Who: Gwen & Harry What: Drinking in a forklift. Yes, really. Where: Oscorp. Where else would they get a forklift? When: During the blackout. Warnings: Teenbaby angst.
Things were crazy.
Gwen wasn't really accustomed to crazy, not until Peter wrapped her in his web and kissed her after dinner one night. But since then, everything had been crazy, and she was trying to adjust in the way good scientists did to changing variables and environments during an experiment.
It wasn't working very well.
Being angry at Peter for her dad's death had made sense, but Peter coming back and being so defensive hadn't made any sense. Harry treating her like a girl, instead of like his little sister, that hadn't made sense. Flash turning out to be a really okay guy, that really hadn't made any sense. Mary Jane made sense, but that was all, and now that she'd finally gotten used to the new changes, things were changing again.
But it wasn't just Peter being gone that made things different. No, Christmas had changed things somehow. Maybe Peter being kidnapped had changed things too. She could still remember what it felt like to be on Harry's lap - not her Harry, but some future Harry that reminded her so much of Mr. Osborn that she'd actually begun to understand how she might have ended up sleeping with him in the comics. She hadn't told anyone that, and she didn't actually have anyone she trusted to tell. Well, Flash, but he would give her crap about it forever, and he might tell Mary Jane.
And that was all new too. She'd never missed having a best friend. Her mom had always filled that role, and she'd talked to her dad about absolutely everything else. Now, she was stuck, and she didn't know how to get the numbers she wanted from the equation, and she was having to figure it out without anyone else to guide her.
And then there was SHIELD and Venom and Spider-Man and Loki, and a future where college seemed more and more like a waste of time. With everything crazy like it was, who wanted to waste four years before living? It was, maybe, the biggest change in her outlook. She'd been looking forward to college since she was little, but now it just seemed like a distraction from more important things. Oh, she'd go to local school and get a degree, but the dreams of full-time and Ivy just seemed duller now than they ever had before her dad had died.
But none of that had anything to do with her desire to see Harry. She hadn't seen him since Christmas, and before that he'd been gone. And, admittedly, Christmas hadn't been them, and she'd hooked back up with Peter after. But she wanted to see him more than anyone else just then, and she put aside the scientist and reasoning for a few minutes to give into the desire without picking it apart and looking for how it worked.
Twenty-five minutes after her conversation with Harry on the journals, she left her lab and went down to Oscorp's delivery door. She had her bag in her hand, so that anyone monitoring would think she was just leaving that way, and she stowed it in the delivery bay as she waited for Harry to text.
Delivery door, she texted, so he wouldn't go up to the guarded front, not that they would ever deny Harry Osborn entrance. She just didn't want Mr. Osborn called right away, which he would be.
On his way to Oscorp, the streets were empty, so empty that catching a cab was impossible. Although Harry Osborn didn't make a point to drive on most occasions, that didn't mean that he couldn't. It rarely made sense to drive in this kind of unsleeping city, but when the power was out and the pitch black night crawled from the horizon up to the smoggy stars, he sure as hell wasn't going to jump off a curb and try to hail a taxi.
He loved this city. The realization hit him between the eyes like most unexpected, nonlinear thoughts could. He'd always just kind of plodded through in a haze of his own solitary confinement, but right now(even with it all dark and apocalyptic, sirens blaring somewhere in the distance) Harry knew that he wasn't meant to be anywhere else. There was something to be said for purpose, and right now, he felt purposeful. Even if he was doing something wrong. Not that seeing Gwen was wrong, but essentially breaking into Oscorp certainly was. Some part of him knew that if his father wanted him to take over the company, if his father even remotely thought that Harry was capable of working beneath him, the man would have given him some access codes or a key at this point. Then again, it was Harry's own fault. With regret and enough guilt to slay the suicidal, he knew that he'd never truly expressed enough interest in his father's work. To be honest, he wasn't even sure about everything that Oscorp did. The guilt slipped away quickly, replaced by a new sense of self-loathing that had only unearthed itself after Christmas. Not that he even wanted to think about Christmas, but it was kind of hard not to now that he was going to meet Gwen. Maybe he should just turn around and go home, come up with some excuse like...
The text distracted him, sloughing off the uncertainty to make way for a child's curiosity, the eagerness of fearless youth. It wasn't often that he was fearless, but he tended to be with Gwen. He'd just known her for so long that it didn't occur to him to be anybody but himself. She probably saw through the stony expression of bullshit that he put on at school any way, even if she never called him on it. She was a good person. He didn't know why that made him a little sad.
Checking his phone, Harry was soon sweeping around the side of the building to the service entrance. He texted back quickly, There.
She smiled at how quickly the text came, even though she knew it was a silly emotional response. When she was younger, she'd assured herself that she would not become one of those girls. She would not become dependant, and she would not depend on anyone but herself for her own happiness. It had been easy to think those things while safe in her dad's penthouse, with nothing bad ever happening. It was hard to put that self-promise into practice. She would never be Mary Jane, never be that wild girl that acted first and thought later, but she was more controlled by her emotions that she wanted to ever admit to.
She wouldn't be including this moment in her Nobel Prize speech, example. No one needed to know how she remembered the Christmas vision and blushed, bright red over pale skin, before she talked herself out of the reaction and slid open the delivery door just partway, enough for Harry to slip in when he arrived.
It was cold outside, merciless winter in New York, and the snowflaked chill whirled around the gap in the doorway as she peeked out. She was blonde hair and a smile, all wrapped up in a pure white lab coat and grey knee-highs peeking out beneath a hint of black skirt. She grinned wider when he swept around the edge, entirely without apprehension as she motioned him forward more quickly with a sweeping arm. "Do you want to freeze your top scientist?" she called.
Harry operated in a black and white view of reflection and emotion. Things were either good or they were bad, and these findings were wholly determined by outside opinion. Primarily due to his father's opinion, but also Gwen's and Peter's for the most part. Well.. not Peter's anymore, as Peter had been gone for some time now, and Harry was forced to remember this as he shivered and shook in wait of the door's opening. What a shitty friend he was. The evidence was stacked entirely against him, but it's not like Harry was want to refute it anyway. He took the punches as they came, even from his own subconscious. It left him gradually downtrodden, and by the time that Gwen opened the door, his smile was watered down to the point of transparency. A weak twitch of muscle. "Sorry.." The apology was offered as he skirted around her, the grin becoming momentarily more real as he considered her to be his. His scientist, anyway.
"Every year I forget how damn cold this city gets." His gloved hands serviced a reminder to his arms, rubbing vigorously. It was only now in this heated environment that his skin remembered what its natural temperature was to be. The sensation was painful and tingling in his fingertips. His breath discontinued its fog immediately upon crossing the threshold, and Harry exhaled a little harder experimentally, curious as to the immediate change upon crossing the threshold. Glancing over to Gwen, his smile was suddenly more real. An unmitigated flash of teeth before the expression was concealed, and he heaved warm breath onto the numb flex of fingers in cashmere gloves.
She gave his shoulder a soft smack when he apologized. He was always like that, too sweet and too polite - with her, at least. With other girls he was something dangerous, a bad boy with money to burn and a sad smile, the kind of guy that every girl wanted to save. She'd seen so many girls crash and burn that way, and she'd walked into so many of them crying inconsolably in the bathroom at lunch, and she'd always wondered what motivated any of them to get involved with someone like Harry Osborn. Or, she had wondered, once upon a time. Back then, she'd acknowledged that he was the handsomest boy in school, with his blue eyes and copper-penny hair, and that smile that could melt butter. But, logically, she'd understood that the risks of anyone dating her best friend outweighed the benefits. These days, it was more confusing, and she might have blushed a little as he edged past her, and as she slid the door shut against the bitter cold.
Her own smile, which had faded as she watched him rub life back into his arms, rekindled when he smiled at her, though there was a shadow of sadness behind her pale blue eyes that she had a hard time hiding. She didn't stay still for long, though, not letting that melancholy seep into her bones. Instead, she tugged on his sleeve, and she pulled him into the bay she'd tossed her bag into minutes earlier.
The bay was crowded, boxes from floor to ceiling, and a forklift slumbering in the corner. It was dark, lit only by the emergency lights, but the clutter made it warm, and she let go of his sleeve once the door closed behind him. In the gloaming, she went to her bag, and she pulled out a bottle of aged whiskey she'd taken from home before coming to work that morning, something she'd intended for Dr. Banner, since she wanted to give him something after Mr. Stark's funeral, but she changed her mind without any pause for her normal, logical considerations. If there was anyone she could talk to, cry around, and get sloppy drunk with, it was Harry. Bottle handed over, she slipped off her lab jacket and climbed into the forklift cab, patting the wide seat so that Harry would join her.
This was a part of Oscorp that Harry had only seen once or twice before, and he'd certainly never lingered around it for long. Oscorp was the kind of place that barely interested Harry, and he only frequented the place out of absolute necessity. These days, that necessity centered around Gwen. He didn't particularly like that she always wanted to meet here, but he also knew that it was a relatively safe place to be. After all, who was going to turn them in? Maybe it was cocky to think them so invincible, but even being banned from Oscorp didn't seem like that daunting of a possibility to him. He neglected to think that it might be for Gwen.
Unbuttoning the thick wool of his coat, Harry became accustomed to the cool, dry air as he surveyed the quiet desertion of their locale. The bay wasn't acutely heated like the more populated areas, or the temperature and humidity sensitive ones. Even so, some heat radiated from the higher floors and the walls beyond, making the storage space a little bitter, but not unbearable. Harry rubbed his gloved hands together and tucking that whiskey bottle under his arm, he watched as Gwen mounted the forklift. Liquor would at least kill the lingering cold in his blood, and Harry untwisted the lid for a quick, grimacing sip to see how the amber waves settled in the empty basin of his stomach. Not bad. Experimentally, he took a second sip before reaching up with his free glove to catch a grip on the steel edge of the forklift, hauling himself up with a foot on one wheel. The whiskey warmed him through to the bone. It brought feeling back to the tips of his fingers, which was initially painful in that confusingly pleasant way that muscle aches could be.
"I know you're nerd enough to enjoy this place, but Gwen," he settled in beside her with a grin that slipped into a momentary frown. "How long do you plan on staying here?" He tried to read her violescent eyes, and there was something concerned in his stare. Harry wasn't talking about just now or just tonight, they both knew that she slept in labs a lot these days.
She watched all that pulling and climbing and sipping, but she didn't interrupt him until he settled beside her with that familiar grin that reminded her of their childhood. She bumped her shoulder against his, and she reached over for the bottle and took it from him, holding it between her fingers before tipping it back and letting the liquid burn her throat. She coughed as she handed it back over, because other than the champagne that older-him had given her at Christmas, she hadn't had anything to drink since that night she'd fallen asleep in his bed at the Osborn estate. "Did you know that alcohol burns because it's a poison, and it's your body's natural defense against drinking it?" she asked, less articulate than she normally would be, and then grabbing the bottle back for another sip, as if her intelligence would return with another drink.
As for how long she intended to stay, she looked up at the ceiling, as if she could see her lab clear through the pipes and wires and drywall. "I've been working more lately," she admitted, giving him a sigh and an honest look. Keeping things from Harry wasn't something she was very good at, and she leaned against his arm before continuing. "Dr. Banner has been gone since Mr. Stark died, so the Chinatown lab is lonely. Flash and I have an apartment now, and I like it, but I just start thinking about everything when I'm not focused on something. Peter's gone, and I think it's for good this time, and you hadn't been around in a long time. Working makes me think about something other than all the things that are wasting space in my mind, because thinking about it all doesn't change anything. Dr. Connors is around. They sighted him, and it just makes me think of my dad."
She took a deep breath, a sharp, sharp inhale. "I missed you." She paused, pale eyes and a wordless request as she looked over him, the whiskey warming her through and making it easier to talk. "Did you see anything at Christmas? Do you remember anything?"
Christmas wasn't really something that Harry wanted to address or think about, and he just shrugged absently as a result. His eyes widened momentarily over the whiskey bottle's bittersweet basin, as Harry was beginning to realize that busying himself with drinking wasn't really a means of answering her question.
"Not really," he finally said, carbon copying his noncommittal shrug once more. Harry wrapped the bottle in his leathered fingers while reading the label. Even if nothing had changed in their friendship, which he was really grateful for despite his continued hormonal foolishness, Harry couldn't quite shake the feeling that everything was different. He could have sworn that he was at least content once. These days the future seemed daunting, the past seemed otherworldly, and the present echoed with loneliness. Not that anything was wrong, because by most standards Harry knew that his life was picture perfect. It made feeling this way all the more guiltifying. He didn't want to feel guilty or bad right now, not when it was the first time in a long time that he'd gotten a chance to see Gwen without fucked up, mitigating factors.
"I missed you too," he said. Working backward to the warmer elements of their conversation. He gave her a sideways smile, and it was real. Balancing the bottle between his knees, Harry pulled his gloves off and stuffed them into one of his coat pockets. "How's living with Flash? Did he have any furniture aside from a beer pong table before you moved in?"
She believed him when he said he didn't remember anything. What differentiated (she believed) her relationship with Harry Osborn from everyone else's was the fact that he never lied to her, and he never tried to seduce her. Even with the whiskey warm in her stomach and a blush fanning across her cheeks as she thought of Christmas, she believed that. But there was still something in his eyes that was wrong, and she'd known him too long not to recognize it. But, since she believed him, she didn't associate it with Christmas, or with anything Harry had seen since that night. And Gwen, she wasn't a liar either, but she'd learned to omit the truth and tell half-truths impressively since arriving here, in this version of home that wasn't exactly home. "I think about it a lot," she admitted safely of Christmas, since he couldn't remember, and it was safe, and then she gave him a questioning look. "What's wrong? Is it Peter, or Mary Jane, or your dad?" She wondered, for just a blink, if he'd learned about Goblin, somehow, but no, he wouldn't be sitting here calmly if he knew, and she discounted it almost immediately.
She reached into his coat pocket with a smile that was reminiscent of their childhood, and she stole his gloves and slipped them on her cold hands. "Don't I at least get a kiss on the cheek, Harry Osborn? After all, I'm winning you a Nobel Prize, remember?" she asked, and then she shook her head, the world spinning the tiniest bit with the moment. "I rented it furnished. Flash is okay, which is strange to say, but he's trying to keep me from getting thrown off a bridge, and I guess he thinks living with him is an easier way to make that happen," she said, with the easiness of someone who'd always had more luck with male friends than female ones.
Harry didn't think of himself as a liar, no matter how much of one he might eventually become. To Harry, the ways in which he occasionally stretched the truth were not a means of keeping himself out of trouble, only a way of keeping everyone else from getting hurt or feeling awkward. If Harry was completely honest with himself, maybe he lied to Gwen just now to keep from feeling awkward about Christmas. Some things were just best when forgotten. Of course once he took the time to consider that, there was no stopping his mind from going down that dark road. Harry frowned and set some teeth into the edge of his thumb when the guilt over that night began to creep up on him all over again. When she mentioned the fact that she thought about Christmas a lot, he glanced up. He wanted to tell her that he was sorry and that he wasn't going to turn into that guy, but then she was asking him what was wrong.
"Nothing. I mean, yeah maybe Peter just a little but," Harry just kind of shrugged with the admission that he didn't know what to say about it. One of the last times he'd talked to Peter, Peter had told him that he was Spider-Man. Harry hadn't been a good friend, and he hadn't wanted to listen, and now Pete was gone. It wasn't supposed to happen like that, right? He wasn't sure how to say that to Gwen, so he said nothing until she went about filching the gloves right out of his pocket. It made him smile, and the flash of a dimple erased the previous and momentary glimpse of sad lamentation that he'd been wearing like a mask.
"You get a kiss on the cheek when you actually win the Nobel Prize." The grin deepened. "You've got to have something to work toward." When she got to talking about Flash and getting thrown off a bridge, Harry's brow furrowed. "You still think that it going to happen? I mean, without Peter here there wouldn't be.." Awkwardly, the words trailed off, uncertain of if he should have said anything about Peter at all.
She liked seeing the dimples on his cheeks, and she gave him a warm smile in the near-dark, all booze in her belly and the safety of someone she knew wouldn't let anything happen to her at her side. She was having trouble seeing a little straight, but she didn't think it mattered. She knew what alcohol did to the central nervous system, and she knew it was a logical outcome of inundating her cells with more alcohol than the body could naturally tolerate, the standard reaction to a toxin. Sober, she would have asked before doing what she did next, which was to curl up on her side, using his lap for a pillow. She rolled onto her back almost immediately, and stared at the roof of the forklift and bent her knees up to keep her legs from dangling over the side.
She reached up and poked one of his dimples with a fingertip, almost missing, and then smiling when she managed to get the trajectory right. "When I win a Nobel Prize, you'll have to give me a raise," she countered, and then she shook her head against his thighs, not even ruminating on the question before responding. "I don't think anyone is going to throw me off anything. Too much has changed. For that to work, Peter has to love me, and Goblin has to know it and want to get back at him." She should be happy about that, but she frowned, and breathed a heavy sigh. She was tipsy enough to do this now, but it didn't mean she wanted to. But she had to, and she looked up at him, gaze all earnest cornflower blue. "Goblin's supposed to be your dad, Harry," she said as softly as she could manage.
Nothing gold could stay. He could see where she was going with the conversation when she took that heavy sigh. Harry felt it in his gut like an icepick, and he closed his eyes against the rising words. Like they were monsters under the proverbial bed, and he could make them go away if he just didn't look. "Gwen," he interjected.. but she was already saying it. He couldn't stop her, and the words wouldn't go away. There was some logical part of him that knew what she was saying was true. She wouldn't say something like that if it wasn't, and she wasn't the first one to suggest it. But she had to be wrong. Everyone had to be wrong. Harry's father wasn't like that. Norman was a businessman, a revolutionary in the field, he was helping so many people with Oscorp's research. He wasn't some madman in armor and a mask! Harry would know if that was the case. And just because the story was supposed to happen that way.. it didn't mean there weren't alternate versions to every story. Wasn't Flash supposed to be some kind of bad guy in a suit too? It didn't have to be that way!
Suddenly there was this deep, wounded flinch of muscle in his chest and his stomach. Harry pushed the bottle away so that it was wedged between Gwen's side and the seat. "How can you say that?" Because it felt like she was saying there was something wrong with Norman Osborn, and by genetic default something wrong with himself. Harry was stiff with anxiety despite the alcohol. Every fiber of his body wanted to just leave because that tended to be the easiest way to deal with just about anything, but he couldn't leave. There was miraculously some of that Osborn pride still alive in him, and it refused to let him budge until she retracted that betrayal. Harry stared down at her with crippling disbelief. His mouth was tight like his throat, and swallowing felt like pieces of broken glass all the way down. "You really believe that? After everything, after.." His eyebrows knit and his jaw was tense for a beat of unraveling silence before he snapped down at her, "Why the hell are you even here, then?! Why intern here? If he's so bad, why?!" Frustrated and looking for escape, he pushed at her to move off of his lap. The lightheartedness was officially extinct.
The betrayal in his eyes hurt, and the hurt on his features hurt, and the way he shoved her away hurt. She sat up, his anger more sobering than anything else, and she grabbed for his shirt to keep him there, because she was afraid he would run off and disappear into the night, never to be seen again, and she couldn't stand the thought of it. Even more than Peter going, this hurt, and she realized just how much she'd come to care about Harry Osborn in the past few months.
"Harry, no, please," she finally managed, finding her voice as she blinked tears out of her cornflower eyes. "I didn't believe it either. I haven't believed it for months, which is why I didn't say anything," she insisted, and even to her own ears she sounded like someone trying desperately to hold on. She'd always refused to be that girl, but here she was, clinging to him like he might slip through her fingers if he didn't like what she said. "Mr. Osborn has been nothing but kind to me, and I love working here, and we've known each other forever, right? We've loved each other forever." Because they had. They'd been friends since she could remember, and she hated hurting him. "But Goblin kidnapped Peter over Christmas. Flash talked to his guy in Las Vegas, and the guy confirmed it. Maybe we can help it stop, or we can help it not get worse, but it wasn't right keeping it from you anymore." She paused, and she looked at him with desperation, and she wanted to beg him not to go, not to hate her. It was selfish, but she didn't want to lose him too. "We can help him, Harry," she promised. Because she didn't believe Norman Osborn was evil; he couldn't be. It had to be like Flash with Venom, and it was just that no one had figured it out yet. "We have a lab, and technology; we can help."
"No. No!" Harry shook his head, refusing to listen, refusing to absorb it, refusing to let it become real. Don't let it be true, there was no way it could be true. Even if his father was supposed to eventually become some bad guy, he wasn't one yet. Harry would have noticed something like that! Why would Gwen say it that way, that somebody from Las Vegas had confirmed it? That Peter had been kidnapped by his dad? Even if Harry had been out of the loop here and there, those were things that he would inherently know! A person knows if their father is a psychopath. His father wasn't even violent, just an emotionally crippled workaholic.
"Stop," he interjected with a painful clench of teeth when her argument strayed to how long they'd been friends.. as if that somehow justified what she was saying. As if she even knew his dad, as if she even knew him. Nobody ever got that close. Sure maybe with Harry it was easy to see all of the flaws and mental deficiency, but with somebody like Norman Osborn? It would take an electron microscope to glimpse any kind of chip in that man's armor. Oscorp saved lives every day with its break-through discoveries. Not Gwen, not Peter, and not goddamn Spider-man were going to change that. "Stop," and those nuclear blue eyes were clear when he looked at her.
"It's not right keeping it from me anymore?" Harry actually looked nauseous, and it had nothing to do with the liquor. It was like he could taste the betrayal. He could see it too, everyone sitting around and conspiring about this. Peter, Mary Jane, Flash. Nice. His mouth contorted into something ugly, and he jerked loose from Gwen's pleading grip in order to climb out of the forklift and hop down, forgetting his gloves in the process of getting away from her.
"The next time you all have a vote on how much you hate my dad, let me know. I'd like for this shit to be said to my face." Instead of just having Gwen show up with a bottle and a smile, premeditated cuddling to soften the blow. For the first time, Harry wondered whose idea it had been for her to tell him like this. Was it all part of the plan? He gave her a contemplative glance over his shoulder, adjusting the heavy gray of his coat. Harry noticed that he'd forgotten his gloves with her as the bare pads of his fingers touched the cool metal of his buttons. It didn't matter, he decided. The cold seemed truly inviting quite suddenly, and before she could try to stop him with more wide eyes and apologies, Harry was out the door.