FIC: Verisimilitude (Spider-Man movieverse, Peter/Harry)
Title: Verisimilitude
Author: unrequitedangst
Fandom: Spider-Man movieverse
Rating: R
Disclaimer: They aren't mine.
Summary: In popular use, the modern romance novel is a formulaic love story, usually lacking literary merit. And this is how it is. (Peter/Harry, 3808 words)
Notes: Written for a spideyslash challenge; the poetry theme didn't turn out quite how I expected it to and ended up evolving into a literary theme, but rain got worked in there somehow. Um.
*
verisimilitude n. how fully the characters and actions in a work of fiction conform to our sense of reality
*
allegory n. a figurative work in which a surface narrative carries a secondary, symbolic, or metaphorical meaning.
The day after the funeral, Harry goes into his father's closet and sits on the floor for a very long time.
The funeral. Not a funeral, because there's only one funeral to be had, and this is the funeral. Or was the funeral, at any rate, because the funeral is over now and all the carefully purchased bouquets of flowers are starting to wilt very slightly, and all the guests have expressed their condolences and are now flying back to San Francisco and Metropolis and Gotham and all the other hellholes that they came down from in the first place, leaving Harry very neatly alone and in the middle of his father's closet floor.
And Harry's sort of wondering if he ought to find something exciting here, like the end of the proverbial rainbow or a treasure chest of some sort. Or a big, dramatic strike of lightning, maybe, which would split a pine open for him. He'd settle for a board of pine, even.
The thing is, though, nothing exciting is happening, and nothing terribly dramatic has been altered in Norman Osborn's closet in the eleven years that've gone by since Harry used to hide there.
Harry's own closet is messy, all badly pressed suits and old jeans. Harry's closet has T-shirts going back to when he was twelve. Harry's closet is the sort of place where even the maids don't go, because it's just that teenage-male-ish and chaotic, faintly reminiscent of a tornado-zone.
Norman's closet -- isn't.
There are suits. There are expensive Italian shoes, which Norman Osborn wore and then ruined in the laboratory by spilling bleach all over them, shoes which Harry will never be able to wear. There are lab coats, which Harry is never going to be smart enough to even pretend to wear without a hint of the absurd. And there are the ties: the hundred percent silk ones that Harry's father wore to board meetings, the dark red ones that Harry's mother bought his father before she left him, the black ones that Harry bought Norman even though Norman never wore them, ever --
Harry thinks that he's probably supposed to box all these clothes up and give them to charity. He's already called the Salvation Army, like a good and dutiful contributing member of society would -- they're very grateful for his generosity, and there's no reason they shouldn't be, seeing as the contents of that closet are worth several thousand dollars.
But Harry has never been good at doing what he's supposed to and letting go.
When the Salvation Army calls the next day to ask when they should pick up the clothes, Harry tells them that there was a mix-up and that he's very sorry, but that the clothes already went to St. Matthew's church, would it be okay if he just wrote them a check instead?
They say okay, and Harry writes them a six thousand dollar check.
Harry has never heard of St. Matthew's church in his life.
*
cliche n. a trite or overused expression or idea; a person or character whose behavior is predictable or superificial.
There is something terribly boring about the whole concept of 'You killed my father, now die', Harry used to think, and this may be why he nearly failed English class all the way through high school, and actually did fail it in college right up until he dropped out. Or maybe it was just the fact that Harry had trouble remembering whether he's supposed to use 'it's' or 'its' in essays.
But really. Revenge on the part of a family member is a rather trite concept by now -- there are just so many cases -- all of which gave Harry considerable headaches.
All those Mafia movies, for one, the kind that Harry was addicted to when he was fifteen. Romeo and Juliet, which is basically one big theme of 'you killed my [fill-in-name-of-family-member-here], now die'. And Mark Anthony, who was all with the 'Brutus, buddy, you killed my better buddy Caesar, now die' concept.
There are historical precedents for this, see? And literary ones, though Harry's not so hot on that stuff.
There's Inigo Montoya. Though Harry isn't entirely sure who Inigo Montoya is, just that Inigo Montoya's father got offed by someone else and that Inigo Montoya goes around and tells people that they must die because they killed his father.
Oh. That movie with the guy from Titanic in it. Just about every single gang movie ever made, for that matter, although that's more of a kill-everyone-for-killing-everyone-else sort of thing. Harry's pretty sure if he thinks about it enough, he'll be able to come up with a half dozen more examples.
So, the whole kill-somebody-for-killing-daddy thing?
Done. Really overdone, too. It's cliché right up until it happens, because clichés aren't supposed to happen in real life, but this time, it does.
Spider-man killed Harry's father.
Therefore, Spider-man must die.
*
motif n. a recurrent thematic element in an artistic or literary work; a dominant theme or central idea.
Harry thinks, perhaps, that he has always been in love with Peter.
The main trouble is, he's not really certain whether he is. In love with Peter, that is, not in love -- Harry has known since before he knew he was gay that he was in love with Peter. It was sort of hard to ignore the whole in-love thing when he had sat through a two season marathon of Star Trek for Peter, and had spent the entire time span staring at the dorky way that Peter grinned whenever the Klingons came onscreen, rather than being bored stupid by the whole Klingon-thing. Whoever the Klingons were, anyway.
Even harder to ignore it when Peter started invading his dreams and, not much to the amusement of his freshman English teacher, caused Harry to accidentally substitute 'Peter' for 'Virgil' in his essay on the Inferno.
Though in retrospect, the fact that Harry used the word 'love' in a connotation outside of family members may have been a good indicator of the whole gayness thing.
So. Right. Harry's in love with his best friend.
This is sort of a problem.
So is the fact that Harry hates Spider-man, because Peter has always taken Spider-man's side and refused to see Spider-man for the murderer that he is. Harry had been sort of thinking that he could work around this, though -- he and Peter had even sort of reached the cordial state of 'let's ignore the whole fact that you know the identity of the guy who killed my father'.
Except it seems that the latest development in this whole saga is that Peter is Spider-man. Or Spider-man is Peter. (There's an important distinction, here, but Harry's not quite sober enough to work it out at the moment.) And this is sort of an even greater problem, because Harry has spent well over seven figures of money -- in the last six months alone -- trying to identify and kill Spider-man.
Harry's good at ignoring things when he wants to -- has to, or he wouldn't be worth a damn in the corporate world. But Harry's not that good, and he's pretty sure that while asking the guy that you knew back when you were both in braces out on a date is theoretically possible, asking the guy that you tried to stab with a very long and sharp knife is -- not quite so theoretically possible.
And then there's the whole thing about Peter not being gentle, nerdy Peter who wore thick glasses and bit his fingernails anymore, but Peter being another Peter entirely, who beats up bad guys in the streets of New York regularly and not being the Peter who used to flinch whenever he saw Flash walking by. Peter isn't Peter anymore, and Harry thinks dully that maybe that's what hurts the most.
Not the whole. Um. Peter having killed his father. That hurts, yeah. But it's just.
Peter isn't Peter, and maybe Peter never was, and that places Harry in love with his father's murderer, with Spider-man, changes all the rules of the game -- Harry still loves Peter, but he's not sure who Peter is.
It seems that the question is not who does Harry love, but who does Harry hate?
*
picaresque novel n. an episodic, often autiobiographical novel about a rogue wandering around and living off his wits, which tends to be satiric and filled with petty detail. the wandering hero provides the author with the opportunity to connect widely different pieces of plot, since the hero can wander into any situation
Harry drinks too much.
Harry is perfectly aware of this fact. So is Peter. And MJ. And all of Harry's old schoolmates, too, because there's nothing like uppercrust New York society, when it comes to gossip-conductivity.
Harry doesn't really care, because the drinking helps, and he'll take any port in a storm. As it is, the drinking doesn't help nearly as much as Harry always thought being constantly drunk would -- it takes the edge off things, sure, but the edge's so glitteringly sharp as it is that there's still more than enough opportunity for blood to be drawn at every single opportunity there is.
Like. Like Rearden, earlier, bumbling his way through some stupidly futile apology, about how sorry he was that Norman had 'passed', as if having a life ended very abruptly was like some sort of test. Or those few Oscorp boardmembers who had survived the Green Goblin's attack -- Norman's attack -- who couldn't look at Harry without the clear, apparent traces of guilt in their eyes. Or MJ, who is appropriately subdued when she speaks to Harry and asks how he's doing, still with the Spider-man worship luminous in her eyes.
Like Peter, who is weaving his way across the crowd right now, camera in hand.
Harry tosses back the contents of his glass in a quick, burning gulp, and turns to the bartender to ask for a refill. He doesn't even have to look to know when Peter's standing behind him -- Harry might not be a superhero, see, but he knows Peter.
"Parker."
"Harry --"
"What do you want, Parker?"
Peter hesitates as he picks up on the last-name emphasis. Good for him, Harry thinks, and takes his drink back from the bartender, turns a little unsteadily to look at his former best friend.
"I just want to -- Um. Don't you think you've had enough to drink?"
"Trying to play the superhero tonight?"
Any of the other boys of Harry's generation, the rich and doomed, would have picked the acidity up instantly and run. Lex would have smiled, smooth and easy, and walked away. Edwin would have made an excuse about having to make a phone call. Fuck, even Wayne would have managed to say something bumblingly stupid, but still managed to get out.
Peter's not of that crowd, though, and doesn't know enough to run; Harry's not sure how to feel about that. It's kind of hard to think with five shots of some alcoholic-drink-or-other burning away in his stomach.
"Harry, your father wouldn't have --" Peter knows it's a mistake the moment that he says it, and Harry can see that realization fluttering limply in the air between them.
"My father is dead, Peter," Harry snaps, just for the blinding flare of guilt, and then throws the contents of the glass straight into Peter's face.
Peter is fully capable of dodging it, Harry knows, because Peter can dodge bullets and stick to walls and go whizzing through New York's streets like some kind of shrimpy little Superman with a much worse sense of humor. Peter can do anything.
Peter does not dodge it.
Peter just stands there with very expensive cognac dripping off his cheap little Costco-bought polo shirt and says, "Harry --"
Harry says, "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I."
And it's like a horrible recap of the entire last six months, Peter with that quietly blank look of fucking martyrdom, the same question, only with different verb tenses. 'Why won't you tell me, Peter?' and the funniest part of it all, really, is that Harry knows why Peter didn't tell him, because if Harry knows that if their roles were reversed and he'd assassinated Aunt May, he wouldn't be all that enthusiastic about telling Peter.
Except.
Except that Harry didn't touch Aunt May and never would have, and Peter should know that and should have all along, because Peter was the one who was there the first time Harry got drunk, ever, back when they were both fifteen and hopelessly young and stupid.
"Peter --"
MJ comes to the rescue, like Harry knew that she would. Flutters around Peter hopelessly, pretty little exotic butterfly, and Harry is wondering now how he ever fell in love with her, this girl who was screamed at a few times by her father and thinks that this qualifies her to be the tragic heroine.
She looks at him like he's the bad guy, and Harry knows she knows. About Peter, that is, and probably about Norman, because Peter always had followed MJ around like a small puppy, and Harry can see the judgment shining there in her longlashed eyes, poor Harry, just like his father --
"Harry, I think you should go home now," she's saying now, like she's his fucking mother.
Huh. That sort of is why he broke up with her -- because she was just like his fucking mother, and Norman saw it.
But the thing is, there's no point in remaining at the party. Peter won't tell him, just because he never has before -- and people are staring now. Harry prefers his self-destructions with a brilliant bang, maybe bright green viridian, like Norman, go out in a quick flare and. Not in the middle of a party with stupid people tittering.
Harry doesn't know what he's thinking, because he's dead drunk, but not drunk enough to not-think, and his drink is dripping down Peter's shoes and onto the floor by now.
Harry leaves, goes home to an empty house and stares at his father's clothes, his father's legacies, everything he'll never be, until he can't think anymore and it's so perfectly clear what to do that he's surprised he didn't think it before.
The suit doesn't fit all that well. It's okay, though, because Harry will grow into it.
*
interactive novel n. a novel with more than one possible series of events or outcomes, giving the reader the opportunity at various splaces to choose what will happen next.
When Peter catches up to Harry, it's in a rush of swirling air, fast and angry and desperate on the glider, and later that night, when Harry's nursing his bruises, he'll remember mostly that it was a miracle that they didn't both fall off the thing when they collided, because Harry has always had really fucking bad balance, and he's only had about a week to practice.
It happens like this -- Spider-man, sweeping down out of nowhere, Harry shooting up on the glider for the first time, nearly colliding like the bumper cars that neither of them ever played, and Harry can see the startled split-second jerk for that moment that Peter sees him and thinks --
"What -- Harry."
Harry takes the glider a few feet higher so they're at eye level, stares at his best friend, and wonders if this was the last thing that his father ever saw.
"Sorry, Spider-man, but I don't happen to be flying a broom -- it's the Green Goblin to you."
Peter waves it off, though, unexpectedly serious. At least that's what Harry thinks -- it's kind of hard to read facial expressions through a mask, and Peter's facial expressions have always been fairly nonexistent in the first place. "You need to go home."
Harry's spent a great deal of time fantasizing about what it would be like to punch Peter.
It's a lot more satisfying than he always suspected it would be, though, and either his father's suit really is better than Harry thought it was, or Peter's just so stunned at what's happening that he doesn't remember to get out of the way, but the punch really does connect, and they spin apart.
Peter says, "Why are you doing this?" and it's so much like an echo of everything that Harry's said so many times before that Harry can't help but laugh, breathless and wild.
"Because I can," he says.
He can sweep forward and try to break Peter's nose. He can slam Peter into a wall and he can see spots when Peter knocks him off the glider and his head slams against a brick roof seven feet below. He can kick Peter and when Peter manages to grapple him to the ground, yank at the mask and get it off, exposing his face to the cool evening air, he can pull Peter's mask halfway off and swear at him, punch him hard in the mouth; he can arch up and kiss Peter, licking at the blood at the corner of Peter's mouth, iron-pure and sweet.
He can. So he does.
*
dystopian novel n. an anti-utopian novel where, instead of a paradise, everything has gone wrong in the attempt to create a perfect society. refer: utopian novel
It's raining the first time that Harry realizes that it's in his power to kill Peter if he really wants to.
It's wet. It's wet and horrible and there's rain everywhere, and Harry is wondering what he thought, try to go out and massacre a bunch of New Yorkers in the middle of a fucking monsoon, why don't we? Dark and stormy night, sure, this is three o'clock in the afternoon and it's raining so hard that Harry can barely see more than a foot in front of him.
Ordinarily, this would not be a problem. However, seeing as Harry is traveling at roughly seventy miles an hour through the air atop a little levitating board thing, this is a problem, because Harry would like to see the Wall that Finally Ended The Life of the Green Goblin before it actually, you know, ends his life.
Being an evil supervillain is somewhat less glamorous than Harry always thought it would be.
So. Harry is tossing off little Goblin Grenades -- he's sure there's probably a far more glamorous name for them, but Norman certainly didn't get the chance to tell him what it was -- left and right into the crowd, cackling madly like the evil person he's supposed to be and actually? Watching people running around like cattle is sort of entertaining.
"You never learn, do you, Goblin?"
And Peter, right on cue, so Harry executes a turn that would be so much neater if Harry didn't have about seven pounds of water pooling in the suit and dragging him down. "Depends on what you call learning, Spider-man."
It's so easy, and the way the grenade feels as it leaves Harry's hand is like this is something he's been waiting for forever, really -- like this is the most natural thing in the world, like breathing. Easy heft, quick flick of the wrist, and then it's gone, unrecallable, bright neon green lights giving way to the bright red of detonation.
Sometime in the middle of this entire mess, things switched, flipped over from black to white, and Harry doesn't know when it was, except that it means that tonight, he'll crawl into his father's bedroom window and get halfway out of the suit before Peter shows up and they fuck all over the room, his father's furniture, and out of the corner of his eye, Harry'll be able to see the picture they make in the bedroom mirror, half-naked and half-costumed, red and green and blue and creamy white flesh, like some kind of supremely confused Christmas tree.
But right now -- right now, it's not Peter anymore, but Spider-man, Spider-manspider-manspiderman, and Norman Osborn is dead --
Carefully, methodically, Harry aims and throws the second grenade.
*
coming-of-age story n. a type of novel where the protagonist is initiated into adulthood through knowledge, experience, or both, often by a process of disillusionment. understanding comes after the dropping of preconceptions, a destruction of a false sense of security, or in some way the loss of innocence
So.
They don't get a happy ending, Harry doesn't think, because they're out of those things, and maybe those kind of things never existed. If they did, anyway, they died the moment that Norman Osborn did, and that should be the end-all and be-all to the story, except that it isn't.
The end will be inevitable, because ends always are. But the time in the interim is theirs', and so what they are is the story that never should have been but was -- love and hate and fucking and everything else in between. They're both a little bit more than Harry and Peter, a little bit less than the Green Goblin and Spider-man, they're neither of them heroes or villains, just terribly, hopelessly lost.
And everybody knows how Harry hates Peter now, presumably over MJ, everybody knows how Spider-man tries to hunt down the Green Goblin, presumably over the whole evildoer thing, and the entire saga of all their conflicts is being played out on the six o'clock news and the tabloids alike. Nobody knows, though, how Peter feels about Harry or why the Green Goblin doesn't actually kill Spider-man once and for all --
It's a tragedy in the making, but it's love, and if Harry were really all that gay, he'd quote some of those trite romances that MJ used to watch and say 'love hurts', because it does -- being slammed into brick walls tends to hurt.
Except that Harry's gay, but he's not that gay, and he's not inclined to romanticize things -- they're not star-crossed lovers, and there's no fucking point in pretending otherwise.
What they are is just this simple: Harry's clogged sinuses the morning after, from the rain that pooled in the joints of his suit when he tried to kill Peter and the way Peter's back arches when Harry kisses him.
They were best friends once, and that should stand for something, and it does, but just not enough.
It's a little bit like dying, each morning they wake up in the same bed, but it's better than the alternative, because hatred is so much better than nothing at all.
Author: unrequitedangst
Fandom: Spider-Man movieverse
Rating: R
Disclaimer: They aren't mine.
Summary: In popular use, the modern romance novel is a formulaic love story, usually lacking literary merit. And this is how it is. (Peter/Harry, 3808 words)
Notes: Written for a spideyslash challenge; the poetry theme didn't turn out quite how I expected it to and ended up evolving into a literary theme, but rain got worked in there somehow. Um.
*
verisimilitude n. how fully the characters and actions in a work of fiction conform to our sense of reality
*
allegory n. a figurative work in which a surface narrative carries a secondary, symbolic, or metaphorical meaning.
The day after the funeral, Harry goes into his father's closet and sits on the floor for a very long time.
The funeral. Not a funeral, because there's only one funeral to be had, and this is the funeral. Or was the funeral, at any rate, because the funeral is over now and all the carefully purchased bouquets of flowers are starting to wilt very slightly, and all the guests have expressed their condolences and are now flying back to San Francisco and Metropolis and Gotham and all the other hellholes that they came down from in the first place, leaving Harry very neatly alone and in the middle of his father's closet floor.
And Harry's sort of wondering if he ought to find something exciting here, like the end of the proverbial rainbow or a treasure chest of some sort. Or a big, dramatic strike of lightning, maybe, which would split a pine open for him. He'd settle for a board of pine, even.
The thing is, though, nothing exciting is happening, and nothing terribly dramatic has been altered in Norman Osborn's closet in the eleven years that've gone by since Harry used to hide there.
Harry's own closet is messy, all badly pressed suits and old jeans. Harry's closet has T-shirts going back to when he was twelve. Harry's closet is the sort of place where even the maids don't go, because it's just that teenage-male-ish and chaotic, faintly reminiscent of a tornado-zone.
Norman's closet -- isn't.
There are suits. There are expensive Italian shoes, which Norman Osborn wore and then ruined in the laboratory by spilling bleach all over them, shoes which Harry will never be able to wear. There are lab coats, which Harry is never going to be smart enough to even pretend to wear without a hint of the absurd. And there are the ties: the hundred percent silk ones that Harry's father wore to board meetings, the dark red ones that Harry's mother bought his father before she left him, the black ones that Harry bought Norman even though Norman never wore them, ever --
Harry thinks that he's probably supposed to box all these clothes up and give them to charity. He's already called the Salvation Army, like a good and dutiful contributing member of society would -- they're very grateful for his generosity, and there's no reason they shouldn't be, seeing as the contents of that closet are worth several thousand dollars.
But Harry has never been good at doing what he's supposed to and letting go.
When the Salvation Army calls the next day to ask when they should pick up the clothes, Harry tells them that there was a mix-up and that he's very sorry, but that the clothes already went to St. Matthew's church, would it be okay if he just wrote them a check instead?
They say okay, and Harry writes them a six thousand dollar check.
Harry has never heard of St. Matthew's church in his life.
*
cliche n. a trite or overused expression or idea; a person or character whose behavior is predictable or superificial.
There is something terribly boring about the whole concept of 'You killed my father, now die', Harry used to think, and this may be why he nearly failed English class all the way through high school, and actually did fail it in college right up until he dropped out. Or maybe it was just the fact that Harry had trouble remembering whether he's supposed to use 'it's' or 'its' in essays.
But really. Revenge on the part of a family member is a rather trite concept by now -- there are just so many cases -- all of which gave Harry considerable headaches.
All those Mafia movies, for one, the kind that Harry was addicted to when he was fifteen. Romeo and Juliet, which is basically one big theme of 'you killed my [fill-in-name-of-family-member-here], now die'. And Mark Anthony, who was all with the 'Brutus, buddy, you killed my better buddy Caesar, now die' concept.
There are historical precedents for this, see? And literary ones, though Harry's not so hot on that stuff.
There's Inigo Montoya. Though Harry isn't entirely sure who Inigo Montoya is, just that Inigo Montoya's father got offed by someone else and that Inigo Montoya goes around and tells people that they must die because they killed his father.
Oh. That movie with the guy from Titanic in it. Just about every single gang movie ever made, for that matter, although that's more of a kill-everyone-for-killing-everyone-else sort of thing. Harry's pretty sure if he thinks about it enough, he'll be able to come up with a half dozen more examples.
So, the whole kill-somebody-for-killing-daddy thing?
Done. Really overdone, too. It's cliché right up until it happens, because clichés aren't supposed to happen in real life, but this time, it does.
Spider-man killed Harry's father.
Therefore, Spider-man must die.
*
motif n. a recurrent thematic element in an artistic or literary work; a dominant theme or central idea.
Harry thinks, perhaps, that he has always been in love with Peter.
The main trouble is, he's not really certain whether he is. In love with Peter, that is, not in love -- Harry has known since before he knew he was gay that he was in love with Peter. It was sort of hard to ignore the whole in-love thing when he had sat through a two season marathon of Star Trek for Peter, and had spent the entire time span staring at the dorky way that Peter grinned whenever the Klingons came onscreen, rather than being bored stupid by the whole Klingon-thing. Whoever the Klingons were, anyway.
Even harder to ignore it when Peter started invading his dreams and, not much to the amusement of his freshman English teacher, caused Harry to accidentally substitute 'Peter' for 'Virgil' in his essay on the Inferno.
Though in retrospect, the fact that Harry used the word 'love' in a connotation outside of family members may have been a good indicator of the whole gayness thing.
So. Right. Harry's in love with his best friend.
This is sort of a problem.
So is the fact that Harry hates Spider-man, because Peter has always taken Spider-man's side and refused to see Spider-man for the murderer that he is. Harry had been sort of thinking that he could work around this, though -- he and Peter had even sort of reached the cordial state of 'let's ignore the whole fact that you know the identity of the guy who killed my father'.
Except it seems that the latest development in this whole saga is that Peter is Spider-man. Or Spider-man is Peter. (There's an important distinction, here, but Harry's not quite sober enough to work it out at the moment.) And this is sort of an even greater problem, because Harry has spent well over seven figures of money -- in the last six months alone -- trying to identify and kill Spider-man.
Harry's good at ignoring things when he wants to -- has to, or he wouldn't be worth a damn in the corporate world. But Harry's not that good, and he's pretty sure that while asking the guy that you knew back when you were both in braces out on a date is theoretically possible, asking the guy that you tried to stab with a very long and sharp knife is -- not quite so theoretically possible.
And then there's the whole thing about Peter not being gentle, nerdy Peter who wore thick glasses and bit his fingernails anymore, but Peter being another Peter entirely, who beats up bad guys in the streets of New York regularly and not being the Peter who used to flinch whenever he saw Flash walking by. Peter isn't Peter anymore, and Harry thinks dully that maybe that's what hurts the most.
Not the whole. Um. Peter having killed his father. That hurts, yeah. But it's just.
Peter isn't Peter, and maybe Peter never was, and that places Harry in love with his father's murderer, with Spider-man, changes all the rules of the game -- Harry still loves Peter, but he's not sure who Peter is.
It seems that the question is not who does Harry love, but who does Harry hate?
*
picaresque novel n. an episodic, often autiobiographical novel about a rogue wandering around and living off his wits, which tends to be satiric and filled with petty detail. the wandering hero provides the author with the opportunity to connect widely different pieces of plot, since the hero can wander into any situation
Harry drinks too much.
Harry is perfectly aware of this fact. So is Peter. And MJ. And all of Harry's old schoolmates, too, because there's nothing like uppercrust New York society, when it comes to gossip-conductivity.
Harry doesn't really care, because the drinking helps, and he'll take any port in a storm. As it is, the drinking doesn't help nearly as much as Harry always thought being constantly drunk would -- it takes the edge off things, sure, but the edge's so glitteringly sharp as it is that there's still more than enough opportunity for blood to be drawn at every single opportunity there is.
Like. Like Rearden, earlier, bumbling his way through some stupidly futile apology, about how sorry he was that Norman had 'passed', as if having a life ended very abruptly was like some sort of test. Or those few Oscorp boardmembers who had survived the Green Goblin's attack -- Norman's attack -- who couldn't look at Harry without the clear, apparent traces of guilt in their eyes. Or MJ, who is appropriately subdued when she speaks to Harry and asks how he's doing, still with the Spider-man worship luminous in her eyes.
Like Peter, who is weaving his way across the crowd right now, camera in hand.
Harry tosses back the contents of his glass in a quick, burning gulp, and turns to the bartender to ask for a refill. He doesn't even have to look to know when Peter's standing behind him -- Harry might not be a superhero, see, but he knows Peter.
"Parker."
"Harry --"
"What do you want, Parker?"
Peter hesitates as he picks up on the last-name emphasis. Good for him, Harry thinks, and takes his drink back from the bartender, turns a little unsteadily to look at his former best friend.
"I just want to -- Um. Don't you think you've had enough to drink?"
"Trying to play the superhero tonight?"
Any of the other boys of Harry's generation, the rich and doomed, would have picked the acidity up instantly and run. Lex would have smiled, smooth and easy, and walked away. Edwin would have made an excuse about having to make a phone call. Fuck, even Wayne would have managed to say something bumblingly stupid, but still managed to get out.
Peter's not of that crowd, though, and doesn't know enough to run; Harry's not sure how to feel about that. It's kind of hard to think with five shots of some alcoholic-drink-or-other burning away in his stomach.
"Harry, your father wouldn't have --" Peter knows it's a mistake the moment that he says it, and Harry can see that realization fluttering limply in the air between them.
"My father is dead, Peter," Harry snaps, just for the blinding flare of guilt, and then throws the contents of the glass straight into Peter's face.
Peter is fully capable of dodging it, Harry knows, because Peter can dodge bullets and stick to walls and go whizzing through New York's streets like some kind of shrimpy little Superman with a much worse sense of humor. Peter can do anything.
Peter does not dodge it.
Peter just stands there with very expensive cognac dripping off his cheap little Costco-bought polo shirt and says, "Harry --"
Harry says, "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I."
And it's like a horrible recap of the entire last six months, Peter with that quietly blank look of fucking martyrdom, the same question, only with different verb tenses. 'Why won't you tell me, Peter?' and the funniest part of it all, really, is that Harry knows why Peter didn't tell him, because if Harry knows that if their roles were reversed and he'd assassinated Aunt May, he wouldn't be all that enthusiastic about telling Peter.
Except.
Except that Harry didn't touch Aunt May and never would have, and Peter should know that and should have all along, because Peter was the one who was there the first time Harry got drunk, ever, back when they were both fifteen and hopelessly young and stupid.
"Peter --"
MJ comes to the rescue, like Harry knew that she would. Flutters around Peter hopelessly, pretty little exotic butterfly, and Harry is wondering now how he ever fell in love with her, this girl who was screamed at a few times by her father and thinks that this qualifies her to be the tragic heroine.
She looks at him like he's the bad guy, and Harry knows she knows. About Peter, that is, and probably about Norman, because Peter always had followed MJ around like a small puppy, and Harry can see the judgment shining there in her longlashed eyes, poor Harry, just like his father --
"Harry, I think you should go home now," she's saying now, like she's his fucking mother.
Huh. That sort of is why he broke up with her -- because she was just like his fucking mother, and Norman saw it.
But the thing is, there's no point in remaining at the party. Peter won't tell him, just because he never has before -- and people are staring now. Harry prefers his self-destructions with a brilliant bang, maybe bright green viridian, like Norman, go out in a quick flare and. Not in the middle of a party with stupid people tittering.
Harry doesn't know what he's thinking, because he's dead drunk, but not drunk enough to not-think, and his drink is dripping down Peter's shoes and onto the floor by now.
Harry leaves, goes home to an empty house and stares at his father's clothes, his father's legacies, everything he'll never be, until he can't think anymore and it's so perfectly clear what to do that he's surprised he didn't think it before.
The suit doesn't fit all that well. It's okay, though, because Harry will grow into it.
*
interactive novel n. a novel with more than one possible series of events or outcomes, giving the reader the opportunity at various splaces to choose what will happen next.
When Peter catches up to Harry, it's in a rush of swirling air, fast and angry and desperate on the glider, and later that night, when Harry's nursing his bruises, he'll remember mostly that it was a miracle that they didn't both fall off the thing when they collided, because Harry has always had really fucking bad balance, and he's only had about a week to practice.
It happens like this -- Spider-man, sweeping down out of nowhere, Harry shooting up on the glider for the first time, nearly colliding like the bumper cars that neither of them ever played, and Harry can see the startled split-second jerk for that moment that Peter sees him and thinks --
"What -- Harry."
Harry takes the glider a few feet higher so they're at eye level, stares at his best friend, and wonders if this was the last thing that his father ever saw.
"Sorry, Spider-man, but I don't happen to be flying a broom -- it's the Green Goblin to you."
Peter waves it off, though, unexpectedly serious. At least that's what Harry thinks -- it's kind of hard to read facial expressions through a mask, and Peter's facial expressions have always been fairly nonexistent in the first place. "You need to go home."
Harry's spent a great deal of time fantasizing about what it would be like to punch Peter.
It's a lot more satisfying than he always suspected it would be, though, and either his father's suit really is better than Harry thought it was, or Peter's just so stunned at what's happening that he doesn't remember to get out of the way, but the punch really does connect, and they spin apart.
Peter says, "Why are you doing this?" and it's so much like an echo of everything that Harry's said so many times before that Harry can't help but laugh, breathless and wild.
"Because I can," he says.
He can sweep forward and try to break Peter's nose. He can slam Peter into a wall and he can see spots when Peter knocks him off the glider and his head slams against a brick roof seven feet below. He can kick Peter and when Peter manages to grapple him to the ground, yank at the mask and get it off, exposing his face to the cool evening air, he can pull Peter's mask halfway off and swear at him, punch him hard in the mouth; he can arch up and kiss Peter, licking at the blood at the corner of Peter's mouth, iron-pure and sweet.
He can. So he does.
*
dystopian novel n. an anti-utopian novel where, instead of a paradise, everything has gone wrong in the attempt to create a perfect society. refer: utopian novel
It's raining the first time that Harry realizes that it's in his power to kill Peter if he really wants to.
It's wet. It's wet and horrible and there's rain everywhere, and Harry is wondering what he thought, try to go out and massacre a bunch of New Yorkers in the middle of a fucking monsoon, why don't we? Dark and stormy night, sure, this is three o'clock in the afternoon and it's raining so hard that Harry can barely see more than a foot in front of him.
Ordinarily, this would not be a problem. However, seeing as Harry is traveling at roughly seventy miles an hour through the air atop a little levitating board thing, this is a problem, because Harry would like to see the Wall that Finally Ended The Life of the Green Goblin before it actually, you know, ends his life.
Being an evil supervillain is somewhat less glamorous than Harry always thought it would be.
So. Harry is tossing off little Goblin Grenades -- he's sure there's probably a far more glamorous name for them, but Norman certainly didn't get the chance to tell him what it was -- left and right into the crowd, cackling madly like the evil person he's supposed to be and actually? Watching people running around like cattle is sort of entertaining.
"You never learn, do you, Goblin?"
And Peter, right on cue, so Harry executes a turn that would be so much neater if Harry didn't have about seven pounds of water pooling in the suit and dragging him down. "Depends on what you call learning, Spider-man."
It's so easy, and the way the grenade feels as it leaves Harry's hand is like this is something he's been waiting for forever, really -- like this is the most natural thing in the world, like breathing. Easy heft, quick flick of the wrist, and then it's gone, unrecallable, bright neon green lights giving way to the bright red of detonation.
Sometime in the middle of this entire mess, things switched, flipped over from black to white, and Harry doesn't know when it was, except that it means that tonight, he'll crawl into his father's bedroom window and get halfway out of the suit before Peter shows up and they fuck all over the room, his father's furniture, and out of the corner of his eye, Harry'll be able to see the picture they make in the bedroom mirror, half-naked and half-costumed, red and green and blue and creamy white flesh, like some kind of supremely confused Christmas tree.
But right now -- right now, it's not Peter anymore, but Spider-man, Spider-manspider-manspiderman, and Norman Osborn is dead --
Carefully, methodically, Harry aims and throws the second grenade.
*
coming-of-age story n. a type of novel where the protagonist is initiated into adulthood through knowledge, experience, or both, often by a process of disillusionment. understanding comes after the dropping of preconceptions, a destruction of a false sense of security, or in some way the loss of innocence
So.
They don't get a happy ending, Harry doesn't think, because they're out of those things, and maybe those kind of things never existed. If they did, anyway, they died the moment that Norman Osborn did, and that should be the end-all and be-all to the story, except that it isn't.
The end will be inevitable, because ends always are. But the time in the interim is theirs', and so what they are is the story that never should have been but was -- love and hate and fucking and everything else in between. They're both a little bit more than Harry and Peter, a little bit less than the Green Goblin and Spider-man, they're neither of them heroes or villains, just terribly, hopelessly lost.
And everybody knows how Harry hates Peter now, presumably over MJ, everybody knows how Spider-man tries to hunt down the Green Goblin, presumably over the whole evildoer thing, and the entire saga of all their conflicts is being played out on the six o'clock news and the tabloids alike. Nobody knows, though, how Peter feels about Harry or why the Green Goblin doesn't actually kill Spider-man once and for all --
It's a tragedy in the making, but it's love, and if Harry were really all that gay, he'd quote some of those trite romances that MJ used to watch and say 'love hurts', because it does -- being slammed into brick walls tends to hurt.
Except that Harry's gay, but he's not that gay, and he's not inclined to romanticize things -- they're not star-crossed lovers, and there's no fucking point in pretending otherwise.
What they are is just this simple: Harry's clogged sinuses the morning after, from the rain that pooled in the joints of his suit when he tried to kill Peter and the way Peter's back arches when Harry kisses him.
They were best friends once, and that should stand for something, and it does, but just not enough.
It's a little bit like dying, each morning they wake up in the same bed, but it's better than the alternative, because hatred is so much better than nothing at all.