FicWad

Finally starting to sound a little bit angry himself, Peter only demanded, "So what? Did you ever bother to ask me, before now, if I really had a crush on her?"

Offended, Harry practically shouted back, "It was obvious! The way you look at her, the way you talk about her, the way you always defend her - "

"I defend you all the time, too!"

"That's not the same thing!"

"And why not? If I just went on the ways things might look to other people, I'd have the same kind of ideas about us that the guy in the comic shop did about Kirk and Spock! Heck, if I just went on how things looked, I'd think MJ had a secret crush on me, since she's the only one who ever sticks up for me and makes that driver stop the bus so I can get on! And if that's not the most unlikely thing in the world, then it's pretty darn close! You just assumed without bothering to ask, before now! It's not my fault that you didn't care enough to bother asking about it any earlier!" Peter snapped, his angry scowl at least as deep as Harry's.

"Didn't care enough? I care more about you than any other person in the world!"

Into the ringing silence left by the wake of that furious shout, Peter snapped, voice bitterly quiet, "Yeah, well, you've got a funny way of showing it, sometimes!"

"Peter, I - /Peter/! What are you /doing/?" Harry's voice shot so high that it nearly squeaked as he leapt forward, just in time to catch Peter as he pitched bonelessly forward, having risen from his sprawl on the two-seat sofa only to apparently - what, trip? Fall?

"Holy moly, how many of these things have I had?" Peter muttered weakly, clinging to Harry and giggling helplessly. "Harry, I think your idea's a bust. I missed my limit somewhere when I wasn't looking."

Torn between panic and indignation (he'd been giving him mostly nonalcoholic drinks for most of the past hour!), Harry gave Peter's increasingly slack form a little shake and tried desperately to ignore the way his voice had just cracked and all but broken, squeaking with fear. "Jesus, Peter, don't pass out! Here, get your legs under you, buddy, okay? We'll go and walk some of it off."

"Well, I'd love to, except that I can't really feel my legs anymore," Peter only giggled, voice muffled where he face was tucked in against Harry's chest.

"You haven't even had that much!" he cried, wincing slightly, reflexively, when he voice once again nearly cracked, even though Peter was clearly too far gone to notice it.

Peter only snickered and, as Harry tried to raise him up more firmly on his feet, took advantage of the change in elevation to let his head loll into the crook of Harry's left shoulder and his neck, murmuring drowsily, each word sending a puff of moist, hot air down over the side of Harry's neck and collarbone, "But I'm a lightweight. Literally. I'm smaller than you. And I'm not used to alcohol like you are. And wow, you have really strong arms, Harry. And you smell good. Is that new cologne?" he asked, burrowing a little bit closer and turning his head slightly, until his nose was right up against the pulse point on the side of Harry's neck.

The snuffling noise, as of a deep breath in, when Peter smelled the side of his neck, sent a burst of heat through his body that went straight to Harry's groin, and he jumped like a scalded cat and almost lost his hold of Peter in the confusion, as he tried to duck away without simply dropping the hold that was keeping Peter on his feet. "Pete - !" he got that far and no further, his voice not just cracking but breaking entirely as one of Peter's hands, curling loosely in the fabric of his shirt, shifted slightly, the edge of his thumb rubbing over the ridge of Harry's right nipple.

"Hmm. I think I'm going to need to lie down and sleep now. Help me get to bed?"

"Just don't - don't pass out on me, okay? And don't fall asleep quite yet, either!"

"I won't. You'd be a fussy pillow, pal."

A half-hearted (at best) urge to protest that claim rose and fell as Peter shifted a little bit closer, leaning in to Harry's body solidly, as though propping himself up against a wall. Only, this wall happened to enjoy the sensation of closeness a little bit too much for comfort, even with Peter so drunk that he was evidently skirting the edge of unconsciousness, and so Harry started carefully shifting out from under Peter's body, a little at a time, so as to avoid unbalancing him any further. "We can make jokes about this later. Come on, pal, stay with me, here! I don't think I can carry you up all those stairs if you pass out on me, Pete. Come on, shift over, that's right, lean on me, let me get a shoulder around you, and we'll get you upstairs and to bed, okay?"

"Elevator. Easier than stairs."

"I know it is. But I kind of need a hand for the numbers, so come on, work with me here, Pete! We need to get turned around towards the door before we can head for the elevator."

"I am turning. I just - I need to lie down."

"Need to get to the bed first, for that. Come on, buddy, walk with me here. That's right. Left foot. Right foot. It's not so hard. No, no, lean on me! I've got you, okay? We're almost to the elevator. It'll be alright. I'll get you there. Look, there's the elevator, already. We're lucky it's hidden away back here near the bar, behind the stairs." Peter muttered something he couldn't catch, turned his face in against Harry's chest, and sighed as they shuffled their way on board the elevator, leaning hard enough that Harry could tell he was essentially out on his feet. He gave him a little shake, trying to encourage him to stay conscious, but the slight jolt as the elevator reached the floor with Harry's bedroom suite was what made him jerk, shivering slightly, and raise his head up enough to peer questioningly around him. "We're almost there, Pete. Just a bit further. Work with me here."

Peter murmured something back, much too low in his throat for Harry to make heads or tails of whatever he might've been saying, and slumped back against him heavily, but he retained enough awareness to move (at least vaguely) in time with Harry, and they somehow managed to make it to Harry's room and the huge king-sized bed. It wasn't until he was levering Peter around so that he could fall back over the down-filled duvet that he was putting Peter into his bed, not the bed in the guestroom just down the hall that Peter had taken to sleeping in around the time Harry turned sixteen, despite the hugeness of the king-sized bed they'd been (mostly) unselfconsciously sharing, before. By then it was too late to do anything about it, though. Gravity had a hold of Peter, and he tipped back onto the bed, eyes shut and obviously already dead to the world as he slumped bonelessly and gracelessly down against the mattress, like a tipped over sack, legs dangling limply over the edge of the bed. Resisting the urge to either groan or curse, Harry bent down to take off Peter's shoes and socks, grabbing him by the ankles and swinging his legs around until the whole of him was stretched out on the mattress, head finally in among the pillows where it should be. He hesitated for a moment then before (mentally thanking any deity that might be listening that Peter never wore a belt unless he was forced into wearing a suit) reaching forward and removing Peter's glasses before quickly taking a hold of the lower edge of Peter's tee-shirt, touching him as little as possible as he raised the material up and pulled the oversized, dark blue shirt up over Peter's head, leaving his hair rumpled and sticking up slightly. Ignoring the temptation to smooth that mussed brown hair back down again, Harry smiled, a little bemused, as Peter turned a little on the bed, curling up onto his side like a cat. The nightstand is on the other side of the bed, though, and Peter wouldn't be very happy if he couldn't find his glasses, so Harry walked around the bed to put the glasses on the little table (once again resolving to try to convince Peter to think about switching to contacts). Then, with a sigh, he kicked off his own shoes and gave in to what seemed like the smallest temptation, to help avoid all the rest, curling in on himself until he was fairly small and lying down on the bed, very near the far edge, firmly telling himself that he was only going to stay for awhile, just long enough to be sure that Peter really was okay, that he was just asleep, and that he wasn't going to be sick or anything.

Peter looked so small, on the bed! And he was so skinny. Harry and Aunt May were constantly feeding Peter, but his metabolism just ran it all off, as he soon he ate anything. Harry could count each rib, the edges of Peter's collarbones were so prominent that they stretched his pale skin there to a papery-thin layer of milky white silk, the hardness of the bone seemingly only just restrained from pushing through. He had no doubt he could've seen the prominent shape of Peter's spine curving away from him, down the center of Peter's back, if only he'd been facing in the right direction. But he wanted to see Peter's face. He loved Peter elfin little face, the way his ears stuck out just a little instead of laying flat to the shape of his skull and were balanced, in a way he couldn't quite explain, by Peter's sharply prominent nose and the clean line of jaw and the boyish dimple in his chin. He loved how different Peter's face was from his: how Peter's mouth was thin and honest to the near-decadent fullness of his own lips; how the cleft in Peter's chin was so deep that his chin almost looked folded up on itself, to make that perfect dimple, when his own chin was so smooth; and how sharply prominent Peter's nose was and the way that the angle of his jaw was so neatly squared off, in sharp contrast to Harry's broader nose and the way his jaw all but disappeared into shadow under the prominence of his cheekbones. He loved the paleness of Peter's skin, next to the honey-browned natural tan of his own (had passed far too many nights, dreaming of the contrasting colors twining together); loved the sprinkling of beauty marks on Peter's face (especially the tiny one just under his left eye, near the inside corner, right where teardrops would naturally gravitate on a face held entirely still and upright, not tilting at all to either side); loved the almost straight planes of his eyebrows; to be perfectly honest, loved absolutely everything there was to the composition of that face. He's had Peter's face memorized for years, could recreate it from memory (and has more than a few sketches, drawings, paintings, of that face, to prove it), and one of the few certainties in his world revolves, as ever, around the fact that he will never grow tired of gazing upon it.

He'd give anything to touch Peter's face like he wanted to, to trace the pads of his fingers slowly across those beloved feature, mapping by touch what's been known to sight for years, caressing until every single millimeter of that creamy pale skin has been covered, and replace those fingertips, then, with his lips. Without even trying, he could imagine the slip of Peter's spine, vertebra by vertebra, beneath his fingertips, feel the contours of his ribs sliding, bone by bone, beneath his palms. He shivered a little against the smoothness of the duvet (blue, as close to the color of Peter's eyes as he'd been able to find, satiny microfiber with only the barest hint of a nap to it, soft and all but silky smooth, just as he's imagined a certain someone's skin to be), then, hands balled into fists against the urge to stretch out and touch. He knew he shouldn't be there, but it was his bed! And Peter was his friend, his t'hy'la/, dammit! /His. Not MJ's, not some hypothetical fellow college student a few years down the line. His. Peter wasn't nearly as smart as he thought he was, if he didn't know that Harry loved him more than anyone else ever could. And if he'd been telling the truth, if he hadn't just come up with all of that mumbo-jumbo about artists and their muses and knights and their queens as a way to make himself feel better about a crush he'd convinced himself he could never act on, if he really did think of Mary Jane Watson as just the avatar, the guardian angel, the visual symbol of an idea (a promise of the future), and MJ was nothing more to him than a slightly worrisome neighbor, then perhaps Harry's love for Peter wasn't quite as hopeless as he'd always assumed it was. Maybe Peter had said more than he meant to, when he'd spoken of being with someone and having it be like being with Harry, only better, because they'd be lovers. Maybe Peter even wanted that, with Harry, but was too afraid to ask, because Harry had always been so careful not to let Peter or anyone else know how he really felt about him. Was it foolish of him to hope so?

Whether or was or not, he shut his eyes to mentally replay the words and the expressions that had been on Peter's face as he'd said them without running the risk of being distracted by the sight of Peter's sleeping form, stretched out in front of him. I'm waiting for college . . . I'll find somebody . . . and it'll be just like with you, only better, because this person will actually love me and won't just think of me as the geeky little brother he never had, and we'll be actual lovers and not just friends and brothers . . . /T'hy'la in every sense of the word. I figure that's the best model to go by, when you're looking for somebody to be your other half. The best kind of relationship would have two people who're as honest as friends, as close as siblings, and who have the passion of lovers . . . I don't really think it'll be somebody better than you, Harry. There's nobody who's better than /you/. You're - /Harry/. You're my Harry. You're Kirk to my Spock, remember? Only, you know, a guy'd get awfully lonely, Harry . . . /Harry's eyes snapped back open, propelled by the wistful sorrow in the memory of Peter's eyes, and fastened on his sleeping friend's face. He wanted, so badly, to believe that Peter had been telling the truth about not being in love with MJ, and he wanted, even more badly, to believe that the sad regret lurking at the back of Peter's gaze and darkening his usually light blue eyes had been there on account of the fact that Peter believed Harry loved him only as a friend and a brother would, when Peter himself wanted more. More than anything, though, he wanted a way to find out whether he was right or wrong without running the risk of ruining the friendship he had with Peter. He couldn't risk losing what little of Peter he had, chasing after something that might or might not be there. He just /couldn't/. He'd die, if Peter were no longer in his life. It might sound melodramatic, but it was still true. He'd die. He knew he would. His soul would shrivel up and blow away, and he'd have nothing left to live for, then. Peter was the sum of everything good in his life, everything that made life worth living. He couldn't risk losing that.

Perhaps, if Peter were still awake . . . but no, he couldn't. Peter might not react as Harry would hope, and, if he remembered, later, then Harry's world and his life would end. How else could he ever discover the truth, short of kissing Peter to see how he reacted and claiming it was just a joke, later, if it went badly? Kissing Peter . . . God! The thought alone was enough to make his blood feel as if it were boiling! Although, actually . . . come to think of it . . . Peter was pretty much dead to the world. Waking to a kiss . . . that always made you say the name of the person you truly loved. Right? And if it went wrong, and Peter woke up enough to realize it was him, then he could always . . . claim he'd fallen, trying to get Peter into bed, and that the kiss had been an accident, right? Right? As drunk as Peter was, how would he ever be able to tell differently? And oh, God, Peter was in his bed, for the first time in over a year. Lying in his bed, curled up on his side like a cat, hair all tousled, lips slack enough with slumber to perhaps be ever so slightly parted . . . Harry shuddered hard enough to make the mattress shiver, hands unclenching and then clenching again, convulsively, and gave a little breathless moan. He'd slithered his way across most of the wide expanse of king-sized mattress between them almost before he knew what he was doing, just managing to stop himself short of Peter's form. If he was going to do this, if he was going to risk this, then he had to be careful. Had to. He shouldn't put any weight on Peter, should, in fact, touch Peter as little as possible, in an attempt to bring him no further than partial awareness, wakening him just enough to elicit a response, to get a name, not enough to wake him all the way, to the reality of whose lips were on his. He shouldn't touch him at all aside from his lips, if he could help it at all. That would be the safest way to do it. So. What he should do was to just eel his way up to Peter (bad word choice. Okay. No. Don't think about that. Don't. Think. About. /That. Dammit!/), line them up like the two pieces of a not yet fit together mosaic of a yin-yang sign, and then lean in just enough, just sufficient to let his mouth lock to Peter's - click - like two pieces of a puzzle coming together. And then . . . and then . . .

Svaha. The time between the lightning and the thunder. Promises waiting to be fulfilled.

Yes. That was what Harry should've done. What he actually did, though, was just a little bit . . . different.

Thin lips, compared to his, shockingly silken smooth and softer than Harry ever would've expected, slack with sleep, slightly parted, so inviting, and he knew he shouldn't, knew it, /knew it/, but couldn't help himself, couldn't stop himself, not once he'd felt those lips, utterly pliant and half parted and warm, so much warmer than him, an almost scalding heat against his mouth. He lunged forward into Peter so recklessly fast and hard that the mattress rocked and groaned beneath him, his momentum pressing Peter's head slightly over and back, down under him into the pillows, and then he dove down between those lips. And Peter should've tasted like alcohol, should've tasted like fruit juice, should've tasted like salt, but he tasted like none of those things. He was sweet, almost stunningly so, like caramelized sugar and rich dark chocolate, just a hint of bite at the back, beneath an explosion of decadent sweetness, and Harry swept his tongue down over and across and behind Peter's teeth, searching for the remains of a candy he somehow might have missed Peter slipping into his mouth, after that last drink, but there was nothing, no residue of candy, just more of that inexplicable sweetness, even up along the sensitive ridges of palate, nothing but more of that taste, caramel and chocolate, and he was instantly addicted, couldn't get enough, tilted his head slightly to get a better angle, until his mouth could seal vacuum-tight over Peter's, and then plunged between his lips, swallowing Peter's first moan without immediately noticing, too caught up in the search for more and more and more of that gloriously inexplicable sweetness for the slight vibration under his lips and tongue to register, at first. His second moan, though, came with a slight but telling movement, Peter's body tilting over onto his back, off his left side, arcing back against the mattress as though in deliberate invitation, asking for the whole of his body to be covered over, like his mouth, and pinned back against the duvet by Harry.

The surge of heat in his body, at that, was frightening enough that Harry finally had to back off, break away, before he could do something even he wouldn't be able to justify trying to explain or excuse. Peter followed him, though, his meltingly soft, endlessly pliable lips clinging to Harry's mouth as though the kiss were as much his idea as Harry's, and Harry had to throw himself backwards, literally tearing himself away, to escape from that gentle suction. The motion of Peter's body as he slid back down among the pillows - his chest describing an arc, pinned to the mattress at shoulders and hips; his head thrown back on a white column of muscled neck that seemed to beg, in its taut arch, for kisses of its own, for worshipful hands and lips and teeth and tongue; his hair gorgeously disarranged, slipping forward over the tips of his ears and across his forehead in feathery strands, seeming very dark against all of that fair skin, framing his face and calling attention to the flush gathering across Peter's cheeks and in the hollow of his thrown-back throat - was the most perfectly beautiful and, somehow, blatantly pornographic motion he'd ever seen, and Harry had to shut his eyes tight against the sight, fingers clawing against the slickness of the duvet before digging in, anchoring himself tight, to keep from launching himself instantly back at Peter and ravaging him like an animal, whether Peter wanted him or not. But the noise Peter made, as he settled among the pillows, didn't even sound human, a high-pitched keening of loss, and Harry's eyes snapped back open, shocked, in time to see Peter's shockingly pressure-plumped and kiss-reddened lips move to the shape of a word - not a name, like he'd hoped for, but a word, a declaration, a promise that hit him like a kick in the crotch: "Mine!" And in that moment Harry knew, without a doubt, that if he did not get off of that bed and out of that room /immediately/, he was going snap, that he would end up raping his best friend, if he had to, in order to possess him, and he couldn't, /couldn't/, he'd die if he ever hurt Peter, never be able to forgive himself, even if Peter could (and probably would, as a far too seductive voice whispering darkly in the back of his brain informed him), and /God /- !

He slammed his mouth shut tight over the sob that rose, forcing it to lodge in his throat, eyes crashing closed, again, like slamming doors to shut out the sight of what he wanted, and was halfway through a mad, blind scramble to push himself back across the broad expanse of bed and away from the source of temptation when a hand closed, almost bruisingly hard and scorchingly hot, around his right arm, where he was braced up over and mattress. A tug, and he was going down, everything seeming to happen in excruciating slow motion, eyes flying wide in shock, seeing Peter, Peter/, chest heaving, passion-painted and -bruised lips parted just enough to show the brief, tantalizing flick of a pink tongue tip, pale against that kiss-reddened mouth, slipping out to smooth moistly over already saliva-slick lips, and then a smile, brilliant, electrifying, and somehow more vividly /real than anything Harry had ever seen before, so bright that he instantly felt the urge to blink, to try to banish away light-dazzled sunspots. He tried to turn himself, as he fell, to avoid crashing down into Peter (who's so much smaller than him, and too thin, fragile, all bird-boned lightness, pale skin over wiry muscle and seemingly hollow bones), but that hand on his arm was demanding, insistent, still pulling on him, and Peter was smiling,/ smiling/, head tilted back provocatively on the column of his neck, blue eyes dark and bright, all at once, and seeming to go on forever. He couldn't look away, once those eyes had captured his gaze, so he was staring at Peter, mouth slack with shock, when they finally collided, Harry's larger body sprawling down over Peter, Peter arching up into him, powerfully, and the deep, sucking kiss, when their mouths crashed together, was better than anything Harry ever could've imagined and more addictive and necessary than oxygen, breathing, all wet, hot, slickness and a warm, agile tongue exploring his mouth like Peter was searching for something, lingering, apparently instinctively, on every place that made Harry twitch.

The kiss slowed only when Peter's hands slid up his arms, across his shoulders, and down over his back in a grip so hard he could feel Peter's bluntly squared-off fingernails through the material of his long-sleeved tee-shirt. Those hands circled, grasped, worked at material until he could feel the tail of the shirt coming loose from his pants, and the abrupt movement of air over a suddenly exposed narrow ribbon of skin across his back, near the base of his spine, was enough to make him so hard that it hurt/, an ache he could feel everywhere, intensifying with each touch. His brain's still trying to catch up with what was happening to him when Peter suddenly gave a lithe twist, rolling him back over onto the mattress and straddling his lap like it was something they'd been doing every day of their lives, the gesture natural and easy as coming home. It should have been strange, awkward, unfamiliar, terrifying, but Harry was reaching out to Peter even as Peter was reaching for him, sliding his hands up across Peter's bare back even as Peter's hands were gliding up under Harry's shirt and touching the skin over his spine. And of course Peter was smooth, more hairless than he, and Harry loved that, loved how the muscles seemed to shift endlessly beneath that satiny skin for every touch, how Peter stretched against him like a cat with every stroke, and knew, absolutely /knew/, that he would never get tired of touching, reaching for everything. Peter kissed like he felt, smooth and subtle and strong, and Harry soon found himself stretched out on the bed, wrists pinned above his head beneath Peter's hands, Peter arching over him, the flawlessly pale skin of Peter's throat and chest seeming to gather color and heat with every breath. And it was too much. Not enough. Both. /God! The sheen of Peter's mouth, as he smiled down at him, the dip of his head, the deliberate curve of his spine when he bent, sucking a line down Harry's throat, licking his collar, tugging away the neckline of Harry's shirt so that he could trace a line out across the collarbone to the joint of his shoulder, and then setting teeth to skin and biting down, hard enough to skate the line of pain. He knew he could break the hold on his wrists, if he really tried, but he didn't want to. Instead, Harry arched up into everything, every touch of that mouth, every rock of those hips, desperately pushing upwards, into Peter.

And finally, then, his name, the thing he had been waiting for, hoping against hope for, even praying for, earlier, Peter whispering (voice solemn and low as if he were breathing out the secret name of God), "Harry," against his almost painfully sensitive skin, which felt so different, as if it were all new, somehow. And in a way, it was. Everything was new. Harry had experience - of course he did, he'd dated more girls than he could (or wanted to) keep track of and had lost his virginity nearly four years ago, at a Christmas party thrown by OsCorp, to some girl (slender, compact, pale, blue-eyed, dark-haired, and eldritch, undeniably but inexplicably lovely, like an older, female version of Peter) whose name he'd never even caught - but he'd never been with anyone he really cared about, before. No one had ever touched him like this, like Peter was, like he really wanted to, like he'd die if he didn't, pushing against the surface of Harry's skin with his tongue and, /God/, learning him that way, as if Peter were somehow taking pictures, clicking them off with each new touch. Harry was still trying to take it all in, to adjust to that and accept that it was really happening, when Peter's chin skimmed down across the soft material of the navy blue cotton stretched tight over Harry's chest and his mouth lowered to that fabric, fastening on the raised hard peak of Harry's left nipple, sucking and biting at it through the cotton, bringing him off the bed with sounds pouring out of his throat that didn't, couldn't possibly, exist.

"/Peter - /!" He collapsed back down against the mattress, his head moving restlessly on the rumpled but still made bed, his fingers grasping helplessly at nothing. "Peter, I - "

"Hush." One more biting kiss to that soft place just beneath his jaw, and the hands on his wrists were pushing off, Peter sitting up over him, braced up on knees that were spread wide to bracket Harry's hips, staring down at him, those paradoxically dark and bright blue eyes hungry and hot and asking for anything, everything/, and Harry couldn't even begin to imagine the kind of person who might be able to refuse him, didn't even bother trying to imagine being a person who would /want to. Instead, he finally got his hands to start moving, wrapping his fingers in the hemmed bottom edge of his shirt, levering himself up off of the duvet enough to peel it up over his chest. And Peter just sat there, over him, staring down at him like there was nothing else in the world to do, so utterly, absolutely focused on Harry (as if he were being studied from the skin inwards, searched and catalogued and memorized and learned and captured) that it could have easily been frightening, if it hadn't been so unbelievably hot, just waiting and watching and then finally, before thought could penetrate, reaching down and touching, as the shirt came away, a long-fingered, well-formed hand wrapping around Harry's right hand, lifting it up so that warm lips could suck on the inside of his wrist, and God! O, God! Harry couldn't resist any longer, had to reach up, had to make contact, and he touched, anything and everything he could, just touched, the fingertips of his other hand skimming along the sharp prominence of Peter's Adam's apple, the delicate ridge of his collarbone, the rippling series of indentations between his ribs. And it was one thing to know that Peter was too skinny and another altogether to actually feel how Peter was just on the edge of being too thin, all smooth skin and whipcord muscle and sharply angled bones, fascinating to simply feel. Harry leaned forward enough to brush a kiss over one bare shoulder, his mouth lingering when Peter arched into the caress, feeling the brush of hard teeth on his inner arm, in answer.

Warm, living skin, and Peter's mouth wasn't the only thing about him that tasted sweet, like caramel and chocolate. Mouthing everything he could reach, Harry pushed back against the mattress, leveraging himself up into Peter, and Peter moved to free Harry's other hand, pushing the shirt the rest of the way aside, letting it tumble away from them like the discarded ghost of caution and prudence and common sense. A slow, natural kiss came after, and Harry could've gladly done that forever, but there was still so much to taste! The skin was thin and sensitive over Peter's jaw; warmer, thicker, and even more addictively smooth and soft on his throat; and fine and fragile as silk over the bones of his shoulder. Peter's all smooth, pale lines, but Harry tongue found the faintest ridges of scars (so faint that they weren't apparent to the naked eye) down over the back of Peter's left shoulder, and he frowned slightly, puzzled at their absolute straightness, making a mental note to ask, later, what they were from. Peter's fingers slid through his hair - which was too short to do much of anything with but pet, really: a novel argument for ignoring his next appointment with his personal stylist, irregardless of the curls that inevitably formed whenever his hair gained any real length - caressing Harry in turn. Nothing in the world seemed to exist beyond the warm breath against his temple, gusting down over his ear, and the slow but steady undulation of hips, and it was enough and more than enough, for a while, just to ride the sensation, slow and sweet. Peter trembled - just a little, just enough for Harry to notice it - whenever Harry touched him, be it in the hollow below his ribs or the soft skin just above the hip, and he couldn't stand it, after awhile, it made him reach up and pull Peter down, urging their bodies together, Peter hard against his thigh, rubbing distractedly against him, and God, God/, they were both still wearing jeans, and that needed to change, that denim had/ to go.

Harry was moving almost before the thought had finished forming, teeth and lips roaming across Peter's throat, hands splayed across his back, a deliberate twist of the hips meant to evoke naked hunger, naked want and need, and he rolled, turning until Peter was beneath him again on the bed, head thrown back and body arcing up into him. "Can I - Peter, please - "

"God, Harry, /yes/!" Peter stretched out underneath him, body undulating gracefully, rumpled and pale and flushed, all pink and cream and bruised red mouth and dark, bright blue eyes that stared up into Harry's, glinting with hunger.

Harry sat back on his heels, shifting back until he was straddling Peter's thighs. The top button was fairly easy to unfasten, the tab of the zipper a little bit harder to get a hold on without pressing too hard, and Peter lifted away slightly from the bed, pushing into the gentle press of the flat of Harry's left hand as his right hand carefully eased the zipper down past the rigid length beneath it. He spread the jeans carefully apart, peeling them away, taking advantage of Peter's lifted hips to ease them down to his thighs, revealing soft blue flannel boxers beneath the denim. Harry ran his hands over that softness, feeling the outline of hard and straining flesh beneath, his focus all on the feeling, for the moment, that contrast of softness and hardness. Eventually, when a soft noise caught in the back of Peter's throat, Harry caught the waistband of the boxers in his fingertips and carefully, slowly, peeled them away, easing them and the jeans down the pale lines of Peter's thighs, over his knees, down his calves, and off over his already bare feet, tossing them aside without once turning his gaze away from Peter. It was like and yet indescribably better than unwrapping a gift. Peter was all relaxed sprawl and half-closed eyes, his breathing both slow and sharp. Harry bent to trace the jut of a prominent hipbone with his tongue, and Peter's right hand brushed gently against the back of his neck, just hard enough for him to feel it, before coming to rest there, cupping to the shape of the joint between his neck and the base of his skull, and Harry pressed against him, in answer, smiling into warm skin at the hollow of Peter's hip. When he let his mouth part until Peter could feel the shape of his teeth pressing against that skin, another noise caught in the back of Peter's throat, and Harry smiled, victoriously, and pushed himself up on both arms, the motion making Peter's hand fall away, and Peter was at once as pale as new cream and as flushed and red as a strawberry being dipped into cream, the dark curls of hair there still a little bit wispy, not as thick as they probably would be in another year or so, but he was already almost as big as Harry (who knew he was fairly good-sized), arched almost all the way up against the concave line of Peter's stomach, and Harry's breath caught almost painfully in his throat as he whispered, "God, Peter, you're beautiful!" and held his weight up on one hand so he could reach down and draw his fingers over that rigidly straining length.

Peter instantly caught his own breath, sharp and loud, making Harry grin like a loon, and he bent forward, placing a soft, endless kiss against Peter's stomach, his tongue pushing into his navel, gazing up and watching as Peter watched him, riveted. The noise Peter made was a thing of beauty, and Harry rewarded him with flickers of tongue, drawing glimmering wet patterns into his skin, across his stomach and down the twinned angular juts of his hipbones, the thought of chemical formulas (maybe equations of biochemistry) widening his smile until he nearly laughed, amused beyond words right up until the moment Peter's hands moved to settle firmly on Harry's hips, fingertips curling down over the edge of his waistband. "You're wearing too many clothes."

And somehow, Peter managed to roll him before the words could even sink in, hands still at the waistband of his jeans but sliding down to the button, the fly, eagerly pushing and pulling and lifting, until Harry's own jeans and boxers came away in a rush of almost blinding heat and movement. The moment when their bodies crashed together, nothing but skin on skin, rolled the eyes back in Harry's head and nearly made him faint, only the continued heat and friction as they kept moving together keeping him from blacking out, too wracked by continuing sensation to pass out. Peter's smaller body moved over his, then, rocking them together, his hands almost too tight where they gripped, one at Harry's left hip and the other at his right shoulder, and it came to Harry that Peter really didn't exactly know what he was doing, what they were doing, just what he was feeling, and so he took matters into his own hands, half rolling them over again until they were both on their sides, all tangled together, a knot of heat and limbs, and Harry could snake his right hand down between them, making a channel for them both, together, tight and sweet, and, as they rubbed up against each, Peter made an impossibly hot noise that made the skin tighten all over Harry's body. He knew that they couldn't possibly last long, but that didn't bother him very much. Harry's one coherent thought, as they raced towards orgasm, was that they were going to have all the time in the world to learn each other and learn how to make things last, afterwards, now that they'd finally stopped hiding from each other.

Later, after sensory overload and mutual combustion, explosion, when Harry finished falling back down to earth and landed in the bed, again, with Peter, sweat hot and slick all over their entwined bodies, Peter was looking at him, eyes dark and opaque, licking his lips and flushed and sated in a way that made his whole body want to twitch with need.

"Fuck."

"Yeah." The ghost of a smile curved up the corner of Peter's mouth, and he leaned down to touch Harry's slack hand, gathering up some of the wetness there and rolling it between his fingertips. Harry raised his head for him when Peter raised that hand, letting him trace his lips with that wetness, before snaking his tongue out and tasting it, lapping at Peter's fingertips and the corners of his mouth, tasting the mingled essence of himself and Peter, salty-bitter but not too strange, not too bad, something he was pretty sure he could get used to tasting. It seemed the most natural thing in the world, afterwards, to reach out a hand to Peter, threading his fingers through Peter's hair and giving a slight tug. Peter instantly leaned in, his still slightly curved lips meeting Harry's, and he kept on leaning in, deepening the kiss, until Harry found that taste in him, too, overlaying the inexplicable sweetness, as of caramel and chocolate, and marking Peter inside, just as Harry was marked.

Later, when they were talking and Harry had finally gotten a blushing Peter to admit that he might not have been quite as drunk as he'd seemed and that he might have been paying a bit more attention to MJ lately than he would have, otherwise, if he hadn't long since noticed that Harry seemed to bothered by (and maybe even a little jealous of) Peter's interest in her, Harry would feel an urge to kick himself over all the opportunities they'd managed to miss, as he also learned just how many times and in just how many ways Peter had already tried to get Harry's attention and show him how much he loved him and get him to tell Peter exactly what he felt for him. But he'd also feel inexpressible relief over the fact that he'd managed to wise up in time, before Peter could feel the need to try what he called his last-ditch effort to win Harry's attention and affection - by actually, actively behaving as though he were madly in love with MJ, all the way up to and including the possibility of dating her, if it would've proven necessary - because he'd be pretty damn sure that any such effort would've backfired badly, convincing him only that he could never have Peter, since Peter would've seemed, to him, to be so honestly madly in love with MJ. Afterwards, both a little shaken by how close they'd come to never finding each other, they'd celebrate by moving from the bed (after stripping off the soiled and rather damp duvet, so they'd still be able to sleep there, afterwards. Eventually) to the shower in the adjoining, private bathroom. A bath and two showers later, when they were finally exhausted enough to actually be and remain clean enough to retire for the night, they fell into Peter's bed, clinging to each other tightly as they drifted off to sleep, still slightly stunned by the mostly randomly chanced series of events that had finally succeeded in bringing them together and not entirely sure that something might not yet go wrong that would be able to tear them apart, again.

They decided, the next day, that this would be their secret, at least until they were old enough that Harry's father and Peter's aunt and uncle wouldn't be able to do anything, legally, to try to keep them apart. But that went out the window as soon as Harry returned Peter to his home, late Sunday evening. Aunt May and Uncle Ben no sooner got a good look at them than Uncle Ben started to laugh, triumphantly declaring that he'd been right all along and that Aunt May owed him a homemade chocolate caramel pie, and Aunt May burst into tears and ran to hug them both, fussing over them and making much of them for finally working things out. Afterwards, when May had stopped sniffling into her handkerchief and Ben had stopped laughing, they all sat down at the Parker kitchen table to have a family meeting about it. It warmed a place in Harry's heart that he hadn't known was cold, still, to essentially be accepted into the family, just like that, and, since he'd at least mostly managed to get over his panic, by then, he and Peter managed to present a pretty coherent case (starting with Norman Osborn and his uncertain temper, including the small minds and mean hearts of the other students, at school, and ending with the fact that they were already planning a serious coming-out - with Ben and May's blessings, of course - by moving into the city, together, after they'd graduated high school) for keeping their love a secret from everybody else, at least for a little while. In any case, Aunt May and Uncle Ben bought into it (May because she was clearly worried for the safety of her boys, Ben because he was clearly concerned about how Norman Osborn might react and what he might try to do about it), and they all agreed, in the end, that, as long as the boys were sure they could handle the strain of living far different lives in public and in private, then Peter should probably keep up the pretense of more than just friendly concern for MJ and Harry should probably keep taking different girls out to the school dances.

He and Peter decided, afterwards, that Harry would steadily cut back on the dating, using things like the SAT and ACT tests and college entrance essays and such as plausible excuses to avoid having to go to things like school dances (except for the inevitable, unavoidable proms, which Harry firmly declared they would go to together, as double-dates, with girls he'd find and bring in from outside the school just for the purpose of those two proms) altogether. The odds were good that his father wouldn't even notice (since, as Harry put it, giving up the dances and some of the casual dating was the kind of sacrifice that a conscientious student would do and so, of course, would be something that Norman would be able to talk himself around into having expected Harry to do at least a year earlier, so he'd be able to dismiss it as yet another sign of Harry's failure to live up to his expectations), and Harry had managed to arrange things so that his father and Peter were never quite within the vicinity of each other long enough for Norman to really notice Peter or try to give him any of his patented song-and-dance routines, so they were fairly sure they'd be safe. Even if someone on the Osborn house staff noticed anything different between the two of them, the odds were good that Norman Osborn would never be told about it, since Harry was much more personable than his father and very well-loved by the staff and Peter had long been considered an honorary member of the Osborn family and extremely good for Harry. As long as they were careful, they ought to be alright. Or at least so they decided, together. And Harry, in the meantime, quietly began to see about making arrangements so that the Parkers would be okay, financially, no matter what Norman Osborn might try to do, if he were to find out and take it into his head to try to ruin them, and to also see about putting aside some money for himself that his father would legally never be able to touch, so he would have a way to afford talking Peter into packing up and running, if it ever became necessary.

Harry had gotten good at "arranging" things for the Parkers, over the years. He was good with computers and he knew people who were wizards with them. And he knew that the Parkers could be too proud for their own good, when it came to things concerning money, as well as almost dangerously naive, sometimes, when it came to believing the best of people and also expecting a certain kind of behavior from people. He'd managed to "arrange" for them to find a very good lawyer (it hadn't been very hard to do. He'd bribed a couple of Ben's co-workers into going to the same lawyer and then recommending the man), when the notion had entered Ben's head (after another co-worker had suffered a particularly nasty accident at work and nearly been denied his health benefits on some flimsy excuse involving the amount of overtime he'd been working) that he and Aunt May should write up their wills, and, after using his computer skills to rig some games at the local stores (resulting in the Parkers winning, altogether, just over thirty-six thousand dollars and nine different shopping sprees in the space of about five months), he'd also managed to get them to frequent a bank where a man with a Midas touch, when it came to handling investments, playing the stock market, and essentially anything and everything that made money grow, had taken charge of their finances and Peter's college fund for them. All of that and more - including getting one of those computer wizards Harry knew to rig a national sweepstakes for a lifetime's supply (according to the photo company, which wasn't really enough film for the kind of photo enthusiast Peter had become, but was more than enough to make his love of photography something he could actually afford to indulge in) of free film from Kodak and a lump sum, the first of every month, to cover the current market price for developing that film (standard 4"x6" double prints) at a photography store, for Peter - had been done in the first year he'd known the Parkers (before they could've known him well enough to suspect that Harry might have had a hand in their sudden streak of good luck), and he'd continued to make sure they steadily, if irregularly, kept on winning minor contests and shopping sprees (to alleviate any suspicions they might've had, after they got to know him better).

It made Harry feel useful and good, to do things like that for people he cared about, but he had no doubts about his father's ability to ruin the Parkers, if the notion should ever occur to him, irregardless of all Harry's attempts to help them become more financially independent and even to build up a couple of nest eggs (not only for Peter's college, but for themselves, too, when Ben finally retired). So after he and Peter got together, he started keeping a much closer eye on them, just to be on the safe side, and weighing his options, regarding rigging a much larger contest or two or even perhaps the state lottery in their favor. Harry already had close to twenty million dollars squirreled away, in places Norman Osborn should never even be able to find it, much less touch it, from a steady stream of contests he'd been rigging (and the proceeds from selling off items he'd won but had no real use for) starting from the time he was ten years old (and, laid up because of a broken leg and staring down the prospect of an entire summer wasted indoors, had decided to seek out lessons in computer hacking from one of the computer prodigies at school. It had been surprisingly easy to bribe Jason into teaching him: all he'd had to do was dangle the prospect of access to his father's computers and the plans for some of OsCorp's pending patents for the latest technological gadgets, and the boy had jumped at the chance. Jason hadn't wanted to steal anything: he just wanted to know how to make some of those gadgets for himself, so he wouldn't have to shell out the thousands of dollars they would've otherwise cost him. And he'd thought it would be a worthy challenge to teach the mathematically challenged Harry Osborn how to hack without getting caught. Harry had surprised them both by having an almost virtuosic knack for hacking, despite his continued inability to actually understand the numbers and the science behind what he was doing, and they'd managed to become almost friends. Jason would be the first person he'd turn to, whenever he needed any help that could be gained through a computer, for years, afterwards). His father had billions to his paltry millions, though, and the Parkers were proud and stubborn, so he figured it would be better to have contingency plans. Lots of contingency plans.

So even though, by the time Peter turned sixteen, his school fund had just over a hundred thousand dollars in it already, since Harry was determined that scholarships and financial awards would end up covering ninety percent or more of the cost of Peter going to college, he got Peter sit down with him and finally choose which university in the city they were going to go to, after high school, so he and Harry could get started on their applications and Harry could get started on "arranging" things. Peter was more than smart enough to qualify for what amounted to a free ride: Harry was just going to make damned sure he got it, whether Peter believed he could or the muckamucks at the university in question (which, as it happened, turned out to be two schools, since Peter wanted into the joint undergraduate biochemistry/molecular biology/genetics program shared by Columbia University and Empire State University and was also extremely interested in both their joint biophysics and atomic, molecular, and optical physics programs, too) might've originally thought it would be more politic to give those awards away to someone with a lower IQ but better connections, socially, or out-of-state credentials, or whatever else could (and too often did) make awards like that go less to those who deserved them than to those who made the scholarship-givers look the best, or not. And even though the Parkers were fairly comfortable (in a lower-middle-class sort of fashion), Harry quietly started to increase the amount of money that the Parkers won, in those carefully rigged contests, even while using some of his funds to take over the electrical coopt that Ben Parker worked for, so he would be able to at least guarantee Ben's job until whenever the older man decided to retire. His caution soon paid off: by the time they started their senior year, the Parkers had nearly as much as Peter's school fund held in their own portfolio, and Harry had managed to get the far too greedy CEO of Ben Parker's company (who'd seemed to think that it made perfect sense to lay off or let go of all of the coopt's senior electricians within five years or less of reaching retirement age, so he could make the HR people hire replacements from India at half or less of the salary of the US workers and give himself a five million dollar bonus, for Christmas) fired before he could do anything stupid.

On the day when Ben Parker otherwise probably would've been given his pink slip from the company he'd been working for and loyal to for over thirty-five years, Harry got his business a lucrative contract with New York City, based on the coopt's prominently all US-citizen, all local resident (New York City and surrounding suburbs) workforce, in exchange for a very public firing of the coopt's CEO, and Ben Parker came home, slightly stunned, with a ten percent raise, a new and vastly improved company insurance policy, and a promise for one-time Christmas bonus of one thousand dollars for every year he'd given the company. Harry was so proud of himself that probably only Aunt May's tearful joy over the fact that they'd finally be able to pay off the mortgage on their home and buy a new car to replace the old Chevy Caprice that Ben had been driving for decades (and nursing along on its last legs for most of the past decade) kept Peter from noticing the self-satisfied smirk that kept worming its way onto Harry's face. He worried, a little, about them taking money out of the bank to make up the difference on the price of a new car, but they wanted to buy a new car outright, to avoid having to pay interest on a loan, and he could understand the logic of that, so he recruited Jason's help to rig another game that would win them ten years of free gas (technically, actually five thousand dollars a year in free gas) and grinned and shook his head while Peter teased Uncle Ben about insisting on getting a Saturn (because it was American made and had gotten pretty good reviews, too) instead of the Volvo that Aunt May wanted (because of its extremely good/ Consumer Reports/ reviews). When he pointed out that Ben was just displaying the same kind of loyalty that had won him his bonus and his company its big government contract, Uncle Ben clapped a warm hand on his shoulder, beamed at him, and made much out of him for understanding him reasoning. Peter laughed and wished them both luck using reasoning to overcome Aunt May's preference for the Volvo, and then slung a casual arm around Harry's waist and hugged him tight, for no reason, and Harry felt so happy that he understood, all over again, why people often spoke of being so happy that they could burst.

It helped that, by that time of year (early November), Peter's school fund already had over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars that it looked like he shouldn't really have to use for much of anything besides basic supplies and possibly rent and groceries, given the full scholarship he'd already been offered and accepted from Empire State University (four years worth of full-time tuition, with an optional fifth-year renewal for double- and triple-majors; either a free dormitory on campus or ten thousand dollars a school year - a thousand dollars a month, from August through May - for rent off campus; a fifteen meal per week voucher plan for the school year; and a thousand dollars a semester for books and supplies through ESU's bookstores or any of those belonging to its many affiliated campuses. And all Peter would have to do to keep it was take enough classes to qualify as a full-time student while maintaining a 3.0 grade point average, something that should be easy for Peter, given the double-major he was hankering after in biochemistry - which was practically a double-major in and of itself - and physics and the fact that his grade point average in school had never been lower than 4.0 and often had been higher, once he'd reached junior high and the weighed classes the school offered), the three extra science scholarships and awards he'd qualified for (two from Columbia University and one from their high school, Midtown High), and the dozen other renewable and one-shot grants, awards, and scholarships he'd been given from Midtown High, local businesses and society clubs, and other departments at ESU and CU (mathematics, Latin, French, journalism, and art) both. Peter was at once so incredibly happy and so stunned that he kept double-checking the letters of offer and of acceptance, and he made lists and lists and lists of all of the possible classes he might be able to take (based on what he could find out about when they'd been offered, over the previous years) and what combination of majors and minors the different possible schedules of classes could give him, trying to figure out how many things he could cram into four or five whole years of classes.

Harry wasn't nearly as ambitious as Peter, but he loved how happy and enthusiastic Peter was about planning for college. Peter insisted that they needed to try to take at least one class a semester together, even though they were going to be studying very different fields. Harry was planning on compromising between the business degree his father expected him to get and the art and literature he'd rather study by going after a double-major of his own, in business economics and the humanities. Since, with Peter's help, Harry had managed to test out of all of the math and science electives required for a basic degree, and he'd tested out above Peter in literature and all the languages they'd sat through AP testing for, he wasn't entirely sure how that was going to work, especially not since Peter had tested out of the vast majority of his required electives, too. But Peter was absolutely determined, and very few things actually managed to sway Peter Parker once he'd made up his mind about something, so Harry had finally just nodded and agreed that it sounded like a good idea to him and they should be able to work something out, obvious lack of overlap in their planned schedules or not. Besides, a part of him thought it was funny, in a way, that, even though Peter already had upwards of three-fourths of the credit requirements for seven minors (Latin, French, history, biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics) and thought that he should complete all seven since they believed, at both ESU and CU, in awarding minors even in programs that were related to an individual's field of major, no matter how much overlap might exist between the two, as long as the different programs retained separate names, and so would probably set the record for graduating with the most majors and minors ever held by a single student, they were going to have a hard time finding classes that they could take at the same time. There was a limit, in any given field, on how many classes one could test out of and how many credits one could get by testing out of certain courses, but given that Columbia University had so many joint programs with other universities, Peter (and Harry too, in certain fields) had been able to skip over and get credit for roughly twice as many classes as he normally would've been able to. Harry was proud of Peter, who would be starting his freshman year with a junior's credits and ending his first semester with four or more minors already completed, and Peter was so obviously ecstatic about the idea that he'd be able to actually take almost nothing but science courses that he'd actually forgotten to be embarrassed about the reasons for that freedom, so it would have seemed meanspirited to mope over the apparent lack of overlap in their intended fields of study.




TBC . . .