, only to be met with the brunette's own sour look in return. In the golden days, this banter would have been mixed up with laughs and playful shoves. But they hadn't been themselves in a long time. Between Harry’s growing obsession and desperation to know the identity of the so claimed superhero, he had been distant and angry, particularly with Peter. And the deeper in his obsession that he got, the more distant Peter got in return. That made even more sense now. Before, Harry had assumed that it was Peter protecting the masked murderer, which he supposed was a little true at least. Just not how he had thought.

“Trust me,” Harry muttered darkly, eyes flicking back to the wound before him, “I don't.” He pressed the rag, now soaked in alcohol, to the deep cut and he would have been lying if he said that he didn't get any satisfaction from the hiss of discomfort from Pete. The satisfaction didn't last long, unfortunately, instead replacing with bitter concern. “Didn't know he'd do this much damage to you. How'd he do it?” He was careful to keep his vice as flat as it could be, to not let any worry he might have creep in.

“Looking for tips?” Peter grumbled before hissing again as Harry pressed the rag to another part of the cut, his fist tightening on Harry's black sheets. The sight of it got an immediate internal reaction, as if Harry had been shocked by something electrical, and it caused the muscles in his gut to tighten and constrict. Clearing his throat, trying to ignore how dry it sounded as he worked to refocus himself on the task at hand. After a period of silence, Pete sighed and finally answered, “Shards of glass he grabbed. Hard to dodge that many arms.”

“Glass?” Harry asked skeptically.

“Yeah, a big piece,” Peter snapped back defensively. “It was basically a window.”

“That what you killed my dad with? A window?” he asked in a low tone, eyes darkening, though he didn’t dare to lift them to look at the man in front of him. He didn’t need to, he could feel the shift in Peter without seeing him or hearing his voice. It was immediate, like Pete had only just remembered why Harry was angry at all. And that did nothing except pour gasoline on the fire of rage in his brain.

Who was he to get to forget? To not live with it every goddamn day, to not have Norman whispering in his ear about it constantly? Peter got to go about his life, got to forget about it. Harry didn’t, and he was never going to be able to. Instead, he was left to obsess and turn the details over in his mind when he should be sleeping.

“Harry-”

“I forgot water. To clean the rag,” he said quietly, abruptly standing and walking into the bathroom again. He pulled a bucket from underneath the sink and set it in the tub to fill with water, sitting on the edge himself while it did. His head fell into his hands easily, his fingers rubbing through his auburn hair as if he could massage away the anger by doing it. It wasn't that easy, of course. If it was, he probably would have worked through all of this long ago. Osborns don’t help the enemy. “He’s not my enemy,” he croaked finally, feeling the lines of his face crease with stress against his hand.He hoped to God it could stay that way, that he wouldn’t continue down this path knowing the true identity of Spiderman. He sat there, unmoving for several minutes, ignoring the sound of the water rushing over the edge of the bucket. The sound of his name was the only thing to pull him from the dark thoughts swirling in his mind.

“Harry,” rasped a tired, weak voice from the doorway. Head shooting up, Harry turned to see Peter standing (well, more like leaning) in the doorway. Despite trying his utmost, Harry's eyes moved swiftly over the other's form, taking in the lean muscles that hadn't been there before Spiderman. Another reminder that he should have known, yet it did nothing to ease the desire in his chest. “It's not… what you think.”

“I think,” Harry said in a tired voice, “that you have a death wish.” He turned off the water and got to his feet, gently leading Peter to the toilet, sitting him on it carefully. “But this'll work better anyway,” he said quietly. “Stay here Pete.” He ignored the brunette's quiet but stubborn protest as he moved to the other room and swiftly grabbed the things he needed, slightly annoyed at having to do this all over again. He returned to Peter anyway, setting down the things on the floor as he sat on the edge of the tub, scooting closer to his oldest friend. “Okay. Trying this again then.”

Peter watched quietly as Harry wet a new rag with alcohol again and pressed it to the wound. At the sharp intake of breath from his friend, Harry looked up at him, eyes apologetic this time, and the sad look Peter gave him told him that he understood, that he was under no impression that Harry was sorry for anything more than the stinging of the alcohol or maybe his part in Doc Ock's return. It was a long silence without anyone speaking, just with Harry cleaning out the wound and Peter occasionally making a small sound. He couldn't help but wonder what the other man was thinking about, if it was about Harry's dad or Harry knowing his precious secret or…

Harry, on the other hand, kept thinking that he had always thought that when he was finally this close to Peter's bare chest (let alone nearly naked body in general) it would be for a completely different reason than this. It was these thoughts that led to the silence becoming suffocating, unbearable.

“You're an idiot,” Harry said quietly. “So fucking stupid.” He wasn't sure what had brought it out of his mouth, but it was fueled by many things. One, Peter never once over the years picked up on the evident and blatant torch Harry had always carried for him, unfair as that one might be. Two, Pete was stupid enough to become something like Spiderman- as if he wasn't signing up to be hunted down and nearly killed again and again by doing this. Three, lying to Harry and not telling him everything immediately. Four, not saying anything as Harry obsessed and searched for Spiderman. Five, nearly getting himself killed tonight. Six, showing up here of all places after the fact.

Peter looked up, his brows furrowing in confusion as he stared at him. He opened his mouth and then closed it again, his fingers drumming on his bare thigh. “Okay,” he said finally. “Go on.”

“No, that's it,” Harry said flippantly as he tossed the rag in the bathtub, grabbing a bandage instead. He stayed quiet for a few more beats before losing his self control. “You shouldn't have come back here tonight. I could have killed you.”

Brown eyes stared back at him as he spoke, and Harry found himself forcing his gaze away uncomfortable, turning his attention back to the bandage instead. “No. You couldn't have.”

Harry swallowed thickly, not moving even though he still had to finish. “You don’t know what I'm capable of, Pete,” he ventured quietly, his voice quaking just slightly on the words. After all, how could he know when Harry didn't even have an idea himself?

“I do,” Pete said finally, voice nothing above a whisper. “And it's not that.”

You're wrong, Harry wanted to say, but he couldn't. Part of him didn’t want Peter to understand how bad he had gotten, how angry and even violent, how unhinged. But it didn’t matter because he was suddenly too distracted by the hand coming to the side of his face, tilting it up again. And then, the rest of the world melted away, even Spiderman and Norman Osborn. They were both erased from his mind because his best friend's face was mere inches from his and he couldn't even breathe. Peter leaned closer then, his lips briefly touching Harry's before pulling away a little bit, his eyes opening as he looked at him, brown eyes searching, asking. Harry didn't think, didn't pause. He just lurched in and kissed Peter with everything he had. Peter responded instantly, bringing a soft sound that he couldn't even name from the back of Harry’s throat.

Harry moved a little, readjusting on the edge of the tub to get closer, a hand coming to rest on Peter's thigh and feeling something in him jump as he felt the bare skin. And then the sexiest sound Harry had ever heard came from Pete’s own mouth, something between a sigh and a moan, and he squeezed lightly, prompting more of it. The hunger in the pit of his stomach grew, prompting him to gently brush his tongue over Peter's lips. Peter opened his mouth for him, met his tongue with his own, and Harry was filled with the overwhelming feeling that they should use been doing this the whole time. They should have always been…

But they hadn't. And things weren't simple anymore.

Harry forced himself to pull away from the kiss, his eyes focusing on a spot on the bathroom floor. “Pete…” The words wouldn't come, and he didn't even have a clue what they were supposed to be. “I need to bandage your wound. We're almost done.” Peter closed his eyes, his head hanging just a little for a moment until he nodded and looked up at him.

Pushing himself further back on the edge of the bathtub, Harry unwrapped the bandage and pressed it to the wound before wrapping gauze around it. When he was done with that, he finished it with medical tape. He wet his lips as he leaned back a little. “So… There.”

“Yeah… Thanks.” Peter wet his lips before leaning forward again. “Harry…” It was clear that he was struggling to find the words, something Harry certainly understood. He let out a small, frustrated noise and Harry knew he was settling for something different. Because he knew him. But then the words he did say were all fucking wrong. “I just... I don’t want us to change. Not from...” His voice shook a little when he continued, “Not from Spiderman.”

A cruel scoff fell from Harry’s lips, his eyes darting away quickly as a sneer transformed his lips. To be fair to Pete, he had always thought that when their friendship changed it would be because they had kissed or had sex or... Or were dating. Not because of all of this. “Yeah, well. We don’t get what we want, Pete.”

“We can.” Peter’s voice was soft, urging, and it prompted Harry to look at him, eyes guarded and angry. No, they couldn’t. Peter was naive, he always had been. He saw a world that didn’t exist, people as they wanted to be or should have been or could be. He didn’t live in the real world and it had always felt endearing, like he needed to be protected. But right now all Harry wanted was to hit him. “You're not your dad.”

Harry stood abruptly, eyes hardening even further as he looked at the man before him. “Yeah, well. You know the way out then.” His tone mirrored one he had gotten from Norman again and again, one that stated clearly that the conversation was over, that he was done. He walked back into his bedroom, not even sure why the hell that comment had shoved him over the edge. Norman had never been dad of the year, Harry himself had always complained about him profusely. So being told he wasn't Norman should have been something good.

“Harry.” He didn't have to turn around to know that Peter was following him. He knew him better than he knew himself. Or so he'd thought yesterday, today he wasn’t that sure. “I just meant… I mean-” He stopped talking, made an irritated noise and then tried again, “You're better.”

Harry pressed his lips together and turned around, eyes flashing dangerously. “So you won't impale and leave me then, hm?”

“I told you, you don't know the whole-”

“Then tell me!” Harry roared finally. He set his jaw, eyes virtually begging his old friend to tell him the truth, to vindicate himself. “Tell me if I don't know!” Multiple times, it had seemed like Peter would have, had Harry not interrupted him. But he knew better, knew Pete better. He wasn’t going to tell him anything and whatever reason he thought was so important would be the end of them as they once were.

Peter readjusted, taking in an obviously pained breath as he wet his lips, gaze overwhelmingly sad. “I can't.”

“But you didn't kill him,” Harry repeated flatly.

“No.”

“Can you look me in the eyes and tell me that?” He stepped forward, desperate for this to be over, for them to be able to move past it. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you didn't kill him.”

Peter looked down, closing his eyes as he let out a breath and Harry already knew what his answer would be. His heart sank in his chest as Peter looked back up and his eyes were wet. He shook his head, voice breaking as he said, “I can't, Harry. I- I can’t.”

Harry looked down and nodded. “Yeah. I know. I figured. Well, until you can… I won't be able to let this go, Pete. I can’t. And if this was reversed, if you thought I had shot Ben... You wouldn’t either.”

“I know.” Peter took a shaky breath before clearing his throat and saying, “Maybe I should go then.” Harry nodded wordlessly, afraid to look at Pete for fear that he might ask him to stay. He couldn’t do that, as much as it pained him to recognize the fact. They were at a crossroads, and it was too late. Too many years, too many secrets, too much hurt. They missed their chance - and that might have been the part that burned the worst.

Yet when he heard Peter cross the room and pick up that goddamn suit, Harry couldn't help it. He looked back at him and met Peter's watery eyes with his own. There had been a lot of lies, secrets, pain. But Harry also remembered playing together as children, remembered Peter crying to him when his parents left, remembered growing older and first noticing how goddamn good Peter's hair looked. He could easily look back on the first time he wanted to kiss Peter, really kiss Peter -like a real grown up kiss. They had been 13, he had just seen an older kid shove Peter to the ground and he had felt like a hero going in there and standing up for him. And he'd sat on the ground beside him and talked to him about how much better he was than any of these stupid kids. Peter had looked at him with a look of such admiration, even love, and Harry had realized then and there what Peter meant to him, and so he had always wanted to keep him safe. And now he couldn't even keep him safe from himself. But Peter made him want to try, he had always made him want to try.

Oh, goddamn it.

Harry walked across the room to Peter, who immediately dropped the stupid suit, and one of his hands fisted into Harry’s shirt while the other cupped his jaw, and Harry cupped  Peter’s face in his hands, pressing his lips to his with an intensity he had never kissed anyone with before. Peter let out a sigh against his lips, moving the hand from Harry’s jaw to his auburn curls and twisting his fingers in it. Harry could feel his heart pounding in his chest as he dropped his own hands then, one exploring Pete's chest while the other tightened around his thin body.