Chapter 19
Something about seeing Peter, in that goddamn suit that represents an untouchable strength and power to so many people, looking Harry in the eyes for once with such complete confusion on his face almost makes him want to laugh. Not that the humor in it is so hard once you put some thought into it. Situational irony, the unexpected, contradictory ideas. That’s comedy, isn’t it? As foggy and distant as simpler things like that have felt since his death, he can still register that it’s not just the humor of seeing Peter in the dark, there’s an awful, poisonous joy that comes from it. Peter can say that he meant to protect him like a record on repeat all he wants, but that won’t ever change the reality that, for almost all of Harry’s adult life, Peter carried pieces of life-altering massive information on Harry’s life. He held, no, withheld, facts so crushing that they’d change Harry’s entire view of his life, things that would shatter his entire goddamn worldview. And he can say that he had good intentions, and maybe he did, but one simple reality that seems to have flown over Peter’s head is that by keeping secrets about Harry that were that huge, by hiding things that put his grasp on reality through a goddamn wood chipper, he held a terrifying amount of power over him.
Perhaps knowledge is power. The weight of what was kept from Harry gave Peter a perhaps unrealized amount of power over him, no matter how much he insists he thought he was doing the right thing. And if there’s one thing that Harry’s father has proven to him, power is control. Peter’s subconscious love of control is very, very well documented in Harry’s mind. For Harry’s entire adult life, Peter has had an implicit power over him. An implicit control over him that even if Peter never truly exploited it, he still took Harry’s agency as a result of. A power over him that snapped Harry’s fraying tether to reality because of what Peter withheld with chance after chance to give him his agency back.
No agency. The thing his life seems to be defined by.
But now Harry is the one who knows. He gets to have the power here. And really, it’s not truly similar to what Peter had withheld from Harry. Peter had kept secrets about Harry’s life from Harry, secrets Harry had every right to know, but Harry would certainly like to think he has a right to be as private with things that affect himself as he’d like.
But then again, when Harry thinks of the last horrifying time he thought he was talking to Peter, it feels dangerous to leave him in the dark about things that… don’t necessarily relate to Harry specifically. The unpleasant vindictive joy he feels at Peter’s ignorance evaporates at that, looping him back around to the question he needs to answer.
How much can I trust you?
It’s the one that somehow feels easier to answer than the question of how much Harry does trust Peter.
Peter flicks a pebble across the concrete below them. “Ever since you came back, it’s like I stopped living in a Superman comic and started living in a horror movie.”
Harry’s lips form a thin smile. “I think I’ve been living in the horror movie this whole time.”
Peter frowns, wide eyes tugging on something in Harry’s chest as he scoots slightly closer, hand raised from his side for a brief moment before it falls back into his lap. “Talking?” He tries to prompt.
“I don’t know how much to tell you. Or how to tell you.”
Peter’s voice is hopeful, all soft and gentle, a tone familiar enough it evokes old memories of speaking in hushed tones in Harry’s bedroom in case of Norman, who Harry was ever eager to have Peter avoid—his friendships always seemed to collapse after his friends met his father—arriving home early from a meeting or business trip, hiding their conversations in whispers, conversations they’d never even acknowledge to each other the next day. “Why not just tell me all of it?”
He can’t hold Peter’s eye contact, glancing away moments after Peter’s face falls in realization. It’s not hiding out in Harry’s sparsely decorated, sad-looking childhood bedroom anymore, it’s not high school secrets between friends anymore. The two of them have peeled the city in two and each taken a half for themselves, Peter owning the physical and Harry taking a recent possession of a metaphysical New York whose streets he’s not yet fully explored. Does he make the choice to try and piece the halves together again, knowing the risks of Peter trying to noblely take the whole thing for himself, trying to take their shared responsibility for his own curse? Do those halves still fit, or have cracks and chips formed during the separation?
“I don’t know as much as you think I do. Its just occult stuff, you know? Weird gods. Weird magic.” He can hear the lie in his own voice, his own tripping over words, his own overly casual tone.
Peter’s shoulders fall, not caused by Harry’s lack of information, but by the deception they both heard. Bricks of silence fall into place between them, a wall growing higher and higher before Peter’s voice tunnels through it. “I didn’t know you danced.”
The question catches him off guard, feet drawn close to his body before he even notices he’s moving his legs. “I didn’t really mention it to anyone. Quit right before I started at Midtown. It was the sort of thing Flash would have gone nuts with.” The toes of the shoes are worn, fabric reduced to threads over the box despite only being outside of their packaging for a few days after their initiation. He’s going to go through more of these things than he did when he was competing as a teenager, in the studio six days a week. “I was good, though.”
“I wasn’t ever good at athletic things. Don’t think I could do something like that.” He says, head tilted.
“You’d be good at it, actually.” The words come out as easily as a thought. “Since you’re all… spider-y.”
Peter shakes his head. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t do the… toe thing. It looks like it hurts.”
“Good news, you don’t need to.” He stands, feet turned outwards with his heels pressed together. “You’re a guy. You’d basically just be a glorified kickstand and occasionally lift people.”
Peter takes the hint to stand, standing to Harry’s left with legs and arms perpetually shifting like he’s suddenly forgotten what his body is for. “Did you do that? The lifting?”
He shakes his head. “My teachers thought I was ‘too old’ to learn the skills guys normally learn instead. Lightened the blow of dad making me quit.”
“Oh,” is all Peter says, eyes shifting to look elsewhere.
“I never taught anyone, so bear with me.” He looks up at Peter. “Stand up straight and round your arms out like I’m doing.”
Peter’s eyes go momentarily wide at the realization that they are, in fact, doing this, eyes drifting down over his arms and then going a bit lower before shooting back up.
“Turn your feet out and touch your heels like mine.”
Peter’s boots scrape against the concrete, forming a wide v before slowly inching out further and further. “I don’t think I can make them straight like you can.”
“That’s fine. Most beginners can’t. That’s first position.” He spreads his feed about a foot apart, raising his arms and flattening them into a smooth line with his shoulders, Peter following with a lot more ease than first. “This is second.”
“Are the arms and legs connected, or can you, like, combine them?”
“They’re separate. Just easier to show you together.” He slides one foot forward roughly twelve inches, lining the back foot’s toes to the front heels. “Fourth for the feet. Third isn’t really used anymore.” Then raises one arm, curving it slightly. “Third for the arms.” Then he curls the lower one in front of himself. “Fourth for the arms.”
Peter follows the sequence of movements as best he can, muscles moving visibly beneath his shirt. “God, I feel so clumsy next to you. You look like a bird.”
His chest warms slightly at that, the comment feeling better than any award that had sat forgotten in his closet after he’d quit. Stress is beginning to ebb from him. Perhaps he was being too harsh. This was just another, smaller one of the stunningly few things Harry was more experienced with than Peter, and perhaps if Peter could follow Harry’s lead for this, he could do so for something as major as gods and magic that neither of them really understand but are intertwined with Harry’s life, like he’s a single strand of thread in a massive tapestry he can’t the completed design of.
“I started when I was four. And I was a clumsy-ass toddler in those classes. You’re normal.” He slides his feet together, legs crossed with his heels touching the other foot’s toes, raising both arms. “And that’s fifth.”
Peter nods, mirroring Harry as moves through all in slow, gentle movements. Then a smile crosses his face. “Can you show me the cool stuff? Like the fun moves and jumps and stuff?”
He can’t help but laugh. “Sure. There’s no barre out here, but if you use my arm, that should work fine enough for now. I’ll probably demonstrate stuff en pointe, which you shouldn’t do because you’ll break your ankles.” He raises and bends one arm, body feeling looser and warmer and more alive than it’s felt in months.
He guides Peter through some basic movements, teasing him lightly for overarched spines and bent knees, trying not to focus too much on the way Peter’s finger run along the threads of muscle in his forearms and linger when Harry pulls away to demonstrate something, or the way his eyes travel along Harry’s legs at a particular wide jump.
When the sun begins to rise, Peter leans his back against the concrete ledge around the edge of the rooftop and massages sore muscles. “I hope I was up to the par of a four year old you.”
Harry laughs, feet rocking with unexpected energy that feels like all that long forgotten passion has been injected straight into his veins. “Na. I was a prodigy.” He jokes. “I think you’re above the toddler average, though.”
A slightly bashful smile crosses Peter’s face. “I think I mostly prefer watching you do it.” He says. “You’re so much… smoother and poised and purposeful with your movements. It’s so pretty to watch. I stick to things and I couldn’t do some of the ways you balance.” His blue eyes meet Harry’s and linger. “If you started competing again, I’d love to watch you.” There’s an openness to his expression, an admiration and trust and complete wonder with Harry that soothes an anxiety he didn’t know he held and sends his ego soaring through the roof.
He shakes his head, trying to hide a wide smile. “I’m probably so out of practice I could barely do concert. And the gender thing is still an issue, ignoring that usually aesthetics is too big of a deal for them to deal with my burns.”
Peters face hardens, as if not being able to watch Harry dance is as big an atrocity to fight as a supervillain bank heist. It’s absolutely adorable. “What’s the coolest choreography you’ve ever danced?” He asks.
Harry’s rocking has turned into rolling on his feet from pointe to flat to pointe to flat. “There was this piece I made with my teacher, it was just this solo piece that existed to be bait for judges to swoon at. That’s all it was. But it was fun, and pretty flashy if that’s what you’re looking for.”
A look of genuine excitement crosses his face. “Can I see it?”
“It’s been… six years. So that’ll depend on if I can remember it.” Peter's excitement is not fair. A far too familiar need to please is rushing beneath his skin, an old motivation injected with something that tastes far less bitter than the old need to impress a father who couldn’t care less about him. This feels good, further energy, a reassurance alongside his need to impress that Peter would probably still gape over the sloppiest performance of his life, as much as he wants to make his eyes sparkle with something truly jaw-dropping.
With a smile to Peter that makes the other man light up, he slides his feet into position and raises himself to pointe.
Peter isn’t wrong, this variation in particular is distinctly bird-like. It had been a piece he and Gwen had developed together for competitive solos, but he can see the Swan Lake roles they’d both been so proud of in it. Though he doesn’t think this would place him specifically as a swan. He feels more as if one of those folkloric swan maidens had carried with her a wardrobe of feathers, daily selecting which colorful plumage suited her. Though if that had been the case, he suspects that there wouldn’t be so many stories of those swan maidens being stuck in unwanted marriages and earthbound without their wings in unfamiliar houses they were now expected to maintain. He is given the privilege to collect himself a closet of feathers in their stead, to see which plumage fits. Perhaps when he leaves each skin behind, the pelt falls to a trapped swan who can use it to run away, even if he can’t leave her pure white swan feathers and the shape of a swift or a hawk might leave her isolated and foreign to her sisters no differently than it provides her escape.
He raises a bent leg high in front of him, before unfolding it, arms crossing in front of him for a brief moment before following the half circle path his leg forms. He pulls on the blue gray feathers of a heron, lets the plumage disguise his uncomfortably stretched skin to see if they’ll fit better. He won’t deny the significant difficult that comes with lacking music and practice, but the little that remains of his atrophied muscles seem to remember the movements as he turns slowly and lets his body dip forward.
His audience sits in front of him, cross legged, a hunter with wide eyes and a baby face, perpetually oblivious to the reality that arrows he flings without thought have tips sharp enough to kill effortlessly, unaware that the swan skin he holds in his fingers is Harry’s freedom, what he’s supposed to be wearing in place of ill fitting pale skin. He is more suited to captivity, it suits his delicately hollow bones better than the wild. A birdcage is far too familiar to not feel more like home than freedom.
And what’s the real harm in tailoring his birdsong to a hunter gentle enough to let him eat from his hand? He lowers his arms, running one hand over the scarred side of his face before he kisses his palm and blows it to Peter, floating as he transitions to some gradually quicker pirouettes.
A heron's skin doesn’t fit him any better. He lets the feathers pull free from his body and drift to the street below, a gift waiting for another swan to take her freedom. In their place, he tries on the dappled feathers and razor sharp talons of a falcon.
He exits the turns with bent knees and spread arms, bowing briefly, before transitioning into a chain of turns, every third a larger movement, transitioning into several leaps. Left foot leading, pointed like talons, the right meeting it and tapping in mid air, landing smooth despite a lack of practice. The second has him raising both legs as close to a split in the air as he can manage, keeping his arms parallel, followed by a leap lead with his right foot and tapped by the left. Certainly more unsteady than it used to be, but he’s impressed he can do it at all. He freezes on bent knees when he lands, arms rounded, peering over the ledge at the edge of the roof and letting the falcon cloak fall off him the same, offering another talons they will get more use out of.
The third set of feathers are far more colorful, designed for the attention of a lover. Birds of paradise, dancers in their own right. He turns to face Peter once again, knowing full well where his eyes drift at a perfectly straight lifted leg. Looks like green accents on leather are just enough color to attract.
He steps onto the narrow ledge, meeting Peter’s eyes. That warmth is back. The sequence of pas de chat into another chain of turns is simple enough, simple enough he thinks he can excuse some improper form to let Peter look.
You could have me. He wants to say. It’s you who’s stopping it.
The corner of the edge he stands on is small, precarious, begging for a bit of recklessness and a bit of trust in his balance. He lifts onto one foot, raising his remaining leg to form a straight line between the two.
It’s wrong and he knows it, and yet he enjoys the heat of Peter’s eyes. There’s a warmth that comes with it, looking at him and knowing that even with the state his body has degraded into, he can be desirable and even with that, one of his most personally held hobbies not just being viewed sexually. There is genuine admiration there, alongside it all. Those damn birds of paradise are onto something.
You could have me.
His leg lowers from the full split in the same movement as he begins another series of turns, ending with his raised limbs set into a Y shape and held parallel, his torso tipped backwards. He can hold the position firmly with ease. Boldness tempts him all over again, his leg strong beneath him. He lets his hips and waist tilt him back further and further, his hair dangling, disturbed by breeezes, the skyline soon lighting up his inverted view as he effectively folds himself in half.
He holds every muscle still, letting himself absorb the moment. The energy is still there, the passion beneath his skin. His lungs burn pleasantly with exertion, the first time in ages his lungs have seen the slightest bit of exception. The chill of night air cools his skin, dries sweat against his exposed upper arms. The warmth of Peter’s stare hasn’t left him, a drug he hasn’t shaken an addiction to.
Reaching into the time before his death, he cannot come up with a single moment in years he’s felt better. He smiles something soft and natural that doesn’t need his conscious mind tugging at his facial muscles and shuts his eyes.
…something is tugging at the tip of his pointe shoe.
He opens his eyes and tilts his head, only to be met with a barely visible thread of spider web trailing, bordering on complete invisibility, from his shoe.
His reverie shatters, coming down from the position far less smoothly than he’d like, the coat of colorful feathers burnt away by betrayal. He stomps on the offending thread to pull it free from his foot, feeling more numb than he expected.
Peter doesn’t even notice. Of course he doesn’t, why would he? When’s the last time he really noticed anything about how Harry feels?
“You’re—oh, wow,” His eyes are wide and bright, oh so innocent, cheeks painted an irritatingly bright red as he runs a hand along Harry’s forearm. “You’re so amazing, you know that? Man, I wish you’d think about doing it again. You’re just so…” He lets out something similar to a giggle. “You’re something else.”
The worst part isn’t that no matter what he does, Peter doesn’t see Harry enough to understand why or how he’s hurting him. It’s not the way he seems to want Harry to just exist as a prop for him. It’s the way hearing those words still feels good. That he wants to hear more from him, that he wants to know Peter liked it, that he wants to keep going. That he knows he did it because he still wants to impress Peter the same way he did as a teenager. That he likes that Peter was looking, that he wants him to keep looking and enjoys Peter being attracted to him and eggs it on knowing full well Peter’s in a relationship with someone who’s not him. It’s the way that knowing once again that Peter won’t rely on Harry’s skills over his own hasn’t stopped the attraction, the need for attention and validation.
Peter doesn’t even trust him, doesn’t even trust Harry when he asks Harry to trust him, and Harry is still so infinitely desperate to please him. He wants to grab Peter’s face and scream, ask him why he keeps hurting him like this without a second thought, ask him what it is that he does that makes people want to impress him, ask him if he knows that he could have Harry for himself if he’d just be willing to not treat him like a side piece. He wants to pound his hands into the ground and ask him why, why it’s so easy to disregard how Harry feels, why he was so enthusiastic to replace Harry just months after he died, and why the hell does Harry still love him?!
Peter asks for his trust despite not trusting Harry, and every part of Harry screams to let his dignity die and give it to him.
Peter stares at the place where sweat is wetting the tips of his fingers, tongue running briefly over his bottom lip. His eyes drift over Harry’s body from the ground up, ending in eye contact.
Show him what he could have. Show him what he’s missing. It’s the vengeful part of him that whispers that, prodding him to act against his reformed morals, his better judgment and restraint snapping in sync when he steps forward and lets Peter’s hands grasp his waist and pull them both onto the ground.
He wishes he could make himself regret it, but there’s satisfaction in knowing that if he chooses so, Peter will have gotten to have him only once, that he can torture him with that lone memory if he chooses to.