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Peter was climbing out the window, for fuck’s sake. It was barely past three in the morning, constant storm warnings flashing on TV, and Harry had shuffled to the kitchen in his pajamas to pour himself a glass of water, only to find Peter climbing out the goddamn window on his way back. Maybe if it hadn’t been the ass o’clock in the night, and the fifty-third floor, he would have ignored it and went back to bed.
“And where are we off to this time?” he asked, making casual conversation, because the situation at hand was nothing if not casual, and Peter stopped in his tracks.
“Um — ”
Harry could practically hear the gears turning in Peter’s head and he tilted his head, waiting for what would probably be yet another brilliant excuse. Last time Peter had not-so-covertly snuck out in the middle of the night, he’d claimed to have forgotten to help his aunt with the laundry. Harry had nodded and gone back to bed, though even he, with his plethora of housekeepers, knew that laundry was not a pastime indulged in at four fucking AM.
“I, um, left my glasses at the library,” Peter eventually choked out. Quite believable.
“And you’re going to get them now?”
Peter shrugged noncommittally.
“And you couldn’t use the front door?”
“Didn’t wanna bother security,” Peter lied.
Of course, Harry knew he was lying. Harry saw through all of Peter’s lies, approximately five nights a week. Peter was constantly disappearing to who the hell knows where for hours, coming back with scrapes and bruises that were not there the previous night. So Harry kept pushing:
“And you were going to get down how, exactly?” he asked. Peter opened his mouth, then shut it. Very nice, Parker.
“The fire — ”
“We don’t have a fire escape, Parker.”
At first, Harry had thought Peter was suffering from an extreme case of school-induced stress, taking midnight walks to clear his mind. Then, Harry began noticing the poorly concealed cuts, bruises and the occasional bright black eye. He’d considered that maybe Peter had gotten into some trouble with the wrong people, owed them money or some similar shady shit. It wasn’t exactly a comforting thought, and he’d asked Peter about it, but Peter kept insisting he’d tripped over on the sidewalk, run into a glass door or fallen down some stairs. He was a clumsy guy, for all intents and purposes, but no one stumbled over their own shoelaces to that extent. To Harry it looked more like he’d fallen off a building, rather than a set of steps. And not once, but repeatedly.
“Right — ” Peter said. “Right, I forgot about that.”
Harry watched him.
“Sorry, I guess — ‘cause Gwen has a fire escape, man. I mean, in her old house, not England. I mean, I wouldn’t know, I haven’t visited her yet,” Peter squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t have possibly gotten worse at the whole game of shadows he’d been playing at. “What I mean, Harry, is that I forgot that we didn’t have one here and — ”
“ — and you almost fell flat on your face down fifty stories,” Harry finished for him.
Peter forced out a laugh. “Yeah, yeah, thanks for, uh, saving my ass back there.”
He jumped down soundlessly from the windowsill and patted Harry on the back before crossing the room and opening the front door.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said and quickly shut the door behind him before Harry could ask any more questions. Harry was a smart guy, even if his distracting piles of money obfuscated the fact, and Peter would rather not be on the receiving end of his calculating glares.
But truth be told, if Harry had wanted to ask Peter all the questions he’d been itching to get across ever since Peter had moved in with him, they’d run out of hours in the day.
“Yeah, whatever,” Harry grumbled to himself, raised his glass of water in a mock toast to the door through which Peter had disappeared, and headed off back to the bedroom.
/
“You know you don’t have to keep doing your laundry at your aunt’s, right? Just toss it in with my stuff?” Harry told Peter, for the umpteenth time. Peter was clearing his things out from the joint hamper, cramming it into an oversized workout bag to take with him.
“I like the detergent she uses. Floral, but not too floral.”
Harry couldn’t keep the what the fuck, Peter expression off his face this time around.
“I can get someone to buy it, if you want, Pete,” he offered. “You don’t have to do this laundry themed walk of shame every week on repeat.”
Peter shrugged, appearing undeterred by the suggested alternative and instead grinned like the idiot he was before waltzing out the door.
Harry considered the hollow twinge in his gut, and he realized it was a bubbling anxiety twisting his insides into knots. He was worried, and had the right to be, because Peter had gotten better at lying.
/
“Nice shot,” Harry said, tossing the new issue of The Daily Bugle onto the breakfast table.
Peter looked up from his book with dewy, distracted eyes, and he looked so stupidly adorable in his glasses that Harry doubled back around the table just to kiss him. When they pulled apart, Peter snuck a hand up to ruffle Harry’s hair, just because he could. Harry didn’t bother complaining that he’d just spent ten minutes blow drying it, because he knew Peter was fully aware of his morning routine and had done it on purpose.
“I still have no idea how you get those pictures, man,” he went on, walking over to turn on the coffee machine before leaning back on the counter and facing Peter.
Peter froze for an infinitesimal second, then cracked a grin and laughed. “Well, it definitely ain’t easy.”
“Well, next time you see the spider guy, tell him to cut you some slack, okay? I don’t wanna have to be the one to beat him up when you end up breaking your neck trying to get a decent shot.”
Peter shoved the rest of his toast into his mouth. “Yeah, I’ll tell him that.”
“Just be careful,” Harry warned. It was a warning, not a suggestion, because Harry would physically fight the pseudo-superhero if he happened to cause any damage to his favorite Peter.
“I’m serious,” he added when Peter merely rolled his eyes.
/
Peter disappeared just before midnight the next day, because Aunt May needed more flour for her tart, apparently. Harry shrugged it off and knocked back a glass of whiskey.
Minutes later, Spider-Man saved four people from a burning building. Harry watched the report on TV with a detached interest, but couldn’t help considering the idea. He laughed it off as preposterous. Peter couldn’t walk down a corridor without snagging his shoes at the corner of the rug and face-planting square in the middle of the hall.
/
Peter kept leaving the windows open.
Harry started to notice a pattern.
/
When Harry’s paperwork went flying for the third time that week, he quite literally slammed his head against the desk. He was wholly certain he wasn’t the one to leave the office window open this time around.
Which only made him irrationally angry, because it was the year 2014, and why wasn’t anything in his damned company digitalized yet. He made a mental note to make that a key point during one of the next board meetings.
Which was when something big and heavy crashed in the living room.
Harry jumped to his feet and practically ran into the room, right in time to watch a disheveled Peter lifting up the overturned coffee table. A part of him didn’t really want to know. The other part kept insisting that he already knew.
Harry asked anyway. “Did you just crash in through the window?”
Peter leapt a literal foot in the air in surprise, and Harry couldn’t help but consider that regular people just didn’t jump that high.
“Shit, you scared me,” Peter whispered. He sounded exhausted, and simultaneously doped up on copious amounts of adrenaline. “Didn’t know you were home.”
“I’m not the one vanishing into thin air a few times a day, Pete,” Harry said and Peter flinched at the cold tone. Harry was tired too, and didn’t exactly feel like hiding it.
Harry bit his lip and shook his head to silence Peter’s incoming excuse. “Your face is bleeding,” he paused. Then, he added a hopeful: “Are you gonna tell me what’s going on?”
“I, uh — ”
“You know what? Save it.”
/
When Harry looked up from his phone to see a truck coming right at him, he couldn’t tell what he regretted more at that very moment: finally getting those damn files digitalized and sent to his phone to look over, or going out for coffee himself instead of sending some minimum wage secretary to fetch it for him.
Okay, and then suddenly, miraculously, following a sharp gust of wind, Harry was not on the street anymore; instead in the air, and then he was on the roof of a fucking building and — shit.
“You gotta watch where you’re going, pal,” the guy said and Harry barely heard him. He kept glancing down at the street spanning below and he wasn’t too sure why he was doing it — it sure as hell didn’t help the buzzing in his ears.
“Hey.”
Harry turned to face Spider-Man for the first time, struggling to get his breath under control. The guy seemed to notice Harry’s discomfort — despite his infamous free falls, he could apparently wrap his head around the fact that not everyone was good with heights.
“Hey, don’t look down, man. I’ll get ‘ya to the ground, alright — ”
“Were you following me?” Harry snapped. All traces of fear were gone, replaced by an irksome suspicion.
“What.”
“You’re gonna tell me it was a coincidence that you just happened to be there when I decided to walk into oncoming traffic?”
“Hey, my job is being at the right place at the right time — looking out for idiots like you,” Spider-Man laughed.
And there was something familiar about that laugh. Harry just didn’t want to admit it to himself.
He suffocated the burning questions worming their way up his throat and asked a nonchalant nothing instead.
“So, I’m not being followed by a mysterious masked vigilante?”
“Nah, you’re not that special, Mr. Osborn.”
Harry barely had the time to grab onto the guy, before they were falling off the roof and swinging at an inhuman speed towards the street below. Spider-Man gently dropped him off in the back alley behind the corporate tower.
If he hadn’t swung back up to the rooftops seconds later, Harry would have slapped him for not giving him a heads up before the jump; then thanked him for not attracting the public’s attention by landing on the front steps of the building. There was no such thing as bad publicity, in the case of the notorious Harry Osborn, but he tended to avoid pointless front page spreads regardless.
He straightened his suit jacket and tried very hard not to think about how disturbingly familiar it felt to have the mysterious guy’s arms wrapped around him.
He cleared his head and began to walk, dialing his assistant’s number.
“Get someone to bring up, like, four cups of coffee, and quick.”
/
Harry failed to mention the incident to Peter, and yet Peter had started to look at Harry like he was made of glass and suddenly more susceptible to breakage than ever before.
Harry ignored the weird connections his mind was trying to make.
/
All in all, Harry wasn’t really good at the whole scheming thing.
Either that, or he was spectacularly good. And kind of drunk. The two often went hand in hand in his case.
He kept walking, though he knew for a fact he was being followed — that was the plan, after all. Despite the early evening hour (in this context, one at night, but who was there to judge his permanently screwed up sleeping schedule), Brooklyn Bridge was oddly empty save for one mildly intoxicated Harry Osborn and the omnipresent guy in spandex that just wouldn’t quit. He was following close behind, and Harry had no doubt that the guy thought he was being sneaky, but no, because Harry was beginning to see things the Spider way.
Stepping his act up a notch, Harry purposefully appeared more drunk than he actually was, swaying dangerously on his feet: a skill he’d picked up and mastered over the years. It worked wonders when he needed an excuse for getting out of doing something complicated and hopelessly boring. Board meetings tended to get cut short when the CEO was slurring his sentences and giggling at inopportune moments.
And, so there he was, carefully trying not to place one foot in front of the other. He noticed a particularly precarious-looking pothole, saw his opening and took it, swiftly tripping over and toppling towards the railing. He was wearing Armani, but trousers could be patched up and bruises would fade. Sacrifices had to be made in the name of science.
Of course, a certain someone wasted no time in swooping down, as if on cue, and catching Harry before he could even hit the ground.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the guy demanded, and wow, wasn’t that something.
Harry merely tilted his head, mulling it all over. “Just wanted to check something.”
“What, the depth of the river?”
“You’re following me again,” Harry stated, looking the mask directly in the eyes. It was disconcerting, that the black holes resembled the timeless void more so than a human face. Or, Harry was more drunk than he’d let himself admit. “Can’t deny that, can you, Spidey?”
Spider-Man ignored the self-satisfied remark. It annoyed Harry.
“I’m taking you home.”
“Sounds like an invitation,” Harry laughed because, goddamn, the guy sounded exactly like Peter. He chalked it up to the alcohol and leaned on the offered shoulder.
/
Peter desperately hoped that Harry was too hungover to remember it all the next morning. But fate was cruel, and didn’t want anyone taking the easy way out.
“Where were you when I came home last night?” Harry asked when Peter came up behind him on the balcony. The sun was just starting to come up and the tiles were cold beneath his bare feet. He was bundled in one of Peter’s sweatshirts, because he did that sometimes. They were bigger and warmer, and comforted him when Peter lied and disappeared.
Peter wrapped his arms around Harry from behind and laid his head on Harry’s shoulder — a placating gesture of affection that Harry had to talk himself out of falling for.
“Aunt May’s,” he mumbled.
Harry defiantly put his cigarette out on the metal bar, and turned around in Peter’s arms until he was facing him, back pressed up against the railing. Apparently, Peter had somehow managed to get into some fight or another somewhere between last night and now, judging by the fresh cut on his cheek.
“How is she?” Harry asked, playing along, sweet and susceptible.
Peter paused for a split second, but it was noticeable to the trained eye. “She’s good. Great, yeah. You should come with me next time I go to visit, I’m sure she’d love to see you.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Harry said.
“Hey,” Peter went on, and Harry looked up to meet his eyes (it permanently annoyed him that he had to look up to do that). “Did you sleep at all last night?”
Harry scoffed. “Of course not, Petey. I’m trying to run a succesful company over here,” he teased, because two could play at this game. He could supply his own truckload of lies to match Peter’s.
“Even the workaholics gotta sleep sometime, Harry,” Peter complained, leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss to Harry’s lips. “Death by paperwork sounds horrible.”
“Sleep is for the weak, Parker,” Harry countered. “It’s for those guys whose companies I drive out of business.”
“Still, I wouldn’t want you to pass out hunched over at your desk. That’s probably bad for your spine.”
“I wouldn’t say no to a shoulder massage.”
Peter laughed, short and sharp, and pulled away. “You’re not that special, Mr. Osborn.”
And, shit.
Peter froze, his thoughts racing on par with Harry’s. They both took to pretending not to be thinking back on the same rooftop incident. And then to pretending the other person didn’t realize they were both thinking the same thing.
“I’m gonna take a shower,” Peter finally managed, changing the topic in a desperate attempt at saving the conversation from a severe downward spiral, “and you’re going to join me.”
Harry followed him down the hall without a second’s hesitation, completely oblivious, as far as Peter was concerned. That, and he could never say no to extracurricular activities of the wet and wild variety.
But, yeah, two could most definitely play at this game.
/
It wasn’t that Harry didn’t believe that Peter had a perfectly good reason for keeping his second identity a secret. It was just that it left him feeling, oh, you know — betrayed. Lied to. Manipulated. Left out of one fucking big loop.
So naturally, he did the dumbest and most reckless thing he could think of on short notice, and dialed Gwen’s number, when he’d once more had too much to drink and knew Peter wouldn’t be coming home for a while (due to a recent oil spill in the harbor and Spider-Man going out to do some community service).
“Is Peter okay?” were literally the first words from other line. “He didn’t do anything stupid, did he — ?”
Gwen trailed off rather sharply at that, and Harry could practically hear her taking back what she’d said in deadly silence. Well, it was pretty much all the confirmation he’d been looking for.
“Nah, he’s, uh, rescuing fish,” he replied, hoping is voice remained steady. “It’s all over the news, if you’re interested.”
Gwen let out a relieved breath. Whether it was because Peter was fine, or because she assumed Harry was in on the big secret didn’t really matter.
She cleared her throat. “Harry, is something wrong?”
Harry froze up, not having planned the conversation out this far. He downed the remnants of his glass and said the first thing that popped into his head.
“Actually, I am calling about Peter. Looking for advice on how to get him to stop throwing himself in harm’s way and all that.”
“What’d he do this time?”
“There were these, uh, ridiculously huge wasps in the city last week, for starters. He corralled them into some warehouse and barely made it out before he blew the whole place up,” Harry droned on, remembering the last utterly suicidal thing he’d seen Spider-Man do on the news.
“Talking is hopeless, if that’s the angle you’re going for. Then again, every angle’s hopeless. You know he won’t stop as long as someone’s in danger.”
Harry considered that for a moment, perhaps longer than he’d intended; it wasn’t long before Gwen yawned on the other line.
“God, I’m sorry, it’s probably the middle of the night over there,” he muttered, internally glad for some excuse or another to hang up.
“It is, actually. But I get it, you’re worried,” Gwen assured him.
“Yeah,” Harry mumbled, “Could you — not mention this conversation to Peter, maybe? I don’t want him to think I’m being pushy. Possessive — or something.”
“Sure thing.”
“Thank you,” he said, and it sounded too earnest for comfort. “Again, I’m sorry for waking you.”
“It’s okay. Good night, Harry.”
She hung up. Harry poured himself another drink.
There was no guarantee that Gwen would keep her promise and keep quiet. But Harry had to hold his head up high, hoping for the best, waiting for the right moment to confront Peter Parker on his own.
/
Spider-Man was in the middle of trying his very best not to get shot when his phone rang. He took a brief moment to wonder why the hell he even brought his phone with him to meetings like this — where half the participants had loaded guns and every intention to use them. Then again, he didn’t really expect anyone calling him at three, or four, or whatever hour in the middle of the night it happened to be.
He managed to web the first gunman to the nearest wall before picking up, because it was Harry, and that was mildly worrying.
“What’s up?” Peter asked, as casually as he could, holding out a finger for the other two men to hold their fire while he carried out the conversation. They didn’t seem to like that idea all that much.
“Are you getting shot at again, Petey?” Harry sounded like he was positively grinning.
The works took a moment to sink in, and then Peter found himself in a superb state of shock and barely dodged a bullet. “What?”
Harry cleared his throat, all traces of humor gone from his tone. “We need to talk,” he said, very seriously.
“This really isn’t a great time, Harry,” Peter managed, ducking behind an old car while one of the two guys reloaded his weapon. They were bad people, violent and needlessly loud, but they deserved a chance to try and prove their worth — Peter knew all about the struggles of being an underdog.
“Oh, come on. Step down and let the cops do their fucking job for once.”
Peter nearly dropped his phone for the tenth time that minute, which was saying something. He hastily stuck a second man to the wall beside the first. “Harry, what — ”
“Now, Pete.”
“Harry, what are you — ” Peter tried to ask, heart suddenly pounding its way out of his chest, and shit, this really wasn’t a great time to be having an in depth discussion.
Harry sighed and set his jaw, climbing over the railing. He hated every aspect of the stupid stunt he was pulling, wishing it really didn’t have to come to this.
“Pete, I’m gonna jump right off this bridge in twenty seconds, I repeat, twenty fucking seconds, and I’m really counting on you being there to catch me.”
“Harry, what the fuck — ”
Harry hung up.
Peter, the air gone from his lungs, heart lodged someplace in his throat, knocked the last attacker out with more force than strictly necessary and sloppily saluted the small squadron of police officers (finally) arriving at the scene before swinging off into the night.
Harry clicked on his phone screen and groaned upon seeing fleeting seconds. A deal was a deal, and his joint fears of heights and water had to be put to good use. Peter knew about both, and would therefore take the threat seriously. And Harry — he just hoped he wouldn’t fucking die.
He shut his eyes and, before he could convince himself that this was, in all honesty, a terrible idea, stepped off the ledge —
“ — the actual fuck were you thinking?”
Harry heard the voice through a echoing haze, and swallowed the brief surge of panic that was misleading him into thinking he was dead. Because that was Peter’s voice, right, and Peter was most certainly alive.
Someone pulled him to his feet, and then someone steadied him with a hand on his shoulder. The voice continued. The voice was angry. Peter.
Harry tried to convey the simple fact that he couldn’t quite breathe yet, but all that came out was a breathless whine. He focused on the masked face and tried to snap himself out of the chaotic surge of adrenaline. It was easier said than done.
“Pete — ” he choked out, once he remembered what words were.
“God, Harry, you idiot,” Peter snapped, pulling his mask off with his free hand, way past the point of keeping up appearances. Secret identities tended to lose their gravitas when a loved one, oh, threw themselves towards certain death.
Harry was still breathless. “Yeah, that was a stupid idea.”
“Buddy, I could have been in a bigger mess, and then I wouldn’t have caught you, and everyone and their mother knows you can’t swim for shit. Did you think about what would have happened then?” Peter was rambling. It would’ve been cute, but it was rambling of the angry sort, which made it less so.
“Could’ve just told me, Parker,” Harry muttered, finally pulling away from the other’s firm grip. “Desperate times call for desperate measures, or — whatever they say.”
“It was too dangerous for you to know,” Peter started, and fuck, Harry was in no mood for those pointless excuses.
“You told Gwen.”
Peter smirked, which was an odd turn of events following Harry’s accusation.
“Yeah, I did,” he confirmed, “and then I did this — ”
He trailed off, and whatever Harry expected was definitely not being pulled into a firm kiss by a fucking web, but he shut his hyperactive brain down and figured it was an inescapable side effect to having a boyfriend who’s part spider.
Peter pulled away far too quickly for Harry’s liking.
“You talked to Gwen?” he asked incredulously, as if he’d only just deciphered the meaning of you told Gwen.
Harry rolled his eyes (because Peter was an idiot) and pulled Peter right back down for another round (because Peter was his idiot).
/
Peter was about to leap out the window to investigate something weird and fluorescent coming out of the sewers in Times Square, when he saw Harry standing absolutely still in the middle of the living room, lost in thought and perfectly horrified.
“Harry?”
Harry looked up and met Peter’s eyes. “Does this make me the superhero’s girlfriend?”
Not the question that Peter had expected. He couldn’t help but laugh at the utter terror in Harry’s voice.
“More or less, yeah,” he said, hopping onto the windowsill, and jumped before Harry Osborn could throw a tantrum and hurl something potentially threatening at his head.
All things considered, it was pretty accurate. Peter would save the world and Harry would stay home, complaining about the red and blue laundry. It wasn’t that bad of an arrangement.