Complicated,
by Glacis. Rated
NC-17, no copyright infringement intended.
The one true thing Peter
Parker knew, other than the fact that inaction led to heartache, and power
brought responsibility, was that life was nothing if not complicated. That fact
was brought home to him with a vengeance as he stood, being kissed by Mary Jane
Watson, in front of his Uncle Ben's grave.
The girl he couldn't let
himself pursue, because of the man he'd failed.
She'd already had her life
threatened because of him. His Aunt May had been terrorized. Even Harry, his
best friend, had suffered, though not necessarily in the way Harry believed. It
was Harry's dad, as the Goblin he'd become, not Spider-man, who was responsible
for Harry's loss.
Moments before MJ kissed him, Harry embraced Peter, told him he loved him, and vowed
death to Spider-man, practically in the same breath, for killing his father.
The fact that his father was also an insane mutated murderous experiment-gone-bad
who'd tried to kill everyone Peter loved, including Harry himself, was one of
many secrets Peter would take with him to the grave.
All those secrets kept him
from MJ.
He hoped it wouldn't be
Harry who saw him into his grave.
Disengaging himself gently
from her hands, he stepped back. "I ... can't." He turned on his heel
and left her there, hating himself for the confusion and rejection he saw in
her eyes, but incapable of doing anything else. He would not put her in
any further danger. He could not admit who, or what, he was, because
that would put her in danger, and he refused to let her walk into a
relationship with her eyes closed, because walking blindly into danger only
worked for people with spider-sense. To the best of his knowledge he was the
only one in the world with that.
Either
way, he was out of luck, and she was out of reach.
He hadn't expected to find
Harry at the apartment when he finally made it back. His friend sat slumped on
the steps, leaning his elbow on his knee, staring at nothing in particular.
"Harry?" He
couldn't ask if he was all right. Not even Peter was that socially inept. He
hovered just inside the door, bunching his fists in his pockets, wishing there
was something he could do to make it better. Wishing for the
impossible, as always.
"Hey,
Pete."
Harry glanced up at him and mustered a pathetic if brave attempt at a smile.
Peter shut the door behind
him and walked further into the apartment, stopping a few feet from Harry.
"I thought ... I thought maybe you'd be at your dad's house," he said
quietly. "Doing business?" He had no idea what sort of things an heir
had to do when his multi-billionaire father died, so he made it a question.
Harry shook his head. "Lawyers tomorrow. I told them I didn't want to discuss
it until I was in a more rational frame of mind." He choked out a bitter
laugh. "Like a pack of vultures up at the house. I ducked out the back and
came here."
Peter looked around,
wondering when they'd show up. Harry laughed again, a little less bleakly.
"S'okay,
I told the lawyers I'd fire them if they followed me. Then I sent Claude off
with the limo to lead the reporters off on a wild goose chase. They should be
somewhere in
Relieved to see a little
life in his buddy's face, Peter closed the distance between them and leaned
against the railing. "Good move."
Harry nodded, then looked behind Peter, a distracted expression on his
face. "I thought you'd be with MJ."
Peter gulped. He could feel
his eyes widen. This wasn't a discussion he ever wanted to have, particularly
not a few hours after burying Norman Osborn. The intersection of his double
lives was risky territory. He chewed over several things he couldn't say, and
finally got out, "I couldn't."
Harry's eyes were warm as
he looked up at Peter. "If you're not because of some kind of misguided
loyalty, don't be so damned noble. She and I split up. You've been in love with
her most of your life. Go for it, man."
While he appreciated the
permission, there were so many reasons it was a bad idea, none of which
Peter could explain without having his best friend shoot him as his father's
killer. The fact that he wasn't made no difference.
Harry thought Spider-man killed
Like he'd
said. Complicated.
His mouth opened, then
shut, then opened again. "I ... can't." His tongue was tied in knots
by all the things he couldn't say, and the few things he could sounded like a
broken record. He shrugged helplessly.
"Why
not?" Harry
asked, understandably confused. "It's not because of me, is it?"
He looked ready to launch
into another speech about why Peter should go after MJ but Peter cut him off.
It was too painful to dwell on impossibilities.
"I couldn't ... I
can't give her what she needs," he blurted. Harry gave him an even more
quizzical look.
"What do you
mean?" he pressed.
Peter rolled his eyes. He'd
never been good with words even before he'd had so many explosive secrets. Now
that it was more tangled than any web he could ever weave, he was absolutely
hopeless. "I just can't!" He sounded as desperate as he felt.
Harry stared at him for the
longest time, and Peter could feel himself blushing. He fought the urge to find
a handy wall and beat his head against it. Eventually, Harry's face softened,
understanding flooding his eyes.
"Oh, man. Of course. I'm sorry. I'm so stupid. I had no idea."
He really had no
idea about a lot of things, Peter thought, wondering what Harry was talking
about. Harry rose from the steps and reached over to hug him. Wallowing in a
moment of misery, self-pity overwhelming him for a second before he could get
his self-control back, Peter hugged back as hard as he was hugged. He didn't
want to lose Harry too, but he had a suspicion it was only a matter of time.
Truth would eventually come out and he'd be screwed. He'd lose. Again. Always.
"I love you,"
Harry said softly. Peter felt the words as much as heard them, since Harry's
face was pressed into the side of his neck.
"I love you too,"
Peter managed past the lump in his throat.
"It'll be okay,"
Harry comforted him, and the irony of the newly-orphaned comforting the one
responsible, regardless of how indirectly, for that orphaning made Peter
tighten his arms around Harry. It wasn't going to be okay ever again.
"I wouldn't count on
it," he admitted.
"We'll never know
until we try," Harry went on.
It was Peter's turn to be
completely confused. He knew Harry didn't know Peter was the Spider-man, or he
wouldn't be hugging him, he'd be shooting him. So what did Harry mean they'd
try? Try to remain best friends despite the circumstances? That Peter's
mutation was just one more difference between them, and if they could overcome
circumstances of birth, wealth, mental abilities and social standing a little
spider-mutation was no problem? Except it was a problem, since Harry
thought Peter'd killed his dad ... well, Spider-man,
but since Peter was Spider-man ... before Peter's internal rambling
could get hopelessly tangled up, Harry knocked his train of thought right off
the tracks.
By
kissing him.
A number of ideas struck
Peter pretty much simultaneously. The realization that Harry had completely
misunderstood the reason why Peter couldn't go to MJ; the really way-out
interpretation he'd placed on their mutual declarations of love; the fact that
MJ must have taught Harry how to kiss because they both went at it like they
were going to devour him; the extreme shock of realizing Harry's tongue was in
his mouth and he wasn't biting it; and the purely physical reaction his
virginal body was having to being royally smooched by a guy who really knew
what he was doing, after already walking away from a girl who really knew what
she was doing.
His hormones couldn't take
the overload. Neither could his brain, which froze like a computer in the
middle of a major hard drive collapse. One by one, like dominoes, his higher
reasoning functions fell over and lay there, insensate, while his body cheered
wildly and waited anxiously to see what Harry would do next.
Shock could do funny things
to a man. The phrase repeated itself on a continuous loop in what was left of
his brain as his frustrated, edgy body wrapped itself around Harry and gave as
good as he was given. Harry's hand came up to cup the back of his head, and a
long arm tightened around his waist, drawing them close together. The hard cock
nudging against his belly prompted a silent and somewhat hysterical giggle to
bubble up in Peter's chest. Before it could escape, Harry's mouth left his and
latched on to the side of his throat.
The giggle became a moan
before it reached his lips, and once it escaped, it echoed through the room.
Harry reacted by sucking harder, and Peter felt his knees weaken. His
spider-sense was going off, but it was more dizzy than alarming. He had the
feeling it had more to do with the fact that he couldn't see straight than any
impending threat.
He opened his mouth to say
something, but 'I'm not gay' didn't seem quite right, given that his hands were
tangled in Harry's hair and he was practically humping the guy. Besides, if he
said that, Harry might stop, and Peter's body was in no mood to say 'no' again.
Then Harry's hand slid from Peter's waist over his butt to cup it, shifting
them even closer together, and all Peter could do was pant for breath and moan
again.
Forcing his brain back
on-line enough to remember how to form words, and to censor the ones that would
end both the embrace and his friendship with Harry, Peter managed to
ask, "How do you ... oh, god, yeah," as Harry's tongue traced his
ear, "how'd you learn how to ... Oh!" So much for
words. Verbal abilities, sparse as they were, flew out the window as
both Harry's hands joined the fun, one still cupping his butt, the other
tracing the front of his pants.
"Wasn't just bad
grades got me kicked out of all those private schools," Harry muttered,
nipping Peter's earlobe and sending a shiver all the way through him.
"You'd be surprised what you can learn if you're open to
opportunity." His fingers wrapped around Peter's balls and tugged gently.
Peter would have asked for
details, but he was too busy coming in his pants. A brief moment of
disorientation hit, then panic, then relief as he
remembered he hadn't put on the Spider-man suit that morning, determined not to
miss the funeral because of any Spidey-crisis. So
when Harry unzipped his fly and dove into his boxers, there was no funky spider
suit to give the game away. A big relief.
As was
not having to clean the suit from Peter coming all over it. Although of
the two, Harry discovering his secret identity was a much more dire possibility
than having to scrub semen stains out of spandex.
His brain merrily tripping
and babbling away, Peter was barely aware enough to turn his forearms away from
Harry's gaze as he was stripped and tipped onto the couch. The spider-suit
would have been disastrous, but explaining spinnerets could be just as
dangerous. He snaked his arms around Harry, who'd managed to get naked sometime
between Peter's brain-melting orgasm and his landing on the couch. As his
mutated skin brushed across Harry's back, the tactile sensation sent a buzz up
his arms, down his spine, and straight to his crotch.
Great. Not only did he spin webs, but his
spinnerets were an erogenous zone, and apparently he was at least a little gay,
because Harry was kissing him again, and the only thing Peter could think about
was spreading his thighs and getting Harry a heck of a lot closer. It was
amazing what his spider-enhanced flexibility allowed him to do, as he wrapped
his legs around Harry's butt and dragged him in tight. What a day for personal
revelations. Life just kept getting more complicated all the time.
"Are you sure?"
Harry asked, his voice husky and strained, as he ran his cock between Peter's
thighs, pushing the head against him and not incidentally driving Peter
completely out of his mind.
It wasn't enough. He needed
more. He had no idea how to say it, or what to ask for, so he grumped,
"You're the expert, what do you think?"
Harry grinned, and kissed
him again. When he came up for air, he asked again, frustrating Peter with the
delay, "What do you want?"
That's it,
make me beg, Peter groaned silently. Aloud, he said as clearly as he could given that his jaw was clenched so tightly his teeth ached,
"MORE!"
Thankfully, that was all
Harry wanted, or maybe it was all Harry could stand, too, because he nudged
further in. The first breach made Peter still, but either the pain wasn't as
bad as he'd feared or his spider-quality pain tolerance made it okay. Whichever
it was, the burn was insignificant in the face of his body's urging.
Somewhere in the back of
his mind a little voice was yelling at him that this was incredibly stupid,
that he was making a bad situation worse, that it would blow up in his face
eventually and he'd be sorry, sorry, sorry that he was
doing this, with Harry, of all people. But his body'd
been through a lot in the past couple years, and not
for the first time his instincts got in the way of his good sense.
He shifted. Thrust down as
Harry cautiously thrust up. Yelped in harmony with Harry's choked scream as he
took Harry all the way in, then froze. He stared
wide-eyed up into the equally wide eyes staring back down at him for what felt
like forever, until he had to move. So he did.
Harry's eyes shut and he
got the most incredible look on his face, like he was in heaven and hell at the
same time. Peter could relate. Once he started moving he couldn't stop,
wriggling and pushing his hips, legs still wrapped tightly around Harry's hips,
arms around Harry's ribcage, spine arching and straightening as he gave himself
over to the pure physical sensation of Harry inside him. Then Harry shifted up
on his knees, taking Peter with him so Peter was resting on his shoulders, and
Harry put his back into it.
Heaven won out over Hell by
a mile.
The stray thought struck
Peter that he was glad for spider-regeneration or he wouldn't be able to walk
for a week, then Harry's hand wrapped around his erection and even that
pathetic attempt at a thought disappeared in a haze of endorphins. He was
flying, like webbing only naked and with a friend, and he never knew sex was so
incredibly good, or he'd've found a way to try it a
long time ago. Maybe even with Harry.
Then Harry tightened his
fingers, and Peter was coming again, and only the most basic survival instinct
kept him from crushing Harry to him in the vice of his arms and legs. Harry
shoved in all the way and rode out Peter's orgasm, and the unaccustomed feel of
bulk stretching him made it the most incredible climax he'd ever had. Even if
it never happened again, and that was a distinct possibility, Peter was
ridiculously thankful it had happened this once.
Collapsing after coming, he
used the last of his strength to keep his arms around Harry's back, determined
to hide his spinnerets and, admittedly, loving the sweaty friction of Harry's
skin against them. Then Harry arched, and whipped against him involuntarily a
few times, and Peter watched, wide-eyed all over again. Harry was surprisingly
beautiful when he came. He'd never thought he'd ever call Harry 'beautiful.'
Then again, he'd never
thought he'd end up on his back on the couch underneath Harry, either. When
he'd envisioned himself naked with somebody, on a couch or anywhere else, it
was always MJ -- when it wasn't Jennifer Garner. It hadn't ever been Harry. At
least, not while he was awake. He refused to be responsible for what his
subconscious did when he was asleep, or he'd never be able to deal with those
early Big Bird dreams.
Harry kissing him again cut
off the stream of insanity that was passing through his brain, to Peter's
immense relief. He wasn't sure what to say once he got his lips back, but it
was okay, because Harry didn't say anything either. He just settled down on the
couch between the cushions and Peter, pulling Peter back against him and wrapping
his arms around him. Peter carefully laid his own arms, spinnerets down,
against the warm arms wrapped around his middle, and wondered what happened
next.
That, as it happened, was
Harry falling asleep.
Far from offended by it,
Peter was greatly relieved. Maybe by the time Harry woke up Peter would find a
way to say he loved Harry but wasn't in love with him, and he didn't think he
was gay but maybe he was bi or maybe it was something spider-ish though he wouldn't admit that to Harry, and that had
been incredible, so could they please do it again? A lot?
He was still trying to figure out a way, any way, to phrase that when he
fell asleep himself.
His spider-sense poked him,
not hard enough to send him into full battle mode but enough to wake him up and
make him look around. Like an elbow to the ribs. There was no immediate threat
in the living room and he relaxed. Prematurely. A gasp
brought his eyes past the stairs to the front door.
MJ stood in the doorway, a
key in her hand, staring at him like she'd never seen him before.
Made
sense, of course.
She'd seen him often, but never naked, and never with another guy, equally
naked, spooned around him, hanging on for dear life. Particularly never when
that other guy was her ex-boyfriend and Peter'd
turned her down just that morning. Peter felt a blush starting at his toes and
going all the way up over his scalp. His mouth opened and his eyes shut, but
when no words were forthcoming from either his brain or MJ, his mouth closed
again and his eyes, reluctantly, opened.
She was still standing
there. She made a lovely statue.
Harry stirred behind him,
and Peter's panic, already full-blown, nearly made him gibber. He heard a gasp
behind him to match MJ's, then
Harry buried his face in Peter's hair and made a noise that was halfway between
a laugh and a curse. Peter's mouth opened and closed again. He knew he looked
like a landed fish, but he couldn't do a blasted thing about it.
"I was ..." MJ
cleared her throat and tore her eyes away from them with what looked like real
effort. "Returning your key, Harry." She
placed the key on the counter with the extreme care of a hazmat worker dealing
with nitro, and glanced back at them. Her blush was almost as bad as Peter's.
To his amazement, she smiled a little sadly at him. "I understand,"
she whispered, sounding loud in the silence, addressing Peter and ignoring
Harry, who'd gotten past laughter and was now just cursing. She turned on her
heel and left, shutting the door gently behind her.
Peter stared at the closed
door and mentally echoed the more colorful curses streaming out of Harry's
mouth. He wondered how she could understand, because he sure as heck
didn't. He hadn't understood much in life for so long it was a chronic
condition, and since The Bite, he knew it would be a permanent condition. His
life was nothing but complications.
"Are you okay?" Harry
asked, his voice still muffled by Peter's hair. As if Peter had a clue how to
answer that one.
Before he could come up
with a way to say 'yes' and 'no' and 'are you kidding?' and 'am I ever?' all at
once, Harry snuffled against the side of his neck and shifted against his back.
Peter's eyes went wide again. He tightened his hold on Harry's arms, and
shivered as sensation sizzled through his spinnerets. That was all the encouragement
Harry needed.
Looked
like Harry got off on getting caught. No wonder he'd kept getting kicked out of private schools,
if that was his reaction to being found out, Peter mused, before Harry pushed a
leg between his and got down to some serious wriggling. At which point Peter
was too busy trying to keep his spinnerets covered to think, then too turned on
to think, then couldn't think at all.
At least
when he couldn't think, his life didn't seem so complicated. Too bad it never lasted. Nothing
good ever did.
end