House of TM: kick off post for Spider-man plot
It happened because he was trying to impress a girl. Well, maybe he was trying to impress the guy by impressing the girl. Harry never could keep things simple, and for as long as he had known them Peter and Mary Jane were a matched set. He wanted to keep both of them, but it just never seemed to work out in his favor. Peter had loved Mary Jane since they were six years old. Harry couldn't remember loving anyone at the age of six, yet somehow he was the one to grow up to have a promiscuous adolescence. Maybe it was the fact he had never fallen in love with anyone before he met Peter and Mary Jane. He thought maybe he was in love with Lex while they were in boarding school, but Lex made it crystal clear that he didn't believe in love. Especially not when he was a senior and Harry was a sophomore and a guy. So, the thing that happened that would change his life and rip him out of the world he had known happened because he was trying to impress one or both of them during a school field trip.
Peter knew the information about the spiders, but he was too shy to talk to Mary Jane about it. Harry saw it as an opportunity, so he pounced, and managed to make a complete idiot of himself. It made her smile though, and really that was worth being a bit of a dork in her presence. Peter made being a geek look charming. Harry really couldn't pull that off. Peter was trying to take her picture for the paper. Harry was hovering behind him, watching as Peter tried to keep his hands from shaking while Mary Jane flashed that smile they both adored. He didn't notice the spider that had escaped from it's glass container weaving a web and moving closer to his finger. The bite wasn't all that painful, but it had shocked him. For only a second he caught a glimpse of it, but it wasn't enough time to note it's features. He immediately felt a little sick and barely managed to make it through the rest of the trip.
Peter kept asking if he was alright, and Harry shrugged it off as he shivered beneath his designer coat. By the time he stumbled into his Manhattan penthouse, he could barely see straight, and all he wanted to do was go to sleep. "Master Harry, are you alright?" Bernard had asked, and appeared concerned as Harry stopped halfway up the stairs to lean against the railing. "You're high again. You promised your father you wouldn't do this again."
Harry blinked through the sweat that was rolling into his eyes and could barely mumble the words, "Not high, just sick. Need to sleep." He managed to make it the rest of the way up the stairs and collapsed on his bed as the world went white. He always assumed the world was supposed to go black when you are spiraling toward an exhaustion induced coma or fever dreams, but he remembers that it was white and so hot. Sometimes, when he allowed himself to think about it, he wondered what it would have been like if things had been dark and cold instead. Would he have still made the choice to leave everything behind out of fear that his father wouldn't be able to accept the changes in his son?
When Harry Osborn woke up the next day he felt a million times better than he had the night before. He also appeared to have put on a good ten to fifteen pounds of muscle and walked with a grace that he was positive he didn't possess before. Not that he had been all that clumsy before, but he was practically gliding when he walked now. It wasn't until he accidentally shot out the web that he realized what had happened while he was trying to impress the objects of his obsession; the spider bite had turned Harry Osborn into a freak.
His father was busy with the performance enhancers program at OsCorp which had him keeping odd hours. Harry managed to avoid him as much as possible. When there was an opening for an independent study program in London that would keep Harry away for the last weeks of high school, he begged Norman to sign the papers to let him go. His father was just happy that his son was finally showing an interest in his studies, and agreed it would look good on Harry's transcripts so the paper was signed. Harry packed his bags and didn't even confide in Peter on why he was really running away. He returned for the weekend of graduation only to tell his father that he was taking a year off from school to find himself in Europe. They had an explosive argument, but Harry couldn't tell his father the truth about why he was running away. There was something wrong with him, and he needed to figure out how to hide his abilities from the rest of the world. Norman Osborn may hate that his son was being a flake and irresponsible, but he could accept that better than to find out his only heir was some kind of mutant with spider enhanced abilities.
Manhattan had always been home to him, but as he boarded the OsCorp jet he knew that he wouldn't return again unless he found a cure to what had happened to him. Unfortunately he never anticipated that there would be a tragedy that would bring him back and force him to live a double life in New York. At least that was still a good year off. He would have some time to try and find himself.
ooc: And this kicks off the Spider-man plot for the House of TM adventure. Harry Osborn was bitten by the spider instead of Peter. We're still working off mostly movie canon, but obviously this is a big change that pretty much turns everything that the trio in the real universe knows on it's axis. Thanks again for giving us an opportunity to play along with this cool plot.