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In fact, Peter was so psyched about college and the classes he wanted to take that, when he heard that the biology department's class field trip might be a visit to Columbia University's Genetic Research Institute, he started gushing excitedly about it and wouldn't even let the all too likely possibility that they probably end up going somewhere a lot less high profile dissuade him from his enthusiasm for the idea. Harry decided to throw caution to the wind, for once, and just come out and ask if Peter wanted him to use his connections, to see if he could get that particular possible field trip approved. A few of the scientists and laboratory assistants who'd worked with his father back when Norman Osborn had been so incredibly fascinated with nanotechnology (about five years and three major OsCorp projects ago, counting the current one) had gone on to become combination professors and research scientists at Columbia University, and there were a couple of them who had reason to remember Harry fondly. Harry was fairly certain that he could make the field trip a reality with nothing more than a few simple phone calls, especially since his way of making sure that Peter had received that full scholarship had mostly involved convincing Peter to let Harry take Peter to Columbia University to meet and interview those same former lab techs and research assistants last January, when Peter had been writing a paper about Norman Osborn's research into nanotechnology. Peter had been a huge hit in something like half a dozen of those different but overlapping scientific departments, and biochemistry professor Dr. Curt Connors had only been half joking when he'd tried to convince Peter to become his lab assistant right then, and never mind the fact that Peter didn't even have a high school diploma yet. While Peter had been excitedly discussing things with Dr. Connors that Harry didn't even bother trying to follow, Harry had been quietly filling in Dr. Connors' colleagues about who Peter was and how Harry was helping him apply for scholarships for college since Peter wanted to get into the joint science programs at CU and ESU and his family couldn't really afford to send him to school without financial aid and they were all too proud to accept help from Harry, even though Harry would've done anything and everything to help Peter.

Peter Parker was obviously brilliant, he was extremely personable, and Harry Osborn made absolutely no secret of the fact that he thought the world of Peter and honestly hoped that, one day, when it came time for Harry to take the reins of OsCorp, Peter would agree to take on responsibility for overseeing the scientific research so that Harry could focus on the business and public relations end of running the company. Dr. Connors and his colleagues were very smart people and they could recognize talent and opportunity when it was staring them in the faces. A lot of Columbia University's reputation in the scientific community was based on the research and breakthroughs that they made or supervised, and their studies were made possible, in part, by the grants and donations that the university's research departments received from companies like OsCorp. Harry didn't have to say a single thing that even approached resembling a threat or a bribe. The facts spoke quite eloquently for themselves. If Columbia University wanted Peter and the added prestige and financial support that his brilliance could and would bring to its science division and research teams, then the school was going to have to make it possible for Peter to attend classes. If the scientists currently on those research teams wanted Peter to be able to join them - and by the time their little visit was over, Harry had no doubt that there wasn't a person at CU who'd met Peter who wasn't looking forward to seeing him enrolled in classes there - they would have to make sure that those in charge of handing out the scholarship offers knew that and acted on it accordingly. It was that simple. And they obviously understand that, because before the visit was over with, Dr. Connors had taken Harry aside and quietly remarked that Peter was quite possibly one of the most extraordinary young men he'd ever met and that he was so certain that Peter would be getting the scholarship that Harry should probably start hunting for a place with enough room for at least a small laboratory, if he was planning on sharing an apartment with Peter after they graduated high school.

Harry had smiled at the man and told him he had his eye on a couple of fairly good-sized places already, since Peter loved to develop his own pictures and would be needing a darkroom, too. The reassurance had earned Harry an approving smile and a warm hand on his shoulder, and Dr. Connors had, of course, turned out to be right, because the next day Harry had received word from a source of his in the university's dean's office that word had come down that a recently submitted application for one Peter Parker of Forest Hills, New York, was to be pulled and fast-tracked for immediate acceptance and a full scholarship offer, and before the week was over with he'd been sent photocopies of the signed paperwork. Peter himself didn't receive word until the end of the month, when the first round of letters were sent out to applicants, but he got an A+ on his paper and his physics teacher convinced him to submit it to some kind of state-wide (and then national, after he was picked as one of the winners for New York) student contest that Harry had never even heard of but which ended up gaining first a Peter a medal, a prize of five hundred dollars, and his name and picture in a couple of different local papers, and then a trophy, a prize of five thousand dollars, his name and picture in a nationally carried paper, and a whole slew of congratulatory phone calls and notes from the people he'd met at Columbia University (even Harry's father, who had never really shown any interest in Peter or seemed to find it particularly necessary to ever even properly meet him, had sent him a card, along with an elegantly framed copy of one of the nationally run newspaper articles - one with a picture of the crowd, after the awards ceremony, with Harry giving Peter a triumphant hug), so Peter had ended up having several reasons to thank Harry for the help, what with the visit to CU and the introductions and all, and he'd thanked him for all the ones he knew about. Harry was hoping that the experience might've lessened Peter's resistance to accepting what he thought of as the kind of help Harry could give him because of Harry's last name and the money his family had.

And Peter didn't disappoint him. He stared at Harry in wide-eyed shock for several long moments, mouth hanging slightly open, and then he practically tackled Harry in his haste to agree and to thank Harry for being willing to do something like that for him. Harry was so thrilled to have Peter agree that he got his cell out to call Dr. Connors and set the wheels in motion at once, before Peter's overdeveloped conscience could try to come up with any reasons for him to try to change his mind. It was a late Friday afternoon, so Dr. Connors was available and answered on the second ring. Even better, he was happy to hear from Harry, happier to help set things up so that the class could tour part of the campus in the morning (and maybe even sit in on a few basic underlevel courses) and then visit some of the safer, more public research labs in the afternoon, and wondered if Harry and Peter might want to catch a bite to eat at one of the campus cafeterias with Connors and some of his colleagues when the tour took a break for lunch - an idea that practically made Peter bounce with happy anticipation. Smiling, Harry agreed that sounded like a wonderful idea, and promised to call back to finalize their lunch plans when he found out what day the trip was going to be scheduled for, so Connors and his colleagues could work the lunch into their schedules. Peter all but tackled him when he got off the phone, and soon afterwards they were curled up together quite happily on Peter's narrow bed - Peter half sprawled across Harry, shoes kicked off and clothes slightly rumpled but otherwise still presentable, just in case Aunt May should come home early from her weekly visit with MJ's aunt, Anna Watson, in the row of houses just behind the one housing the Parkers and MJ and her dad (MJ's older sister, Gayle, having long since married and moved away). The door to Peter's bedroom was closed, of course, and his aunt and uncle always knocked, but Harry considered it better to be safe than sorry, and they always tried to stay presentable, in Peter's house - plotting ways they could get away from the rest of the class for their lunch with Dr. Connors and the others without their absence being noticed by their classmates or the chaperones for the trip.

They had a new biology teacher at Midtown High, and the man not only didn't like Harry, for some reason, but he made absolutely no attempt whatsoever to keep that dislike to himself. Harry didn't actually have a class with him, but Peter had an ecology course with him, and Peter, who hardly ever complained about anyone or anything at school, unless he was pressed into it, had, more than once, come away from his class scowling darkly and muttering about Mr. Huey Kwan's unreasonable attitude towards Harry. It was a pity the man wasn't more reasonable - they could've just enlisted his help with slipping away from the rest of the group by asking for permission for the lunch meeting, if only he didn't have such a grudge against Harry because of Harry's last name and all that it implied - but between the size of the group that would likely be going and the special dietary requirements of some of the vegetarians and vegans in their class, it was very likely that they would be split up and sent off to various different locations and diners on campus. As long as they weren't seen slipping away by themselves but instead made sure to leave quietly and shadow an adult, odds were that nobody would notice the adult they would be shadowing wouldn't actually be one of the chaperones for the trip. If all else failed and they were caught and questioned, then, Kwan or no Kwan, Harry could always pull rank and declare he and Peter had been invited to a private lunch with some of Norman Osborn's old researchers, even calling Dr. Connors for confirmation of this, if it became necessary. But he and Peter both hoped they'd be able to avoid that. As little attention as anyone ever really paid to them (unless they were either trying to pick on Peter or wheedle help with their homework out of him or else trying to get something out of Harry because of his last name, of course), though, they were soon fairly certain that they had a plan that would let them escape from the rest of the group unnoticed, and Peter was so happy that the conversation soon drifted off into a nice long exchange of thoughts and hopes about how it would be, once they were out of high school and living together.

Harry was so pleased with himself and on such an endorphin high from the long, loving kisses they'd been exchanging in between their plans about the future that, when he finally went home that night, he didn't notice his father was up and waiting for him until he'd crossed almost halfway to the stairs and been called out after twice. Norman's sudden interest in his son was understandable, given that Harry was, after all, going to graduate high school this year. The same sudden interest that Norman evidenced towards Peter, though, was more than a little unnerving, even if the conclusion he seemed to have leapt to - that Harry was not only using Peter as a resource to help himself through school but was also deliberately cultivating Peter as a potential future asset for OsCorp - was the assumption he and Peter had long since decided they would try to steer Norman towards, should he ever surface from any of his projects long enough to take any real notice of Peter. Something - a sharply predatory glint, a twinkling hint of ambition lurking behind the bright blue that was nothing/, nothing at /all/, like the color of Peter's cornflower blue eyes - lurking at the back of his father's eyes when he spoke Peter's name unnerved Harry to the point where he finally became defensive enough to warn his father off of Peter, claiming him as his friend and not some tool to be used by Norman Osborn. Norman had simply smirked in a sort of /we'll see about that manner that made the blood run cold in Harry's veins and nearly made him frantic enough to try and see if he could smash that smirk off of his father's face with his doubled fist. He had to bite down behind his lower lip, hard enough to nearly gag himself on the sickly sweet coppery taste of his own blood, to keep from simply screaming that Peter was his and Norman could go fuck himself because Harry would kill him, would not hesitate to fetch the gun he'd been given for his own sweet sixteen, and blow his father's fucking head off, if Norman even so much as thought about trying to touch Peter.

There was something beyond unnerving about the fact that Peter actually looked enough like Norman Osborn (given the man's blue eyes and sharply angular features and brown hair that was so much straighter and lighter than Harry's, not to mention his thin mouth and blade-like, prominent nose and thin, wiry build) that he could have passed for Harry's brother, truly, and so, when Harry's father merely remarked that he looked forward to properly meeting this unofficially adopted little "brother" of Harry's someday, Harry had to force himself to bite down /hard/, until the blood flooded so fast that it choked him and kept him from saying anything stupid. Despite Harry's sullenly uncooperative silence, though, his father's sudden interest in Peter remained unabated, and Norman soon began trying to engineer opportunities to meet Peter. Harry was so busy coming up with ways for them to dodge his father that it was almost a surprise, when the day of the field trip finally rolled around. His father insisted on a "family" breakfast that made him too late to get to school in time to catch the bus for the field trip, so that he had to call ahead to inform the teachers that he was being driven to the campus, but Norman cut things a little too fine, and he was able to get Peter and himself away from the man fairly quickly, afterwards, since Mr. Kwan was already calling for the students to get into groups for the tour. The first two-thirds or so of the tour went off without a hitch - they even managed to sneak away for a thoroughly enjoyable lunch with Dr. Connors and a dozen other research professors and student assistants - but the last research lab of the day was a bioengineering/genetics laboratory with spiders, and for some reason Eugene "Flash" Thompson and his thugs thought it would be fun to pick on Peter "Puny" Parker (as Flash insisted on calling him), and things started going downhill from there. Peter had permission to take pictures of the campus and research labs for the school paper, and asking for some pictures with MJ in them fit as part of the cover they'd agreed on, earlier, to keep anyone from suspecting just who Peter really loved, but being in a relationship with Harry had given Peter a lot more confidence in himself, and girls like MJ and Liz Allan had begun to show signs of noticing Peter as something more than just the class scapegoat lately, which in turn had made Flash nastier than normal.

When Mr. Kwan finally stepped in to put an end to the bullying - by trying to blame it all on Harry for talking all throughout the presentation, of course - and the graduate student research assistant who'd been acting as their tour guide interrupted to point out that, as far as she could tell, Harry had just been trying to protect Peter and his camera from Flash and the other jocks and trying to help an increasingly uncomfortable looking MJ get away from Flash long enough to actually look at the spiders, the resultant argument and the slap the tour guide gave Huey Kwan when he accused her of favoritism towards Harry because of Harry's last name (the young woman hadn't known who Harry was and hadn't been impressed when she'd found out, and was both honest and angry enough to tell Kwan quite firmly that his bias against Harry because of his last name was a form of discriminatory harassment that would've gotten him hauled up before the Dean and fired for opening up the college to being sued, if he worked for the university instead of for a local high school) kept him away from Peter for half an hour. Peter was a little paler and quieter than normal, but Harry thought it was just because Peter hated it so much when people fought. It wasn't until the tour was over with and the Rolls showed up to pick Harry up (minus his father in the back seat, thankfully!) that Harry began to suspect that something might be wrong. He went to take Peter's right hand (once they were safely in the car and on their way to Peter's home), and Peter hissed and flinched away from him like a man in pain, revealing a nasty looking swollen place between his thumb and forefinger where he admitted to having been bitten by something in the last lab. Harry wanted to take him to the hospital at once, but Peter insisted that he was okay - that if the bite had really been poisonous, he would've collapsed and gone into convulsions right after being bitten - and they ended up pulling over so that the driver could hunt out the EpiPen in the first aid kit in the glove compartment so that Harry could give Peter a shot, since Peter insisted he was just having a mild allergic reaction.

By the time they got to Peter's home, Peter was not only pale but lightheaded and shaky enough to be unsteady on his feet. Harry threw caution to the wind and made Peter lean on him to the point where he was practically carrying him, in order to get him up the front porch steps and inside the house, and he was shouting for Aunt May and Uncle Ben as soon he got Peter inside. Peter kept trying to insist that he was alright, that he just needed to lie down for a while, that he neither needed nor wanted any doctors, but he couldn't stay on his feet and he felt like he was burning up, and, when the thermometer Aunt May got into his mouth beeped off at one hundred and three point five degrees, Harry started to panic while Uncle Ben bolted for the bath and the ice box. It took three attempts at an explanation before the two elder Parkers finally made Harry understand that Peter's fever was too high and that they had to get it down before they could do anything else, but as soon as he understood Harry sent the driver off to fetch a couple bags of ice from the nearest store while he bent to pick up Peter bodily so he could carry him upstairs to the full bathroom (the one with an actual tub). There wasn't enough ice in the refrigerator to make even close to a solid layer, but the water was cold enough that it made Peter yelp in shock and rouse enough to demand (fairly coherently) to know what was happening, after Harry had gotten him out of his clothes and into the water. Harry explained as best he could and, when Aunt May called up the stairs that he should keep Peter awake and talking, if he could, Harry insisted that Peter tell him everything about what he'd missed seeing, in that last lab, while Kwan and their tour guide had been fighting. He was shaking Peter's shoulders, trying to get him to stay awake, when the driver (a man in his mid-forties named John Tyers, though Harry wouldn't remember that until later) came running up the stairs with four bags of ice in his arms. The addition of the ice made Peter yell, and brought the water level up close to the rim of the bathtub, once John had carried up the other six bags he'd also bought, but Peter's forehead was still hot to the touch and he still kept trying to drift off, either to sleep or unconsciousness.

Harry was on the verge of having a full blown panic attack when he finally noticed that the previously hugely swollen, angry red knot of flesh around the bite on Peter's hand was finally fading to a color more like the rest of Peter's pale skin, the swelling receding until the nodule was less than half the size it had been when Harry first laid eyes on it. The flesh there was still oddly hard and hot to the touch, but Peter's forehead was less obviously warm, his heartbeat was no longer quick and erratic, and his breathing pattern had relaxed to the point where it was very like that when he slept. When Harry called out for the thermometer, Peter's fever had gone down to a hundred and two, and, when he checked again, ten minutes later, had dropped almost to one hundred. Aunt May called through the door to tell him to keep Peter in the tub until his fever was down to at least a hundred degrees, so he had to wait another fifteen minutes before he could start manhandling Peter out of the tub, but Harry was so incredibly relieved that the crisis had passed that, when Peter roused enough (while Harry was awkwardly trying to get him into the robe and sleep pants that Uncle Ben had fetched from Peter's room) to mutter, again, that he was fine, just tired, and that he didn't need any doctors, Harry agreed to wait and see how Peter felt, after a nap, before he hauled him off to the hospital emergency room. He carried Peter to his bedroom, tucked him into bed, planted himself in the chair at Peter's computer station, and resolved to wait and see what (if anything) happened. He was dozing in the chair when Aunt May came up with a tray of food - meatloaf, a baked potato, green beans, and biscuits - and insisted that he needed to eat something. Surprised to find himself hungry, Harry cleaned his plate and then woke Peter up long enough to take his temperature (which was holding steady at a hundred degrees) again and ask him if he felt good enough to eat anything (he didn't, but he drank a huge class of ice water and almost an entire carton of orange juice before he finally stopped complaining of thirst and drifted back off to sleep).

When the phone rang a few hours later and a sardonic sounding Norman Osborn asked if his son was intending on coming home for the evening at all, Uncle Ben (who had only been at home when they'd arrived that afternoon because he'd been schedule a half a day off, so he could go in for his yearly physical) quietly and politely made excuses for Harry while Aunt May argued with him until he agreed to go home and sleep, promising to call him if Peter should get worse in the night. Harry agreed, however begrudgingly, but made sure to get up early enough to show up at Peter's house early (bright and early, actually, at barely seven o'clock) the next morning, so he could check on Peter before school. Peter was still asleep, still running a slight fever, and, when Harry woke him up to ask how he was doing, drank most of a gallon of milk before he drifted off to sleep again. "Well, at least we know he isn't going to get dehydrated," Aunt May sighed from the doorway. "You go ahead to school, Harry. I have your cell phone number. If anything should happen, you'll be the first person I call, after Ben." He didn't really want to go, but he wasn't sure if he'd be able to get away with not showing up at school and he really didn't want to call any more attention to either himself or Peter, after yesterday, so he finally sighed, kissed Peter's still noticeably warm forehead, gathered up his backpack, and headed for the door. Peter was awake and eating homemade chicken soup when he called, during lunch, and aware enough to talk to him (sort of coherently ) for a few minutes, before Aunt May took the phone back so that Peter couldn't drop it into his soup bowl. Harry was reassured enough to actually start paying a bit of attention in class, though he was shocked when MJ actually approached him, during the break between fifth and sixth period, to ask him if he knew where Peter was. She kept fiddling with her three quarter length sleeves, eyes darting everywhere but Harry's face, and when he took hold of her right arm and turned it over, lifting her sleeve a little so that he could see the vaguely hand-shaped bruise up above her elbow, he was sad but somehow unsurprised to notice that the ugly mark was bigger than his own hand, closer to the size of her surprisingly burly (for a college professor and would-be writer) father's hand - or Flash Thompson's.

When Harry got to Peter's house after school, Peter was still running a fever but he was aware enough to listen to him when he explained about MJ's bruise and the way she'd burst into tears and run from him, when he pulled the sleeve back away to expose the wound. Peter noted, quietly, that he'd been trying to think of a way to ask Harry to help him make sure MJ got out of that home safely, after graduation, and, with barely a pause (since he'd been thinking about it for the past few hours), Harry replied that he thought he knew how to make sure she got out, Flash or no Flash. With her red hair and blue-green eyes and milky pale skin (surprisingly free of freckles, aside from perhaps a few scattered across her slightly upturned nose, during the summer), Peter's angel was striking enough to make it as a model, given the right kind of support and a couple of good gigs, and she could act and sing as least as well as the dozen or so teenaged starlets and pop singers as Harry could think of off the top of his head. A good friend of a close acquaintance of Harry's was opening an art gallery in the city in April, and for a nearly two weeks - ever since Harry had "arranged" for said close acquaintance and friend to stop by the Osborn mansion for a visit while Peter had been in the midst of sorting his latest pictures into portfolios - had been trying to convince Peter to agree to let them include some of Peter's pictures in the showing they had planned for the grand opening. MJ loved getting her picture taken and had long ago given Peter to take as many pictures of her at home or around home as he wanted to, so he had several stunning photos of the redhead. If Peter agreed to the showing and included pictures of MJ in his collection for the showing, Harry was sure he could get MJ noticed by an agent who take care of her and see to it that she became a well-paid professional model. All Peter had to do was agree to the showing - which he had stubbornly been refusing to do, despite both Harry's cajoling and the gallery owner's (honestly unprovoked by Harry) insistent attempts to convince him otherwise - and Harry and his connections could take care of the rest.

Peter grumbled irritably about being blackmailed, but finally agreed. He grumbled even more when Harry refused to help him start sorting through pictures right then, but he'd eaten a surprising amount of crackers and homemade soup and gone through a jug and a half of some kind of mixed (cranberry and apple and cranberry and grape) juice, and his eyes kept drifting shut on him, so Harry tucked him back into bed, brushed kisses against his temples, and let him go back to sleep. When he was sure Peter was asleep again, he went out into the hall (though he kept Peter's bedroom door cracked, so he could still see him) and gave the gallery owner (a bright and energetic twenty-two-year-old by the name of Kathy Novik) a call, to let her know that Peter had agreed to the showing. Fifteen minutes later (and still feeling half deaf in his right ear, given the volume of the young woman's obviously thrilled shriek of joy), he gathered up the dirty dishes and carried them downstairs, so he'd have a reason to strike up a conversation with Aunt May and let her know that Peter had agreed to the showing. Almost as soon as he brought the subject up, she asked if Peter would be including pictures of Mary Jane in his collection, given that there was sure to be a large crowd of local well-to-do individuals and celebrities present. They ended up having a long conversation about MJ's family, Flash Thompson's father (who, according to Aunt May, was an even nastier drunk that MJ's father), and Anna Watson's fear that MJ would either marry Flash Thompson to get away from her father (and so end up in a short, miserable, and possibly abusive marriage, like MJ's only, older sister, Gayle, had done with her high school sweetheart, Timmy Byrnes) or else that she would try to run away to the city after her graduation, would have to move back home when she eventually found out that she wasn't able to afford living there, and would end up getting put in the hospital some day soon afterwards because of her father's violent temper. The Parkers were all increasingly worried about MJ's safety, but there was little they could do to help her, and Aunt May kissed Harry's cheeks several times for helping Peter find a way to help. "Mary Jane has always wanted to be either a professional model or a star on Broadway," Aunt May declared, beaming as she gave Harry yet another hug. "She's always been the loveliest girl! Thank you so much for doing this for her and for Peter. You're a good boy, Harry Osborn."

Harry wasn't too sure about how good he really was, but he let Aunt May convince him to stay for supper, and, even though he was still running a slight fever and groggy enough to lean on Harry for support quite willingly as he came down the stairs, Peter was feeling good enough to join them, and that made Harry so happy that he forgot to blush, when Aunt May praised him to Uncle Ben for finally convincing Peter to agree to the showing, so that they could hopefully help kick-start a professional modeling career for Mary Jane. Peter insisted (in between larger than normal mouthfuls of roast and mashed potatoes with gravy and green beans and what looked like jaw-cracking yawns) that his pictures really weren't good enough to justify all the fuss, but he wanted to help MJ and Harry wanted him to agree to the showing, and so he couldn't, in good conscience, not do it. All three of them insisted that Peter was much better than he gave himself credit for - with Uncle Ben going so far as to declare (rightfully so, in Harry's opinion) that Peter was good enough that he could've made a living as a professional photographer, if he weren't so keen on becoming a scientist, instead - which made Peter laugh, shake his head, and throw up his hands in surrender. They were in the middle of dessert (some kind of homemade cake with apple chunks and raisins) when the phone rang and Norman Osborn startled them all by inquiring as to Peter's health and then politely engaging in a conversation with Aunt May for the better part of an hour about various (mostly trivial) things while the boys finished their cake and Harry got a bleary-eyed and still warmer than normal to the touch Peter back upstairs to his room and into his desk chair while Harry changed the linens (a task he'd learned from Peter) so he could get Peter safely tucked back into bed again without having to worry about the possibility (however remote, given that Peter had definitely been bitten by something during their field trip) of germs lingering on the sheets. Aunt May's conversation with Norman was just winding down as he made his way back downstairs, and he took the phone long enough to assure his father that he would leave for home as soon as he'd said his goodbyes. Fifteen minutes later, he was on his way home, where he would be unutterably relieved to discover his father had been called away, due to some sort of brouhaha at his laboratory. And Harry's relief at his absence was so huge it was nearly tangible.

The next morning, he showed up at Peter's, hoping to find him better, and found himself blinking, reaching dazedly to pinch himself, to make sure he wasn't still asleep, as Peter came thundering down the stairs, turning somehow so that he ran halfway up the far wall at the edge of the stairwell, there in the turn where the stairs bent themselves up over the hallway closet, before using the flat surface to vault himself up over the edge and onto the floor, his pale face flushed with health and good humor, blue eyes laughing up at Harry. He started to ask a question, didn't get any further than the first word, a shocked, "What - ?" before Peter leaned in, hands tangling in his shirt, and pulled him down to him, kissing him until he was so breathless that he didn't notice that the lips pressing to his or the hands tangling in his clothing were still warmer than normal, as if from fever.

"I'm feeling much better today! Starving, but better! Come on, come eat breakfast with us, I talked Aunt May into making French toast and she's made bacon and sausage to go with it! We have time - school won't start still for over another hour - and we even have powdered sugar if you're going to be weird about the syrup being hot like you were the last time! Come sit down and eat with us!" Peter was practically bouncing in place as he extending the half invitation, half order, and his enthusiasm was contagious. Harry grinned back, nodded, slung his backpack up over the edge of the bannister where it would be out of the way but too visible to miss when they finally left, and followed Peter into the kitchen, where he proceeded to eat far more food than he normally would have and yet still didn't even begin to match the amount of food that Peter - who ate so much and so ravenously that Aunt May told him twice, only half jokingly, that he could slow down enough to breathe between bites if he wanted to, since neither one of them had any intention about taking his plate away - managed to put away. Peter did eventually slow down (a little), but only to chatter (in between huge gulps of milk and bites of crisp bacon) about how the kitchen needed painting and Harry could even pick out the color, if he wanted, if only he'd agree to help Peter do the actual painting, since Uncle Ben was so busy at work. Harry just grinned and nodded. He was so busy being happy that Peter felt better that he just didn't notice Peter wasn't wearing his glasses. Or he noticed, but he didn't think anything of it. Part of Harry's Christmas present had been Peter acquiescing to accepting and even wearing contacts and, though he hadn't worn them yet to school, in the back of his mind a half-formed thought assumed that the lack of glasses was due to contacts, an unspoken thank you for all of Harry's help during Peter's illness.

Like an ass, Harry just assumed. He didn't think to ask. And so when Peter pulled a Neo on MJ during lunch and managed to catch not only her but every single item on her tray without so much as spilling a drop or her drink, all Harry could do was stand over by the far doors and gape like an idiot. He was still standing there and gaping like a proverbial fish out of water when something white flew out from Peter's right hand (or was it the wrist? He couldn't properly tell and by the time he'd recovered enough to try to take a closer look, the door was shutting behind Peter's fleeing back), snagged a lunch tray, and threw it and its contents in a rather spectacular mess all over Flash Thompson's head and back. Instincts kicked in and propelled him after Peter just a few moments too late to stop Flash from charging furiously after Peter, where the shock of watching Peter pull an acrobatic Neo on Flash instantly sent him back into gaping dumbly and imitating a fish, a shocked, "Which one?" the only answer he could function enough to string together when MJ tried to demand that he do something to help, as Peter performed ever more and more bizarrely /Matrix/-like moves to avoid Flash's fists. Not until the fight was over and one of Flash's cronies declared, with a ugly twisting sneer, that Peter really was a freak and a look of pain and panic settled over Peter's face did Harry manage to snap out of it - once again moments too late to be able to stop what was already happening, as Peter turned and ran for the doors of the school as if the hounds of hell were on his heels. And despite all of that, Harry was certain that he really should have been able to catch up to and even overtake Peter. His legs were longer and he was in better shape than Peter. But somehow, no matter how hard he pushed himself, he couldn't get any closer than half a dozen steps behind. And calling out after Peter had no effect, no matter how many times he shouted his name. But he couldn't just let him go. Something was clearly wrong - something that seemed very likely to be serious - and he was determined that he wouldn't leave Peter to face it alone, no matter what it was.

So Harry did the only thing he could think to do and kept chasing after him and calling his name until finally Peter ducked down a dead-end alley and couldn't run any further. And, once Peter had stopped trying to hyperventilate and Harry had then kissed him until Peter finally stopped alternating between trying to call himself a freak and tearfully stammering about not knowing what was happening to him and being afraid that it would somehow make Harry think he was a freak, too, they put their heads together and started trying to figure out just what had happened and why. Harry surprised himself by putting the pieces together and realizing that Peter must have been bitten by that fifteenth genetically engineered and enhanced super spider - the one MJ had noticed wasn't in the combination cage and display case, with the other spiders, in that last lab, on their tour of Columbia University's research facilities and science departments - and managed to keep Peter from having a full-fledged panic attack over the notion that the bite must have somehow injected him with a retrovirus that had overwritten part of his DNA with some of the genetically engineered spider's unique DNA by reassuring him that, first of all, he would love Peter even if he started sprouting extra arms and legs and, second of all, Dr. Connors or someone involved with the project would doubtlessly be able to do something to help Peter if the changes to his body and genetic makeup turned out to have done something harmful to Peter, though Harry hardly thought that perfect vision and a suddenly extremely fit and flexible body with unbelievably quick reflexes were things that could be considered detrimental. Peter started picking at his wrist at that point and muttering about spider silk, and Harry cut off what he could tell was another burgeoning panic attack by taking hold of said wrist, raising it to his lips, and kissing the flesh there thoroughly. Peter surprised him by moaning and nearly falling in a heap at his feet - apparently, on top of everything else, the faintly scarred-looking skin just above the wrist had become an extra sensitive erogenous zone - after which he burst into tears and hugged Harry hard enough that he literally couldn't breathe, and that finally seemed to do the trick. Peter stopped trying to panic and settled down enough to suggest "testing" his new abilities. Eager to keep that good mood intact, Harry agreed that this sounded like a fine idea to him.

Five hours later - after watching Peter climb straight up a wall and then hitching a ride up said wall by clinging awkwardly to Peter's back and waist; laughing himself silly watching Peter trying to figure out how to shoot and then aim the webbing that shot out from just above both of his wrists; shrieking like a girl when Peter swung them across their first building, misjudged, accidentally dumped Harry off onto another roof and then slammed awkwardly into a billboard across the way; screaming himself hoarse when he thought Peter was about to be run over by a semi only to find him clinging by his fingertips to the lamppost and peering fearfully up at Harry on the roof above him once the truck had passed; convincing Peter to call home so that Aunt May and Uncle Ben wouldn't worry (it turned out that no one had called about what had happened at school and, at Peter's panicked look, Harry got on the line and spun a quick story about Flash Thompson picking a fight with Peter and Harry taking Peter out of school afterwards because Peter was feeling sick again) and then reclaiming his cell phone so he could make arrangements to cover their absence from school, since he knew that no one was going to report the fight, given the way it had ended, and Peter's recent illness would give them a plausible excuse for leaving the school, especially once he got Dr. Williams (his personal physician and a friend of a friend, someone who would be willing to help without asking any awkward questions) to write out and fax over notes to the school's office to excuse them both; and then getting the ride of his life after Peter had finally figured out how to control the arc of his swing enough to keep from repeating that (thankfully only embarrassing and not damaging) collision with the billboard and insisted on taking Harry with him on an aerial trip that took them all the way out to the outskirts of the city proper - Harry was beginning to think he'd helped created a monster, between Peter's tendency to grin manically at everything and the ever more daring and acrobatic swings he was insisting on taking between the buildings and billboards and occasional trees. He looked so genuinely happy, though, that Harry couldn't help but smile back, no matter how maniacal Peter's grin got.

Peter started to calm down after awhile longer, though, and around six o'clock they found themselves sitting down on a rooftop garden, talking about what to do next. Peter didn't want to tell Aunt May and Uncle Ben about what had happened to him until he was absolutely sure that the spider bite wasn't going to hurt him and he had enough control over his new abilities to be able to prove to them that he wouldn't come to any harm by using them, either. That sounded like a good idea to Harry, given Aunt May's ability to worry, so he volunteered to get Peter access to a lab and find someone qualified to run some basic tests and full-body scans (so they'd be able to chart the extent of the changes to Peter's body) and able to keep quiet about any abnormalities that might show up because of the bite. He tried to get Peter to agree to let him go to Dr. Connors for help, but Peter didn't want to get the scientists and assistants in charge of creating the spider that had bitten him (and then being so careless with it as to let it loose so that it could bite him) in any trouble and, since he really didn't want anyone other than Harry and eventually maybe Aunt May and Uncle Ben to know about what had happened to him and how it had changed him, he was extremely leery of presenting those researchers with the temptation to treat him like a sort of human guinea pig, so Harry had to reluctantly agree that they would only go to Dr. Connors if it turned out that the bite was definitely doing something harmful to Peter (since, if that were the case, Peter didn't want anybody else to be in danger of being bitten) or they ended up absolutely needing access to research and information that had allowed that spider to be brought into being in the first place. Harry got him to agree that, even though he really wanted to test the limits of his new abilities as much as possible, Peter wouldn't try to do anything (unless it was an actual emergency) unless Harry was there to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn't accidentally hurt himself, which mollified him enough that he went ahead and sat down to make some phone calls then and there, to see what he could go ahead and set into motion, regarding those tests.

When Harry got off the phone, they decided that they'd explain away Peter's ability to avoid getting creamed by Flash by spreading some rumors that Harry (who actually was fairly proficient at a couple different styles of martial arts) had been teaching Peter a bit of judo so he'd be able to protect himself adequately in a fight. It had been nearly two months since anyone at school had tried to physically pick on Peter, so using some recent instruction in judo as a cover story should make sense, since beginners often had a hard time gauging just how much force it was necessary to use against an opponent. Plus, the story had the added benefit of being at least partially true, since Harry actually had taught Peter some basics of self-defense. Harry tried to show Peter a couple of moves that could, if necessary, at least kind of account for some of the actions he'd taken during the fight, but they got tangled up together when Harry moved to correct one of Peter's forms and Harry, overbalanced, accidentally crashed into Peter and made them fall over, with Peter underneath him. The shirt Peter was wearing rode up over the waistband of his jeans, and Harry was shocked to see sharply defined bands of rippling muscles on Peter's once slightly concave abdomen. One discovery led to another and Harry soon had Peter stripped down to just his boxers. But when he made as if to touch him, Peter flinched violently and shied away, insisting that they didn't know if the mechanism responsible for apparently altering Peter's DNA and, thus, his body was something that could be passed on or not and that he didn't want to take any chances with something that was probably a retrovirus and might be communicable. Harry spent most of the next hour arguing with him and mostly getting nowhere before finally, with a dark scowl, he snapped that if Peter was that concerned then they would play it safe until after Peter had been tested, but that if it turned out that it was communicable, then Peter would just have to get used to the idea of sharing his new abilities with Harry, because Harry would be damned if he'd give up on any part of their relationship just because of some stupid spider bite.

Peter's eyes were suspiciously bright as Harry helped him back into his clothes, but Harry managed to bite his tongue to keep from launching into yet another lecture about Peter's lack of self-confidence, and they stood together for several minutes after that, arms wrapped around each other and holding on hard. By the time they broke away from each other, the sun was starting to show signs of thinking about setting, and Peter had decided to distract himself from his worries by remembering that the kitchen needed painting and Harry had promised to help paint it if he were allowed to pick the color of paint they would use. Peter looked a little bit ragged around the edges by then, so Harry let him have his distraction and even joined in by starting a friendly debate about what color would look best in the kitchen. Peter wanted blue (blue was his favorite color and he always seemed to want things in some shade or another of blue) and Harry wanted either a nice pale, cheery, lemony yellow, or else a vibrant shade of grass green. On the way to an actual store where they could get paint, they agreed on a darker, calmer green as a compromise (and Harry very determinedly avoiding smirking to give away the fact that he'd wanted a cooler, darker shade of green all along), and Harry talked Peter into letting him get a taxi when they'd gotten the paint, since he really didn't want to risk somehow losing or spilling a bucket of paint all over the roof or down the side of some building. They actually made it home to Peter's at a fairly decent hour, and Aunt May had kept dinner warm for them in the oven. Over their late supper, they started their rumor campaign by telling Aunt May and Uncle Ben about Peter's fight with Flash Thompson and stressing that Harry had gotten Peter out of that school because Peter had been feeling woozy and accidentally hit Flash harder than he meant to and then gotten upset and sick to his stomach over that, too. While Aunt May fussed about Flash Thompson's awful father and the way that his horrible habits were ruining his son, Ben managed to be supportive of Peter while reiterating the fact that violence did nothing but breed even more violence. They both thanked Harry for taking care of Peter and, after promising again to help Harry paint the kitchen Friday after school, Harry traded a meaningful look with Peter and then headed home, so that he could start following up on the plans he'd made and what he'd set in motion earlier, regarding both their alibi for the day and the tests that Peter wanted run on himself.

The next few weeks went be very quickly. The lab tests had top priority, of course, but since Harry's father was hardly ever home - something was going on with his project, something that required him to be at the lab constantly - Peter practically lived at the mansion for days at a stretch, tucked away in rooms that were hardly ever used, in one of the exercise rooms, or in the pool, letting Harry help test his new reflexes, his aim, and, in general, just seeing what he could do and how quickly he could respond even when Harry was doing his level best to distract him. The results of more scientific tests came back to them in fits and starts, and most of the news was good. Whatever was responsible for changing Peter had integrated itself so completely with his DNA and his body that it was now literally a part of him, with no trace of it remaining unbonded to migrate to another host. Cursory examination of his blood showed fairly typical O+ that only showed its strangeness if one realized Peter had been born with AB+ blood or looked at the hemoglobin closely enough to realize that a small percentage of its hemoglobin more properly resembled the heme of hemolymph at the molecular level. His DNA looked fairly normal unless one were familiar enough with the human genome to recognize that it had forty-eight instead of forty-six chromosomes and that the extra base pair wasn't a mutation caused by a duplication of one of the normal human chromosomes but was, instead, a neatly packaged set of nucleotide sequences that simply did not occur naturally in humans. One had to know what one was looking at to see it, though, so Peter would probably be safe enough, as long as no one happened to run any tests that would reveal certain . . . less than normal facets of his physiology. Peter had also developed doubled- and tripled-up structures of something that was apparently less brittle than bone but firmer and stronger than cartilage in place of some of his bones, entire extra layers of muscles (with connecting tissues) that simply should not have been there, and what looked like a rib-like shield of quite cartilage and not quite bone from the top of his pelvis up around his spine and over his ribs, fusing into a second layer of protection over his actual ribs.

Harry was frankly amazed at how solid and yet compact Peter's new body was. The most amazing thing, in Harry's opinion, was that Peter wasn't all that much bigger than he had been before, though it certainly seemed like he should have been. He was just - a trifle bigger all over and a lot more solid than he had been, with lean, wiry muscles that wouldn't have looked all that out of place on a highly trained, professional dancer, gymnast, or martial artist . . . at least as long as one didn't look closely enough to notice muscle definition in places and directional groupings where humans didn't generally have any. He weighed a bit more than he had, and he certainly ate a lot more than he ever had, but his metabolism burned through it all so quickly that he basically stayed right around the same size he always had been. He just filled his clothes out a lot more and in more interesting ways than he ever had - a fact that Harry appreciated, once he got used to the idea of Peter having so many new muscles and being so much stronger, though Peter was even shyer of his body than he had been before, not to mention worried about accidentally hurting Harry with those new muscles. It took a lot of patient coaxing for Harry to get Peter not just used to but comfortable enough with his new abilities and strength that Peter stopped worrying about somehow accidentally hurting Harry, but it was more than worth the time and effort to get Peter to embrace the new him and to stop worrying so much about it all. Peter was so much happier and more confident and at ease with himself, by the time Harry was through convincing him, that he finally started coming out of his shell more in public - even at school. He made more friends at Midtown High, in those last two and a half months of classes, than he had in his entire school career. Flash Thompson and his cronies still didn't like him and muttered about him mutinously, but since he wasn't so "puny" anymore and a lot of the other popular kids (especially ones who were friends with MJ rather than Flash) had taken a collective shine to him, there wasn't a whole lot that they could to do to Peter except badmouth him. And Peter was so used to ignoring insults that he hardly seemed to notice - something that made Harry so proud that he felt like bursting.

It helped that the opening of Kathy Novik's art gallery, complete with a good-sized collection of Peter's photos, was an unmitigated success. Harry hadn't even had to bribe anyone for good reviews: Kathy had gone out of her way to search out truly gifted local talent, and it showed. In spades. The gallery was a roaring success all on its own, and Peter's showing was one of the more talked-about exhibitions, especially the mini-collection informally dubbed the angel next door - a mix of stunning color prints with an almost painful vividness and ultra clarity, and glossy, ultra focused, perfectly shaded, breath-stealing black-and-whites that somehow managed to seem more real, even, than the shockingly intense and gorgeously lifelike color prints - which Harry had deliberately finagled an invitation to the grand opening for MJ and guest for, so that he could savor the delicious irony of pictures (carefully, deliberately snapped by Peter) of a living, breathing, shocked to static silence MJ in front of montage of photos of her that managed to seem more real and alive than the girl herself. Harry quite purposefully pulled one spring, by passing on one of those exquisitely perfectly timed snapped pictures of a doll-like MJ in front of Peter's achingly, vividly real photographs of his angel to the Daily Bugle - a New York newspaper that Peter's Uncle had always had a subscription to and which the Parkers favored, for some reason, over the other larger, more widely-read newspapers - with instructions that the picture had to be credited to Peter Parker. The first run of that weekend edition of the newspaper sold out almost as soon as the paper hit the stands, forcing the company to print a second and then a third run of the issue; people in positions of influence and power in the arts community started talking about Pulitzer Prizes in photography; MJ was signed to a major modeling agency (which promptly and efficiently organized a rush to get her on the covers or in major photo shoots for twenty different magazines - local, national, and even global - all scheduled to come out by the end of April) and then promptly moved in with her Aunt Anna until the end of the school year (at which point she declared she would move to an apartment in the city) to get away from her father; and Peter was offered (and, after some persuasion and guarantees that he'd be able to work on and complete the project over the coming summer, eventually accepted) a deal with Simon & Schuster, Inc., for a lavish coffee table type photography book focusing on Forest Hills and his angel next door.

Peter laughed when Dr. Connors (who'd been invited to the art gallery opening at Peter's insistence and actually managed to find the time to come to it) joked that the art and photography departments of Columbia University and Empire State University would try to steal Peter away, but when job offers started rolling in - some of them for quite prestigious photography agencies and highly lucrative private institutions - he quickly went from largely disinterested amusement to stunned disbelief. He just couldn't believe how many people seemed perfectly willing to pay him obscenely large amounts of money just to come take some pictures of them or for them, and he practically went into shock when private art collectors started contacting him and the gallery both about the possibility of buying original prints or even some of the negatives for some of his work. Photography was a hobby for Peter - a well-loved hobby, and one that he was extremely good at, but just a hobby, nonetheless - and it had never really occurred to him that he might be able to make a living just by taking pictures, so the sudden realization that his hobby could easily bring in enough money to support what he laughingly called his science habit pretty much just blew Peter away. After one of the backers of the gallery approached Kathy and she approached Peter about the possibility of using some of his art as the basis for part of a limited issue run of high-end souvenirs and reproductions for the gallery, though, it finally started to sink in. Peter steadfastly refused to sell any actual originals or negatives, but he wasn't against using some of his developing tricks to create minutely different prints from his negatives that were, technically, all originals, and then selling those or the rights to use them to various private collectors, the art gallery's souvenir shop, and even a local printing press that made professional grade post cards with prints on them that were either locally taken or somehow thematically linked to New York.

By the end of the school year, Peter had earned so much money that he could have easily gotten himself a nice apartment in the city to live in and put himself through half a dozen or more years of full-time university classes without ever once having to take out a loan or accept a single scholarship. Since he'd already accepted all of the scholarships and grants he'd been offered by Columbia University and Empire State University when they'd first accepted him, though, Harry was able to talk him into investing most of the money by telling him that, if he invested wisely, in about a handful of years he'd have accumulated enough to be able to return the favor to those two schools by setting up some new scholarships for them, giving them grants to help fund some of their departments, donating new equipment to one or more of their departments, or something else along those lines. Aunt May and Uncle Ben were so proud of Peter for his success that they encouraged him to accept every offer he could that came along, as long as it was fair and would get his name and his art out to more people, and they sided with Harry on most of the discussions that came up about money and job offers and deals, to the point where the three of them actually got Peter to agree to accept some weekend photo shoots for different local and then national art magazines. Peter was sure that the public's fascination with what he referred to as his boringly normal, everyday, local subjects was just a side effect of a fad centering around MJ and his angel next door pieces, but Harry knew that it wasn't. Peter had undeniable talent: he could effortlessly make even the simplest, and most ordinary of everyday objects and people and scenes into eye-catching, heart-stopping, endlessly memorable art. Other artists - artists who sculpted or painted or performed their work - started requesting Peter to photograph them at their work, with their work, and just the work itself. By the end of the school year, Peter had finally accepted the fact that he wasn't just a fad, and his single book deal had been expanded into a renewable contract for a dozen different books (with no less than seventy-five to one hundred different images each, subject matter left to Peter's discretion, though the company would provide professional writers for text and sidebars), to be completed at any time over the next ten years.




TBC . . .