Chapter 29
Harry wakes up with Peter’s teeth sunk deep into the flesh of his upper arm. He doesn’t register the intrusion of teeth beneath his skin until he shifts, eyes still shut, and feels the tug in skin that seems detached from his muscles. The intrusive force is sharp, razor sharp, shredding his skin as he flinches away from it and drawing blood when the original wounds had longed scabbed over despite the penetration.
A hiss of pain escapes him as his eyes open, hands scrambling to grip the source of the pain. His fingertips meet Peter’s hair and tangle in as he grips, pulling him away with everything he has. Peter’s rows of pure black eyes are open, focused, his jaw set firm as his eyes alight with a ruthless hunger. Struggling only makes him bite in deeper, shredding fragile decayed muscle, a smile briefly flicking across his face as the taste of rotted, liquified flesh meets his tongue.
“What the hell are you doing?” It’s not enough. Peter is a solid weight baring over him, utterly unmovable from the source of his focus. “Get off!” He demands, attempting to yank himself away by the web hammock they slept in. What the hell has gotten into him?
Peter’s teeth are going to tear right through him and take most of the muscle in his shoulder with them. “Snap out of it!” He barks, a final warning before he finds the knife he keeps strapped to his side and draws it against his own skin, acidic blood bubbling at the sharp edge that’s rapidly brought to Peter’s side.
The second the substance meets his skin, Peter flinches back, his jaw releasing as he falls backwards into the hammock, his face suddenly filled with the expressive warmth it had been devoid of moments ago as he blinks in complete disorientation, hands grasping blindly for purchase on the swaying net of webs. “You—“ He blinks, neck snapping downwards to look at the source of the pain in his side. His expression contorts. When he looks up, he stares at Harry with a betrayal, a renewed sort of wariness that makes the warmth vanish from Harry’s body. “You stabbed me in my sleep.”
“You bit me!” He snaps back, the rabid rage in his mind relishing the way Peter flinches at his tone. His blood runs hot with what he can’t even begin to reconcile as fear. Even in anger, he’d never feared Peter. The only time he can recall fearing Peter was when the man’s emotions had been puppeted by a force that craved violence more than anything and had left Harry missing half his face. And yet he can’t deny what he saw. Peter had seen him as nothing more than meat.
Peter finally notices the exposed, butchered muscle and outpouring of blood. “I bit you?” There’s horror in his face, but horror that lapses as his tongue flicks over his teeth, tracing every inch of each to clear away the stains of blood, slow, savoring. A shiver wracks his body.
His eyes are locked on Harry’s injury with a fascination that borders on desire. Harry recoils, shifting his body to hide the injury from Peter’s eager eyes. Christ, he’s fucking salivating.
The realization comes like a bolt of lightning. Peter wants to eat him. It’s not just whatever could overcome his judgment in the dead of night or the mental vulnerability of sleep, it’s Peter. That desire is in Peter.
And despite the fear that comes with that, Harry doesn’t feel the desire to flee with that realization. It’s Peter, every cell in his body supplies at the mere thought, Peter wouldn’t hurt you, not consciously. Even now, even if he looks, he isn’t taking. He loves you. He finally loves you, despite the way you have changed. He wants you, don’t walk away from him when you know how much it hurts to be left alone with something you can’t control.
He breathes. It is a desire. It’s not Peter. Once that thought quells his instinctual, animalistic fear, he finds it doesn’t bother him nearly as much as it should. Even if something happened, Harry’s body has recovered from a lot. “You bit me in your sleep.” He confirms. The confusion in Peter’s demeanor soothes him, his body relaxing and sliding down the hammock, inching closer to Peter. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember doing it.” He swallows. “I really was asleep, Harry.”
His shoulders go slack. “I believe you.” He beckons Peter closer. “Mind using more of your webs to hold me together?”
Peter crawls close to him, the motions more arachnid than ever, rows of eyes regarding him with anxiety. He takes Harry’s shoulder in his hands, shifting for a better angle on the wound. His fingers are soft and gentle as other, but that doesn’t change the way that his touch stings when it dip into the ridges and lines of exposed muscle and torn canyons in his flesh. It’s painful, Peter’s touch tracing his wound, but it registers as almost intimate. Why shouldn’t it be intimate? Most of the touches of a lover are tender in their vulnerability, sensation in the body drawn from tender touches to lips and bare skin, areas that an individual undeserving could use for harm.
This touch is below his skin, to the complete and total vulnerability of exposed flesh and bone. The negative sensation of pain fluttering like an adolescent bird through his body doesn’t chance the tenderness of the feeling. It is a lovers touch.
The webs start at the bottom of the injury, winding upwards to stifle the blood like a tourniquet. Each threat is cautious, a hand guiding it to the place it will do the most good, forming a layered band of white threads to quench the blood.
“I’m sorry.” He has the impression Peter doesn’t apologize only for the bite.
Regardless, he opens his arms to Peter and embraces him tightly. “It’s okay. You can make it up to me when we get out of this hole.” He looks over the edge of the hammock, down to the floor of the stony tunnel below. “I hope that asshole didn’t intentionally get us lost.”
Peter leans against him and laughs. “We should get going, shouldn’t we?” He crawls across the webs to the edge of the hammock, offering Harry a hand. “Here, I’ll help you down.”
—
The tunnels are dark and twisting, a labyrinthine hell where the walls are made of jagged, splintering stone. It’s hard for Harry to worry about himself as the hours tick by. Regardless of his injuries, he doesn’t need rest, food or water in his undead state. He just can’t say the same about Peter.
Sure, they might be fine for now, but if this journey extends for days, Harry fears what might happen to the other man. At that point, Peter would be eating him out of necessity whether he liked it or not, and that wouldn’t solve the water problem.
The thoughts renew his determination to find a way out, even when the monotony of constant stone is enough to drive him to insanity, its own special form of torture.
They don’t encounter an exit before they find another person.
Rounding the corner of the twisting path reveals the back of a lone individual, pace brisk. Inaudible mutterings emanate from the individual, hunched over as they march onward, until their footsteps, loud against stone, have them turning.
The mask that covers their face is all too familiar. It’s a crude recreation of the Goblin mask, carved and painted from wood with the only real inaccuracies being lines and distinct details that bring to mind images of the masks Norman had mounted on the walls and Harry had been enthusiastic to get rid of.
But on height alone, this is not his father. This person is much taller than his father. Their eyes, far too brown to pass as Norman, fixate on Peter, already sparse emotion draining from their countenance.
Harry’s eyes catch on the glint of the barrel of a gun.
He watches Peter’s body tense instinctively at a threat he can’t see and leap, the gunshot echoing as a bullet meets the stone wall behind them. Peter hangs off the ceiling by his fingertips, swinging until his feet meet the stone and he can release his grip and fling webs at the imposter, rapidly incapacitating them.
Harry’s mind lurches. Why had he frozen? There wasn’t much he could do, but he hadn’t even tried.
The individual stumbles in their bindings, but manages to stay upright, almost held up like a doll in the hand of the child.
And then their neck jerks to the right with a hollow crack, head dangling limp against their right shoulder as their body grows heavy with lifelessness.
The webs release from Peter’s hands. “I didn’t do that.” He whispers, the words rushed. “Harry, I didn’t do that.”
Basil has peaked its head out of Harry’s collar, serving to confirm his worst impulses. He twists in every direction, his feet slipping against stone. “Come out, coward!” He barks. “Or does being a shapeshifter make you a fucking pussy?” The snake tightens around his torso, anxious, hiding itself beneath Harry’s collar once again.
Peter drops from the ceiling, reaching for Harry. “What’s going on?”
“Has to be him. He looked like you once. And he snapped your—his neck when he showed himself. He’s here.”
Warm hands fix themselves around his ribcage. “Harry.” Peter says, fingers fitting into the spaces between prominent bones. “What’s going on?”
He must seem insane. “While we weren’t talking, I encountered an… I guess a god, called Nyarlathotep. A shapeshifter. At one point, he came to me and I thought he was you. He looked like you, actually.” He pauses, unsure of how to press on. “He said everything I wanted you to say and he revealed himself by snapping his own neck. It just reminded me. It’s nothing.”
Peter’s fingertips rub into the dips in his skin. “You got up to all sorts of stuff when we weren’t talking, huh?”
A slight chuckle escapes him. “It’s better with you.” It comes out so meek he kicks himself, so cheesy it was doomed no matter his tone, and yet he can see in Peter’s voice the ease with which he falls for it, a bright smile lighting up his face.
The moment can’t last when they stand over a body.
He steps away, regretting the loss of touch, and kneels over the body. He lifts the mask off the body and is met with a sight that makes him start. The body is half decayed, skin discolored and stretched tight over the skull as hair rapidly falls from the scalp. And it continues to decompose before their eyes, leaving the features utterly unrecognizable, reduced to bones alone in a matter of minutes.
From beneath the fabric covering the bones, he catches a glimpse of a leather bag against the bones of the hip. He reaches out, pulling it out and opening it, hoping to find some kind of clue.
Inside is a lone letter.
Scout the river shoreline to the west for signs of recent activity. Report back within the day.
Praise be to the Undying.
He passes the letter to Peter, watching rows of eyes flick over the writing. “We’re going the right way, then?” He watches Peter’s expression inexplicably brighten. Upon noticing Harry’s perplexed state, he backtracks, stumbling upon his words. “I mean, if there’s a river nearby, it has to go to the surface eventually.”
If nothing else, it’ll mean Peter can stay healthy longer.
—
“I can see light.” Peter whispers. A glance in his direction confirms the statement. The path is slowly curving upwards, turning from cold gray stone to a warmer sandy brown variant. The dim orange glow of sunlight during dusk—or perhaps dawn, time is slipping by him—is beginning to illuminate the beige stone, creating a beacon of freedom for them to follow.
Harry doesn't let himself relax until the path ends and the two are faced with the mouth of the cave. As they continue, the sandy colored stone they trek into grows more and more familiar.
The cove they exit into confirms it. The same cove he’d been attacked by that strange, animalistic man who’d called himself Kraven, down to the bloodstains against stone. The sun has just dipped below the horizon, painting the scenery around them in shades of purple and rendering it a far softer looking location than when they’d last been here.
“Back here?” Peter says, his head tilting to one side in bewilderment. The energy seems to drain from his body, his shoulders growing slack from exhaustion. “We didn’t even find the Vulture.”
Relief courses through Harry’s veins, making his blood feel light as air. Maybe not, but they’re safe. He stumbles forward on aching feet and wraps his arms around Peter, absorbing the warmth like he’s a sponge.
Peter laughs. “What’s this?”
His hands reach into Peter’s hair, stroking, untangling knots, the action a soothing reflex. He can feel the warmth of blood beneath the surface, the life of his heart. “I was worried about what would happened if we got stuck down there for too long. I don’t need to eat or anything, but for you…”
Peter’s head drifts up, their eyes meeting. “Oh. I hadn’t even realized. I’m always hungry, lately. It’s hard to tell when it’s normal or not.”
Goosebumps ripple to life on the clammy skin of his back. How much of that is the same hunger that had Peter burying sharp teeth into the fragile flesh of his shoulder? Anxiety trickles into his mind, filling it with images of Peter ripping open his belly to sink his teeth into his intestines or peel the skin back from his muscles, the flesh still hot and fresh from his body.
His throat goes dry before he shakes off the image like water from a dog’s coat. “Stay with me tonight?” A warm body beside him in bed is an appealing idea.
“I thought you wanted to take things slow.” Peter teases, his voice bold yet hesitant, articulating each word carefully as he formed his sentence.
Odd that taking things slow is appealing when life has proven itself to be such a fragile thing. It seems to have only encouraged him. Why rush through things when he could savor each step, each touch, and treat it as just as memorable as any major first or celebrated anniversary?
“Would you believe me if I said I just wanted to cuddle?” He lowers his hands to Peter’s shoulders. He feels solid. The image of his broken body feels so distant. A small smirk falls across his face. “You owe me a date. I’m not letting you get out of that by getting me in bed.”
The sound that erupts from Peter is a mix between a laugh and a yelp. He covers his mouth, embarrassed. It draws a smile to his face. His thumb rubs over the spot where his jawline connects to his neck, feeling muscles flex as he stutters out a response. “Are you calling me a manwhore, Osborn?”
“I wasn’t, but if the shoe fits.” He replies, a light chuckle following.
He watches the light pink of Peter's cheeks darken, the color spreading to his ears and neck. He can’t withhold a smile at the sight. “I only kissed Gwen!” He sputters out the response.
“Yeah, weren’t you dating MJ at the time? And didn’t you and her kiss while she was dating me—?”
Peter interrupts him with perhaps too much enthusiasm. “You’re gay!”
“You didn’t know that.” He pauses, his eyes rolling upward as his lips purse, mock-pondering the topic. “And hey, didn’t you sleep with me while you had a boyfriend?”
“You kissed MJ while I was with her!” He protests weakly, eyes flickering down to where fingers stroke his jaw.
He pauses. “Yeah. Guess I’m a little easy too. Maybe that’s why I let you sleep with me while you were taken.” He smiles with glinting teeth. “Maybe it’s better to stick you to me. At least with me, if you cheat I’ll just lob a pumpkin bomb through your window. It’s motivating!”
He can feel the blood beneath his fingers pulse through Peter as he blushes. Harry leans forward, brushing their noses together. He can feel Peter breathing, life-breath Harry lacks exhaled onto his lips like he’s trying to perform some sort of non-contact CPR.
Peter’s fingers find his spine. “I feel like I should ask this time.”
Their lips are inches apart. It takes a monumental amount of restraint to keep from kissing him, to keep himself from pressing them together and stealing his breath. Instead, his lips curl up into a smile.
Before, or maybe with anyone else, it would be as simple as brushing his fingertips against the right places and sending the right coy words into someone’s ear, toying with their puppet strings until he felt rough hands grip him by the waist or wrists and yank him to them and he let his control slip away so they could play with his own strings. In that moment, he doesn’t ghost his fingers up Peter’s abs when he reaches to touch his chest, he just presses his palm flat against Peter’s chest and feels a heart that once belonged to him beat in sync with his own.
The words his heart thrums with remain held back from his lips.
“I think you might be the most important person in the world to me.” He says. “That’s why… not yet.”
The touch to his back loosens. “Yeah…” Peter looks down, a self conscious smile on his face. “I messed things up pretty badly, didn’t I?”
A brief moment passes before he shakes his had slightly. “Hey, it’s not just you. I want to make sure I do this properly. Before everything happened I wasn’t the best in situations like these, but you’re too important to treat it like a hook-up or a fling. I want to give you the best I have. And the best isn't rushed."
"When did you get so mature?"
A pained smiles stretches Harry’s face. “I had six months where I couldn’t do much more than think.”
Peter’s fingers once again fasten themselves to his back in the moment he tries to step away, pulling a chuckle from him. “Come home with me. It’ll be more comfortable to hold me under the covers.” Harry says.
As they step away from the beach, the sounds of disturbed water echo from behind Harry. As he turns around, he sees the very familiar metal arm that’s risen from the water, a red light shining in the center of the claw on the end.
—
Odd how much a change in a few hours.
Mary Jane looks out on the yellow robed figure in front of her, the mask that obscured any sort of identifiable features and the fabric that writhed constantly with something obscured beneath.
Someone wearing a mask that makes her shiver with the terrifying familiarity is chained at the person’s feet.
Her hand burns.