@ircnmonger | plotted starter
The first time he wakes up with a large chunk of time missing from his memory, Harry honestly doesn’t think much of it. He’d been out partying the night before, celebrating his return to normalcy, and he’s been blackout drunk enough to automatically assume that’s what had happened. It isn’t until the second time that he suspects something is off, because he hadn’t been drinking; he’d been poring over law books in his room, and then he’d suddenly been elsewhere, blocks away in some unfamiliar area of the city. But he brushes it off again because he feels fine. Better than fine, he feels spectacular.
Weeks go by without incident, or rather, without any negative incident. His vision has improved significantly, and he’s ditched the geeky frames he’d worn for years; he’s getting stronger by the day--impossibly so; he’s found a new confidence both within personal and business relationships, and he’s no longer afraid to ask for what he needs from either. All the good crashes to a halt, however, the third time he lapses. Because when he comes to in a grimy alleyway near the East River, he can feel another presence in his head, a dark sort of satisfaction that goes with it, and there’s blood caked under his fingernails that doesn’t belong to him.
And instantly, his stomach sinks.
Calling Dr. Michaels or his father is out of the question: there’s a niggling worry in the back of his head that messing with the cure now, in any capacity, would render it ineffective. And Peter and MJ still don’t know of the lies he’d told them. So while Ezekiel Stane admittedly isn’t the first person in his contact list he thinks to call, when he scrolls over that name, he pauses contemplatively.
He makes the call.
“Hey, Zeke.” He shoots for casual when the young man answers his call, but his tone betrays him, allowing his fear to give the words an upward, cautious inflection. “You busy, man?”
Harry looks down at his hands, staring at the sickly copper crescents embedded under his fingernails. Maybe it’s a trick of the light, but he thinks he sees shadows receding from the tips of his fingers, going deeper beneath his skin.
“Could use someone to talk to.”
















