Chapter 6
“I think I should tell you,” MJ tells him once he’s on week two of ignoring Peter’s frequent calls. “That Peter keeps trying to get me to give you messages from him”
The resentful part of Harry he knows full well has no right to exist quietly comments that it might be the first time anyone has ever willingly told him anything. He squashes it. He has no right to expect anything from anyone, he hisses at it in his mind. But a little bit of that lingering resentment still rises like oil. Guess Peter doesn’t like how that feels. Harry seems to be doing a lot of showing him how it feels lately. Once again a thing he really has no right to do.
He dabs the brush again and leans closer to the painting he’s working on to hide his face. “What’s he been saying about me?”
“Not much that you can make sense out of, but that’s Peter for you.” She looks over at him, straightening her back. “He’s getting really antsy.” Her words are a lot softer for a moment. “I think we’re both a little clingy after what happened. Him particularly, because of… you know.”
I don’t, actually. “I know.” He knows that his own clinginess is twice as intense, rapidly shifting between intruding on anyone near him to avoid being alone with thoughts and memories and the feeling he’s being quite literally consumed from the inside out in a way no normal person should live through, and self isolating out of shame.
“It seems like he thinks he did something.” MJ comments, shifting towards him like to see if he’ll allow it. Like a fucking feral animal, they still haven’t stopped acting like he’s a feral fucking animal. Though really, it would be justified if they thought of him like one. To MJ, him breaking into her home and nearly choking her out would have been as sudden as a blizzard in July, only explained as some disproportionate wrath over being kissed once. There’s still some indignant part of him that insists he deserved some anger towards Peter, but there’s no damn way he can justify bringing her into it. And why the hell did he do it? What the hell could he tell her? “Oh, I saw my dead dad in the mirror and he told me to!” like he’s some fucking horror movie villain? What would either of them get out of that, other than him getting locked up somewhere?
“He did.” Is all he says. He finds himself shifting away from her approach before he can stop himself, avoiding her eyes. Peter’s… comment has cut deeper than he can really fully process. Like Peter could stare at him and tell that there were still bugs eating at him. Like he could feel them nesting beneath his sternum as vividly as Harry could
“Are you going to tell me what?” She sounds annoyed with his avoidance.
He just shakes his head and goes back to painting like it’s not worth worrying about. “It’s best between the two of us.” And Peter’s partner. Harry would have already told him, but he can’t even remember the guy’s name, let alone figure out his number.
She stares at him like she’s trying to identify an animal skull, like she’s searching for some part of him that will solve a puzzle he can’t see the picture of. Then turns away. Adjusts her own canvas, then turns back to him to brandish her brush like a dagger at him. “This one is supposed to go over those colors, right?”
He nods, the tension he feels constantly easing slightly when the conversation steers from the topic of Peter. “You got it. You’re picking this up fast.” He’s able to smile genuinely as he tells her that, something that feels like a rarity lately. He means it, though. She’s always been good at anything related to the arts, of course it would translate to this. “You should come paint with me more often.”
“I’d love to. None of us ever see you now.” She leans towards him to watch him add the last of the highlights, hand on his shoulder. He finds himself avoiding eye contact all over again once she looks up to keep speaking; he can’t get that damn sentence out of his head. And she’s looking at him like there’s something to identify again. “I should head out. Dinner with the girlfriend.” She pauses, considers him. “You should come do something with us sometime. Gwen’s good at finding exciting things.” And then he’s alone.
He’s found himself in front of the old mirror that blocks off the hidden room. He’s learned that if he focuses on the scarred half of his face, it prevents his mind from warping his reflection into the face of his father. The scarred part of his face is the part that’s himself, like his face is a mask that the bomb broke a piece off of, making that the only thing that’s real. Peter created the only part of himself that feels real.
And yet, scars or not, he’s never recognized his own face as himself.
He slides the mirror into the wall.
Strange that he recognizes the actual mask more than his own face, despite how little he’s worn it.
He doesn’t know exactly what it means that the changes of the performance enhancers feel so natural that he doesn’t notice them until he takes a closer glance. No person should be identifying sounds from miles away, but he doesn’t think twice when he faintly hears Peter until it takes so long to find him. Did it feel this natural for Peter? Or did it feel detached from him, unnatural, like suddenly growing a third arm that he didn’t completely know how to move? Were they both just predestined to end up like this, is that why it feels natural for Harry? Or is it only Harry who feels like this, meant to follow and have his life revolve around him no matter what he does? Did Harry’s life become meant to result in this the moment Peter was bitten by that spider? Is that it? Is that why the moment he heard him, he looked to follow him with no second thought, his own grudges irrelevant?
He can pick out the red and blue of the costume the moment it’s not being blocked. The scene is almost like a dark version of a celebrity being swarmed for autographs, with the number of people who swarm him. That being said, when he thinks of it, he really doesn’t know the limits of what Peter is able to handle. He hops off the glider just out of sight, still not keen on being seen by Peter if his presence isn’t needed.
And so he slinks over to the corner between alleys, like a cat stalking prey. He remains hunched and low to the ground as he watches. Peter doesn’t seem to be having too much of an issue, though the numbers noticeably strain him. He keeps himself in front of a group of teenagers who look at him like the celebrity Harry had just been picturing. Like it’s an action movie and their lives aren’t seconds away from ending if Peter slips up.
The group of… what is he supposed to call them? Enemies? Sure, that works. Does seem preoccupied on Peter, to be perfectly fair. Peter is swinging and twisting and throwing out quips so quickly he almost looks like a mean spirited ballerina in a ballet that requires some particularly interesting costuming choices. He can see Peter is getting rather cocky, not paying attention after the ego boost single handed ot taking these numbers is giving him.
So he doesn’t see that one of the little bastards has pulled a crowbar into his hands and managed to scramble behind him and raise it. Harry doesn’t even realize he’s reached for the sword until he sees the guy about to hit Peter be held to the wall by the blade through the back of his collar. Almost everyone freezes at that, snapping their heads around wildly to find where the hell that came from. Seems about time to make his appearance.
He knows he’s fast, unnaturally fast, and has privately decided that that’s mostly something he uses for style points, for no real reason if he’s being honest. But it allows him to make himself seen only when one of these little bastards is on the ground with his knee on their chest, the blades on his arm pressed into his throat.
The thugs stumble back, Peter himself staring and sputtering at his sudden appearance. “Wh-you’re-what?!”
He really can’t help but feel a little smug at his shock, but does his best not to let it show. “Good time for webs.”
Peter nods, webbing the dude he’s on top of to the ground, then doing the same to the man who’s struggling to free himself from the sword. “What are you doing here?” He genuinely sounds stunned.
“Just wanted to watch the show.” He clocks one thug in the jaw, who tumbles to the ground to be incapacitated by Peter. “Didn’t realize that the show was going to be live painting with materials blood and brain matter onto brick.”
Peter just stares, probably gaping behind the mask.
“Not the time to stare.” His voice is threateningly sweet, an attempt at communicating that he’s still mad. Not mad enough to let him die or get seriously injured, but mad. He swings a fist into a dude’s shoulder, wrestles him against the wall, webbed up the moment Peter has shaken himself back into the fight.
He’s a little more violent than Peter is, such is the nature of bladed weapons, but he finds himself trying to play a little nicer while his moves are under Peter’s eyes. He wants to be good. Or maybe he just wants Peter to think he’s good. Maybe that’s what matters to him deep down, not any real change to his character. Just a change to who he’s performing for.
But, even with the change to his fighting style, fighting with him feels completely natural, like Peter’s just an extension of himself he finds himself constantly comfortably aware of. Well, it’s probably the other way around, isn’t it? Him being an extension of Peter? That’s how it’s always been. Of course he would change to match Peter. That’s just how things work, clearly. Maybe this is predestination, maybe this is just how things would always end up. Not like Harry’s giving much up to be an extension of another.
He snaps the sword back into place on his back once things have cleared up. Peter’s standing across the alley from him, facing him while Harry’s back is turned to Peter.
“Could we-“
“Not here.”
Peter nods, clearly turning to instruct the teenagers he’d been protecting, but finds they’d scuttled off at some point. He sighs, looking back at Harry. And it just remains silent for so damn long, both trying to identify some idea of what to do next through the empty eyes of their masks. Harrys the one to approach first, watching Peter be overcome by some combination of hope and anxiety before Harry passes him, retrieving the glider and turning back. That bitter part of himself is back again, relishing the disappointment that is visible across his body language as the rest of him is overcome with some combination of guilt and indignation.
“Get on.”
Peter scrambles towards him, not even saying he could just swing when Harry can just… tell he wants to.
Logically, he knows Peter’s got his freaky little spider limbs and can probably stick to the glider, but he still finds himself wrapping one arm around him out of fear he’d fall off. Peter notices, anyone would, but Harry doesn’t look to try and figure out how he feels about it.
“Can I ask where we’re going?”
“Don’t know.”
He lands them on a roof somewhere, hand lingering on Peter’s body longer then he cares to admit. Peter removes his mask almost immediately, staring at him with eyes filled with some combination of emotions he can’t really identify. It puts him on edge, though. Most things do. Keeping the mask on, Harry waits for him to start talking.
Peter stares at him from only a few feet away like he’s miles from him. “Don’t… read into what happened?” It sounds like he’s asking Harry to confirm it for both of them. “I just… I don’t know. I thought you were dead for so long, so I had all this time to think about regrets and now it’s all sort of messing with my head and making me impulsive about things I might not actually mean.”
Considering Peter kissed him right before his death? That sounds like a whole load of bullshit. And once, Harry would have believed that bullshit. Once, Harry would have jumped at the chance to be involved with Peter in any way, even if he wasn’t even given the dignity of being important enough to be his actual partner. He dreamed of any chance to be worth anything to Peter, no matter how ashamed of feeling that way towards another man. He tried to prove himself worthwhile to Peter; he’d never pitched himself as a romantic candidate through anything emotional, only through what he could provide for him. And despite the fact that so long before he’d been convinced nothing about him as a person was worthwhile, it still cut him deep to find out how utterly he’d lied to him in every aspect of their lives. Not just because it meant Peter had been the one to kill his father, but because it meant he’d never been as important to Peter as Peter had been to him.
Peter can tell he doesn’t like that. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to explain it.” You could tell me the truth. He wants to say, feeling like his organs are falling out of him through the pit of his stomach at the realization that Peter’s lying to him again. And about something he can disprove so fucking easily. “I’m sorry.” He says again, and Harry wishes he meant it. “It’s… it’s like after so long with you either… gone or hating me, I’ve forgotten how to be friends with you.”
Damn it, trust Peter to be able to stumble into how to hit him where it hurts. He can hear it in his head all over again, insisting that he shouldn’t be alive and there isn’t space for him in the world anymore. That he was dead too long, the world has moved on without him. Damn it. He feels sick. He warns himself that he better not dare cry in front of Peter. He shouldn’t. He can’t
Despite the mask, Peter can tell. Of course he can, so lacking in emotional intelligence and yet he can always just tell. “That came out wrong.”
“It better have.” He wants to leave, but for the moment he just turns away. Would things be easier for you if I had really died? Or if I had just stayed in the ground?
“Wait, no! Harry!” And he finds himself turning back. “I don’t… I don’t mean it like that. I still want to be around you. I just… things have changed so much, and I don’t really know how to figure it out yet.” That really doesn’t make him feel better.
He finds himself reaching up to retract the mask. It doesn’t feel any better, but he feels less… outright angry. “Okay. Well, here’s your chance.”
“What?” He seems confused.
“Learn.”
He steps closer. “I don’t know what you… mean. How?”
His wide, confused eyes make any ill will he could feel ebb away. “Let’s go figure it out. I don’t think we’ve spent time together one on one since I came back. And we weren’t speaking for more than a year before that.” He tries to sound gentler, but it just comes out tired. There’s a faint scuttling around his throat, making him turn his head again at the risk that whatever fucking beetle that is is close to the surface.
He wishes he still cared that they were there. That it bothered him. But even if it hurts, he just doesn’t process it as more of a bother than a bird nest on a slightly inconvenient spot on his roof. One he can see eggs in, so he feels too guilty to do anything to remove it. It’s more on his mind to prevent anyone else from noticing, from knowing he’s less mysteriously alive human and more undead freak of nature.
Peter nods, eyes flicking downward for a moment, like he’s thinking. “Do you remember that in high school we’d go to that one burger joint every Friday after school?”
Harry’s brow furrows for a moment before he realizes. “It’s only a block over, isn’t it?” He leans over the ledge, trying to see if he can spot the place.
“Yeah it’s--Harry!” The shout of his name is so panicked he freezes completely in confusion before he’s yanked away from the ledge, suddenly finding himself on the ground with the wind knocked out of him.
“What the hell?! Why would you--?” He freezes, the gears in his mind slowly ticking. Slowly processing the panic in his voice alongside the precarious position he’d been putting himself in. “You thought I was going to fall.”
Peter backs away, wide eyed, mouth open, stunned by his own actions. There’s a sizable moment of total science. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“You thought I was going to fall.” He repeats, mostly to himself, gears in his head slowly turning.
“It’s like for a moment I saw you die again.” Peter eventually says.
“I understand.” He finds himself saying slowly, and meaning it. He slowly rises to his feet, processing. “Peter. I’m okay.”
“That’s good, I didn’t want to actually hurt y-”
“No. Peter. I’m okay, I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.” He says, approaching Peter. “Peter, I’m not totally sure I can die anymore. At least, not like that. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. If anything, I should be worried about you.”
Peter nods slowly, eyes flicking around, expression filled with complete anxiety. “Yeah. Yeah. I know.” His head jerks towards Harry. “Wait, what do you mean-?”
He shrugs, settling into sitting on the ground and catching his breath back from when it was knocked out of what remains of his lungs. “Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? I healed from that. I was alive in a grave for more than six months. I think that probably means it would happen again if I sustained that level of injury, right?”
“What if it doesn’t” Harry can’t tell him he’s got reason to believe it would. “What if that was just… some weird fluke accident? And if it happens again you’re just gone?”
“I’m being careful, Pete. I promise.” He says as gently as he can manage. “Dying wasn’t fun, I’m not jumping at the chance to do it again if I can avoid it, even if I will be back within a month or two.”
Peter suddenly brightens up. “Please be careful.” He still stresses. “Even if it would just be a couple months, I’m genetically prone to heart conditions. Don’t want to make my poor heart give out. I can’t come back, after all!”
He laughs. “You seem pretty excited about those heart conditions.”
Peter flushes with embarrassment. “...You called me Pete again. You haven’t since you came back.”
“I haven’t.” He realizes. “You’re right.” He swivels on his feet. “Well, Pete, I think I still owe you some burgers.”
This becomes Harry’s first introduction into something he learns Peter has gotten a lot of entertainment value out of: Entering a random restaurant to get take out in full superhero garb. Known to result in a lot of gawking and staring and excited requests for photographs from the entire staff of restaurants he’s been going to with Peter since the moment he started going to Midtown. Always nice to give some local teens and college kids working for minimum wage a story most of their friends won’t believe.
“I like the name, by the way. Mantis.”
Peter has shown him one of his favorite spots, which turns out to be on top of a gargoyle on a building Harry’s father would probably smack him on the back of the head for not knowing the name of.
“You set a theme. Kind of had to become a bug.” Harry says around a mouthful of burger. “Besides, I think the goblin thing is beyond rehabilitation.”
“That’s true. So you don’t hate the bug anymore?” He teases.
“No. Also, think it’s bugs now. We are bugs. We’re giving New York an insect problem.”
Peter groans. “God, some arrogant ass is going to show up calling him the exterminator now. You’ve jinxed it.”
“Yeah? Hope he doesn’t steal your partner in some stupid weed-fueled plan.”
Peter punches him lightly over the shoulder. “I don’t know, if he comes and saves us from a dude made of sand and an alien, maybe I can forgive it.”
He snorts. “Shocked that you didn’t correct me and tell me spiders are arachnids, not insects.”
He watches Peter nearly fall off the oversized gargoyle. “Oh, god! Who am I?!”
“Don’t know. Definitely not Peter Parker.” He pauses. “God, this burger sucks way more than I remember.”
“Do you want to find something else?” Peter squints at him as he scarfs it down. “You don’t have to eat it.”
“No, I’m gonna.”
Peter gives him a strange look before he speaks again. “Is the whole superhero gig treating you alright? No missing limbs so far, which is good to see.”
“I’ve come close.” He jokes. Peter doesn’t know how real that is.
“Really, though. I didn’t expect you’d start, after your introduction to it was, uh, dying.” He shifts closer.
He doesn’t really know how, or even if, to express the strangely natural feeling of it all. “It’s alright. Not been getting much sleep lately anyways, so it works out. Especially after the sale.” He explains, noting the frown on Peter’s face at the mention of his sleep. “Can I ask you something, actually?”
Peter nods. “Anything.”
“How did it feel when you first got bit?”
“Really sick, actually. Spider bite, go figure.”
He shakes his head. “No, I mean with the powers and everything.”
Peter leans his head back briefly. “Well… I don’t know. We were seniors when it happened, so it was… excited teenager reactions, mostly. I thought it was really cool. Not much else I can remember. Why?”
He frowns, trying to determine if it would freak Peter out to say it. “I keep… not noticing when I’m able to do things no person naturally could. Or, not really that. It just feels more natural, like it just makes sense that it’s there.”
Peter nods slowly, briefly looking at him. “I never thought about it like that. I don’t really remember enough to confidently say it’s the same. But I never really… hated it early on. I don’t think I can confirm it feeling natural, but the opposite definitely wasn’t the case. Not like my body rejected it.”
Harry leans back, propping his legs up on the stone surface. He doesn’t really know what to make of that, it’s the most neutral of statements. He closes his eyes, unintentionally tuning himself into the bugs. It stopped hurting a while ago, which… concerns him, considering how deeply he often feels these things. There’s a sharp crawling just to the left of his sternum, thousands of prickles in the flesh there as it moves. The bastard manages to find something sensitive in his ribcage to crawl on, and that actually fucking hurts, like a dagger dug into whatever the hell muscle or organ it had found, making his entire body seize up with his hand instinctively jolting to clench over the area.
“Harry? Are you okay?”
“It’s nothing, I have phantom pains.” He explains away as quickly as he can manage, unsure if that’s the actual definition of the word. But he begins… feeling around that space on his chest with that hand, feeling a sensation of freezing cold horror overtake him slowly.
Where is it, where is it, this has to be nothing, just find it, damn it.
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
He can’t even reply. He’s stunned silent, not even really hearing Peter, deafened by the realization that for some completely unknown amount of time he’s been living, totally fine, functional, not even noticing that he doesn’t have a heartbeat.