Chapter 22
Harry is dreaming again.
But he’s not been tethered to his own body tonight, instead he finds he’s looking through the eyes of another, his host’s thoughts drifting in and out of his awareness like distant whispers. Beneath the gaze he peers through like a peephole, large, heavy boots have the wooden boards beneath the owners feet creaking with the strain of the man’s weight. With a gust of wind, the weight of furs drag against skin that’s not his own, though he catches a glimpse of the morbid reality that most of the animal skins have heads and paws that remain completely intact…
Large, tanned hands reach for the railing on the deck of a small boat, looking out across dark water towards New York’s harbor, the city illuminated against the night sky. Casting a glance around the vessel, the man removes an object wrapped in cloth from a pouch on his thick leather belt and casts it into the harbor. “My thanks.”
Harry can’t help but take notice of the man’s hand. A thick leather glove covers most of his forearm, but it doesn’t completely cover what that glove might be worn to hide. The skin from his forearm down is discolored, blotched purple and blue with unnaturally prominent veins. Flesh swells into unnatural, scaley growths surrounding a v shaped indentation into his forearm only growing deeper as it disappears into the glove. Around the base of the diseased-looking flesh, ink swirls like it lives, shifting into letters in a language Harry doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. Despite the unfamiliarity, his mind processes it with ease. He’s never seen it before, and yet he can read it. Three phrases, perhaps titles, form a loop around the end of his elbow.
The Undying
The Drowned Man
The Starved Fiend
The man lowers his arm from their shared line of sight, turning his head towards where several men aboard the vessel are preparing to dock. He watches, but makes no move to help, leaning against the railing until the boat is firmly bound to the dark, empty dock. But once every piece of equipment is set in place, the men working on the boat step to the side, allowing the man to step off first.
Harry doesn’t recognize this part of the city, though he knows it’s New York. Though that does stand to reason if he is to truly be honest with himself, he’s not exactly the sort of person who’d spend time around commercial docks. The man’s steps are confident enough. With his head held high, he navigates the docks until he comes to a run down, shabby dive bar mostly occupied by the workers on the nearby dock. Being a weeknight, the place isn’t packed, but there’s certainly enough people to provide a decent spread of customers through the space.
Harry can guess the man is rather tall given the way he peers out from a point roughly a foot above most other patrons and likely just as large of a man as he’d guessed, the sea of drunk dock workers parting to let him through with no effort on his end and only a few startled glances on theirs. The scruffy looking man working the bar looks at him with an expression Harry can’t completely read. His mouth opens to speak, but the man beats him to the punch.
“Mojito.” The single word spoken in a thick Russian accent startles Harry as much as it does the bartender. Not the… expected request for a massive Russian man who’s wearing more animal skins than actual clothing, but you know what? That’s on Harry for stereotyping.
“Alright!” The bartender, caught off guard, steps backward to work. With his back turned, the man sits and pulls a newspaper beneath the arm of a very drunk man towards him. Plastered on the front page is what Harry has found to be a rarity: his own persona emblazoning the front of the Bugle. The image is rather blurry, but he recognizes it as an inexplicably taken shot of him when he’d danced for Peter on the roof, his face luckily disguised by the unfocused shot. But despite the fuzzy shot, there’s a glimpse of something that the man’s eyes immediately focus on.
There’s a rather visible patch of skin on his back that has been riddled by holes left by the insects that have burrowed into his skin and remained there, though they have managed to become a bit more tolerable recently. Perhaps they’ve just settled into an odd hibernation within his body for the approaching winter. But a sudden jolt of fear fills Harry when the man’s eyes continue to linger on that area of his skin, a slight huff of laughter exiting his mouth.
“You like the bugs?” The bartender asks.
“Hmm?”
He slides the drink across the table. “Spider-Man! The Mantis!” He says, making jazz hands in emphasis. “The Bugle doesn’t do much other than bitch about them these days. Frankly, I think they only sell papers because people like regular updates on our vigilantes.” The man doesn’t respond, but the bartender seems happy to keep talking for both of them. “The dock workers have become convinced that there’s a third.” He comments. “But with my work, I know better than to trust them. Superstitious, they are.”
The man’s eyes briefly drift down to his arm before shooting up to make eye contact with the bartender so intense it makes him flinch. “Tell me more.”
The bartender shakes himself, seeming bewildered by his own fear. “Whenever there’s a storm,” he attempts to regain a casual tone. “There’s always at least one person who comes in and says they saw a man walk out of the river. Usually multiple saying they saw him together. Sometimes they say he has tentacles for legs! I think they’re bored and seeing things, but ah, nobody cares what I think!” He shakes his head. “Besides, we’ve already had an octopus man.”
“Really now?” The man says. “Anyone here tonight you could point out who’s seen this man?”
“I think so. Hmm, let me look…”
Harry doesn’t hear the bartender answer. He feels every muscle in this man’s body stiffen before he stands so suddenly the stool he’d been sitting on falls to the ground with a thud. He makes a beeline for the empty bathroom, turning and staring into his own reflection.
Bright, animalistic yellow irises stare back at the man from the reflection of his sunken eyes, unnaturally sharp teeth exposed when his lips drap back in a snarl, the thick beard on his jaw only serving the feral look on his face. The man is absolutely massive, broad, muscular shoulders tensed as he stares at himself with wild rage, seeming as though every inch of him is solid muscle.
“Who are you?” He growls at his own reflection, eyes narrowed. “What are you doing in my head?!”
The shout startles Harry. It’s a question he didn’t even know the answer to, but one that’s a startling confirmation that, in some capacity, this is real. A confused anxiety doesn’t even have enough time to set in before he feels an odd tug, like a mother cat scuffing a kitten, and is pulled backwards into blackness with a force that nearly knocks him unconscious.
His back hits… something. Apparently the ground. Not any sort of texture he’s familiar with; the surface beneath him is frigid but misty, feeling almost like a thousand tiny hands that claw and grip and tear at the skin of his back. His head is throbbing with an ache so deep and painful he clings to consciousness by the tips of his fingers despite the way that falling into the void grows more and more appealing. He pulls his eyes open for only a brief moment, only to be met by a cacophony of lights so bright and of so many numerous colors blended together, flashing over and over and shifting between hues so rapidly that it only hurts his head further. He lets his eyes fall shut again.
“Harry.” It’s the Guide’s voice, softer than he’s heard it before. Hands grip him and pull him from the surface that retracts its thorns at the hand of the entity, lifting him with an unnatural ease before gently setting him against something much softer on his skin. He shifts, getting comfortable in the embrace of something that moves with him. Fabric of some kind. Or maybe an odd liquid dense enough to suspend him. A hand remains behind his head, supporting it. “I must apologize, I often forget the fragility of the human mind.”
He opens his mouth to respond, but only a groan of pain exits his mouth. A hand gently presses against his jaw, shutting his mouth. “Hush. No need.” He lays his head back into the support of the hand, letting every aching muscle of his body relax. The second hand draws away. “I only need for you to open your eyes.
That sounds more difficult than making an attempt to speak. Why does he need to do this anyways? The cacophony of brightness he’d seen had only served to make his head ache more, making his eyes feel even more like lumps of lead that threatened to sink through his brain matter and his teeth feel like daggers into his gums. Really, he just wants to release the ledge his fingers cling to and fall unconscious.
“I’m going to help you. I just need you to open your eyes.” Harry doesn’t know why he trusts him.
He rips his eyes open for a brief moment, just in time to see the Guide’s cloth covered hand reach into his chest like his body is made of water. He gasps. Despite the ease with which he reaches into Harry’s body, he can feel the hand, moving through his bones and half decayed organs until those odd fingers grasp something inside him and pull. “I’m sorry, child.”
It’s perhaps the most painful experience of his entire existence, more so than even enduring his autopsy in complete consciousness. It feels like every cell of his body around what the Guide pulls away is being burned, reduced to nothing regardless of the importance to his body. The movement to yank whatever it is from his body is much slower than reaching in, as if the thing he’s ripping from Harry’s torso is resisting, insistent on remaining inside him and digging in razor sharp talons to remain there--talons with an ability to decay anything they touch. The pain only spreads as a result, clawing its way through his entrails within the grip of a supernaturally steady hand before it exits his body in a flash of orange light.
Harry wakes up screaming.
His hands claw at where it has been pulled from his stomach, nails grazing helplessly against completely intact skin until his eyes snap open and recognize his surroundings. Awake. The safety of his home. Nice, warm orange walls, reflecting the rising sun onto his face. The lounge is comfortable beneath his body.
The lounge.
He sits up, ignoring his still-aching head, and turns. Though fresh blood stains consume most of the fabric, Harry is the only one lying here. Peter’s body is gone.
The door swings open, startling him. “Harry! Are you okay?” MJ seems to be lowering her voice, but the question of that odd behavior leaves his mind when the light of the sun glances off her right hand in a way that can’t help but draw his attention.
“His body is g—!” He snaps his head towards her so quickly his neck aches. In place of flesh and blood, her hand, fused at the wrist, has turned to pure white, shining ceramic with the joints of a puppet. “What happened to your hand?” His lungs ache for a reason he can’t identify.
She looks down at her own hand, lifting it and bending the fingers one by one, her face showing resignation rather than shock. “I noticed it when I was waiting in the lobby last night. I don’t…” She shakes her head. “I was going to show you, but it didn’t seem like a good time when you came back.”
“His body is gone.” His voice shakes.
She winces. “About that… we might need a rain check on this conversation. There’s… something else that might need your attention.”
He feels nauseous at the mere concept, barely able to haul himself to his feet to follow her out of the room. He forces his still lungs to fill with air in a feeble attempt to soothe himself, but startles himself in the process. Why does it smell like bacon?
“Kitchen,” is all she replies, seeming even more shaken than he is.
The sight he sees is not something he could guess if he had a century to try. Peter, alive and well, is cooking enough breakfast food to feed a small village with culinary proficiency rather uncharacteristic of him. A generic pop song plays on the radio with Peter humming along, scooping fried potatoes into a full platter Harry recalls is normally used to hold the Thanksgiving turkey. Catching sight of the two of them, he turns, a massive, confident smile plastered on his face below his eight eyes.
The most human pair of the set blink, sitting in the original sockets but turned pitch black and glittering. Below them, where the puppet had carved a bloody hole into his face, are six newly grown glittering black eyes, three beneath each socket. An unconcealed affection enters them at the sight of Harry, lips parting as his smile grows wider and revealing two razor sharp fangs on each side of his mouth.
“Harry!” He bounds forward like a dog who’s just been offered a treat, a cocky hand sneaking behind Harry’s head and pulling him forward as he surges upward, smashing Harry’s unsuspecting mouth into his parted lips. Seeming to take Harry’s stunned motionlessness as an invitation, slipping his wet tongue between Harry’s lips and pushing Harry’s jaw open enough to dive so deep it seems like Peter is looking to taste him. His spare hand seizes Harry’s hip, pressing his own to Harry’s and grinding them together. Hard.
Harry is left bracing himself against the doorframe by the time Peter has satisfied himself, his arms looping around Harry’s waist with a cheerful smile on his face like he’s utterly unaware of any reason this might be odd or unwelcome behavior. The display leaves his mind so blank he can’t even manage a bewildered or indignant response to it, instead standing frozen in Peter’s embrace. From where she’s fled several steps away to avoid being smacked when Harry’s hands scrambled for purchase on the doorframe, MJ gives him a slightly confused but sympathetic look.
“Hi, MJ.” Peter says offhandedly, not even looking at the poor woman before surging upwards with a grin to try and kiss Harry again. This time, Harry has the necessary sense and anticipation necessary to push him away before their lips touch. “You smell good.” He says, unconcerned with Harry’s rejection.
“What—what—“ His mind is reeling, caught between utter confusion at the idea Peter died, Harry saw Peter die, Peter’s goddamn brain matter was splattered all over Harry, he had to hold Peter’s chest cavity shut with his belts to get him home without traumatizing some poor New Yorker by having Spider-Man’s intestines land on their head. The other half of him is laughably indignant about the pettiest thing he could be angry about in this situation. His best friend has risen from the dead more mysteriously than Harry himself did and he’s angry he kissed him again? Inexplicably, Harry feels a sudden stroke of guilt that telling Peter’s pretty, alive, perfect boyfriend about Peter’s death hadn’t even crossed his mind. “What the hell?!”
Genuine confusion fills Peter’s face, dragging Harry closer despite having been pushed off moments ago. He seems completely unbothered by the idea of MJ witnessing them together, like the rather sexual and infidel nature of this interaction hasn’t crossed his mind. “Why are you mad?” He tilts his head like a puppy. When he blinks, the eight eyes close one after another like a wave, reflecting the lights in the room with an earnest affection in the void surrounding. If Harry’s thoughts weren’t so chaotic, he’d come to the odd realization it was inexplicably cute. “I broke up with John. Isn’t that what you were mad about?” He says it with the same weight he’d ask if someone’s allergies were acting up. He leans in again, not to kiss him but instead to press his face into the side of Harry’s chest that he’d broken open the night prior. “Man, you smell good.”
Harry looks up, trying to beg for MJ to come save him with his eyes but finds she’s chosen to abandon him in favor of trying to make a dent in the absolute feast Peter has somehow concocted despite being very much dead about six hours prior. He’s not felt more betrayed in his life. Left alone to rely on his own defenses that have always been far too enthusiastic to lower their drawbridges to the very enemy he made them for, he can only manage to squeak out a single word. “What?!”
“I texted him. It’s fine.” Well, goddamn if that doesn’t just make Harry feel even more like shit. It’s not particularly flattering either. If Peter is being that careless with his actual partner's emotions, how does Harry begin to trust he won’t be treated the same way someday if Peter finds someone else to obsess over? It feels all the more likely to happen to Harry rather than someone talented and strong like MJ or stable and simple like John. Harry’s a bastard, something Peter should be all too familiar with by now. He was already jealous and petty and often outright volatile. Dying has cost Harry the few things he thinks could appeal to someone: charisma, extroversion, even just having a pretty face. And Peter was already eager to replace him…
Gods, how is that what he’s focused on right now? Is he really just that self centered? Peter died. His blood still stains Harry’s clothing, so that whole situation wasn’t just something his ever unreliable mind had concocted to cause himself distress. And Peter’s body carries evidence of the previous night: the new eyes sit right where he’d been struck in the face and there’s the faintest line of scar tissue running from where his neck emerges from his shirt up to his hairline, right where his skull had been split open. Not unlike Harry’s own body, though he doubts those scars would appear like that if it was the same force that pulled him from the brink that had stitched Peter’s shattered body back together. The holes in Harry’s torso did not seal themselves, instead healing around the edges of the wound to create impossible tunnels directly through him. Someone could press two fingers into either side of those scars and feel their fingertips touch in the core of Harry’s body. By all logic, if it was the same force Peter should be staring at him with a channel like a canyon dug into his face, completely eliminating his nose.
“Do you feel alright?” It’s all he can manage in this moment. Peter’s behavior is odd, but it would be a lie to say Harry’s hadn’t changed in the time since his death. Harry knows that feeling, that loss of so much of himself that left him feeling like a child’s plush toy with it’s fur worn down and holes appearing in its fabric skin, who’d once been a favorite toy in youth but had been left on a bedroom shelf for years, an untouched novelty of the past kept for past fondness but never shown the love that had been felt then. Perhaps Peter is simply better at concealing that incomplete feeling. It’s a simple sentence, but as much a plea as an invitation. Tell me I’m not alone in this feeling. Tell me that I’m not weak for feeling so broken from this. Please understand.
“I feel great, actually! Never better.” Harry’s not able to detect a lie in those words, his heart sinking as a result. It should be a good thing. It’s cruel to wish this horrible broken, hollow feeling on Peter, to wish for another person to experience the odd survivor's guilt he feels towards his own death. Peter’s okay, he found it in himself to come back from that brutal violence better. That's a good thing, right? But it just feels so alone. Like there’s some defect in him that leaves him feeling like half a person. That keeps him awake because the darkness of the ceiling reminds him of the lid of his coffin and fills him with panic when he’s simply trying to sleep. That makes eating and drinking feel like a selfish act because he knows he doesn’t truly need it. There’s something wrong in him that leaves him wishing he was really dead. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt more… clear headed and confident in my life.” His eyes meet Harry’s. “So I know I’m making the choice I want.” He licks his lips, his hands a vice on Harry’s bare waist. Harry wishes it wasn’t working.
His disoriented hands make shaky, imprecise gestures as he speaks. “How are you this calm? At least when I died I didn’t-didn’t grow extra eyes!”
The confusion returns to Peter’s face. “Is that a spider joke? That wasn’t very good, maybe we should work on your quips.”
Oh, god. He doesn’t know. “You should look in a mirror.” He says faintly.
Peter frowns slightly, releasing Harry’s waist from a grip he thinks is going to bruise to make an attempt at finding inflection in the kitchen windows. His expression doesn’t change, though there’s no way he doesn’t see it, one hand prodding at a newly grown eye, head jerking back as all of his eyes blink rapidly in sync with one another. “Oh. Well, that’s new.”
Harry’s voice grows more shrill. “That’s it?! You died, and—and that’s it?!”
Peter whips around to face him. “I what?”
His mind is moving more slowly than a cloud across the sky on a windless day. “You don’t remember.”
“Yesterday? Yeah, I tried earlier when I woke up.” His eyes suddenly grow a bit wider, tongue ghosting over his lips, newly grown fangs glinting slightly. “You were very distracting.”
“You died.” He blurts out. “Peter, I watched you die.”