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The first thing Harry does is take all those terrible masks off the walls, toss them into a heap in the middle of one never-used bedroom, and crush them into dust with a sledgehammer. He knows he could do something else with them, something better, but he can’t bring himself to care right then. All he knows is that his father loved them, and right now he hates his father more than anyone alive. And he’s buzzing with energy right then, his thoughts are a hurricane inside the confines of his skull, threatening to cleave bone if he doesn't find an outlet.
Peter’s words are on repeat in his mind. The needle keeps skipping back into various parts of their conversation, painting hazy, old images onto the backs of his eyelids. It’s selfish that not all of those thoughts are about Peter, isn’t it? How can he be making this all about himself? This all has nothing to do with him, it’s not him who needs the support.
Sometimes, when the repeated conversation in his head comes to its end, his jaw hangs open like he’s going to say what he’d wanted to say to Peter then. But not to Peter, to the fragments of all his father’s horrible furnishings. At least Harry had the sense to keep his jaw shut when they’d actually been having that discussion.
Like then, he says nothing. Harry doesn’t even know what he would say. Because the words that came from the rolling, tempestuous acid in his gut, they're lies, aren't they? And Harry hates lying—hates liars!
There’s a heap of ceramic fragments, chips of wood, and dust beneath him. Might have swung too hard; he thinks there must be splinters of floorboard in the heap as well. Not a movement is made to go and clean it up; instead, he turns and flings the sledgehammer through his father’s antique desk. It might have just chipped the thing if it was thrown by other arms, but Harry is strong now! Strong enough to fight back! It goes careening through!
Just, it doesn't make him feel any better.
Whether or not Harry feels better doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t change the fact that anything his father has touched simply does not deserve to exist.
The sledgehammer is subsequently discarded into the emptiest of the too-many spare bedrooms, alongside the rest of the tools he barely knows how to use, barely knows what they’re even for. Harry cannot keep living in this place, but he can’t truly leave. There are secrets in the walls; he is shackled here. He’d always been afraid it would happen.
Harry doesn’t really know why he went and dated MJ. Or… or he does, but he knows it wasn’t quite for her and he doesn’t understand why his past self would have taken her when she was what Peter wanted. Dating MJ had wound up suddenly feeling like the intensity of his relationships progressed in reverse—his first girlfriend as an adult, and all they really did was hold hands and go on simple dates and kiss somewhat infrequently, like they were middle schoolers.
The humiliating bit was more that Harry preferred it that way. He liked it, he didn’t want anything more. So he wound up almost knowing that it wouldn’t really last early on, because what woman would be satisfied with this?
The tiny dining room table tucked into their kitchen isn’t one of his father’s antiques; the man never bothered to eat at home. Harry had needed to buy that himself. Consequently, he doesn’t want to destroy it as badly as he does everything else. But, no matter how much Harry does or does not like it, he still determines to get rid of it. Being touched by Harry doesn’t feel much different to being stained by his father’s hands. He’s half his father, more than half. Norman Osborn’s split image.
Nowaways, one side of him even bears the jagged edges where he was torn off his father.
Almost everything about the kitchen is almost the same. It’s not painted in layers of moss-green and cockroach-brown like the rest of the manor, probably because Harry’s father never stepped foot in there enough to notice. It’s the only part of this place that wasn’t Norman’s, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not-not Norman’s. It’s a piece of the penthouse, and being so untouched and isolated and, in whatever feeble way, safe mostly meant if anything it could be called Harry’s. But Harry is Norman’s.
At least everything that was Norman’s had an identity. His father knew what he wanted, even if what he wanted was dark and intimidating and comfortless and horrible. This space wasn’t worth his father’s time, but Harry had never changed it from soulless shades of beige and mid-tone browns and white because if it looked anything other than mindlessly dull, his father might notice it. Even from beyond the grave.
Not anymore. Destroying all of that feels like the only way he could exorcise his father’s touch from this place.
Harry doesn’t really know how to do this--Harry doesn’t really know how to do anything. He was raised to be useless, maybe. To not know how to do anything for himself. That’s not quite it, he was raised to either be ruthless in business and intelligent enough to figure the rest out himself, or to be so useless he’d have no chance, no skills, that would let him leave this place. If he wasn’t that, he’d be shackled here, doomed to have no choice but to lay down and--no, no, stop, don’t think about it, you don’t even know if it was real.
He first paints one wall orange--Jeweled Peach, the hardware store had called it, then strides across the room and paints the opposite pink, Spring Azalea. Seeing them both, he decides he likes the pink more, and rushes to cover the orange. Mismatched walls would look horrible, and he wants to eliminate. He wants to eliminate as quickly as he can.
Only, Harry’s trying to cover wet paint, so what he really does is create a wall blotchily covered with an entirely new color. Staring at his newest mistake, the variable state this salmony color sits in between orange and pink, he instead blots some of it onto the tips of two of his fingers and waits for it to dry. Then he’s out the door and down the elevator, flagging down a taxi. He thinks the driver tries to make small talk with him. He doesn’t hear it.
Peter’s face is engraved on the backs of his eyelids. Harry should have tried harder to keep them apart. He knew how his father was—maybe if Harry had just not forgotten his backpack on that day, that ordinary-but-not day that ruined everything forever for everyone, none of it would have happened. MJ and Peter act like they think everything is fine now, but it's not! If it was, Peter wouldn't have told him that with blue eyes stretched as wide as they could go and Harry—nothing is fine! Just because they all aren't trying to kill each other doesn't mean that it's just fine now! Don't they see it?!
His heart is pounding like he’s run a marathon. He doesn’t really mind, the sort of focus that comes with it is something he never-ever has. Yeah, maybe once he has the paint his attention drifts a bit, but it’s only to floorings and carpetings and replacement cabinetry and things of that variety, anything that isn't his father. It’s all the same task, the same bleeding welt to fix. The blood in his ears is deafening enough that he hardly notices that the employee he checks out with is telling him he can pay for it to be installed.
Harry says no, because he needs to be able to do something without needing his hand to be held.
He thinks something must have broken in him when his father died. Not… not like it did when he learned Peter was Spider-Man and started to hear things. He thinks he’s sort-of frozen. Harry is the same person he was when he found his body, still seventeen in a lot of ways. He doesn’t know how to fix it—he’s tried, he swears, he’s tried to go and figure out if he’s just spoiled or something and deal with it, but he’s still just stuck.
He has to be a fraud. Every time he sees his friends—his only friends, only, don’t fuck it up!—he’s just blanketed by this dread that they’ll find him out somehow. Like being stuck like that is something horrible. It must be.
It’s also probably why he only has two friends. Whatever charisma Peter thought Harry possessed has disintegrated; he is entirely incapable of talking to people his own age. He thinks that Peter and MJ must be able to tell in some way. They must be ashamed.
And even if they are, how somewhat infrequently they both see him probably isn’t just that. He can remember Peter flinching at the sight of his face the first time he saw him after moving out. Harry hadn’t known what to think about it at the time, but he cannot get himself to stop thinking about it now.
Everyone thinks Harry is the splitting image of his father—Harry thinks he is. It’s just sort of funny, because his father would insist, his voice thick with disgust, that Harry looked too much like his mother. And that he acted too much like her.
Maybe both things are true; not many people know what his mother looked like. Only his father. When he was a teenager, Harry had thought that Norman must've not loved Harry's mother, because there was no trace of her in the penthouse. But Harry knows now that was wrong—it was one of the only ways his father ever showed he loved him.
He steps into the parlor for a moment, mostly to assess what he should plan on changing in there. Instead, his attention gets caught on the tablecloth laid out over one small table. White silk with lace about the edges. Just like Mom's wedding dress.
Harry is gagging when he turns around and closes the door.
Harry doesn’t know how to remove the existing cabinets, doesn’t know how to install countertops, doesn’t even know how to paint walls properly, but it feels like something he should be able to figure out. People DIY things like this all the time. If Harry had ever been taught how to do things on his own, instead of being built to be this feeble, he would know how to figure it out. Harry was made to be nothing at all, to be incapable beyond the penthouse walls. If he can’t, then he is nothing.
He’s so entirely incapable he couldn’t even bathe himself until he was a teenager. Guess he got family time out of it. Ha. Ha.
When it’s all done, it’s night. He doesn’t know what night, but the world outside the windows is dark, but inside is bright with artificial lights that illuminate the chemical-born pink covering his walls and new white cabinets. His shoulders ache.
He suddenly hopes that the light of future sunsets won’t make it look like the walls are bleeding. He’d wanted it to look warm, to try and disguise the fact that this has been, though safe, a very lonely room since his father started firing the house staff when he was a pre-teen. He can’t remember much of the people who worked there, but that means he can’t remember the face of the nanny who’d been the one caring for him for most of his early childhood, and he knows he’d cried when he’d found out she was gone. Harry can’t remember most of his childhood, actually.
Harry remembers coming home after getting kicked out of some private school for his gradually tanking grades and wondering why they had so many damn spare rooms, then feeling guilty when he recalled there once had been people living out of those rooms, people who’d been kinder to him as a child than his father.
Harry also remembers, before that, thinking that surely his father would pay more attention once they were gone. He did, in a way, but he was also more distant than ever before in another. Harry also spent a lot of time wishing he wasn’t more attentive in those days.
But when his father wasn’t being attentive, he still made sure that the staff’s roles were replaced. More thoroughly did it. Harry didn’t often get to choose what he wore, what he ate, what classes he wanted to take.
Norman Osborn was hardly present, both physically and emotionally, but he managed to seal those shackles onto Harry even from that distance.
Harry rips the carpet out of, repaints, and lays down flooring for two of the spare bedrooms in a single night, one that he can’t remember in more than blurred flashes the next morning. Which is strange. He didn’t sleep, he shouldn’t have had much time to forget. But nothing about how he feels then seems like it could be called normal, really.
Probably nothing. Must be nothing. His mind is just scrambled from those hundred times he's been hit in the head. That's all. It wasn't real.
It is a bit stupid they have that many spare bedrooms. His father had no family, meaning Harry had no family, and neither of them were the sort of people who’d have many friends.
…God, he’d been thinking about it so recently and he’d still forgotten that there had been a point once. Last night he’d gone through and entirely redone the room the nanny who’d raised him had lived out of.
Her face is gone from his head, but he doesn't know what it was that took it away. Harry can’t even really remember if his mother died or left, but he thinks she must have died. There are too many of her things that she would have taken with her if she had left. And he wants to hope that if she had, she would have tried to take him too. If she’d fought to do that, Harry would have remembered that, even if he can’t remember much of his youth.
Her wedding dress is still in his father’s closet.
No, stop, don’t think about that. Stop.
Mary Jane and he had tried to have sex once. Harry just couldn’t, he couldn’t, he hadn’t been able to make it happen and it was so awful and humiliating. She had insisted it was fine and that she wasn’t angry with him for not being able to manage it, but he hadn’t been able to--still didn’t really--believe her. Instead, they’d just laid in bed and talked. She’d told him a bit more about her father, about how he used to scream at her. How she’d nearly missed Sophomore homecoming because he’d poured beer over her dress, and she’d nearly fallen in her heels and twisted her ankle. How she liked that he knew what that sort of thing was like.
Harry had told her he was afraid his father lusted after him. He thinks maybe that made her less angry. She must have been angry. But he’d really liked it, just sitting with her and talking in the same way he liked that they’d only been doing simple, innocent things before. And it was then he really, really, really knew it would end soon, because there was no way anyone other than him could possibly want something like that forever. It was one of those things, one of those ways he was weak and wasn’t a real man. A real man would want that.
Harry had heard Peter talk plenty when they were teenagers about worrying he was somehow underdeveloped sexually, in sentences filled with jargon Harry didn’t understand but also with emotions and underlying motifs he understood too well. Peter, in his fears, had seemed to see Harry as the matured thing he wishes he was. And Harry had felt, like always, as though he was a fraud, because not only did he not have the courage to just tell Peter he didn’t much like the idea of having sex himself, but also because he couldn’t, because Harry didn’t even have the decency to not want sex correctly. Now, if it was real, Harry guesses they both ended up like that for the same fucked-up reason. Because it would be too simple if it was only that neither of them wanted it.
But none of that is why Harry dated MJ, why he dated at all despite knowing he couldn’t give a girlfriend anything. Back then, Peter had been entirely entranced by Harry’s father, and Harry had been afraid of his father, afraid of many things that all tied back to that--his father lusted after him. (Right? How much did you just make up?) He hadn’t wanted to end up sitting beside the cask of amontillado, watching as every door and window of the penthouse was bricked shut and he was trapped with him.
Among what little remains in his memory is that day when Norman had first caught word that he might be dating someone and pestered him for details. Peter had been there. Harry remembers that most distinctly of all: Peter was there. Peter was there, his face displaying poorly-concealed vindictive pleasure at the situation. He just… he just thought Harry was being punished over MJ. That was all that was happening in Peter's mind. He did't realize what was happening, the actual reason Norman was prying. You are mine. You are mine. You are mine.
But whether or not Peter knew the whole picture didn't really matter to him then. The person he trusted most was taking his father's side.
Peter hadn't really understood why he was so quiet for the rest of the night, or why he went to bed early. Why he started losing weight so rapidly after that.
Harry feels like an idiot for worrying so much about that now. Why hadn't he realized that if his father's attention was shifting over to someone he liked more than Harry, all the worst things were going to go with it?
His younger, teenage self hangs in a birdcage beside his heart, and that kid hurt for it. That kid hurt so, so much, and Harry thinks the only time that things have hurt more than Peter looking so smug as Harry was cornered was…
Was recently. The kid is curled up in a metal-barred corner because everyone is just leaping at the chance to help Peter work through things, deal with it all, but nobody even noticed when it was Harry. It's good that Peter is being helped, he swears he is really, truly happy that Peter has that, but occassionally the kid just raises his head and meekly asks what about us? Why didn't anyone care? What about what we need?
And… and Harry consciously knows that he, himself, is the consistent part there, that it's not really Peter being special because most of the time, people will react like that for anyone, but he doesn't have the heart to tell to take the cosmic hint.
…But that, what he told her, is one of the things Harry knows is true. There is so, so much where he can’t tell if something was real or not, if he was just making things up because he was just somehow secretly horribly perverted and depraved and awful. But he knows that his father lusted after him. He knows it.
Harry just doesn’t know if he gets to be angry or upset or scared, because it doesn’t really matter. He’s being dramatic. Really. It would matter if his father had ever actually done something to him. Ever acted on it. He didn’t.
Harry knows that’s true. He also knows that his father… well, he must have still been trying. It must just have been that he was distant to try and protect him. Must have just been that Norman said terrible things to him and hit him—no, he didn’t hit Harry, he just shoved him or backhanded him sometimes, it didn’t count—so that he’d be at a safe distance. Most of the time.
He thinks of his mother’s wedding dress and nearly takes one of his fingers off with a table saw.
Not that it changes anything. His father was still a monster, for what he did to Peter. There are a mountain of ways that Harry should have been able to stop that.
There are too many bedrooms. Too many beds. Harry can’t sleep, the king size in the master bedroom could easily hold two more people. He thinks he might break down the walls between two of them, fuse it into a larger room for… something. Anything. But Harry doesn’t know how to do that, so he puts it off for later and focuses on the master bedroom. His father’s bedroom. His bedroom. There’s not really anything him about it, but it’s where he sleeps. In cold, unfeeling, thick walls.
What the hell is amontillado, anyways?
At least its preexisting emptiness means it’s easy to drag everything out, even though his hands have begun to shake a bit. With so many damn useless rooms, it’s nothing to find somewhere to shove everything in there for the time being.
For a second, he stands and stares at the closet. It hasn’t been touched since his father died. And he doesn’t have to touch it now! He doesn’t! Nothing in there needs to be moved to paint!
If he stays here, bricked in, until he dies, nothing in the closet ever has to move ever again.
What is wrong with him? It’s just a closet. He can’t be this dramatic, just… just get over it, rip the bandaid off.
His mother’s wedding dress is still there. Dusty and wrinkled. All the white silk and lace is a bit yellowed with age. Apparently it wasn’t ever put back into its garment bag from the last time.
It looks so small now. It’s strange to think that he’s actually twenty-five, no matter how much it feels like his seventeen-year-old self is trapped in a hanging birdcage somewhere close to his heart. He’s far taller now—it would probably only have been when he was twelve that it could have ever felt so much larger than it is in reality. Not that he didn’t get far taller than it in no time at all. The last time he wasn’t bigger than it, he was probably fifteen.
Harry manages to summon the strength to reach out and touch the tear where the sleeve attaches to the rest of it. There’s a tear in the stitching there, matching the ragged pieces he knows much of the tulle is in.
It might be that it’s not that he’s been stuck seventeen for the past eight years, unable to do anything to fix it, maybe he’s been fifteen for ten.
Maybe someday, he thinks, he’ll find a way to stop feeling so damn guilty all the time.
Back outside of the dark closet, plastic goes on the floor, and then he’s finding that he’s having a harder time placing the painters tape down than he had in the first room he repainted. How is he getting worse? Will his hands just stop shaking?
And then, Harry steps back and looks at all that space of wall surrounding him and doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be covering that horrible dark green with. It should be simple—he thinks most people would just use their favorite color. And Harry knows three things: Peter’s favorite color is red, probably because of his MJ obsession and eventually because of Spider-Man as well, Mary Jane’s favorite color is blue because she likes that it brings out her eyes, and Harry hates green. He doesn’t know if he’s ever had a favorite, or if he ever had he’s forgotten it with most of his adolescence. Maybe Harry should ask Peter. If he just forgot, Peter'll be the one to know.
No, don't bother him. Shut up, Harry, stop bothering them, Harry. You don't even know if it was real.
For a while, he thinks about painting it pink. He’d like something that feels warm. But he’s still afraid the walls would look like they’re bleeding whenever the sun rises or sets, and while he might be able to stomach the tricks his eyes like to pull on him anywhere else, more blood in his bed might break him. He settles on a light gray, because it’s neutral enough it can’t possibly wind up hurting him while still having a bit more identity than just choosing white. White would be another reminder Harry is barely a person.
He nearly paints the bed frame pink. He settles on pink bed sheets instead, covered by gray blankets.
As he’s leaving, he faintly realizes this bedroom has a lock on it. His childhood bedroom didn’t. None of the bathrooms even had locks, but the en suite one does.
That morning, as he lays down carpeting in his father’s old study, his cell phone rings, the tone nearly having him leaping out of his own skin. At least the voice on the other end is soft enough to make his skin stop prickling.
“Hi, Harry.” Peter sounds like he hasn’t been sleeping much either.
Harry leans back, suddenly aware of a deep ache across most of his body. He tries to shove some energy into his voice, but it comes out raspy regardless. “Hey, Pete! What’s up?”
“Didn’t think you’d be up this early.” Peter sounds a bit amused, but it doesn’t last. His tone crashes into something he’d heard only days, maybe a week before. “Um, I wanted to ask you something. I need your help.”
“Anything.” He responds, no hesitation. Peter doesn’t just need his support—he deserves it. It’s the least Harry could do for him.
There’s a soft, hesitant noise from Peter on the other end. “…It’s about your dad. The stuff he did to me.” He says, barely a whisper. “I’m worried that he might have had stuff related to what happened that he kept. Like, photos or papers or something. I’m sorry, I know that makes no sense.”
“No, no, it’s alright. You don’t need to tell me why.” He rushes to say.
“I’d like to look, if that’s okay.” Peter’s voice is a bit shaky. “And destroy anything he might have had. Not-not because of you, it’ll just make me feel a little better, I guess.”
He’s nodding into his phone like Peter can see him. “Of course, it’s not a problem.” He says. That guilt, that constant guilt that he doesn’t quote know the origin of, is clawing up the back of his throat. “I’m sorry,” he says, “for what he did.” He's sorry, he's so sorry. He could have stopped it, couldn't he? If he'd tried harder.
“Don’t do that. It wasn’t you who did it.” Peter implores, sounding almost weak despite the intensity of his tone. “It’s not your fault. And… and it’s not mine either. It’s only his.”
A thousand different things flash into Harry’s mind in rapid succession, all making icy cold shoot down his spine. It is, it is, and now there’s a horrible new way it must have been. “Still.” He croaks out, then things slip into silence. “When do you want to come by?”
Peter has been left an odd combination of relieved and a little weary. “Um, the weekend is probably better. I’ll come by on Saturday, if that’s okay.” The final words are tacked on hastily.
“That’s great.” He rasps, and then the call is over.
That’s when Harry drops what he’s doing and goes to knock the wall between two rooms down. The carpeting isn’t enough anymore, he needs to do something more taxing with his hands or he’s going to start peeling his own skin off so he won’t need to live in it anymore.
Was it because of him that his father did those things to Peter? Harry knows the way his father would stare at himsometimes, but it must have been a leap to go from feeling that way towards his own son and the distance that Harry can only believe had been connected to something like that to… to raping some kid he barely knew. And it feels like a splinter in his mind, cracking straight through his skull, that he might know what that bridge was and that it might have been him, because of course it might have been him.
There are other reasons he knows there’s not a world where he can call himself a victim.
Norman hadn’t allowed him through high school sex-ed. That hadn’t stopped the fact that Harry was (supposed to be) becoming a man, and that suddenly his blood ran a lot hotter in his veins. But Harry was a butterfly who’d crawled out of its chrysalis too early; maybe he could have become something beautiful, vibrantly colored and lifted by the wind, but instead he crawled out with crumpled wings with distorted patterns and misshapen legs. Ugly, irreparably so.
His blood ran hot, and he didn’t know why yet. But that was rather normal. It was just that then, it didn’t do so for girls his age, or even boys. He probably could have handled it if it was something like teachers, because it wasn’t uncommon for kids to have crushes like that, and that would at least go away eventually.
Harry had wanted it. His father had… been determined to make sure he was properly educated on things like that. When eyes had bored into his naked back, he had not felt any less hard in his own fist. He’d liked it, his father had lurked behind him, all-seeing eagle’s eyes on his body, a body with limbs too long and ribs jutting out beneath skin, undeniably adolescent. Undeniably horrible, but was that blame only on the man who hadn’t touched him when Harry had liked it? Because he had! He had! But—but his father had kept his distance, and maybe some of those things had happened because of the attraction, but he'd been doing all he could, hadn't he? It was himself who—who—
He can feel as nauseous as he wants about it all, but he’d been the one to slink silently into his father’s room in the dead of night, having carefully listened for the moment when his father would fall asleep, and sit cross legged beside his bed, just staring at him. He’d stay there for hours at a time, no matter how exhausted it would leave him at school the next day. And he’d done that dozens of times. And he’d been the one to go into his father’s bedroom while he was away and… and…
His father hadn’t ever touched him, not even with the dress. Any time his father might’ve touched him are things Harry doesn’t even know were real or not. His father hadn’t ever really hit him, just shoved him or cracked his knuckles over his face whenever he was being exceptionally slow.
That wasn’t true in the opposite direction.
Once, when Harry was young, soon after his mother had gone—he still can’t quite remember what happened—he’d wandered, utterly lonely, into the kitchens and the private cook had taken pity on him and let him help. Hadn’t let him touch anything hot or sharp, but had looked away long enough for him to spot a freshly caught and even more freshly gutted fish and, on some impulse, reach out a tiny hand to touch where it had been split down the belly. It was cold and slick; he can remember the distinct texture of shorn-through muscle fibers more vividly than he can remember most of his youth. Remember red-tinted juices that coated his hand and left his skin sticky.
He's just lucky that Peter left his father's corpse there in such a hurry. If Peter knew… he already could hardly look at Harry. But humans and animals aren't really that different in death—Harry was just left red and sticky all over, not just his hands.
Sure, most people would think his father feeling that way towards him was… awful. But Harry was the one to have actually done something. That was worse, wasn't it?
Even if Harry had been right in what he told MJ about his father, Harry had been inviting it, hadn’t he? He’d wanted it even when his father insistently kept the distance. He'd wanted it. He'd gone out of his way to draw the attention.
Was it his fault? Had he somehow, in his teenage foolishness and depraved lust, managed to put so much strain on the father who kept him distant intentionally that he’d wind up doing something that awful to Peter? It feels idiotic, like some edgy, immature result of teenager over-emotional thinking, but that’s what he’s been stuck as for years, isn’t it?
Oh, he realizes when dust coats the lining of his throat, I forgot a respirator.
That’s the day, though he doesn’t know why, he hears the elevator ding open and carpet-muffled heels approach him from behind.
When he turns, it feels like the air is as thick as molasses. Moving is as tiring as if he were swimming, his shaking growing far more intense in a matter of seconds. As his eyes rest on her face, he watches her brow knit together, her face twisting in concern. “You look awful.” She comments.
“I’m happy to see you too.”
She steps carefully into the dusty mess of wall-pieces in disorganized heaps. “You knocked a wall down.” She comments, looking at the jagged drywall edges.
His nod is a bit numb. “I did.”
“Why?”
He pauses, forcing himself onto his more than exhausted legs. “I can’t remember.” Something about there being too many rooms. Too many bedrooms for one person, so many bathrooms he hasn’t even looked at a few of them in months. And Harry is as shackled here as he was afraid of being when he’d gone and dated her, chained to the room behind the mirror and the knowledge he might unwittingly leave some evidence of the goblin behind. This is only an attempt to make his prison palatable, but he can’t remember how this was supposed to help that.
He could fill all these useless rooms, but everyone he’d want to fill them with finds the idea of taking wealth they haven’t earned repulsive. Harry hasn’t earned any of it either.
Mary Jane’s heels click more loudly against the plywood beneath them, but those steps are disorganized, an awkward shuffle in place. “I went out with Peter this morning. He mentioned he was going to come over here this weekend.”
It’s a complete relief that she didn’t come here for him. “He is. He just wants to look at some stuff.”
“Have you told him what you told me?” She says, voice kind yet almost stern. Straight to the point, he thinks with a thin lipped smile even as his heart plummets into his stomach.
The smile quickly distorts into an awkward, upturned grimace. “Told him what?” He says, no matter how his face reveals that he undeniably knows exactly what.
And she can see his revealing face, so she doesn’t even deign that as worth direct attention. They both know what he said, and now MJ can easily guess that it’s something Peter doesn’t know. “Harry, I don’t think you’d say something like that if there wasn’t a reason for it. You don’t have to talk to me about it or tell Peter, but I think it would help you both if you did.”
It wouldn’t help. Either he’d be a liar, trying to frame it like he was entirely helpless and subjugated, like he was a wide-eyed kid who had no clue what was happening, and not nearly a man, acting on his own almost as much as his father did, or he’d need to tell Peter the truth. He’d have to watch the face of his best friend drop, any attachment or remaining fragments of trust crumbling away until Peter looked like he was staring at either a stranger or a threat. There’s nothing about telling Peter that would help anyone. Even if Peter would be a bit comforted by hollow lies… “I can’t,” he tells MJ. “You know him. He won’t want to accept help or support or whatever from anyone if he knows someone else was hurt. I can’t stomach it if he just shoves all that away because of me.” He shakes his head, sitting back on his heels. “I can’t go and do that to him after everything.”
She stills in place, looking conflicted. “When will it have been long enough?” She asks.
“I don’t know. He just deserves the spotlight to himself for now.” He plasters a wry smile on his face. He must be pale. “If I can’t handle it, I’ll stop. I promise.”
He doesn't think she believes him.
"Please, at least try to get some rest. You look awful, Harry." She begs.
Harry says that he will. Harry does not. Harry is exhausted, he feels like his muscles are shredding themselves on a cheese grater every time he moves, his body is running on fumes. But he's thinking so, so much.
And he's thinking that if Peter suspects Norman might have something about what he did to him, what is there on Harry?
If there is, Peter can't see it. Peter needs to focus on himself for once in his fucking life.
And now Harry has all sorts of dangerous and thorough ways to make sure that Peter never, ever sees anything that would be too revealing towards what happened to Harry.
—
Peter looks awful when he shows up to the penthouse. Unwashed clothing that reeks faintly of sweat, hair matted with the same, and bruises greeting him coyly from beneath his clothing.
Harry assumes he spent the whole prior night on patrol, in anxious reflection of… whatever it is that Harry has been doing to this place. He does not ask, because they do not talk. Peter looks too distant, looks like he's been hollowed out. Doesn't, for that matter, look like he could speak if he tried. Doesn't look like he's registered that Harry is real. Harry is not real.
Harry lets him into Norman's study like that stupid butler—heknewheknewheknewheknewheknew—did for him for years, watches Peter toddle his way in, and turns his back. Being watched makes his skin crawl nowadays. So Peter sorts through old papers alone, and Harry finishes painting his childhood bedroom a familiar shade of blue.
Peter looks worse when he emerges—like a bat, following the setting of the sun—but he's speaking. He stands in the doorway to the painted bedroom, looking small, looking like they're in high school again, looking like a little boy that Harry never met. "I, um…" Speaking makes Peter's throat spasm unnaturally, as though he's about to vomit. It's obvious he's been crying. "I'm done. With… I, um, found…"
With that, the color is beginning to drain from Peter's face. He leaps to stop him. "You don't need to tell me! I'm here to help." Whatever Harry can give, whatever he can scrape out of his worthless carcass.
"Can I stay here tonight?" Peter blurts out. "I just—I think if I tried to swing back, I'd end up splattered all over the pavement." He only blanches more heavily at his own words. "Oh, wow. Um, that was really… I don't know why I said that. I'm just really tired. Sorry." He chuckles, a sound that registers more like the noise some piece of machinery would make before breaking catastrophically more than it does laughter.
His skin burns; he swears that he can feel the gore across his legs all over again. "Yeah!" Harry's muscles feel stiff with the intensity of his own plastered-on smile. He must look awful; the last time he showered was before the last time he slept, and the last time he slept was before Peter told him about it, and he doesn't know how long ago that was. Lucky, always lucky, that Peter still doesn't seem the most aware of his surroundings, 'cause Harry must smell like death. "Yeah! Yeah, of course!"
There's something wrong in his voice. Harry's stupid, must be, if he had decided to hedge all his bets on Peter not noticing how he had stubble growing in or how exhausted he was or how foul he must smell or how he didn't sound right or how he definitely hadn't changed his clothes since before MJ visited rather than taking care of it before Peter could notice something was wrong.
Does he want Peter to notice? Is he really the sort of man who'd witness his closest friend in such a state of pain, pain he should understand at least fractionally, pain he might have caused, and care more about his own pain being worth noticing than if Peter was okay? "I-I'll—We can get takeout, and I'll find a spare room you can use! Like when we'd sleep over as teenagers." Harry's stuck being that, he can't force himself into the shape of anything more than a fickle teenage friend.
Peter swallows thickly—but how could he be comfortable in this disgusting place when Harry can hardly stand it? "Yeah. Yeah, that would be good." Peter avoids his eyes. Peter does that a lot now. When they were teenagers, Peter would just stare him down—and Harry had liked having his attention—but… that's another piece of common ground that Peter does not and cannot know they possess, that Harry hates the sight of his own face too. "Can I sleep in here?"
"Huh?" Does Peter know there aren't locks? Peter probably feels best about this room because it's familiar, it makes sense that way, but does he know? Does he know there aren't locks? "Yeah, sure. Of course!" And there his mind goes, whirling and desperate. What is he doing? Harry can't stitch this together, but he can, he can just— "You never let me take you out and get nice things for you!" Maybe Harry is tired, maybe he is, he can't think. He did that for MJ, right? And… other people. Made them feel better. "But you've been through so much, and you've done so much, you—let me get you something nice for takeout! As a reward!"
Oh. Shit, he's just making Peter uncomfortable. "O-or just whatever you want. I'm here for you!" Get it together. Get it together if you want to act like you can be a support for him. "I am. I want to be." He croaks out, because he does. Badly. He doesn't know what's so broken in him that he keeps doing things like this; petty and attention grabbing bullshit.
"Are you alright?" Peter asks.
He doesn't want to be asked that anymore. Not like this, not after his chat with MJ. But keeping his face orderly makes it feel like the skin of his cheeks is going to tear. "I'm good. I'm great. Tell me what you need."
Peter only looks all the warier of him for it. "Well, pizza." That smile is more forced than Harry's. "And then, I need to stop thinking about all that stuff for a while." When the stretched-wide lips turn pained and wry, they look a hell of a lot more natural.
Harry sort-of thinks Peter must be telling him to get lost, because surely he'd be a reminder all on his own.
—
Peter is sleeping in Harry's bed, in Harry's childhood bed. His body is rumpling the fabric of once perfectly tucked blankets. Probably replacing some of the lingering scent of Harry with his own. Probably sheddings hairs, his dead skin cells, into Harry's sheets.
They used to have sleepovers together here. Used to sleep in the same bed, curled around each other beneath the covers, because if Flash could grab his buddies by the ass in the locker rooms, just holding each other wasn't gay. And deep down, Harry had felt like with his best friend there, he was protected. Which was silly. Harry did it all to himself.
Harry is not in bed beside Peter right now. He's knelt on the carpet, his eyes only hardly peeking over the edge of the mattress. Peter is so much more… large than he was when they were kids, and Harry isn't so gangly either.
He can't imagine how freaked out Peter would be if he woke up right now. It's—listen, Harry knows it's wrong, Harry knows he's being creepy, but—but—but nobody really touches him anymore—shit, that sounds bad, he's not touching Peter, he won't touch Peter—he just means that Peter is never relaxed, not since they graduated, and maybe that's just because he's Harry and he probably makes Peter uncomfortable or more likely, it's because of Spider-Man and Harry is just making things about himself—
Listen, Harry just doesn't get to see Peter peaceful anymore. Peter is never peaceful, he's always so tense. Always frowning. Always staring at walls. He stares at Harry like he thinks Harry's a ghost, but in a sort of way that makes Harry feel like it must be Peter who's the ghost. This is the only chance he really has.
And Harry knows that it's selfish, but he needs it. He's a parasite, but he's a leech gorging itself on Peter's blood. He just needs to feel alright for a second, find some peace in the hurricane of whatever it is that's running through his head and has kept him conscious for far too long for it to be good.
Harry's doing his best to keep it peaceful! He promises. He promises. He's combing Peter's hair with his fingers whenever he begins to shake, he's running the back of his hand over his cheek when his brows go tense. Whenever Peter is awake, he can't do anything, and if Peter's not okay, neither is Harry. So… so if Peter can sleep decently, maybe the stormy buzzing will stop for long enough for Harry to sleep.
It's selfish, he knows, to want the way things were when they were younger back. The world is better for Spider-Man being there; even Harry quails to think of what might have happened without him. And it's not Peter's fault that Harry's mentally stuck there, his soul lingering in a time far simpler than the one he has to live in, even with the hazy clouds over most of his youth.
But what Peter doesn't know can't hurt him.
…Does Peter really get to be mad at Harry for thinking that?
Don't tell Harry.
For brief moments at a time through the night, Harry imagines crawling into bed beside Peter. If he coaxed into deep enough sleep, Harry would be able to do whatever he wanted—Peter wouldn't notice it. Wouldn't notice if he curled up right against his chest. Wouldn't notice if he ran his fingers over his face. Wouldn't notice if he—
Harry jerks his hands away from the other man so quickly he risks waking him up, feeling shame curl in equal quantities with the heat in his gut. His blood is rushing faster, hotter, his clothes feel tight.
Get away from that boy.
Harry locks himself in the bathroom, shutting his eyes as tight as he can and bracing his head against the wall. His teeth grit as he shoves his hand into his pants—it's the fastest way to make it stop. Even if touching or being touched hasn't… ever really felt good.
—
It's another thing that Harry would have been able to cover up easily if he were more organized, or had planned ahead. Not many people would think of it as that weird or worrying or whatever, but he still doesn't want to explain why he's ripping his own house apart or why he hasn't hired someone to do it for him. Doesn't want to lick his wounds after the latter would leave him bleeding.
If he had stopped before Peter got up, if Peter hadn't found him hunched over a sawblade that spun a bit too close to his fingers, maybe he wouldn't have noticed.
"How long has it been since you slept?"
He doesn't know Peter is there until he says that. Peter looks better, though! Good. That's good. "Huh?"
Peter's lips work. His arms fold. Harry is so, so tired. He does not, however, repeat the same question. "What are you doing to this place?" He says instead.
"Um, I…" Tired. Too tired to be guarded. So fucking exhausted of everything, but nobody else sees how horrible everything is! "I can't keep living here, but the Goblin is here. I can't leave. So I need to make it something else." His words are blending together. He's exhausted, why can't he stop thinking? Why is he still awake?"
Peter blinks with owl-eyes. "Um, when did you last sleep?"
"When we talked?" He babbles.
Peter's face twists. Or he thinks so. Everything is blurring a little. "That was…" Peter trails off, or maybe he doesn't. Maybe Harry's body is just starting to shut down, and he's about to split his head open on the saw, bisect himself mid conversation. After all the work Peter did to save his life. "You need to go to bed."
"Nuh-uh." He mumbles. "No, can't."
"Why not?" Peter sounds like he's talking to a toddler. Harry thinks he's supposed to be offended.
He shakes his head, the air around him thick as gelatin. "My bed's too big. I can't, Pete."
Peter's strong hands pull him away. Pull him up til he's at least mostly on his feet. Turn him around. Peter is so much stronger than him, even after his father's formula.
As Peter walks him to his bedroom, directing him with one hand on his back—with that warm, warm, touch—Harry meekly hopes that Peter is pushing him towards sleep after his words because he's going to stay. Peter won't leave him in a dark, cold, vast bed, will he?
He thinks, as Peter sits on exposed sheets and pulls off his shoes, that surely getting what he wants for once means that he'll be able to keep going just a little longer before his psyche collapses entirely.
Peter slides beside him into his bed, one hand firm on his chest as though he thinks Harry has the strength or energy to try and escape him. Harry stays limp on his back, his eyelids lead, but aware that Peter has settled onto his side, looking at him.
“Can I ask you something?” Harry forces out through his stiff lips. “You don’t have to respond, I just…”
“No, go ahead.” Peter shifts, their shoulders resting together. There’s something else in his tone—he’s almost hopeful.
His eyes shut, sinking like a stone to the bottom of a river. “When did he do it to you?”
When Peter responds to him, he doesn’t seem tense or uncomfortable, just a bit disappointed. “Oh. Um, senior year, I was sleeping over. I think he was still supposed to be on some trip. We were sharing a bed, I thought he was coming in for you and I was sort of embarrassed…” Peter pauses. “You know, I was worried that you’d died or something. Because you wouldn’t wake up.”
Oh, but Norman probably had been coming in for him, wasn’t he? Harry can remember being suddenly able to think clearly when his father had died, then finding those sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet. It was meant to be him, wasn’t it? Peter hadn’t been supposed to be there, and when he was, Harry was right to suspect his father would prefer Peter over him in any situation. He can’t help but wonder if he doesn’t want Peter to know for any of those silly pseudo-benevolent reasons he tells himself, or if he just knows Peter wouldn’t ever be willing to forgive him if he actually told the full story.
“Harry?” Peter whispers into the dark room. His body shifts, resting more in the crook of his arm. “Are you okay?”
“What?”
Peter audibly hesitates. “You… clearly haven’t been sleeping, you seem really stressed out and you look awful.” An arm creeps around him. “I don’t think it’s your fault, if that’s what it’s about. You couldn’t have done anything.” Peter draws him close. He's warm, feels all firm and strong, but all Harry can think about is that he doesn't deserve the trust.
“No, no, I’m fine. I don’t know what’s been up with me, I’ve just been weird for the past week or so. It’s hard to describe.” He’s not sure how Peter can stand to lay here with him. Harry doesn’t think he could endure it if it was his own face he had to look at. “I’m good, I promise. It’s not news to me that he was a monster.”
They settle into silence from there, but even as he feels himself slip closer and closer to sleep, it’s then Peter, who’d fallen asleep easily in his childhood bedroom just hours before, who’s restless, shifting beside him, jostling still when he rests his head on Harry’s shoulder. “Everything alright, pal?” He mumbles out, his eyes still shut.
“I’m sorry if it’s nothing,” Peter begins slowly. “But I can’t help but think.”
He feels a faint smile form on his face. “Never a good sign with you.”
“I’m being serious, Harry!” Peter elbows him gently.
Harry finds himself laughing, because it’s all sort of funny in a horrible way. It’s all hilarious. Peter had been so jealous both times Harry had gotten involved with MJ, and he hadn’t even known that Harry can’t even get hard properly! Oh, maybe Peter can’t either, and that’s why the three of them could just drift between each other without it ever mattering, because MJ would always know that if they were in bed like this, that it was incapable of ever being something and maybe all the cheating kisses mattered just as little because neither of them could ever manage that for her. This is all a great big joke. And it’s a terrible thing to think about the only people who care for him. But it's funny! Everything is awful, and they're both able to just pretend they're actually happy! “Why?”
The other man sounds genuinely and completely caught off guard. “Why? Harry…” Peter trails off. When he begins to speak again, his words are as firm as stone, unwavering. It’s not a question anymore, Harry’s blasé response is a key fitting into a lock. “At one point, me and MJ were talking and she mentioned you and her never had sex. It seemed like there was something else to it, but she wouldn’t tell me. When I was in your father’s office, a lot of papers were bent or in the wrong order. Some were missing. And… I mean, I’m not a doctor or anything, but you seem sort of manic. And you can’t tell me that it didn’t start after I told you. I’m not dumb, Har.”
Even as he feels himself go pale, the cartoonishly wide grin on his face suddenly carved into his body like granite. He couldn’t stop if he tried. Might as well go down laughing at the world.
“He did it to you too, didn’t he?”
Everything is just a massive joke.