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Sight
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At first Peter watches Mary Jane alone, out of his window. Afraid she might see him some night, he steals furtive glances, watches her silhouette undress and fills in the details himself. When her curtains are open, he blushes and hides under the covers but cannot completely look away. She mesmerizes him, this picture framed by his window each night.
Harry eventually notices, of course, because Harry comes over more often than Peter expects of a rich boy who has a room of his own big enough to fit in Peter's kitchen and living room, and when he comes over Harry observes more closely than anyone thinks he does. So he visits and he stays and he sees Peter seeing Mary Jane – and he smiles. He smiles then he leans against the window sill and stares provocatively at the girl and masturbates without hesitation or shame. It's only so long before Peter can help joining in because Harry teases and tugs and gives him his sheepish 'who me' grins that lights up the room and lets Peter see him, young and lithe and brazen.
Peter panics sometimes, worrying about his aunt or uncle walking in and seeing, but Harry laughs away these concerns as Peter hurriedly drapes blankets over him. He frets over Mary Jane as well, would die if he knew she saw him, but some part of him knows that she must. Every so often she glances over; every so often she teases and hides just out of sight.
She knows they watch, watches them watching and loves to know they watch.
And when they go to school she sits with Flash but glances at Harry who glances at Peter who glances at Mary Jane and back and forth. These gazes make Peter shift uncomfortably but he cannot look away, cannot stop looking and, in his most private moments, knows that he wants somebody to look, to see him.
They see him and he sees them and the ballet of glances and glimpses goes on until Peter thinks it interminable and longs for more…
Then everything changes.
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Smell
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The city smells drastically different from the hydrangea-lined suburb that Peter grew up in. Pollution settles like a cloud over the city and Peter's only escape from the ever-present stench is when he is swinging, far above the smog and pollution. High above it all, the air smells fresh and clean and simple, something pure and uncontaminated.
When he comes back down to earth, Peter finds himself in rooms awash with scents unlike those of his aunt's home. The smells of food cooking are replaced with the scent of fast food and delivery, the decay of remnants left out too long and dirty clothing piled up and left unwashed. It is teenaged and college and thoroughly undomestic.
The smell of Harry is the same, however. Almost. His cologned presence still lingers in each room, as it did when they were at home and he visited often enough for the odor to remain after he'd left. This time, however, his scent is adulterated, tainted by something that Peter has smelled in his dreams and fantasies over and over again.
Harry comes home smelling faintly of the only perfume Mary Jane ever uses and it suffocates Peter each time he does. When he sees Mary Jane, she smells of the restaurant in which she works. But, underneath all of that, he knows there are traces of Harry. However slight, they have left their marks on one another.
He wears neither cologne nor perfume. All he has is the sweat that comes with being Spider-Man and that is something he hides and washes away, shares with no one.
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Taste
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When Spider-Man kisses Mary Jane for the first time, all Peter can initially taste is rainwater. It runs down her face and his, into their mouths and mingles with their saliva. They remain locked in the kiss and the sullied rain gives way to the warmth and breath of Mary Jane's mouth. Peter finds that Harry was right - strawberries.
If he holds on long enough, will the layers peel back, will he taste Harry too?
Their kiss ends before he can wonder at his vicarious desires. When he returns to the apartment, he stifles the thoughts but they cannot help but surface. Will Harry know when next he kisses MJ that someone else was there? Would he recognize that it was Peter if he had any reference? Would he like how Peter tasted?
What did Harry taste like?
Peter thinks himself subtle and unassuming but his hunger shows through. Harry guides their conversations with hypotheticals – what would it be like to kiss a person upside-down? Didn't Peter think that Mary Jane should be satisfied with him and not go hero-seeking? Wasn't he any good or at least good enough?
Harry, Peter finds out, tastes of burgers and boxed sugary cereals, the kind with fake marshmallows and crusted frosting, everything cheap and childish which his father never bought or wanted to see him eat. Somewhere too he tastes of wines whose names Peter cannot pronounce and liquor that he cannot afford. Harry carries a hint of youth gone wrong and childhood missed, a hint of decadence which he can never quite eliminate and, as Peter expects, a hint of Mary Jane.
What Peter discovers but did not expect is that Harry is hungry too.
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Sound
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Over the beep of his aunt's machines, Peter hears himself speaking to Mary Jane of what Spider-Man 'told' him about her. She gives him little noises of encouragement and Peter feels like he could go on forever, pouring out his compliments, his feelings and barely remembering to substitute the 'Spider-Man' for the 'I.' Given the chance to finally, if in a roundabout way, say everything he has held down feel marvelous.
Then from the door Peter hears a little strangled noise of surprise and the wonderful crumbles. Harry hears them, sees them and clearly feels like he has been betrayed, standing there with a bunch of flowers and a hurt expression.
"Nonononono." Peter starts for the door, a chant pouring out of his lips. But with a slam, Harry disappears and yanks himself out of Peter's grasp when he finally manages to catch up in the hallway. The ding of the elevator that Harry gets on, glaring all the while, is disturbingly final, as if Harry is leaving to attend an execution.
Backtracking, Peter pokes his head in the door, glances at his still sleeping aunt and the bewildered Mary Jane.
"Aren't you coming?"
His disbelief and verging disappointment are such that suddenly Mary Jane can't imagine doing anything else.
Elsewhere, Harry assures his father that he was 'right about everything.'
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Touch
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Peter's words have evaporated and left him though he doesn't think words ever meant much to Harry anyway; MJ perhaps, but not Harry. He finds Harry in the cavernous house of his father and knows that Harry seeks – has been seeking – closeness, approval, affection; but all from sources from which he cannot obtain it. Worried about hurting his best friend, about making things worse, Peter finds him sitting in the young Osborn's room and drapes himself over him. Mary Jane enters a moment later and takes his hand but Harry still doesn't move.
Closer, Peter thinks. He massages at first, then pets and Harry gives Peter a 'what-are-you-doing' look that vacillates between fear and amusement. Then Mary Jane laughs so that Harry knows his game is up but that it's somehow fine and alright. Still closer, until one of them realizes that there are too many layers of fabric in the way to be really, truly close.
"We'd, uh… we'd be warmer under the blankets you know," Harry suggests in a voice too surprised to carry any hint of suggestiveness. Their bodies manifest the effects of the cold, so Peter nods as if this makes perfect, innocent sense.
"Sure. Sure."
Pink tipped breasts get offered up as pillows and heat spreads over every surface of flesh. With Peter pressing into his neck and Mary Jane somehow managing to stroke both their thighs, Harry begins to laugh. Everything around him is warm and living and willing and he thinks he must be feeling for the first time because nothing has ever felt so absolutely safe and right. Then Peter shifts, needing to do something to release the crazed energy and emotion that began building when he pressed against the two people he loves most. He moves and then they each move in tandem and find what they were looking for all along.
Across town, all Norman Osborn finds is an empty apartment. He takes out his frustrations on a crowd of people in Times Square and – despite his bombs and his armor and his fury – he is taken out.
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When the police bring the body of his father home, still clad in his monstrous trappings, Harry tries to feel something for him, something of the grief or rage or hurt or anguish he thinks he probably should be feeling. Peter approaches him first and then Mary Jane; they tug and pull him back to the darkness and the warmth of the room they came from and he follows, eager.
The dawn will come to face their problems; but for this night they slip back into the comfortable pleasure of sense and experience.
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