~*~

Peter tried to sneak into the apartment as quickly as he could, but it was to no avail. His foot fell on the squeaky step and Ursula popped out of the door of her father's apartment before he had time to twitch. She stood at the top of the steps and held out a fistful of paper scraps, each with various scribbles on them. Peter didn't even need to look at them to surmise what they would say.

"Your friends called again," she told Peter in a bright but confused tone. "Two from Mary Jane, three from the boy. Do you want the messages?"

Peter kept his face carefully blank. "Yeah, I guess." He crammed the paper into his pockets and got to work on jimmying open his door.

"Why aren't you calling them back?" Ursula asked from behind him.

He turned his face just slightly so he could see her out of the corner of his vision. "It's complicated."

"They sound like they really miss you." When he didn't say anything, she pressed forward. "If I had friends like Mary Jane I wouldn't want to lose them. She's very pretty, you know," she told Peter with a note of jealousy in her voice.

"Yes, I know." Peter sighed and kicked the door. He glowered at it in silence for a moment, while Ursula watched him.

"Do you want a cookie?" She asked timidly.

He gritted his teeth and kicked the door, which finally creaked open. Turning around, he looked at her in a defeated way, his shoulders slumping as though she had eventually worn him down.

"Sure, why not?" He sighed with resignation.

He sat on his bed while she brought in the familiar chipped plate of cookies and milk. Peter took one without comment and Ursula studied his face, watching him chew and waiting for him to make the first move.

"I think I messed up," he finally said after polishing off the dessert.

"Did you have another fight?"

"Kind of. I don't… I have a decision to make and I don't know how to make it. I just keep putting it off and putting it off, and now I'm afraid that it's been so long they'll both be mad at me…"

"Maybe you should read the messages." She pointed to the pocket of his coat, which was draped across the room's single chair with the messages poking out. "They don't sound angry. They sound sad."

"I keep hurting them." His shoulders hunched. "And now everything is so messed up, I don't know if I can make things right."

"Shouldn't you at least talk to them though? Nothing can get better if you don't do anything."

"But anything I do… how do you make a decision between your two best friends? How do you pick which one you care about more?"

"Do you have to decide?" Ursula asked uncertainly.

Peter didn't say anything and instead took another cookie. He chewed slowly while Ursula looked out of the window, sitting in silence. As he finished, Ursula stood up.

"I'm sorry," she apologized and ducked her head. "You probably want me to leave."

She picked up the plate and the empty glass and headed for the door. As she shut the door behind her, Peter lay back down on his bed and looked up at the chipping ceiling, making invisible ledgers with his mind. He ached inside and wanted to put off the decision and not think about it. But every day he didn't make a choice, the conflict only further filled his thoughts.

Sitting up, he reached for the messages and flipped through them, then got out of the rest of the unread messages he'd crammed into his desk drawer. Setting them out on his sheets, he sifted them into two piles and read each of them over carefully. Some were inquiries, some were flat out begging, but all of them twisted his insides and made him feel awful.

Taking a breath, he tried to condense it down in some way to logic, consider the options and what the ramifications of any decision would be. He could return to Mary Jane and try to patch up the infidelity. He could try to convince Harry that they could just be friends. More drastically, he could examine his own feelings and see if they weren't, in fact, reciprocal. He could reduce everything to friendship between all of them and look to date somebody else all together, maybe see about Gwen. He could remain cut off from each of them for good and pretend that he didn't know either of them; but that was a decision that became less appealing with each subsequent day alone.

Finally, he pulled on his jacket and swept all of the messages off of his bed and into the garbage. Hoping to avoid another conversation, he took the fire escape down to the street and allowed his feet to guide him along a path instinctively chosen.

~*~

Harry came home to the same darkened penthouse that he'd left to go to his physical therapy session, still using a crutch for one of his legs. He locked the elevator door, walked down the hall and into the great room to get started on work. But when he reached the entrance, he stopped short.

"Missed you," Peter murmured.

Harry wanted to run but was root to the spot and afraid that his legs wouldn't let him. Peter crossed the distance slowly, shyly, making Harry muscles twitch in anticipation of Peter's touch. When it finally happened and Peter's body was within reach of his, Harry pulled and squeezed like he was attempting to crush the life out of him, letting the crutch fall to the side.

"I called."

"Yeah, I know."

"You had me worried. Scared."

"I'm a little scared myself right now."

"Peter, I'm not sure I want the answer. But would you mind very much if I kissed you again?"

"You don't have to ask my permission, Harry." He set his forehead against the other's neck.

"Good." He pressed on his mouth again, harder this time than before, more confidently than before. "Because I really, really wanted to." Peter blushed and Harry backed away a little bit. "I'm not making you uncomfortable, am I? I'm not trying to."

"No, no, I'm just… I really never thought about this. Like I said, I'm a little bit scared."

"Of me?" Harry looked worried. "Anything I did fighting you, hurting you, that's in the past…"

"Not that. Just scared. What will people think?" He looked anxious. "How do I explain this to Aunt May, to MJ, to myself?"

"Come on buddy." Harry ruffled his hair. "Aunt May is going to care about you no matter what. But what you think about yourself, that's something you have the answer to. Why did you come here in the first place?"

"I thought about stuff." Peter loosened his grip and looked down. "I thought a lot about you and our history and our friendship and how it felt when you kissed me the first time. I couldn't see going on without you being there. It was bad enough when we were fighting; thinking about losing you for good hurt too much."

"But what made the difference between friendship and… and this?"

"I've thought about that." He shook his head. "But I don't have an answer. Not a clear one. Only feelings, only the thought that it felt good and right and I didn't know what I'd do without you and I didn't think friendship even would have been good enough, after everything." He held onto Harry's shirt and looked into his eyes. "Is that answer enough?"

"Any answer that brought you back here is good enough for me." Harry grinned. "But is there any chance I could sit down? All this standing makes my legs feel like they're going to give on me."

"Sorry!" Peter gasped and reflexively lifted Harry up and toted him over to the couch.

"I was just going to walk," he laughed. "But this works too."

"Are you getting better?" Peter asked anxiously as he sat down beside Harry and passed him pillows. "How are your visits to the doctors going? Are you going to be alright?"

"Well enough. I have another operation in a couple of days and after that it's all up to me making sure that I stay on track and work my legs so that I retain my mobility."

"Thank goodness." Peter draped his arms around Harry's neck, but Harry remained oddly stiff.

"We still haven't really talked about one thing, though." He looked down at Peter. "Mary Jane."

"Mary Jane," Peter sighed. "I didn't want to make a choice. I liked it when you were both my friends." He lay down on Harry's lap and looked up at him. "Do you think she'll even want to be friends after this? Do you think that will change since we're apparently, you know…"

"Together?" Peter nodded and Harry shrugged. "Dunno, Pete. That's up to her. If I had to guess, she'll probably feel a little bit disappointed, a little bit hurt."

"And what about us? Do you think if she's around, we're going to… I still care about her. I came to you first because I'm comfortable with you, because I knew better what to do with you while I still don't know what to do about her. But at the end of it all, I still care."

"Preaching to the choir, Peter." He sighed. "Crap, I don't know. We should probably at least try and talk to her."

"That's what Ursula told me."

"Who?"

"The girl who takes the messages at my apartment."

"Oh. That's who that is." He shifted. "And I know we're not having this conversation now, but you're moving out of that place and I'm not going to listen to you say no. You're coming here if I have to move you out myself while you're at class and have you come home to find all of the locks changed and your stuff in here."

"Harry…"

"But back to MJ." He groaned. "Really a mess, isn't it?"

"I don't want to be mad at her. I can kind of… now I can understand her confusion. It's scary to have this life-changing decision in front of you and you don't know what to do or how to make the choice and whatever you do there's always this worry that there's going to be regret. I don't know how you pick and feel like you did the right thing."

"Well you could always avoid everybody's calls and pretend that it isn't happening." Harry gave him a rueful smile and dipped to kiss him on his temple. "There's always that."

"Sorry," Peter whispered. There was a buzzing, vibrating sound and Peter sat up. "I think that's your phone. I hope that's your phone."

"It is." Harry rolled his eyes. "If this is anybody from OsCorp… oh."

"What?"

"Well, Pete, it looks like we don't have to approach her after all." He looked over the top of the phone. "It's MJ."

"Are you going to answer it?" Peter murmured.

"Yeah, I guess." He pressed the button. "Hello? MJ… Mary Jane, you're going to have to slow… I can't understand…" He fell silent and listened for a while.

"What's going on?" Peter mouthed.

"Dunno," Harry replied silently. "Okay, you can come over. Yeah. See you soon."

"What was that about?" Peter looked at the phone in Harry's hand.

"I honestly have no idea. She was really worked up though and kept crying. I could hardly understand a word of what she was saying. But she's coming over, though, so I guess we'll learn pretty shortly."

"Maybe I should leave." Peter stood up reflexively.

"No, Pete." Harry grabbed his wrist. "You've been running for a few weeks now and it's not going to get any better until we all face this. Alright? No more ducking out of windows Pete. Time to face this, for better or worse."

Peter's arm went slack and he sat back down. "I feel sick."

"Welcome to the club. But if we don't get this cleared up it will hang over our heads forever and we'll never be ble to move forward or build any kind of solid relationship. If that's what we're doing. If it's what you want."

"It's what you want, right? Mostly."

"Well, yeah, I think that…" There was a ding. "That's her."

"How'd she get over here so fast?" Peter paled.

"She must have called from really close by."

"Maybe you should get the door." Peter clutched the couch cushions. "You know, ease her into this slowly."

"Come on, Pete. No more excuses. I'm the one with the bad legs and you want me to do this all on my own?"

"You said they were getting better!" Peter protested as he handed Harry his crutch.

"They are, but that doesn't mean I don't want support – physical or moral. Look, if we do this together…"

"… she can be mad at both of us?"

"Don't think so negatively." Harry pressed the button to buzz the elevator up and unlocked the metal door to it. "Don't even know why I locked the thing," he muttered.

"What do we say?"

"Maybe let her talk first. I mean, she obviously had something to tell us."

"Or you."

"How do you know she didn't call your place too?"

The arrival of the elevator silenced them and a red-eyed Mary Jane appeared when the door parted. She stepped out of the door with a stumbling motion and looked between the two before bursting into a fresh wave of tears that she daubed with a crumpled tissue.

"Mary Jane?" Harry murmured and reached for her, touching her uncertainly on the shoulder.

"What's wrong?" Peter flanked her on the other side, a bit frightened to see her so upset – more than she had been after the battle, more than almost any time he'd seen her.

She looked down at the floor, taking in an unsteady breath. "I'm pregnant," she whispered. "And I'm sorry."

~*~