He remembers drinking too much after Aunt May left; missing Uncle Ben, wanting to comfort Harry after that awful scene at dinner. He doesn't remember going upstairs, or how he got into the wrong bed, or why; doesn't know why he and his best friend are spooning, and God, if Harry wakes hung over and decides that he hasn't had enough drama yet, this could be -
A sigh against his shoulder, and "Go make breakfast," Harry orders drowsily.
Peter breaths out into his pillow.
The second time he can't blame alcohol but he can blame Dr. Osborn; another argument about MJ, Harry wanting to shout into the phone and not daring, and Peter spent half the night sitting on Harry's bed talking about nothing until Harry almost smiled. They fell asleep watching some trashy horror movie, and Peter might have dreamed Harry saying "It's too bad you're not a girl, Pete. My dad likes you," but he doesn't think so.
He wakes to the sound of the morning news. It's cold outside and warm in Harry's bed, and Peter doesn't want to get up.
"I was mad at you," Harry insists with the righteous indignation of the very drunk. "'Swhy I asked her."
Sober, Peter braces Harry upright and fumbles with his keys. "What?"
The door opens and they tumble in, Peter staggering under Harry's weight. "I was mad. 'Cause my father likes you better."
"Not true," Peter soothes.
"I..." Harry pauses, looking lost. "I wanted somebody to choose me, y'know?"
"Harry -"
"Shut up, Pete." Harry's forehead is hot against Peter's temple, and his breath tastes like single-malt scotch. "Shut up. Come to bed."
"You're tired," Peter says, and hears his voice shake.
"Sorry about last night, Pete," Harry says quietly, moving slowly and carefully in deference to what looks like a wretched hangover. "I didn't mean to drink that much."
Peter pauses in the middle of a paragraph on eigenvalues and closes his eyes against the memory of warm breath on his throat, of lips that just barely, accidentally, brushed against the nape of his neck; of getting Harry undressed and into bed. The knot of Harry's tie whispered open under his fingers like water parting in his hands.
"That's all right," he answers. "Everybody has a bad night now and then."
Don't tell Harry, Dr. Osborn said, dying.
Don't tell Harry, MJ said, so long ago that he thinks it might have been in another life.
The look on Harry's face would have frozen the words in his throat even without promises to the dead. He wants to say It'll be all right, but it won't. He wants to say Please understand, but Harry never will. He wants to say I had no choice, but Harry wouldn't care.
So many things he can't tell Harry, so many things he wants to, and none of them will matter now.
It isn't fair.
Thank God you're here, Pete.
You're the only family I have left now, Pete.
You're like a brother to me, Pete.
He knows what MJ wants from him and he can't give it to her, not now. He leaves her there in the graveyard instead, and walks away from her hating the part of himself that was glad to hurt her, that was glad to see his own pain in someone else's eyes.
The suit is suffocating that night, and everything costs him more than it should. Despairing, he stands in a burning building and waits to feel clean again.
There are boxes everywhere in the apartment, waiting for the movers. Harry sits on one and scrubs the back of his hand wearily across his forehead, smearing dust.
"You could come stay with me for a while," he says, not looking at Peter. "Until you can get a new place."
Peter thinks of the last time he was in those rooms. He thinks of Harry sleeping there alone with his father's ghost. He thinks of Harry, and an arm slung carelessly around him, and soft breath against the back of his neck.
"I'd like that," he says, knowing he shouldn't.
This room has a sweeping view of the city from huge windows, and another time Peter would be impressed. But his arm is around Harry, holding him close, steadying and comforting - for hours he has listened to Harry talk about his father, words full of pride, grief, and love flowing between them like a river. It's dark, other people may need him; but he can't go, not yet.
His lips moving against Peter's throat, Harry whispers, "I'm going to make Spiderman pay."
Peter touches his friend's hair, looks out at the glittering skyline, and answers, "Maybe he's paying already."
There are sirens in the distance, and Peter's spider-sense tingles in a dizzying flow of information - a mugging, an armed robbery, a burglary, he couldn't reach them all even if he were in costume and trying. He'll never be able to reach them all. Someone will always die who could have lived if he'd been there, and tonight he needs to be Peter Parker.
He needs to because Harry wouldn't lace his fingers into Spiderman's hair, and his mouth wouldn't open into hungry, knee-melting heat against Spiderman's the way it opens now against Peter's.
He can forgive himself one night.
Peter watches the moonlight and thinks that in some other universe are a Harry and Peter with no secrets; where Harry "accidentally" leaves the condoms across the room and makes Peter get them with a web, where the kink potential of wall-crawling has been thoroughly explored, where a mention of Spiderman will make Harry's eyes light with the memory of laughter and loving instead of with cold rage.
He wishes that he lived in that universe instead of this one; this one, where Harry whispers He killed my father against Peter's skin, and Peter's only answer is Here, I'm here.
