Chapter Text
In theory, Harry Osborn understood what it meant to be “in love,” though he wouldn’t say he had ever personally experienced it. Really, “love” was such a complicated concept, all neurons firing and brain chemistry, messy stuff. Harry hated complicated. Because there was something deeper that people always wanted from him that he never seemed able to offer. Harry was fond of people. He tolerated others. Some he loathed with every fiber. But love, that was tricky.
In the moment, Harry snorted, the most undignified sound he had probably ever made in his life, with Peter Parker standing before him, dressed in a cheap tuxedo and surrounded by hastily arranged prom decor. But Harry only shrugged at Peter and said, “I’ve never been prom-posed to before, should I - I don’t know - squeal and jump around or something?”
Peter shook his head, hand still outstretched but now turned in a warning gesture. “No- No, I’m pretty sure a recently concussed person probably shouldn’t be jumping around, man. Just a ‘yes’ is fine.” He winked, and Harry pretended to hide a blush.
MJ eyed the giant letters propped against a box hedge and squinted. “Aren’t those the actual prom decorations from Midtown High?”
“From the student council closet, yeah.” Peter nodded and straightened from his bowing position. He thumbed his nose, chin tucked down as MJ raised a questioning eyebrow at him.
“And you have a key to the student council closet?”
“No.” Peter shook his head. “No, I do not. But Gwen does and I… borrowed hers.” He gave a cheesy grin and gestured around him. “So - prom! And Harry gets to be a real boy, and also drumroll please…”
He spun around, swiped a velvet cloth off the nearest glass, patio table, and revealed two glittering, plastic crowns. “Bam! Prom king and queen! Do we need to vote?”
“I think,” Harry said and broke away from MJ to grab the two crowns from the table, “since it’s my house, I can declare myself Prom Dictator-” He put the gold grown on his head and gave an officious wave of his hand before a partial bow.
“Prom Overlord, death to democracy,” Peter said with sarcastic enthusiasm, clapping his hands together. “I love it.”
“And as such, I can declare Miss Mary Jane Watson, my Prom Empress,” Harry said and placed the pink and silver tiara on MJ’s head. “How does that sound?”
MJ gave a half-curtsy, her cheeks flushing red in the low light from the strings of bulbs hanging above the terrace that gave the effect that the night sky had leaned down closer to watch them. “It would be my honor, good sir.”
Peter watched Harry offer his hand to MJ and lead her into a dance. He had to admit, even slightly concussed and wearing only socks and pajamas, Harry Osborn knew how to sweep a girl off her feet. It looked like MJ had noticed it, too. Her eyes were locked on Harry’s, a startled smile to match his self-assured smirk. They spun in a sweeping circle towards a vase of fresh cut flowers where Harry snagged a rose and put it between his teeth, wiggling his eyebrows at her, so that MJ started laughing again.
He handed the rose to her. And there was a promise in his eyes when he did, but Peter couldn’t quite read what the promise was. MJ seemed to know though, and Peter wondered what secret thing he had missed.
When they went spinning past him, Peter snagged an elbow. “May I cut in?” he asked, affecting an accent closer to Harry’s before he spun Harry away from MJ and onto their makeshift dance floor.
The two of them staggered around the terrace together, all awkward elbows and tripping over feet, before finally Harry said, forcefully, “Look, Parker, you let me lead for once.”
Nodding, Peter gave a flustered laugh. “Yeah, yeah, whatever you say.”
After that, they fell into step together, and Peter was surprised to find that all those years spent following after each other meant that he could almost predict Harry’s next move and compliment it with ease. As far as dance partners went, they weren’t half bad.
Harry had a practiced grace that Peter, even as Spider-Man, never could manage. But Peter found there were similarities between web-slinging and dancing that he never would have thought possible, the momentum of one move transitioning to the next, the trust that your lifeline wasn’t going to let you fall. And he trusted Harry, in a way that Peter felt he could trust very few people.
“Listen, Har, I’m sorry that I wasn’t there to help.”
Harry, whose eyes were distant like he was thinking of something else, snapped his gaze to Peter’s. “So, what? I could owe you a double life debt? Get over yourself, Parker.”
Peter wanted to smile and laugh it all away like he normally did, but this time, something in him wouldn’t let it go. “I just don’t want you to think you can’t trust me, you know, that you can’t rely on me.”
He knew a little of what that was like. Losing Uncle Ben had been, among other things, a wake-up call to his own arrogant self-importance. He never wanted to miss a chance to save someone ever again. With great power…
Harry spun him so suddenly that Peter had to shift his focus to avoid slipping and falling.
“For someone so smart, you sure can be an idiot sometimes,” Harry said and spun Peter back again. “I mean, who puts that much pressure on themselves, anyway? Who said my life was your responsibility?”
Peter swallowed but couldn’t find the words to say. Of course he was responsible for Harry’s life, for MJ’s, for Gwen’s, for May’s, for everybody’s, all of New York was his responsibility. That was the point. That was the whole point, to being abandoned, to losing Ben, to following in his father’s footsteps, to being bitten, to becoming Spider-Man.
Peter shrugged and found it hard to meet Harry’s eye when they stood this close. “No one, no one said it.”
“Whoever it is, whatever they want from me, I don’t want you or MJ getting caught up in it.” Harry missed a step in their dance, and the whole thing seemed to come unmoored. Peter felt his hand shake as Harry braced against him.
“Harry?”
MJ stood from where she’d been leaning against the marble railing along the edge of the terrace. The rose Harry had given her hung from her hand. She seemed to notice something was wrong.
“I’m fine,” Harry said quickly and drew away from Peter with a jolt. His fingers trembled where they fell at his side. “It’s nothing.”
But MJ pressed forward and wrapped her arms around him. Harry stiffened at first, like he wasn’t sure how to react, but after a moment, he sort of melted at the edges and let himself sigh and sink into the embrace. Peter took Harry by the back of the neck and moved his head to rest on Peter’s shoulder while wrapping his other arm around MJ.
Harry realized with a sinking feeling in his gut that he was, perhaps, a little in love with both of them.
They stayed like that for a minute. And the tape in the old boombox ended so that silence fell over the terrace and the moonlit garden beyond. The whole world could have stopped for all they knew. But at least for that moment, they were all together, and everything would be alright.
Harry let go of them both, his head ducked low. “I’m- My headache is coming back. I’m going to-” And then he slipped back inside.
Peter and MJ watched him go.
“Do you think we should go after him?” Peter asked.
“Give him a little room to breathe,” MJ said, her voice so gentle as she stood this close. “I think he’s more afraid than he wants to admit.”
Peter changed the tape over and swept MJ into a dance then. He wasn’t nearly as good as Harry, so they mostly just swayed there together to the music. MJ rested her head on Peter’s shoulder, and Peter looked off into the darkness beyond the terrace wondering how he was ever going to manage to split his heart four ways.
“Where were you?” she asked at last, the question Peter had been dreading but knew would come eventually.
“I wasn’t-” He didn’t want to lie to her, not ever, but especially not right now.
“Part of me is glad that you weren’t there, don’t get me wrong,” she continued when he didn’t. “It’s not like I wish you were there to get traumatized with us or anything, but then you didn’t answer your phone. I called Aunt May’s, and she didn’t know where you were either. I got to thinking maybe something happened…”
Peter backed away from her, his head tilted back and eyes closed against the golden light around them. He was so tired of doing this, this right here. Putting that arm’s length of distance between himself and the people he cared about.
“Yeah, I - uh - I ate something bad, I guess. And I let my phone die, and I’m- I’m really sorry, MJ.”
“Don’t be sorry,” MJ told him, and she reached up to rest the rose against her bottom lip. It hid one corner of her downturned mouth. “Don’t be sorry, Peter. But don’t do this, whatever it is you’re doing. Getting hurt and sewing yourself up in your apartment, disappearing all night without a word. Don’t. Not when Harry needs us both.”
Peter blanched and dropped his head. She knew something was up, knew he was hiding something dangerous and that he wouldn’t tell her.
“You don’t understand this,” Mary Jane whispered slowly, so that Peter could just barely hear her. “Because Ben and May always loved you like their own. But when you grow up without that safety net, knowing that someone is there to catch you, every day feels like falling.”
She dropped the rose away from her mouth and gave that sad, cracked-open smile that she had given him in the alley, curled protectively over Harry’s body. It cut Peter down to the core.
“Harry needs a net right now, and I think that’s what we have to be for him. Or I’m afraid-” She glanced off into the darkness. Her words hung their between them, a spider’s web caught on the breeze. “I’m afraid he’ll hit the ground, and he won’t get back up this time.”
Peter stared at the marble beneath his feet. It felt a hundred miles away from him.
“Tell me I can count on you to be there for him when he needs us.”
Nodding, Peter sniffed and rubbed at his right eye. “You can. I swear.”
MJ’s voice was cold as steel. “Peter, look me in the face and promise me.”
He looked up at her, face like the moon and hair like fire and all that conviction burning in her chest. “I promise you, Mary Jane. I won’t let him fall.”
She nodded, and the fire dimmed, hidden behind her own mask, one Peter hadn’t noticed before. “Good. Neither will I.”
Mary Jane Watson loved her boys. She always had.
The problem was, MJ loved lots of people. Her heart was made for giving love away like candy at a parade. But for as many people as she loved, she trusted very few.Love, she knew, could corrode. It could fade or break or crumble or fall. It could fester between two people until they hated each other’s guts, until their daughter burned up in the fever. She was determined not to end up the same way.
But she couldn’t help loving Harry and Peter.
For her twelfth birthday, Harry had given her a glass ornament in the shape of a horse, finely detailed and glistening in the sunlight where she hung it in her bedroom window. That’s how she thought of Harry, as glass. Cool and clear and sharp, but delicate, too. He had to be handled with care.
For the same birthday, Peter had given her a photo album, one of his first forays into photography. It was full of precious little moments pictured just out of focus or off-center. Perfectly imperfect. And that was Peter, sincere and full of joy, but always a little off-kilter. Like he was in the process of slipping away. Or he was never all there to begin with.
They were her boys, and she loved them. They were her boys, and she didn’t always trust them. These two things were equally true. And it broke her heart a little each time she was forced to reckon with it. Maybe it always would.
A few weeks passed in relative ease. Peter was always busy with school or the Bugle or Spider-Man. MJ saved her tips and waited on a phone call she feared would never come. Harry rested at home until the doctors were absolutely certain he was alright.
The day that Peter got a call that Mr. Osborn wanted to see him about his internship, he figured Harry had finally gotten around to coming back to Oscorp again. He grabbed his to-go coffee from the desk he used part-time with three other interns and scooted off to the nearest elevator. The AI assistant asked for his floor number, and he gave it, always a little wary that by some fluke of circuitry, the computer might realize that he was something more than what he seemed.
But he was soon enough deposited onto the top floor of Oscorp with no fuss. He turned a corner in a glass and steel office space that was mind-bendingly reflective and came face to face with one of the two security men charged with protecting Harry. Smythe or Harrison or…
“Good afternoon, Mr. Parker. Right this way,” the man in black said and gestured with one ridiculously muscular arm.
Peter nodded and followed his direction only to sprint rather brazenly into Norman Osborn’s personal office. The man himself sat, smiling, behind his glass top desk with its screen lit from beneath in a blue-green glow that did startling things to Doctor Osborn’s features.
“Peter,” he said, “sit.” It was not a matter up for debate.
And Peter sat, instantly afraid.
Norman Osborn regarded Peter with a cold, calculating eye, in much the same way he had at Harry’s birthday party. Peter felt like a spider pinned to a board with a needle through his center, on display beneath the doctor’s piercing gaze. Suddenly, the AI building assistant did not seem to be the only threat to his thin veneer of normalcy.
“I apologize that I have not taken the time to thank you personally, Peter, for what you did for Harry.” Norman jabbed a finger at Peter’s previously injured shoulder. It had healed nicely, good as new, but Peter was still reminding himself to favor his other arm while in public, just in case.
“Harry is very fond of you,” Dr. Osborn went on, his hands now folded over the head of his cane. The handle was silver in the shape of some bird, Peter thought, or maybe a bat. “In fact, I would say that your presence in his life again has had quite the positive effect. You and Miss Watson.”
Peter gave a jerky, self-conscious nod. “Happy to help, sir. Harry is a special guy. We’re glad to have him around again.”
“I wonder if you would do something for me, Peter.” Norman leaned forward then and swept his hand across the desktop. Peter noticed, with a jolt, that his fingers were slightly gnarled, almost claw-like. “If it wouldn’t be too much to ask, that is.”
“Anything, sir,” Peter said and instantly felt an acidic slick of regret in his gut when Norman Osborn gave a toothful smile.
“Good, good.” He tapped the desk screen again, and images appeared in the air between them. Holograms, Peter thought, the novelty of Oscorp’s sense of scientific flair was never quite lost on him.
The images were shots of Harry from different angles, all around the city. Most of them were from the day of the attempted kidnapping. They featured Peter and MJ, as well. It twisted Peter’s stomach to see how happy they all looked, how oblivious to the many watchful eyes.
“My son is in a difficult position,” Dr. Osborn continued as he stood from his desk chair and began pacing around the office. “He’s young and impulsive still, and despite my best efforts to protect him, he rails against my - some might say - ‘overbearing’ hand.”
Peter’s eyes were locked on a particular image of Harry whispering something to MJ, his head leaned towards her conspiratorially.
“He does not trust the people I have hired to protect him, and I am afraid that he may be taking matters into his own hands when it comes to this little trouble with the kidnapping.” Norman had worked his way behind Peter now, and he rested one trembling hand on Peter’s shoulder. “I want to know what my son is up to, and I think you might be the man for the job, Peter.”
“Doctor Osborn-” Peter started and felt the hand on his shoulder tense.
“Mr. Parker, I understand how this might seem to you.” Norman leaned forward so that his head hovered over Peter’s other shoulder, though his gaze was fixed on the images of Harry. “But a father is very protective of his son, especially when it is his only son, his legacy so to speak.”
Peter knew that Dr. Osborn knew of his own father, of Richard Parker disappearing into the night like the hounds of hell were after him. He set his jaw and steeled his eyes.
“I’d like to offer you an opportunity, because I admire the work you’ve done here at Oscorp. I have many connections, Peter. Many ways that I can assist those to whom I feel indebted.” Norman finally released Peter’s shoulder and took a seat at his desk once more. He waved the pictures of Harry away so that an employee file came up instead.
Peter looked into Gwen Stacy’s eyes and swallowed.
“It was at my personal recommendation that Miss Stacy received her place at Oxford, and while I understand your financial situation, you may be aware that - in the past - there has been funding allocated towards helping certain students who served in our intern positions meet their greatest potential at the school of their choice.” Norman smiled, and for once, Peter felt like the fly in the web.
“I can guarantee you a place in Oxford, in their school of engineering science, if you’d like. I believe that is where your predilections lie, is it not?” Then he curved his head downward, to peer at Peter from beneath his heavy brow. “Or had you considered genetics, like your father?”
Peter didn’t answer. He didn’t know if he could even breathe anymore.
Norman waved his hand once more, and Gwen’s face disappeared, leaving the air between them empty, save for Peter’s mounting panic.
“Consider my offer, Mr. Parker. And consider this, too.” He turned his chair away to face the wall of windows behind him, the city skyline beyond. “Everything I do, I do because it is what’s best for my son. You can be sure of that.”
