Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

(“We’ll see you soon, okay, bud? It’s only a week. Just like last time.”)

-

Peter Parker is seven years old when Tony Stark looks into the camera, staring down the souls of every living person watching the broadcasted press conference, and tells the world that he’s Iron Man.

By this point, Peter already lives with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, who are so very nice and lovely to him despite not being ready to raise a child when his parents dropped him off and promised to be back soon. Four year old Peter had blinked up at them, quite used to his parents leaving for business trips by that point and not feeling too upset about it despite always missing them while they were gone, and he had held May’s hand and nodded his head and murmured a little, “Okay.” Mary Parker pressed a kiss to the crown of his head and Richard Parker gave Peter that same warm smile that he always gave him before leaving – a don’t worry smile, a stay out of trouble smile, a see you soon smile.

One unexplainable plane crash later, and Peter never gets the chance to see his dad’s see you soon smile again. Now, three years down the line, he doesn’t really remember what it looks like, but he knows he’ll never forget this moment right here – him, with his hands pressed to the glass of the TV as his eyes go wide, his Aunt May on the phone in the hallway and his Uncle Ben cooking dinner in the kitchen. Neither of them are watching the news with him, are too busy, always busy, trying to balance parenthood that they never really agreed to (not that they would rather send Peter off, because they love him, but that doesn’t make it any less overwhelming) and finding better jobs because their incomes were comfortable for just the two of them, but with the added financial strain of a growing child, paying the bills is getting harder and harder as they struggle to make sure there’s enough food for the three of them on the table and that Peter has clothes that fit him right.

But Peter is watching the news, and he feels giddy, because Tony Stark just told the entire planet that he’s a superhero, and Peter has only heard of superheroes in blurry memories of Captain America bedtime stories that his parents would tell him in hushed whispers and gentle words, easing him to sleep, where he would dream of saving the world and being a hero, just like Steve Rogers.

And, apparently, just like Tony Stark.

The press conference comes to a quick end, and suddenly the screen is filled with a shocked looking news anchor stuttering through a rushed recap of what just happened, clearly trying to make sense of the situation, but Peter is already hopping to his feet and sprinting to the kitchen with a wide grin and a pep in his step. Ben gives him an amused look when he stumbles to a stop by his side and instantly starts tugging on Ben’s shirt, excitedly exclaiming, “Tony Stark’s a superhero, Uncle Ben!”

“I’m not sure about that,” Ben chuckles, not maliciously, but rather just uncertain. Some would call Tony Stark a hero, while others would claim him to be a monster, all because of the weaponry he provided to the military, but those people don’t say that anymore, ever since Stark announced that the weapons division of his company was being shut down immediately. The state of the public opinion on Tony Stark is up in the air, not a hero, but not a monster, either.

“He is!” Peter insists, nodding wildly and officially bouncing where he stands. “He just said! He’s Iron Man! Tony Stark is Iron Man and Iron Man is a superhero!”

Ben looks up, over the counter, and sees the news channel still on, the words on the screen backing up Peter’s statement. Smiling fondly, Ben ruffles Peter’s hair and tells him, “Looks like he just might be, Pete. Now go wash up, dinner’s almost ready, okay?”

And Peter feels a bit dazed for the rest of the day because there was a superhero out there and maybe superheroes like Iron Man, like Tony Stark, can stop plane crashes that no one can explain. Maybe superheroes can let kids like him have their parents come home when they’re supposed to come home. Maybe it’s too late for Mary and Richard Parker – and maybe it’s too late for Peter Parker, too – but with Tony Stark, it won’t be too late for others, and that makes Peter happy as he sits at the kitchen table and eats his dinner and thinks about Iron Man saving the world.

As it turns out, it’s not too late for heroes like Iron Man to save kids like Peter Parker.

It’s 2010, and there’s something really cool happening that Peter really wants to go to. He begs his Uncle Ben and his Aunt May, promises that he’ll do extra chores and even offers to make dinner for a while even though he only really knows how to make sandwiches and toast, but his enthusiasm and insistence is enough to make his aunt and uncle share a smile and nod their agreement. Peter’s admiration of Tony Stark has been evident since the day he revealed himself as Iron Man, an admiration that has grown from a basic hero worshipping to an actual, somewhat blatant understanding that Tony Stark is also a genius, especially in areas that Peter is already showing interest in. Science, technology, and wanting to know everything are three things that the kid has been focused on since he was in first grade and he started noticing things that he didn’t understand – like why a cup of iced water filled to the brim didn’t overflow when the ice melted. He’s always asked questions and wanted answers and learning that Tony Stark has a lot of answers to questions that he hasn’t even thought to ask yet…

Well, Iron Man is a superhero, but Peter thinks that Tony Stark is one, too.

Which is why, when Peter hears one of the older kids talking about the Stark Expo at school, and he manages to catch a story about it on the news, he goes to May and Ben, and he manages to convince them that taking a nine year old to an Expo based on his idol is a good idea.

And it is, it really is, because everything Peter sees blows his mind. There’s technology his young brain had never even been able to consider before, AI’s and robots and interactive pieces that make Peter giggle excitedly. He points at cool merchandise and Uncle Ben is helpless against the shine in his eyes, using his spare twenty bucks to purchase something cheap and simple, deciding that the way Peter grins is worth having to skip eating on his lunch breaks at work for a few days. Peter wears the plastic Iron Man mask with pride, holding Aunt May’s hand in one of his own, the other poking at Ben to show him cool things that catch his eye. They find his excitement endearing, heart-warming – this kid isn’t theirs but they’ve been raising him well and that alone makes them giddy with love for the boy.

“What’s over there?” Peter asks, pointing off towards his left, where a large gathering of people are waiting. He’s not tall enough to see above their heads, but there’s an energetic chatter coming from the crowd, which is more than enough to draw his attention and peak his interest.

“Looks like a stage, Pete,” Ben answers simply. “There’s probably some kind of presentation.”

Peter grins, bouncing from foot to foot excitedly. “Can we go over there? I wanna see it!”

One look at his beaming face, and they couldn’t even try to say no.

Because the crowd is already so large, they aren’t able to get anywhere near the stage, and are instead pretty far back, but Ben just puts Peter on his shoulders to see better and calls it a win when Peter gasps at the display of bots that come on stage. Justin Hammer is there – a Tony Stark rival, but not nearly as smart as Tony, which Peter knows because of just how obsessively he watches any news stories involving Iron Man or the man within the suit – and he’s talking about something that Peter can only kind of hear over the people talking around him, speakers not really loud enough for the words to be clear. He’s not really interested in hearing what Justin Hammer has to say, anyway, and is much more taken by the sight of the gunned up suits. They aren’t as appealing as the Iron Man suit, he thinks – they look much more scary, not like something a hero would wear, much more like something for a villain. If Peter saw one of these on the street, he wouldn’t feel protected. He’d just be afraid.

And it’s as he’s thinking this that Iron Man lands on the stage, and before Peter can do more than let out an excited squeak at seeing his hero with his own two eyes, the scary military suits are pointing guns towards the crowd and chaos ensues.

In hindsight, being at the back of the crowd should give the Parker’s an advantage, as they’re closer to the exits, but everyone rushes past them before they even fully understand what’s going on, and Peter doesn’t know which way is what by the time he’s being lifted off of Ben’s shoulders and placed on the ground. May takes his hand and looks him in the eyes and says, “Don’t let go, okay?” He nods and grips her hand tight and they start to follow Ben towards the closest exit when someone jostles them a bit too harshly and Peter doesn’t have enough strength to hold on any longer, and suddenly, his aunt and uncle are pushed into the crowd and Peter doesn’t know where he is or where they are or what he’s supposed to do. There’s a terrifying amount of people running around him, carelessly pushing him aside without even bothering to care that he’s a child and he’s alone and he’s so, so afraid.

The Iron Man mask had been pushed up to rest on the top of his head when Ben put him on his shoulders, so he could see the stage a bit better without having to look through the eye holes cut out, but he pulls it back down to cover his face now, feeling somehow more confident with it in place, protected. If he can look like Iron Man, maybe he can act like Iron Man, too. Maybe he can do something more than stand here in the middle of a panicked crowd, separated from his Aunt and his Uncle, and be afraid.

Would Iron Man be afraid? Would Tony Stark be afraid?

Maybe, Peter reasons, but a hero wouldn’t let their fear stop them from being a hero.

With that thought in mind, Peter stands up straighter, squares his shoulders in a way that gives him a sense of more power, and he starts pushing against the current of people, towards the danger, towards the scary robots with the big guns. He gets jostled along the way, shoved by stray elbows and flailing arms and people too blinded by their fear to see him there, but the crowd starts to thin out the closer to the stage he gets. Overhead, robots are flying, gunshots are deafening, and in the middle of it all is nine year old Peter Parker, chin held high and fake repulsor glove cladded hands curled up into determined fists. He’s not sure what he’s going to do, but he’s going to do something to help, even if that just means finding someone who needs to be pointed towards the exit. He’s going to do something.

Then, just as he’s found a little cleared out spot to get a better look at his surroundings and the state of things, one of those robots lands five feet in front of him, and it’s guns are planning to take him down. Peter sucks in a sharp breath, knees shaking in fear, but heroes don’t let fear stop them, so he raises a hand with the palm out and the faux repulsor pointed at the robot, because he’s going to do something, he’s going to do something good. He thinks of Iron Man, of how he saves peoples lives, and if Peter Parker can take out this one scary robot, then that’s one less robot that can hurt anyone else, and with that thought, he holds his breath, imagines the repulsors going off and—

The robot is taken down with a beam of light, and for a short moment, Peter thinks he really did it, before he hears the metallic noise behind him and looks over his shoulder to see Iron Man himself standing there, hand held out just like Peter’s. The face plate of the suit tilts down at him, and a voice that Peter has become quite accustomed to due to hearing it on the TV so often says, “Good job, kid,” before he’s flying off to keep being a superhero. Peter watches him go until he can’t see the suit anymore, and even then he just stands there, grinning underneath his Iron Man mask with a sense of pride swelling in his chest. He doesn’t even really notice when May and Ben find him, just lets them hug him and cry a little over how worried they were and take him home, where it’s safe, and for the next few weeks all he can think about is that his idol said that he did a good job.

-

(“He’s been having nightmares again. He doesn’t think I notice, but I always do.”)

-

At the age of (almost) eleven, Peter Parker watches from his apartment in Queens as aliens invade New York, and the first ever gathering of the Avengers in a public place takes form. The news stations struggle to get any good footage, having to record from helicopters far enough away to not be in imminent danger of the flying creatures, but their cameras are good and they can zoom in far enough to get decent outlines of six figures (one much bigger than the other, to which Peter points at it and whispers to himself, “That’s Bruce Banner’s angry side,” in soft awe) standing in a circle with a promise for injury and harm surrounding them. May is at work, and Ben is asleep on the couch, so Peter doesn’t turn the volume up any louder than absolutely necessary, and he mirrors his younger self – the seven year old with his hands pressed to the TV screen with wide eyes and a dropped jaw – as he watches the action.

There are a few reporters talking over each other, trying to describe what it is that’s happening, but no one really knows for sure what’s going on, so it sounds more like stammered gibberish that’s kind of headache inducing, so Peter just tunes them out and looks at what the camera’s are catching instead. There are flashes of Captain America with his shield on display, and Hulk jumping from building to building, taking out aliens along the way; Black Widow is taking out aliens left and right, and there were a few shots of Hawkeye and Thor both doing the same, though with their own techniques and skill sets. But Peter’s attention is solely grabbed by Iron Man, who almost looks like he’s dancing through the air as he leads a trail of aliens through the streets. winding around buildings and through alleyways and occasionally shooting them out of the sky. He is graceful and powerful and Peter feels his admiration for the hero double in size by just watching it happen.

And then:

“This just in, there is apparently a missile heading for New York City—"

“It appears that Tony Stark’s Iron Man has grabbed onto the missile—”

“The missile, guided by Iron Man, is coming in hot and—”

“—we don’t know if—”

“Reports are saying—”

“Tony Stark has just—”

“The missile is—”

“—in the wormhole—!”

“—city is no longer in danger—”

“—hostile aliens have—”

“—all just fell to the—”

“—no sign of Tony Stark yet—”

“There he is—!”

“But he’s falling—”

“—falling—”

“He’s falling fast—”

Peter holds his breath. Iron Man hits the ground as a distant camera zooms in. The Avengers gather around him, and the world goes silent, and Tony Stark isn’t moving, Peter Parker’s hero isn’t moving, he isn’t moving, the man who saved Peter once and told him he did a good job, the one that inspires Peter to be a hero one day – that man isn’t moving, until Hulk lets out a yell, and he’s jolting awake and Peter can breathe again and New York is okay, Tony Stark is okay, everything is okay.

Everything is okay.

Everything is not okay.

Tony Stark’s Malibu home has been blown to pieces, sent into the ocean, and Tony himself has yet to be found. Pepper Potts made it out, and Tony did not, and everyone is saying he’s dead. The news is saying that Tony Stark is dead, and Peter is restless with grief, restless with sadness, restless with—

Well. Peter has been restless for a few months now, ever since he met a high schooler that goes by the name of Skip at the library, where Peter had been doing his homework while Aunt May got groceries at the little market across the street. It was their routine, for whenever Uncle Ben is at work and they need to restock their fridge – every Thursday afternoon. Every week.

Originally, Peter quite liked doing his homework at the library, because it was quiet and always warm if outside was cold, or cold if outside was warm, and it smelled like books and bubble gum. And he had liked Skip, too, because Skip said funny things and didn’t treat him like he was too young to be cool. He ruffled Peter’s hair kind of like Uncle Ben did, and he asked Peter if he needed help with his homework, proudly boasting that he went to Midtown, a high school meant for kids that excel in technology and science. Peter already knew about Midtown – was already signed up in a program at his middle school meant to help advanced kids in getting high enough test scores to test into such an intelligent smart kid school – and that just made Skip seem even cooler in his eyes.

Plus, Peter was kind of lonely, in a way. He didn’t really have any friends, and while he loves his Aunt and his Uncle, he’s always wanted someone else – something like a brother. He had thought that Skip could be like a big brother for him. He was quite excited by that thought.

But big brothers don’t do what Skip does.

A twelve year old kid should not be subjected to an inescapable feeling of filth, shouldn’t spend an hour in the shower scrubbing at his skin until it’s red and tender and he still doesn’t feel clean. He stops watching the news with Aunt May and Uncle Ben because he doesn’t want to see the reports of Tony Stark’s death, doesn’t want to face the mere idea that his hero could be gone, because people still need to be saved and who’s going to do the saving if there’s no more Iron Man?

Peter still needs saving, and who is there to save him from the high school boy with the funny jokes and the kind laugh and the smile that makes both Ben and May trust him alone with their nephew?

He often considers telling someone, entertains the idea of spilling these secrets, these scarring moments and the sleepless nights he’s had in result, but he doesn’t know how to choke out the words. Peter Parker is not brave enough to even save himself, how could he ever imagine being a hero one day? Heroes don’t let this happen. Then again, heroes aren’t supposed to die so soon, either, and yet there are weeks that go by with no sign of Tony Stark anywhere, his body not found in the ocean and no one knowing where it could have gone. Tony Stark died and Peter Parker is not a hero.

Until Tony Stark returns, victorious, and Peter thinks that heroes might just struggle sometimes and maybe that’s why it took so long for Iron Man to return. And as he thinks that, he marches into the kitchen, where Aunt May and Uncle Ben are dancing around each other to put together a basic dinner of off brand mac and cheese and cut up microwaved hot dogs, and he tells them what the boy from the library that they think is a good influence on him did, and he never sees Skip again.

Harley Keener’s life is changed by a famous rich guy with a dead Iron Man suit.

It had been an entirely bizarre, unexplainably strange experience when it happened, because he had just read the headline on the paper merely twenty minutes prior to finding that the supposedly dead billionaire had broken into his garage. Tony Stark hadn’t been in great condition, sure, but he certainly wasn’t deceased, and oddly enough, he wanted – no, he needed Harley’s help.

And, well – Rose Hill, Tennessee can be boring, and helping a superhero billionaire who was rumored to have passed away and somehow ended up in his garage? That’s not boring.

Plus, he kind of liked Tony, oddly enough. The guy was pretty blunt and brutal, but he was funny, and he clearly had a mission on the mind that he intended to finish. Harley doesn’t remember much about his dad before the guy fucked off to wherever he decided to go, only vaguely remembers a sense of comfort and happiness that he would have around his father, but after he left, Harley just had his mom and his sister to keep him company. His mom works a lot, and when she is home, she only really has the energy to make them something to eat and then go to bed, so, as much as Harley does love her, it’s hard to feel any sort of connection with her. She has a son that she would do anything for, but she doesn’t really know him, doesn’t know his interests, his likes, his dislikes. When the bullies at school go from saying harsh words to throwing out slaps and punches when there’s no one around, he just ducks his head so she can’t see the bruising and lets her fall sleep blissfully unaware of her oldest child’s discontent.

Harley’s sister, on the other hand, he is very close to, despite their five year age gap. Abbie is a force to be reckoned with, even though she’s only a month or two past her seventh birthday, but she’s been like that for a while now. Much like Harley, she’s resilient, and the two of them spend hours together after school, waiting to see if their mom will be awake enough to spare them more than a few minutes before ambling down to her bedroom to sleep until her next shift starts in the morning. The stark difference between Harley and Abbie, however, is that Abbie has a real relationship with their mom – Angela Keener loves her kids, sure, but (and she would never admit this out loud) she only really knows one of them, only understands one of them, and that one is not Harley.

So, when Tony Stark showed up and introduced himself as a mechanic despite being a well known superhero with billions of dollars and a resume consisting of saving the world once already, Harley kind of felt… something. A comfort of sorts, a feeling of ease. A sense that this guy would listen to Harley talk about the old car in the junkyard across town that he kind of likes to tinker with on his way home from school, where Robby Johnson teaches him things about cars and engines and building that Harley kind of already knew but loved to hear more about.

It’s been almost a year since that happened, and the 1969 Ford Mustang that Tony had left him with when he upgraded Harley’s garage as a thank you is in perfect condition, and he wants to do something with it. He wants to drive somewhere, find someone, build something. He wants to take Abbie to the arcade or to the next town over where they have a real nice ice cream parlor that their mom stopped taking them to when she lost her second job three years ago. He wants to put this car to use. Drive out of Rose Hill and just… be free from everything for a while.

But he’s freshly thirteen, and even though he knows he could figure out how to drive this thing without anyone’s help, he can’t risk getting pulled over for it. They can’t afford the ticket.

Still, he considers it, sitting behind the wheel of a car that belongs to him, a car that was gifted to him by Tony Stark, and he pictures all the places he could go with it. He envisions driving off to a good college, one that will actually challenge him, one that isn’t as easy as Rose Hill’s public schools. Using this thing, he could go to Los Angeles, to Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, New York…

With this car, he could go somewhere else, somewhere where he can be something, put his intelligence to work, because he’s smart, he knows he’s smart, knows he’s capable of doing things that no one else in this town can do. The only time someone in Rose Hill has been smarter than him was when Tony was here, and that had only been for a very brief amount of time. God, but he wishes it had been longer – wishes that there was someone here who got him, someone who understands him. Wishes that he never had to watch Tony Stark drive away without Harley sitting in the passenger seat.

Letting out a long, strained sigh, Harley shakes his head, pushing that train of thought away, knowing that it will only bring on guilt for thinking of ever wanting to leave his mom and sister in Tennessee without him to be there for them. Maybe one day, if things are different, but for now…

“Stupid,” he murmurs to himself, gut twisting and a lump forming in his throat. He pulls his hands back from the white knuckled grip he had been clutching onto the steering wheel with, and with another shaky sigh, he climbs out of the car and pretends that he’s happy where he is.

Tony Stark creates Ultron, and Ultron is a disaster.

Peter watches the live news feed on his phone in the middle of shopping for school supplies with Aunt May, the excitement of being accepted and gifted tuition scholarship into Midtown being pushed to the backburner as his eyes stay glued to the screen. The Avengers fight and they save everyone they can and Peter irrationally wishes that he was there, that he could help, instead of just sitting here in a secondhand shop in Queens, helpless to do anything other than watch.

In Tennessee, Harley stares at his grandmother’s old radio, wrist deep in soap suds but the dishes he had been washing forgotten, mind too busy reeling as he listens to live updates coming through. He thinks of the last time he talked to Tony, another one of those brief phone calls where he asks questions that hardly get answered and Tony just checks in to make sure Harley is doing okay, and he listens to the news station with bated breath. The city is floating and then the city falling and then the city is gone and whether it’s considered a victory or a loss depends on who’s asked because Ultron is gone but so many people are hurt and killed by the falling rubble that it’s hard to say that anybody really won.

Tony Stark created his own demon, and then he defeated it, but there are always more demons to fight, and there is never a simple answer for a question that’s impossible to phrase.

Mere months later, Peter’s demons begin to stir, manifesting in the form of a radioactive spider bite followed shortly by the death of his Uncle Ben. The hours turn into days, and the days turn into weeks, then three months have gone by and Peter still can’t scrub his hands clean of the blood that had stained the street. He takes showers that are too hot and he stands under the water and he looks at his skin and he’s reminded of a twelve year old boy who wanted to scratch himself to the bone just to be pristine. Nightmares plague him every night of the life fading from Ben’s eyes, of Mary and Richard Parker, long dead, rotted and mangled from a plane crash, speaking words he can never remember when he wakes up. Dark corners make him nervous and he can’t look at the pavement two blocks over from their apartment because he just sees Ben bleeding out while Peter does nothing to help. And Peter could have helped, should have done something – only two days prior did he obtain these abilities of his, yet he couldn’t use them to save the father figure that took him in and raised him after his parents died.

It becomes a point of motivation, because at the age of seven, Peter Parker thought that superheroes like Iron Man can save people before it’s too late, and maybe Peter Parker couldn’t save Ben, but maybe he can save everyone else. Maybe he really can be a superhero.

Maybe he has to be, because what kind of person would he be if he didn’t?

-

(“Sometimes, I think… I don’t… I don’t really know where I belong… you know?”)

-

The day that Tony Stark shows up in Peter’s apartment and recruits him for Germany is the same day that Harley says fuck it and drives his car for the first time. Distance and life circumstances and millions of things separate the two of them, but Peter stutters through a surprised greeting while Harley takes the back road leading to the next town over where there’s a movie theater and a roller skating rink and no one will recognize him, no one will instantly know that he’s just barely fifteen and doesn’t even has his permit yet. He figures the car out quickly, having already known the logistics behind driving and only needing a few minutes to apply that knowledge into actually driving, and as soon as the initial nervousness goes by, as soon as he’s made it past the outskirts of Rose Hill, he feels… exhilarated.

His sister and his mother mean the world to him, and he would do anything for them, but the heaviness of a small town and a small family and a lot of expectations only seems to be increasing every day. School is easy but bullies are insistent, his mom is loving but he’s lucky to see her for more than five minutes a day, Abbie is his favorite person in the world but he’s in charge of taking care of her while their mom is at work, and when she gets in trouble (and she does get in trouble – like her brother, too stubborn to just let things drop, to acknowledge the consequences but choosing to act in spite of them) the blame is more than often shifted to him because shouldn’t he be a better influence for her?

Never mind the fact that he’s fifteen and still learning who he is while trying to find a job somewhere to help out with groceries and save up for better places, that he’s barely old enough to be responsible for himself but still has to carry the responsibility of watching his sister, too. When she’s a bit older, in just a year or two, he’ll be able to convince his mom that Abbie is old enough to be home alone, that he doesn’t need to always have an eye on her – after all, when Harley was nine years old, she never bat an eye at the prospect of him being home alone, apparently seeing a resilience, a toughness that she might not see in Abbie, but that’s alright. Abbie is almost ten and soon she’ll be able to look after herself while their mom is at work, and then…

Well. Harley doesn’t know, but something’s going to change when that happens. He’s going to wait until he isn’t a necessity to his family’s basic survival, and then… and then he’ll do something.

As soon as he can, he’s going to make a move. He just needs to figure out what, exactly, it’ll be.

Peter Parker has a painful reminder that he is not indestructible, and that reminder comes in the form of a cement warehouse being dropped on him. He had already known that fact, at least on a logical level, but every instance up to this point, he’s at least been given the chance to turn around and run away. The option, he thinks, gave him the courage to face the danger head on, knowing full well that he could always back away. He never backed away.

But now, he can’t do that. He can’t change his mind and go home and call it a night and let someone else deal with the bad guys instead of him. There is an entire building weighing him down, water running somewhere to his left and oxygen feeling too heavy in his aching lungs. No matter how much his sucks in air, it doesn’t feel like enough, and he doesn’t need his high tech suit that Tony took away to know that at least two of his ribs have snapped. Healing will be a bitch, but he supposes he can still just heal – if, of course, he can make it out of this mess.

The thing is, Peter is strong – he knows he’s strong, has been able to stop speeding cars without breaking a sweat, held his own in a fight against Captain America and the Falcon and the Winter Soldier and the fucking giant guy that could also turn super small and Hawkeye and the Scarlett Witch, but this is different. He can’t move. He can barely breathe. All he can do is struggle and panic and cry.

Once upon a time, Peter felt trapped.

He was five years old and starting kindergarten and he didn’t understand why his mom and dad weren’t there to send him off like they had always promised they would. Uncle Ben kneeled by him and reminded him that his parents were gone, to which Peter blinked at him and said, “I know, but shouldn’t they be back by now?” He had watched the way Aunt May choked back tears, hand over her mouth and lashes fluttering rapidly in an attempt to dry her eyes, and he had felt suffocated by the inability to grasp what, exactly, was going on. The fact that his parents were gone and were never coming back just hadn’t processed in his mind quite yet, and he was stuck in between knowing and not being able to know.

He was nine years old and the only person he considered a friend was moved away to a boarding school in another country. Harry Osborn was a strange kid but Peter Parker was strange, too, and apparently their parents had known each other before Mary and Richard passed away. They weren’t best friends, were hardly even acquaintances, but they had a childish understanding that they’d always sit together in class and at lunch to avoid sitting alone, and when one of them was being picked on, the other would interfere. Then Harry’s mother passed away, and his father decided to ship him off to a fancy school somewhere in England, or France, or wherever it had been, and Peter Parker was back to sitting alone and having no one helping him when the bullies pushed him in a corner and laughed.

He was twelve years old and he didn’t want to leave the apartment because sometimes Skip Westcott waited for him outside and offered to drive him to school. Aunt May cooed and pinched his cheek and Uncle Ben said something about how it was nice, knowing there was an older kid looking after him, hearing that Skip was able to shoo off the bullies that tried to follow Peter home. That much was true, sure, but when Skip told the bullies to fuck off, he always did it with a grin and a sinister glint in his eyes, and Peter was struck with the wish that his bullies were more persistent because he’d rather be shoved to the ground and spit on than spend another minute alone with Skip. But May and Ben were happy for him, for having a friend, someone looking out for him – an older brother figure, and Peter didn’t want to tell them that Skip was none of those things, didn’t want them to feel guilty for not noticing, for sitting by in content while their nephew went through hell.

He was fourteen years old and Uncle Ben was bleeding on the street and he knew he could help, he knew that whatever he was going through – these changes, the sudden strength, the way he could stick to walls, these things that he didn’t understand and was trying so hard to get a grip on – at least one of them could help save Ben, if only he knew how to use them. There were pebbles digging into his knees and a pool of blood soaking into his jeans and his shaking hands were pressed to the wound and he was crying, he was screaming, and Ben kept murmuring that it was alright, that it was going to be fine, as if Peter was the one in need of consoling, and Peter had choked on a sob when Ben’s murmuring turned into incoherent mumbling followed by a long exhale and the following inhale never came.

He is fifteen years old and he’s still reeling from being told off by his hero, of Tony Stark himself looking him in the eye and telling him that he expected Peter to be better, that he messed up, that people could have gotten killed because of what Peter did. He is fifteen years old and the suit with all the safety precautions has been taken away from him and he’s still in the fight, wearing his old suit from before Tony Stark showed up in his apartment and he was saving people to cope with not being able to save Ben. He is fifteen years old and he can’t let Liz’s dad, the Vulture, steal from Tony Stark, can’t allow those weapons to be made and sold on the streets, and even after seeing the disappointment shining in Liz’s eyes when he told her he has to go, he goes after the bad guy.

He is fifteen years old and he is trapped beneath a pile of rubble that any normal person would have immediately died under the weight of. There is a throbbing pain in his skull and his legs and he can’t do this, he can’t breathe, he can’t escape, and no matter how loudly he calls for help, no one will come. May is working a shift and Tony took his suit and Ned probably thinks that Peter is unbeatable and there is no one who will come looking for him until long after this weight crushes him.

But he sees his reflection with the mask, and he thinks about everything – about his parents, about Harry, about Skip, about Aunt May and Uncle Ben and Tony Stark and his best friend Ned and his kind of friend Michelle and he can’t let himself die here, not without trying. Because Toomes is still going to go after that plane whether Peter dies or not, and if Peter can get out of this, then maybe there’s a chance he can stop it. He may be trapped, but he’s been trapped before, and he’s gotten out each time.

He is fifteen years old, and he takes a deep breath, and his pushes until he’s free.

Harley Keener’s mother gets a promotion at work, makes two dollars more an hour, and she comes home looking like a significant weight has been lifted from her shoulders. She pulls Harley into the first real hug they’ve shared since he was twelve and had to get picked up from school because of a group of high schoolers that decided to pick a fight with him, gave him a black eye and a busted lip and he didn’t cry but the tears stinging behind his eyes became a lot more insistent when his mother rushed into the office and instantly gathered him in her arms, checking over his beat up face and shaking her head with a certain sadness written into her features. She’d left work for that, for him, and at that point in time, he was convinced that he just wasn’t worth missing hours over, because they needed every dollar they could get, but she took him for ice cream and promised to set up a meeting with the school to talk about how ridiculous it was that high school kids could wander to the middle school and do something like that without even a teacher interfering.

Harley hugs her back, because of course he does, and he can’t help but grin when she places a kiss to his temple and then spins around to give Abbie the same treatment, gushing about getting better hours and how she can take the night shift to make sure she’s actually home in the afternoon instead of not getting off work until after midnight. Her work schedule is more adjustable for last minute changes and needs, and their budget is about to get a lot more freeing.

Abbie lets out a joyous laugh and goes to put on one of her favorite films for a celebratory movie night, but Harley is stopped by a hand on his elbow and his mother’s gentle, knowing smile. “We’re gonna be okay,” she tells Harley softly.

“Yeah, I know we are,” he says, confused, but she just shakes her head and shifts her gaze to the door leading to the garage, a kind of reluctance shining in her eyes.

“We’re gonna be okay,” she says again, more firmly, trying to put the message across. “And wherever you need to go, you’ll be okay, too. So, just… do what you need to do. Do what’s best for you.” She settles a hand on his shoulder, squeezes lightly, a loving, comforting gesture. “Tennessee isn’t where you belong, we both know that. My only rule is that you give me a call and let me know where you settle, ‘cause if I don’t know that my baby’s safe, I’ll track you down and drag your ass back here.”

Harley doesn’t respond for a long moment, trying to make sense of her words, because there’s no way she means what he thinks she means. That’s just… that’s not possible. Clearing his throat, he takes a moment to grapple with a response before trying to stammer out, “I- I don’t understand what—”

But his mother just chuckles a warm chuckle, pulls him into another hug, this one softer and warmer than the last, and she quietly tells him, “You’ve been wanting to leave Rose Hill since you were a kid, Harley. And ever since Tony Stark came into your life, you’ve been even more restless, so ready to get out of here and go somewhere. So—” she pulls back, holds him at an arm’s length with somewhat shimmery eyes, “—you’re going to pack up your bags, maybe make a few calls if you have anyone else you want to tell about this, and you’re going to go somewhere.”

“Ma…” Harley trails off, feeling choked up and speechless and completely lost. “I can’t—”

“You can,” she interrupts, “and I know you want to. This is your chance, okay? Abbie and I will be okay, and wherever you go, you’ll be okay, too. And anything you need me to do, whether it be signing papers to get emancipated or to have someone else have legal guardianship over you, whatever it is… I’ll do it for you. Okay?” She sniffles once, and it becomes evident that this is straining her, that she doesn’t want to send her son off, but she knows that if he doesn’t go now with the support of his mother, then he’ll end up going in a year or so with no one to help him along the way.

Harley swallows roughly, because he doesn’t like crying and he doesn’t want to cry in front of his mom, and shakes his head. “How did you know?” he asks, hoarse.

With a light chuckle, she answers, “Because you’re my son, Harley, and I know you.”

And Harley thinks that he just might have the best mother a person could ever ask for.

There is good news.

After the initial shock of Aunt May finding him in his suit, things start to fall into place, even though they feel a bit like they’re falling apart. She gets ahold of Tony within twenty four hours, and the three of them have a long sit down about the situation – because May knows her nephew, and she knows that he won’t give this up, no matter how much she initially wants to beg him to. So, she sets up her own guidelines, negotiates with Tony and Peter until the three of them find a middle ground that works for them all, that allows Peter to not only continue being Spider-Man, but also gives him a real good shot in the future with having a real internship type of position at Stark Industries, both offering job opportunities as well as mentorship in the world of being a superhero, while also being sure that Peter knows he has to maintain his grades unless he wants to face week long periods of no Spider-Man to let him catch up. He starts working with Tony in the lab on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and he convinces Tony to let Ned come with him on one of those days, and his grades stay up, and everything is good.

Harley waits until spring break to leave, because it’s just a hassle leaving school so abruptly, but the final bell rings and he runs out of the school and he makes it home in record time, because this is the day. This is when he leaves, and he goes somewhere, and he does something, and everything changes. His mother is already home when he gets there, and she gives him a smile that’s as happy as it is sad, because she saw him lugging his bags down to his car the night before, and even though he hasn’t officially told her yet, she knows that he won’t be here come sunrise. Abbie is at a friends house, and as much as Harley wants to say goodbye to her, he doesn’t know how to break the news of him leaving so suddenly, and part of him hopes that not saying bye will motivate him to make sure he comes back to visit as soon as he can. They have an early dinner, and they don’t talk about it, but she makes sure to go to her room and not look back as he heads to the garage and wonders if he should feel guilty for being so excited.

There is bad news, too.

The drive from Tennessee to New York is a lengthy one, and Harley has to grapple with the fact that he didn’t bother to let Tony know of his plans. Sure, it’s not like they talk every day, but he calls at least once a week, and Harley has been dodging any attempts to talk since his mom got that promotion. He has to hope that, when he shows up, it won’t go to shit. He has to hope that Tony really does care for him enough to help him find a place to stay, to help him go to a better school and figure out a life more suited for who Harley is. He has to hope, but the longer he drives, and the more he pushes off stopping for rest or food because his nerves makes him too antsy to stop, the harder it is to hold onto that hope.

After everything, Peter still gets nightmares. He used to have them around the anniversary of his parents death, and then got hit by a plague of them for the first month after Ben’s passing, but now he gets them every single night. There’s a building trapping him and a plane heading for the city and Peter is alone and no one is helping him and nothing makes sense because it’s not exactly a retelling of what he went through, more a garbled mess with flashes of pain and water and metal wings and a glowing Chitauri power core that explodes and most of the time he wakes up in a cold sweat with a scream trapped in his throat and life is good and things are good and everything is good but Peter Parker is not okay.

The money that Harley has saved up from helping out his neighbors with yardwork and basic mechanics is just enough to cover all the gas he needs to get to New York, and he’s smug to say he’s riding at half a tank when he manages to track down the Stark Tower – which isn’t too hard to find, considering it’s eye-grabbing qualities and the way it sticks out among the other buildings. He isn’t sure where to go from here, however, so he simply goes down a block or two until there’s a place for him to pull over by the curb, and he takes out his phone, and he pulls up Tony’s contact.

Bi-monthly phone calls may have been missed, but a late phone call with a big surprise? Harley hopes it was worth the wait, because it’s a bit easier to hope, now that he’s actually here. It’s easier to hope when he knows that Tony is in the same city as him and he remembers how, even though they joke about it, the two of them really had connected. Tony isn’t like a dad to him – at least, not yet, anyway – but he quickly became a sort of… mentor figure, something that Harley had already admired before meeting but that he now officially looks up to for motivation and inspiration. Tony wouldn’t just tell him to fuck off after Harley shows up like this. He knows he wouldn’t.

“Kid,” Tony greets pleasantly, picking up on the third ring. “Been a while.”

“That’s my bad,” Harley tells him, already grinning in excitement as he peers out the window and stares up at the Stark Tower, wondering if Tony is in there right now. “I got busy, stopped answering your calls for a bit, but that’s whatever. Reason I’m calling now is ‘cause I have a question to ask you.”

Tony huffs out what could be a chuckle, but what is more likely just an incredulous little noise, as if he still isn’t used to how briskly Harley can wave away topics and switch to a different one on the fly. “You ignored me for, like, a month,” Tony points out. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d be offended, but I’m the asshole who ignores people for fun, so I guess I’d be a hypocrite to really be mad.” There’s a background noise, and a muffled voice that Harley doesn’t recognize, followed by Tony telling whoever it is, “Yeah, yeah, that’s fine,” before he addresses Harley again to say, “Ask your question, then.”

The grin on Harley’s face grows until it’s almost painful, and in a casual tone that barely manages to conceal his excitement, he asks, “Do you have, like, actual parking for your dumb tower? ‘Cause from where I’m sitting, there’s no where to put this really nice car that some crazy guy gave me when I was twelve, and I’d really rather not have to leave it parked by a curb for criminals to do whatever they want.”

A long moment of lapsed silence, followed quickly by, “Tell me right now if this is a joke.”

“Use some of that fancy tech of yours and take a look outside,” Harley shrugs, feeling smug. “I’m two blocks down, lookin’ at the tower right now. And still trying to figure out if I have to leave my car here or not, by the way. Y’know, since you haven’t answered my question yet.”

“Jesus, kid,” Tony breathes, letting out an airy laugh. “My heart’s not in the best shape, you know that? I can’t take surprises like this. You should have told me you were coming.” For a moment, Harley wonders if that’s a hint of frustration in Tony’s voice, but he only sounds giddy and fond when he continues with, “About fucking time, though. Been trying to get you to visit for years, Keener. Now, Friday’s gonna track your phone to see exactly where you’re at and then instruct you into the parking garage. Once you get that done, she’ll tell you how to get to my lab.” Then, in a special, soft sort of Tony Stark voice – the kind of tone he only uses for people he really cares for, like Pepper and Rhodey and Happy, and only on rare occasions – he adds, “It’s been too long, kid. Can’t wait to see you.”

“Yeah,” Harley says. “Yeah, you too, old man.”

There’s a short burst of a laugh that manages to cut in before Friday’s voice takes over, telling Harley to put his phone on speaker and guiding him on where to go.

What was supposed to be a quick nap on the sofa of Tony’s lab somehow stretches into a three hour slumber that Peter wakes from feeling groggy and disoriented. He can’t really remember laying down, but he remembers Tony getting a phone call, remembers asking Tony if it was okay if he got some rest because he hadn’t really slept well the night before (the nightmares are still persistent, and usually Peter can fall back asleep after having them, but particularly harsh ones will leave him restless until the sun rises), and he remembers wondering who Tony was on the phone with but opting not to question it. Assumedly, Peter had them ambled over to the couch and passed out, because that’s where he wakes up now, a slight throbbing behind his eyes and a general ache encompassing his body from the not so sleep friendly leather cushions that he had passed out on.

He can see two figures across the room, one recognizable, the other not so much, but he can’t really make out their appearances through the sleepy blur in his vision. It takes a minute for him to blink away the bleariness, but eventually his eyes begin to focus, and he lets out a yawn that’s louder than intended as he pushes himself in a sitting position. The two people turn towards him at the sound, and Peter realizes that the recognizable one is Tony, while the other is… a kid?

Yeah, a kid, looking to be about his age, wearing a content little smile and glancing between Peter and Tony expectantly. Peter blinks again, rubs at his eyes, and shakes his head on confusion. “Wh…?”

“Took you long enough to wake up,” Tony says, arms crossing over his chest and head tilting slightly to the side, an amused look filtering through his gaze. “I was about to ring up Helen to check on you and make sure you didn’t accidently slip into a coma. Again.”

“It wasn’t an actual coma last time,” Peter grumbles, flushing slightly under the curious stare of the stranger in the room. “It was just… an almost coma, that almost happened, but didn’t. It’s different.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Yeah, ‘cause that makes it so much better,” he says, sarcasm clear in his voice as he huffs out a laugh. Peter doesn’t respond, instead just glances at the stranger again, then back to Tony with a furrowed brow, a silent question written on his features, which seems to kickstart Tony’s brain and remind him of his surprise guest. Grinning, he steps forward, gesturing between the two boys and stating, “Oh, by the way— Peter, this is Harley. Harley, Peter. I’ve told you two about each other.”

Instantly, Peter brightens, his mild nap induced headache forgotten as he scrambles to his feet with a wide, excited smile. “You’re Harley!” he exclaims, trying to decide if he should step forward to shake his hand or not. “I’ve been wanting to meet you since Mr. Stark told me about you!”

“Really?” Harley asks, looking flattered. He glances over to Tony, who simply holds up his hands in some kind of surrender before spinning around and walking away, assumedly to give the two teens space to get to know each other. Harley chuckles when Peter enthusiastically nods, ambling forward so they’re not standing a good ten feet away from each other, not a much more appropriate proximity to hold a conversation. “Well, I mean, same, I guess. He talks about you a lot, when we talk. I’ve been pretty curious about the genius spider kid that Tony always rambles about.”

“Wh—” Peter splutters, looking wide eyed to Tony, who shows no outward reaction other than a light snicker. Opening and closing his mouth a few times, he looks back to Harley, who definitely has a knowing look in his eyes, and he asks, “You know? About- About Spider-Man?”

Harley shrugs, crossing his arms over his chest with an easy going grin. “Yeah,” he answers simply. “I figured it out when he kept mentioning that you work on all of Spidey’s tech, to the point that it got suspicious how much of it you did, so I just asked him if you were Spider-Man and he told me I didn’t know what I was talking about, which seemed like a pretty obvious answer to me, so…” he trails off, noticing the glint of stress in Peter’s eyes, and quickly assures, “Don’t worry, man, I won’t blab. You’re, like, only a couple months older than me. If you wanted people to know who you are, you would tell them, and I’m not gonna be an asshole and just tell everyone that this kid that I don’t even really know yet is actually a crime fighting arachnid. That’d be a pretty shitty thing to do, you know?”

It takes a moment, but Peter relaxes at that, clearly seeing the sincerity in Harley’s words. “Thanks,” he murmurs, offering a small, grateful smile – and sending a silent thank you to the world for making the kid that Tony always talks about as nice as he had hoped he’d be. “So, um- what are you doing here? I know Mr. Stark has been trying to get you to visit, but he hasn’t mentioned anything for sure yet, so I just thought you guys hadn’t been able to find a time that worked or something.”

“Oh, I’m not visiting,” Harley says, waving a dismissive hand through the air. “I’m moving.”

“To New York?” Peter asks, brows raising slightly.

Harley looks over to Tony, who glances up at the pair of them and shrugs before saying, “To one of the spare rooms, probably. At least for now, anyway. Little shit just showed up out of nowhere and said his mom gave him permission to leave Tennessee, and he chooses to drop on my doorstep with a duffle bag, expecting me to give him a place to stay.” As he says this, he grins, amusement ringing clear with his words. “Damn lucky I actually give a shit about him, or I’d kick him to the curb. Only kids I’d ever let show up like that are you two. And no—” he points at Peter, who looks absolutely elated to be included on that short list, “—that doesn’t mean you can just ask May to move in here. I mean, you can, if you ever need to, but she would murder me if you went home asking about that, and I don’t want to die yet.”

“She wouldn’t kill you if she could move in here with me,” Peter quips, voice chirpy and bright, paired with a grin that’s somehow equal parts kind and mischievous.

Tony lets out a long sigh, shaking his head. “Yeah, I offered that. She said no.”

“Wait, you—"

“Anyway!” Tony loudly interrupts, cutting off Peter before he can continue, leaving Peter standing there with a slightly dropped jaw. He makes a mental note to ask May about that later, because he wants to know why she would decline that offer, but he pushes it aside to focus on the conversation as Tony tells him, “Harley and I were talking while you were dead to the world, and since I don’t really trust anyone else to take care of him, he’s gonna stay here and I’m gonna take some kind of guardianship over him, or whatever we have to do. And I think I’ll send him to your fancy smart kid school, too.”

Peter perks up, facing Harley with a grin. “You’re gonna go to Midtown?”

Lifting a shoulder in a shrug, Harley says, “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. Tony says I have to test into it in order to actually go there, so I might not, but—”

“You’ll make it in,” Peter assures quickly. “If you’re even half as smart as Mr. Stark makes you out to be, then the entry tests will be a breeze. And if you’re really worried about it, my friend Ned kind of hacked—” he stops, falters, and stutters out, “I- I mean, he- he was able to figure out what’s on the tests, so, um- I could help you study for it, just to make sure you know what to expect, y’know?”

Harley pauses, then lets out a snort. “Your friend hacked the school?”

“No!” Peter exclaims, followed quickly by, “Well, maybe, but not to cheat or anything! He wasn’t looking for the tests, I swear, we were trying to find out when Mr. Harrington’s birthday was because he wouldn’t tell us but we knew it was in June and we wanted to do something for him but asking one of the other teachers when his birthday is would be suspicious, you know? So he hacked into the system to figure out when his birthday is and he accidentally found the tests and we were just curious if we could still pass the tests if we weren’t already going to Midtown, so we printed out a couple copies and a copy of the answers and we took the tests to see how we’d do, and—”

“You talk a lot,” Harley cuts in, grinning. “Did you even breathe during all of that?”

Peter huffs, but doesn’t respond, because he actually is sort of out of breath from trying to rush out that explanation and he needs a minute to regulate his heart rate. Thankfully, Tony fills the quiet gap by quipping, “As your mentor figure, I’m required to tell you that hacking into school files is very much frowned upon. However, as Tony Stark, I want to ask you to bring Ned with you on Tuesday. Kid’s got real talent and I wanna put that to use before someone else can snatch him up.”

“I feel like I should remind you of what happened last time I brought Ned here,” Peter says slowly, carefully. At Harley’s imploring look, he adds, “Y’know, with the whole… blacking out thing?”

Tony waves a dismissive hand through the air. “You almost passed out the first time you came here, too,” he points out breezily. “He’ll get used to it, like you did. Just takes more than one visit. Plus—” he looks to Harley, who appears to be fairly comfortable not inserting himself into the conversation, rather just listening with interest, “—Harley is here now. With two of you, it should be help your friend relax a bit and not feel so… I dunno, out of place, I guess? Especially if Harley goes to Midtown. Then he can just join your little group of nerds and settle in without much of a fuss.”

Harley purses his lips, pondering that – not really an offer, more of a suggestion, but there’s a tint of hope beneath Tony’s words, because it’s pretty obvious, really, how much Tony wants Peter and Harley to get along. It’s evident in how he spoke so highly of them to the other, in how he insisted that they’re scarily similar and like the same things and how they could probably take over the world if they ever met. From what Harley’s heard, Peter has the purest heart around, and based on what Peter’s been told, Harley is easily one of the most resilient people out there. All good things.

For a long moment, there’s no reaction, and Tony looks borderline anxious about the silence, but then Harley faces Peter, and Peter faces Harley, as if they’re thinking the exact same thing, which they very well might be, and Harley asks, “Are your friends, like, stupid nerdy or cool nerdy?”

“Um.” Peter considers this, then decidedly answers, “Both, I think. Depends on the day.”

Harley nods, looking satisfied by that, and says, “Then I already like them.”

Chapter Text

(“We all have our family that we were born into, parents that may or may not love us, maybe some siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins… but the family that matters most is the family that we choose. Sometimes that includes your born family, sometimes it doesn’t. That part’s up to you to decide.”)

-

True to his word, Peter offers his help in making sure Harley knows what to expect on the test he needs to take to get into Midtown, the two of them spending a majority of Peter’s spring break sitting in the corner of Tony’s lab with Peter’s textbooks strewn about and what feels like an endless supply of loose leaf papers covered in noted scattered all around them. Tony gripes at them for being so messy, having to step over pages of notes in order to not mess up whatever sort of order they have going on, but he still smiles when he watches them work together – Harley, being a little genius like he is, doesn’t need too much assistance, because he knows a majority of the information Peter is quizzing him on, but the chemistry heavy topics he asks for help with, just because he isn’t as confident in that department as he is in all the other topics. By the time that Harley’s test date comes up, he knows he’s gonna ace it.

They don’t really talk much about themselves during this time, focusing solely on the task at hand, but there are little moments that peak his interest, nabbing at his curiosity. Like when Peter gets a phone call and his entire face lights up when he answers it, walking out of the room with an excited, “Hey, May!” falling from his mouth before the door closes behind him.

Harley prides himself in not being too nosy, but he can’t help it when he asks Tony, “Who’s May?”

“His aunt,” Tony answers simply, far too engrossed in the blueprints he has up, spinning the design around and examining it closely. Still, even as he squints at the project and jots down some notes, he tells Harley, “Don’t piss her off. She’s fucking terrifying when she gets mad.”

“Sounds like you’re talking from experience,” Harley muses, glancing over to the glass door, where he can see Peter still chatting happily on the phone. “Any reason for that, or is it the fact that you’re you?”

Tony looks at Harley, eyes still squinted, this time with scrutiny. “I’m sorry, maybe you should be nicer to the guy that’s currently in the process of getting legal guardianship over you just so that you can stay in New York and go to the fancy nerd school, don’t you think?”

For a moment, Harley pretends to consider this, then simply shrugs. “Nah, I’m good.”

“Little shit,” Tony murmurs, turning back to the blueprint with a barely suppressed smile of amusement. Harley keeps looking at him, still waiting for a response, which Tony succeeds in postponing for a solid thirty seconds before the staring gets annoying and he’s letting out a long sigh. “Fine,” he says, making one last little note before putting his full attention on Harley. “May didn’t like me at first because she didn’t know about Peter being Spider-Man, and she just thought he had a regular internship that was taking up all of his time and making him miss curfew and shit, even though I specifically told him not to do that. Then she did find out about Peter, and she kind of hated me even more for a little bit, but we all had a sit down and hashed things out, and ever since we managed to compromise, we’ve been fine. Maybe not friends, at least not yet, even though Pepper and May are definitely best friends by this point, but we’re fine. Our main priorities are keeping the kid safe, so we get along. That good enough for you?”

Harley just blinks a bit, huffs out a, “Yeah, thanks,” and then looks down at the notebook in his lap – Peter’s notebook, filled with notes and scribbles and little jotted down reminders in the corners of the page. Keeping the kid safe plays in Harley’s mind, and he wonders how much of that is necessary, because he thought that Spider-Man only dealt with the fairly small things, robberies and lost pets and very not dangerous things, but the way Tony’s features darkened the slightest bit seems to imply more. He thinks about how dangerous it really is, but he doesn’t ask when Peter comes back because he’s not sure if he really wants to know the answer. Plus, that’s not really a question you ask someone you barely know, no matter how curious you are. His Ma raised him better than that.

It isn’t until after Harley takes that entry test, after his mom signs over partial legal guardianship split three ways to Tony and Pepper (which Harley doesn’t know if that’s really a thing or if it’s just being allowed because he’s Tony Stark and he has the best lawyers in the country working for him) — after spring break ends and Midtown sets him up with a schedule, that’s when him and Peter really start to get along.

Of course, they’ve been talking since they met, but conversation has always been light, about things in the lab or the test or school or something else that was just as intellectually stimulating. Harley asks a lot of question about how being Spider-Man works, about the suits and Peter’s abilities and whatever else he can think of, all of which Peter is happy to answer once the uncertainty of Harley telling people about his identity ebbed away. Peter asks Harley about what he can build and how he learned to build it and how much he wants to learn to build in the future, and Harley joyfully babbles about what he can do. It’s not exactly formal conversation, but it’s mostly just polite small talk that doesn’t really lead anywhere, pleasant chit chat between the busy work. No real bonding, no actually getting to know each other.

That changes on Harley’s first day at Midtown.

The day starts out pretty bland and normal and pleasant when he ambles into his first period with his schedule in hand, a brand new backpack filled with more school supplies than he’s ever been able to afford for a school year before, yet alone the second half a semester, and the first person he spots is Peter sitting at a table towards the middle of the room. He’s busy talking animatedly to the boy sitting next to him, who Harley can only assume is that Ned guy that had been brought up a few times (and who had not been brought over to the Tower the following Tuesday, though Peter promised Tony that Ned would be coming over with him as soon as possible), so he doesn’t notice Harley kind of hovering by the door of the classroom in uncertainty for nearly a solid minute. When he does, his features brighten, and he excitedly waves Harley over, clearing his stuff off the table to make more room and waiting until Harley is lowering himself into the seat next to him to ask, “So, what’s your schedule?”

Harley shrugs, handing over the slip of paper in his hand before shrugging off his backpack and letting it fall by his feet. “I haven’t looked past first period,” he tells Peter, who is already scanning over the page quickly. While waiting for Peter to look it over, Harley turns to the other guy and sticks out a hand, awkwardly having to angle it around Peter’s form. “You’re Ned, I’m guessing?”

“Good guess,” Ned grins, reaching forward to shake Harley’s hand. “And you’re the Harley guy that Peter keeps on mentioning, right?”

“That’s me,” Harley nods, returning Ned’s grin with one of his own. “Glad to know I’m worth mentioning.”

Peter rolls his eyes, setting the schedule on the table and sliding it back over to Harley. “It’s not every day that Mr. Stark has someone my age move in with him,” he points out. “We have three classes together, by the way, and you have four with Ned and two with MJ. None of us are in calculus with you, though.”

From Peter’s left, Ned blinks and murmurs a little, “When did you memorize MJ’s and I’s schedules?”

“You practically live with him, too,” Harley counters quickly, pointing an accusing finger at Peter, who waves a dismissive hand at Ned’s question without bothering to really answer it. “I’ve been here for, like, a little over two weeks, and I’ve seen you almost every day.”

“That’s different,” Peter states simply, slouching back in his seat with a shrug. “Half of that was spring break. May had to work the whole week, and Ned and MJ had plans with their families, so I had nothing else to do. Plus, I said I’d help you study for those entry tests, and I did.”

Harley quirks a brow. “And the other half?”

Faltering, Peter takes a moment to consider his words, then carefully answers, “May has been working every day this past week, too. I don’t like being home alone, so she let me go to the tower more than usual, but once her coworker gets back from vacation in a couple days and her hours go back to normal, I won’t be there every day. Just the regular three or four days a week.”

It’s a pretty valid response, but Harley still isn’t convinced. “You have a room in the tower, though.”

“For emergencies, yeah,” Peter nods. “And it’s pretty much empty, other than whatever Mr. Stark put in there. I’ve only actually used it once, and I probably won’t use it again any time soon.”

“Okay, buzzkill,” Harley chuckles, shaking his head in mild amusement. “Whatever you say.”

“Barely used or not,” Ned interjects, lifting a hand slightly, almost appearing business like as he says, “I still say the fact that you have a room in the first place is, like, extremely badass.”

Harley grins. “See? Ned gets it. I like you, Ned.”

Looking proud of himself, Ned looks to Peter and informs him, “Harley’s my new best friend.”

“Traitor,” Peter says with a smile. “At least MJ is on my side. Right, MJ?”

He twists around in his seat, addressing a girl sitting at the table behind them that Harley hadn’t really noticed. Her nose is buried in a book, but it’s clear she’s been listening as she flick her gaze up to give Peter an unimpressed look, bluntly stating, “I’m not part of this,” before looking back at the book.

Harley points at her with a decisive nod. “I like her, too.”

“Dude, you can’t just steal my friends,” Peter whines, facing forward in his seat with a dramatic pout. “They are literally the only friends I have. No one else is gonna wanna put up with me!”

“Not stealing,” Harley corrects. “I’m just statin’ facts. I like them. I also like you. No harm, no foul.”

Peter looks pleased by this, but he doesn’t get the chance to respond before the teacher walks into the room and loudly announces that it’s going to be a review day because they have a new student and they want to make sure Harley is caught up and capable of understanding where the class is at. Of course, that involves the teacher calling Harley up to the front of the class to introduce himself, which he reluctantly does, and when he rolls his eyes and looks at Peter in the hopes of sharing an annoyed expression over the situation, Peter just gives him a genuinely supportive grin paired with two thumbs up, and it’s just… not at all what Harley was expecting him to do, but it’s also just a really nice thing to do, which Harley is starting to think is the very definition of who Peter is.

He introduces himself with an exaggerated country accent that’s ten times thicker than his own slight southern twinge, which only really comes out with certain words and phrases, and like he tips an imaginary cowboy hat for absolutely no reason, but it draws out a few scattered snickers and Peter snorts when Harley calls their teacher darlin’ before going back to his seat, so he considers it a success.

Harley lets his lunch tray hit the table a little harsher than necessary, for the sole purpose of having the sound draw the attention of the three people sitting there. It’s succeeds, seeing as all three of them jump at the sound, but he doesn’t give them a chance to say anything about the volume before he’s sitting down and asking, “So who the fuck is this Flash guy that keeps bugging me?”

Instantly, Ned and MJ roll their eyes while Peter drops his head to the table with a groan.

“Oh, that’s promising,” Harley says, brows lifting slightly. “What, is he an asshole? He seems dick-ish.”

“Yes,” MJ says. Ned nods his agreement. Peter just lets out another groan, this one louder and more annoyed. MJ reaches over to pat Peter on the back of the head while she tells Harley, “He has a hard on for calling Peter names and spreading weird rumors about him. The only time he doesn’t say shit is during decathlon, but that’s just because I’m in charge and he knows I’ll kick him off the team if he does.”

Frowning slightly, Harley scoots the slightest bit closer to Peter in order to nudge him with his elbow, questioning, “He’s a bully? I have a habit of kicking bullies asses, I hope you know. There were a fair share of ‘em back in Rose Hill, and all of them got at least one black eye or busted lip from me. Told off anyone who bugged my sister, too, if you don’t wanna get violent. I can use my words.”

Peter huffs out a laugh, keeping his head resting on the table top but turning slightly so he can look up at Harley, his cheek smooshed against the table. “That’s nice and all,” he says, “but Flash isn’t a bully. He’s just, like, super annoying. Besides, it’s your first day here, and picking fights is not a good idea.”

“Which is why I also offered my words,” Harley points out. Peter just blinks at him, leading him to hold up his hands in surrender. “Alright, fine, whatever. I just think it’d be smart, letting me have your back on this, since we’re kinda gonna be stuck with each other from now on. I mean, we still kind of barely know each other, sure, but two high schoolers with direct connections to Tony Stark? One of which lives with Tony, while the other is literally a secret superhero vigilante? Bound to cause some trouble.”

“Sounds like a match made in heaven to me,” Ned snickers, swiping a French fry off of Peter’s tray before lightly flicking him behind the ear. The combined actions make Peter sit up quickly, glaring at Ned in mild offense, but Ned just grins and uses the stolen fry to gesture at Peter’s food. “Start eating.”

Peter keeps glaring at Ned, though the ends of his lips start to twitch up in a smile, and he blindly reaches over to grab a handful of fries and promptly shoves them into his mouth. Quirking a brow, he speaks around his food, words muffled and stray crumbs spraying everywhere, to ask, “Satisfied?”

Instantly, MJ pushes what’s left of her lunch across the table, features steeled over. “No. Keep going.”

Rolling his eyes, Peter grumbles something about being overprotective as he obediently starts picking at his food, though the appreciative shine in his eyes outweighs the snark of his words. Harley pops another grape into his mouth and chews it slowly, confused. “Am I missing something here?”

“Not really,” Peter shrugs, though he does turn his body slightly to properly address Harley, finishing the last of his fries before bothering to keep talking. “Remember when you were asking about stuff I can do and whatever, and I told you about my, like, super metabolism?” Harley nods, gaze flickering down to Peter’s lunch tray and taking note that it’s piled twice as high as Harley’s is. Peter tears off a piece of his bread roll and takes a moment to eat it before continuing with, “Well, we found out a few months ago that missing meals for me is like skipping eating for a whole day for a normal person. Which isn’t that bad, but during finals last semester, I got home late one night and went to bed without dinner, then forgot to eat breakfast and studied through lunch, which was apparently too many missed meals than I can handle, ‘cause I almost blacked out in P.E. Not finishing my lunch isn’t as dramatic as they’re implying—” he gestures vaguely towards Ned and MJ, who both look somewhat offended by that, “—but ever since that happened, they’ve both been on my ass about it and shoving food in my face constantly.”

MJ frowns, crossing her arms and resting her elbows on the table as she cocks her head slightly to the side. “I’m sorry, are you complaining about me bringing you snacks every day? Because I can keep the bag of gummy worms that I was gonna give you after school, if you really don’t—”

“No!” Peter exclaims, eyes going wide as he looks at MJ. “You know how much I love gummy worms!”

“That’s what I thought,” MJ says, a smug smile on her face. “Keep eating, Parker.”

Harley snickers, a happy little feeling swelling in his chest, and to no one in particular, he states, “I think I’m gonna like it here.”

Midtown, Harley decides, is at least a thousand times better than Rose Hill High.

For starters, his classes are actually challenging – they reach a level of intelligence that a small Tennessee town doesn’t bother to teach. His teachers are patient enough to repeat themselves if asked, and are very clear that needing to ask if nothing to be embarrassed about, but otherwise they continue with the lesson and assume their students are following along. Harley has never needed to take notes before because he already knew everything he was being taught, but even on his first day he has multiple pages of notes that he’s kind of really excited to go through and rewrite and color coordinate and fully nerd out over. Which he would absolutely get teased for back in Rose Hill, but everyone else in his classes seems just as invested in what they’re learning as he is. This is a school meant for the smart kids who want to be smarter, after all – for the first time ever, Harley’s peers are very similar to Harley himself.

His second day isn’t much different than the first, and the first few weeks go by like a breeze once the new school jitters ebb away. Before school, he wakes up early enough to make himself breakfast – he leaves two extra plates on the counter, because he doesn’t know if Pepper and Tony are already gone or not, but the plates are always gone by the time he gets back so he has to hope that they’re getting the breakfast he makes, too, and he hopes it does well in showing his gratitude for letting him stay with them. His first class is spent with his new friends, who are arguably his only friends, seeing as the only people in Rose Hill that he actually liked were either his mom and sister or the guys at the mechanic shop a few streets over that let him stop by and help out sometimes, and the following two classes, one of which he has with Ned, the other being his calculus class that his friends aren’t in, are both spent with quick lessons, some note taking, and then busy work that he gets done fast enough to be able to get most of his homework done before the bell rings. At lunch, he sits at the same table and he joins MJ and Ned in pushing food in Peter’s face (mostly because he thinks it’s funny, watching how annoyed Peter gets even as he accepts the food and inhales it within seconds, the endless pit of his stomach never satisfied), and then he goes with Ned for his next class, joins Peter for the class after that, and ends the day in P.E. with the both of them, where Harley has the pleasure to watch as super strong Peter tries his best to act like he doesn’t have super strength (it’s a lot funnier when you know he’s faking every second of it).

After school, he finishes up whatever homework he didn’t get done in class, and he either lounges around and lets himself be lazy, or he goes to Tony’s lab to build things and watch as Tony works on prototypes and new suits and various ideas for offensive and defensive weaponry. Peter still comes to the tower almost every day, even though he had said it was only a temporary thing, but Harley doesn’t question it because he quite likes having Peter around, enjoys the way their brains can bounce ideas back and forth one second, bicker tirelessly the next second, and then melt into stupid jokes and giggles the second after that. Tony had been right to assume that they would get along. It’s almost scary how well they do.

When Harley heads to bed (a specific time, insisted upon by Pepper and Tony – apparently, it aligns with when Peter is supposed to be back from patrol and getting ready for bed, too; they said it’s easier to just use the same time, since it’s a time that May had agreed to, meaning it must be an appropriate, parent-approved time to expect a sixteen year old to call it a night), the first thing he does is call his mom. She has night shifts now, but they’re not until after Abbie goes to bed, so she’s usually available to talk – and even if she’s already at work, she apparently made a deal with her manager that she can take a fifteen minute break to talk to him, because she refuses to miss a call. They don’t really talk about much, but she tells him about how Abbie is still upset with him for leaving like he did, and Harley tells her that he’s never been so happy at school than he is now, and they have an unspoken agreement that they won’t admit to missing one another, because Harley’s scared that admitting his misses his mother and his sister will lead to him regretting doing this, and he really doesn’t want to regret something good, and his mother must know that, because she doesn’t say she misses him, either, even when he knows that she does.

Which is why it catches him off guard when, during his third week at Midtown and five weeks since he left Rose Hill, his mom takes on a gentle sort of tone and tells him, “Your sister misses you.”

“Oh, uh—” Harley falters, glancing around the lab with a slight frown – they’re daily call is a bit earlier today than usual, because there’s a wind storm zoning in on Tennessee that’ll probably knock out cell service for a few hours, which means that he’s still in the lab instead of in the room that he’s not yet used to calling his own. He considers taking the call into the hall, because it feels like this might be going down a more sentimental route that he doesn’t want to be overheard, but Peter and Tony are on the complete opposite side of the room and are zeroed in on the open chest plate of Tony’s latest Iron Man suit, so he decides that it’s probably fine and says, “Well, I- I miss her, too. Obviously.”

“I don’t think it is obvious, honey,” she sighs, sounding strained and tense and not at all in tune with the good feeling that these phone calls are supposed to be. “I know you’ve been trying to give her space about all this, and I think that was a good idea at first, but…”

Harley clears his throat, resting his shoulder against the wall and trying to feel more casual than he feels as he leans against it, keeping his eyes on Tony and Peter just to make sure they aren’t listening. “But…?”

There’s a moment of lapsed silence, and Harley is starting to think the wind storm must have hit when his mother speaks up to say, “Well, think about it, hon. You didn’t tell her you were leaving, you didn’t say goodbye, and you haven’t tried to talk to her since you left. I understand why you did that, but to her, it… it probably feels a bit… familiar, you know?”

“Fa—?” Harley stops, a ball of dread forming in the bit of his stomach and making him feel sick. His eyes sort of glaze over, no longer focusing on the room in front of him, and he doesn’t really notice how bland and dead his voice sounds when he states, “Like Dad. It’s… she… I remind her of… wow. Okay. Shit.”

He doesn’t really see it when Peter looks up at him, or notice when he nudges Tony with a confused frown and a concerned furrowed brow. He also doesn’t hear his mom start to say, “Honey, you’re not—”

He just takes a deep breath, lowers the phone (doesn’t even end the call) and sets it on the table beside him, and walks out of the room with a much calmer exterior than should be possible when the inside of his mind is screaming at him. If he closes the door with a bit more aggression than necessary, it doesn’t register in his mind, and he isn’t there to experience the sudden silence left in the lab after his departure.

“Um.” Peter looks at the door, looks over to Tony, and then looks at the phone. “The call’s still going.”

Tony lets out a long sigh, setting down his tools and getting to his feet. “You can keep working if you want,” he says dismissively, making his way over to the phone and picking it up briskly, wasting no time before pressing it to his ear. Peter does his best to block out the conversation, because he doesn’t like to eavesdrop no matter how easy and often unintentional it is when he does, but when he looks down at the suit in front of him, he doesn’t think he can keep working on it. It doesn’t really feel… it doesn’t feel right. He shouldn’t just keep working like this when his (admittedly new, not very close but still pretty decent) friend just left the room in barely concealed distress.

So, he does what Tony did – sets aside his tools, stands up, and moves.

Harley is not on the same floor as the lab. He is not in his room, or anywhere in the pent house, or even on the balcony or on the roof, which is where Peter would go in order to get some fresh air. No, Peter finds Harley on the second floor, in a cafeteria built for tour groups and employees, sitting slouched over at a table in the corner and poking at a small bowl of Jell-O with a spoon, his features steeled over.

Unsure of what else to do (because comforting a friend is a learned skill, and Peter doesn’t have any previous experience with comforting Harley Keener, because he’s only known Harley for a little over a month and up until now he’s just been pretty chirpy and overly southern and unfairly funny), Peter gets his own bowl of Jell-O, heads over to the table, and silently takes the seat across from Harley. He doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t know what to say, but it turns out that not saying anything is the right thing to do, because it only takes a moment before Harley lets out a long sigh, drops his spoon carelessly into the bowl, and asks, “How much of that call did you hear?”

“None of it,” Peter instantly assures, only to pause a moment later in uncertainty. “Well, technically I heard all of it, because I don’t really know how to control my senses yet, but I wasn’t paying attention to it and tried to block it out, so I didn’t, like, process any of it. It was more like background noise.”

Slowly, Harley nods, staring down at his Jell-O with the type of dazed expression that makes it seem like he’s not really seeing anything at all. “So, I’m guessing you want me to tell you what happened, then?”

Peter shrugs, takes a bite of his Jell-O and tries to shove his worry back down into his chest. “Not necessarily. I mean, if you want to talk about it, then I’ll listen, but I’m kind of just running on instinct here. I don’t like being alone when I’m upset, even if I don’t want to talk about why I’m upset in the first place. If that’s not the case for you, then I’ll leave you alone, but—”

“You don’t have to leave,” Harley interrupts, voice hushed. Seemingly running on autopilot, he leans back slightly, the table they’re sitting at close enough to the wall that Harley is able to rest his head against it, and lifts a single shoulder in a half shrug. “I don’t know if I want to talk about it.”

“Then you don’t have to,” Peter says simply, offering a kind smile as he pushes Harley’s bowl closer to him, eyes flickering down at it and back at Harley again. “You can just eat some Jell-O with me, yeah?”

Harley doesn’t move for a moment, just looks at Peter warily, uncertainly – he expects something different, expects Peter to dig more, question more, because he’s never met a person who didn’t push for answers – but then a small smile plays on his lips and he reaches forward to pick up his spoon again.

For the first time in weeks, May has the night off work.

It’s not that May wants to work as much as she has been, but she had offered to fill in for her coworker when he announced that he was going on vacation. Then, apparently, that coworker decided that he didn’t want to leave Florida, and called in to tell them that he was quitting. No two weeks’ notice, no warning, not even an apology for putting the hospital under the stress of suddenly losing a nurse in the emergency room, where they can’t afford to be understaffed. Because of this, she’s been taking all the shifts she can get, because it’s exhausting, sure, and it’s hard work, yes, but it’s not like they don’t need the money. Peter eats enough for three people in a single sitting, and despite how much he’s insisted that he can just limit himself at home to save the cash, she’s still standing firm that they need to have enough food to satisfy his metabolism and keep him energized and healthy. Rent can be kind of hard to pay on time and bills tend to pile up on the counter with URGENT stamped across in red ink, so the more she works, the better, but that doesn’t make it any easier for Peter to adjust to their apartment suddenly being so empty all the time. Where he usually would come home to do homework and eat dinner with May, patrol for a bit, and then come home again in time to tell her goodnight, he now goes to the tower even when it’s a day that he didn’t used to go, does his homework there, maybe eats something there if he doesn’t feel too guilty about asking for food, comes home just long enough to make some kind of half assed dinner (half of which he puts on a plate in the microwave for when May gets home, whenever she ends up getting home) and put his bag in his room, and then he patrols until his curfew hits and he has no choice but to go back to his room, where he tosses and turns until he falls into a restless sleep.

Tonight, however, when he comes home from patrol, there’s the smell of (slightly burnt) popcorn wafting through the air, and he’s so excited about it that he doesn’t even change out of his suit before running into the living room, a grin stretching over his features when he finds May waiting from him on the couch, a movie paused on the screen and the remote in hand. She checks her watch, clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and smiles at him. “Two minutes to midnight, Pete.”

“Which is two minutes before curfew, so I’m not late,” Peter tells her instantly, flopping onto the couch next to her and letting out a happy little giggle. “I thought you said you had to work tonight?”

“Switched shifts with Bec,” May dismisses, waving a hand through the air. “I have to leave early, but I get to be home tonight. Now go—” she points down the hall, “—and put on some actual pajama’s. You don’t have school tomorrow and I plan on being a bad influence by staying up way too late watching movies that I don’t even really like, all because I need some quality Peter time.”

Peter hops to his feet and salutes her with a loud, “Yes, ma’am,” before shoveling a handful of popcorn into his mouth and dashing down the hall before she can scold him for it. He manages to kick off his suit in record time, pulling the first clear pair of sweatpants and shirt that he can find from his closet and tossing them onto his bed. It’s almost stupid, how giddy he is – he feels like a little kid, but he can’t help it. Aunt May is all he’s got left for family and spending time with her never fails to make him happy.

He’s got his sweatpants on and is halfway through getting his shirt over his head when he hears the sound of May’s phone ringing, and he tries not to let the dread form in his gut as he finishes pulling on his shirt and makes his way to the living room. Blocking out the sound of the call is still hard for him to do, but he manages to keep the conversation away and instead just leans against the wall at the end of the hallway, his heart sinking when May looks at him with a frown. “Yeah, Bec, it’s- yeah, yeah. I understand.”

The call ends with May murmuring a quiet little goodbye, and her eyes stay glued on Peter, guilt swirling in her iris’s. It’s not her fault, though, and Peter doesn’t want her to think he’s upset with her, so he tries to crack a smile and asks, “Rain check on Peter time?”

“I’m sorry,” May breathes, looking even more sad by his words.

“No, it’s okay,” Peter promises, crossing the room to sit on the couch again, nudging their shoulders together, his forced smile feeling more strained. “I’m not a little kid anymore, May. I understand.”

May lets out a sigh, letting her eyes flutter shut and shaking her head slightly. “I’m still sorry.”

There’s a lump in his throat. It’s hard to speak around, but he manages to choke out, “It’s probably not a good idea to stay up too late, anyway. Tomorrow’s Saturday, y’know? Internship day.”

Neither of them points out that every day has turned into internship day because May hasn’t been home and Peter’s been opting to go to the tower after school instead. Instead, May just nods, draws Peter in for a warm hug, and plants a kiss against his temple before telling him, “My next day off, we’re gonna have a full movie marathon of whatever you want to watch, okay? Even if it’s a week day, I’ll let you stay home from school or stay up late or whatever, just so we can spend some time together.”

And even though Peter can’t be sure when that next day off will be, he still smiles a more genuine smile, returns the hug happily, and murmurs a content little, “Okay.”

-

(“Do you ever think you might be the exact person you didn’t want to become?”)

-

“So, my dad left us when I was a kid.”

Peter drops the wrench in his hand and blinks at Harley with wide, owlish eyes. The wrench bounces off the corner of the table and clatters loudly to the ground. Maybe he should have led in with something else, instead of jumping into the deep end like that. Guess it’s too late to take it back.

“I was seven,” Harley goes on, not taking his eyes off the wiring in front of him, though he does take in Peter’s reaction from his peripheral. “Abbie, my sister, was almost two. She doesn’t really remember anything about him, but she remembers having someone there, and then having them not be there anymore. Says she still gets weird nightmares about it, him leaving, even though she doesn’t remember what he looked like, sounded like, how he acted…” he trails off, frowning. “I remember, though.”

“I…” Peter clears his throat, shaking his head slightly. “I’m sorry.”

Harley shrugs, mostly unbothered. “Don’t be. I stopped missing him a long time ago. He chose to go, you know? I’m not gonna spend my life moping around and waiting to see if he’ll come back.” He isn’t really working on the wires anymore, more just fiddling with them absentmindedly and staring down at the table with a furrowed brow. “Abbie, though, she, uh- she spent a long time thinking he was gonna come back, because she was so young and didn’t understand that when he left, he really left. It didn’t really set in until she was in kindergarten and people talked about their dads and she realized that she was never gonna be able to do that, and it kind of hit her pretty hard, y’know?”

Slowly, Peter nods, a strange look crossing over his features. “Yeah, I… I understand.”

The way he says it sounds kind of… kind of heavy, kind of weighed down by it’s own meaning, but Harley opts not to question it, at least for the time being – he doesn’t want to prod into business that isn’t his to know. Instead, he gives up on the façade that he’s still working and drops the wires entirely, resting his elbows on the table and leaning against it with a long, slow exhale. “Basically, it’s just a sore topic for her, and it’s really hard for her to talk about, and I guess me packing my bags and coming to New York reminded her of our dad leaving, and now I want to call her and talk to her about it but I don’t really know how? And I don’t feel comfortable talking to Tony about this, and Pepper is really busy so I don’t want to go to her, either, and Ned and MJ are really cool and all, but out of the three of you, I see you the most, and I just didn’t really know what else to do so I’m sorry if—”

“Harley,” Peter interrupts, voice soft and patient. He reaches over, wraps his fingers around Harley’s wrist and squeezes once, lightly, a comforting gesture. “I’m here for you, man. However you need.”

Taking a deep breath, Harley nods, giving himself a minute to gather himself before he uses his free hand to dig into his back pocket and pull out his phone, staring down at it like the device might bite him. “I’m gonna call her,” he says, forcing his words to come out steady and sure. Peter lightly squeezes his wrist again, and Harley tries not to sound pleading as he asks, “Can you just… like, sit with me, while I do?”

“Of course.”

Harley nods again, and his hands shake, just a little bit, as he unlocks his phone and pulls up his sister’s contact – which he’s been looking at a lot these past few days, trying to gather the courage to do exactly what he’s doing right now – and it only takes a few seconds of hesitation before he presses call.

Peter Parker is a lot of things.

He’s Spider-Man. He’s the second smartest kid in his class (behind MJ, obviously). He’s a damn good nephew, an orphan, a decent friend, and he’d like to say that, despite everything he’s been through, he’s a pretty good person, too. His moral is high and his expectations for himself are higher. He’s patient when he needs to be, and impatient when he can get away with it. He’s at least a little funny, even though a lot of his jokes are probably considered cheesy to most people.

But, most of all, he’s really fucking lucky.

That’s not to say he has good luck, because he doesn’t – god, Parker luck is a curse, he swears it – but things kind of just… they work out, eventually. He lost his parents, but he had May and Ben. He lost Ben, but he still had May, and he later met Tony, who isn’t a replacement, really, but who has become that sort of father figure in Peter’s life that he admires and looks up to. He got bit by a crazy Oscorp spider and got sick from it, but then he developed these powers that help him save people. It works out, at some point.

So it really fucks him up, the first time he isn’t able to save someone.

The girl can’t be more than ten, maybe eleven years old, and Peter had been swinging through the city to get home before curfew when Karen informs him that she’s just been abducted by a black Sedan. He finds the car quickly, and he feels that same ache in his chest as he always done when he deals with kids that are in danger, but that ache fuels him to spring into action, curfew be damned. Dropping onto the hood of the car, he wastes no time in attaching a web to the back bumper, then two more webs to the buildings they’re passing, connecting the three webs together in order to bring the vehicle to a quick stop. Inside the car, he can hear loud cursing and shouts as the tires begin to spin out, unable to progress down the street any further, and Peter hops to the ground with a sense of satisfaction, pulling open the door with enough strength to yank it open even if it is locked, and he’s just about to make a comment about how they should really reconsider their life choices when he notices the guns.

One of them is pointed directly at him, and the other is pressed into the girls temple.

“Woah, woah, hey,” Peter says, holding up his hands in faux surrender. Sure, he can web the gun away, but the person holding it has a finger to the trigger and Peter can’t be sure that yanking it won’t result in a shot going off. His best course of action is to try and distract them, or at least get both guns pointed his way rather than towards the girl. “Let’s talk this out, yeah? She’s just a kid.”

“We’re not here to talk,” the person in the driver’s seat sneers, having given up on trying to drive and instead pulling out a third gun, this one trained on Peter, as well. That’s good, though. It’s not pointed at the kid. “Either let us go, or we shoot her, right here, right now.”

Peter is a lot of things, but he’s not a profiler, and he doesn’t really notice the lack of hesitation, the sincerity of their voice. In his mind, it doesn’t add up, kidnapping a girl and immediately killing her. Surely, they had to have taken her for a reason. So, convinced that they won’t really shoot her (or, at least, that they won’t kill her, and that he’ll be able to rush her to the hospital if it’s needed), he starts, “Or—”

A gun shot goes off, and if he didn’t have his suit on, there’d be drop of blood on his face, on his skin, and he watches in horror as the girl slumps over, a bullet hole in her head. He feels sick. He feels—

Another gun shot, and pain ripples through his abdomen suddenly, blindingly, and he absently hears when Karen tells him that she’s alerting Mr. Stark of the situation, and Peter runs on autopilot as he webs up their guns, webs them to their seats, and then webs up the tires of the car, just to make sure that they can’t go anywhere. Then, as gingerly as possible, he pulls the body of the little girl out of the car, sets her on the pavement, feels for a pulse that he knows isn’t there, and sits with his head bowed until Tony arrives.

FROM: little s(h)i(t)ster

i’m still mad at you

TO: little s(h)i(t)ster

that’s fair

you deserve to be mad

i’m sorry i did what dad did

FROM: little s(h)i(t)ster

you didn’t mean to

but thank you for calling

it made me feel better

like

a lot better

even tho ur still an asshole for leaving like that

now stop texting me it’s a school night and mom will still ground both of us even if ur in new york

love u

asshole

TO: little s(h)i(t)ster

love u too, abs <3

Harley can’t help but smile down at his phone, his heart warming in his chest as Abbie sends an eye rolling emoji, following shortly by a red heart. He already knew he missed her, but it had been kind of easy to ignore it when she wasn’t talking to him, and now it’s much more persistent, this longing to see his mother and his sister. He doesn’t want to go back to Tennessee, but he wants them to come here, at least for a little bit. Maybe he can try and figure out a way to have them visit this summer.

Letting his phone fall to sit in his lap, he turns his attention to the TV, an episode of Friends playing that he’s not really all that interested in watching – his mom loves this show, and Pepper had seemed pleased when she walked through the room and saw it on, so he decided to just leave it. There’s some kind of conflict about a job interview and immature jokes and Harley can’t be bothered to pay attention to it, instead just bringing his knees up to his chest and starting to ponder up possibilities for how to make a trip to New York possible, and how to get his mother to agree to it in the first place.

Those thoughts cut short a few minutes later when the door leading to the deck outside opens, and Tony comes stumbling in, Iron Man suit still on, Peter leaning heavily against him but staring blankly into the distance. Tony startles slightly at the sight of Harley, and if the situation were different, he’d probably make some kind of comment about how it’s past midnight and he should at least be in his room by now, but Peter sucks in a sharp breath and Tony lets out a curse and Harley notices, suddenly, that there is blood dripping onto the floor. A lot of blood, actually. And it’s—

It’s Peter’s blood.

“Pete,” Tony says, tone borderline pleading as he frantically glances between Peter and the elevator across the room. “Kid, you gotta cooperate here, okay? Helen is already waiting for you in the med bay.”

Harley gets to his feet, phone falling to the floor, already forgotten, and quickly rounds the couch to stand on Peter’s other side. “What the hell happened?” Peter’s eyes shift, land on Harley, but they aren’t present, they aren’t really registering what’s in front of him. Harley tries not to feel too unsettled by the blank expression, rather looking at Tony to ask, “Why is he—?”

Tony shakes his head, cutting Harley off. “Help me get him to the med bay,” he says, already moving forward, across the room, practically dragging Peter along with him. “Then you can ask questions.”

Wasting no time, Harley rushes over to loop an arm around Peter’s waist, helping to support his weight and making it just a little bit easier to cross the room. There’s a trail of blood droplets shining atop the white carpet, and Harley can only manage a quick glance down to spot the source of the blood before he has to look away with a rough swallow. There’s a bullet hole in Peter’s stomach.

Does super Spidey healing work fast enough for this?

Harley really fucking hopes so.

“Over here,” Tony instructs as soon as the elevator doors open, and Harley just wordlessly helps guide Peter down the hall, through a barely open door, and doesn’t even have time to process his surroundings before Tony is helping lay Peter down on a hospital bed placed in the center of the room. There’s a woman here, someone that Harley has seen around the tower but has never officially yet, but one look at her name tag lets him know that this is Helen Cho, the only doctor that can be fully trusted with all of the Avengers secrets, whether it be hidden identities or the extent of their abilities. She doesn’t acknowledge Harley, already putting all her focus on examining the wound, not even reacting when Tony asks, “How bad does it look? Because I don’t think I’ve ever seen him bleed this much before.”

Helen takes a few minutes to gingerly press around the wound, tapping on the side of her glasses (likely some high tech shit, like Tony’s sunglasses) and murmuring lightly under her breath, before she glances at Tony with a sigh and tells him, “It’s not… it’s not good, but with his healing, the only real danger is having him heal around the bullet. We have to take it out, but after that, he should be fine.” She then looks up at Peter’s face, which is pale and distant and kind of hard to look at. “I’m more worried about whatever has him so unresponsive.”

“There was a kid,” Tony explains, looking pained as he steps out of his suit. He’s still in sweatpants and a shirt smudged from a full day at the lab. He must have left in a hurry. “The cops got there about the same time I did, and… I don’t know what happened, but this girl, she must’ve been, like, ten years old, and…”

What? Harley wants to ask, hating the way that tension and uncertainty curls angrily in his chest, eyes flickering back and forth between Tony and Peter. What the fuck could have happened to send Peter into a state like this? He bites back the words, not because he isn’t tempted to say them, but because Peter speaks up before he can, sad and hushed and sounding far away as he murmurs, “I didn’t save her.”

And… oh.

Oh.

Over the course of almost seven weeks, Harley has learned a lot of little things about Peter Parker. He’s learned that Peter is easily one of the smartest people in the world, that he has a stupidly contagious laugh and a large assortment of science pun t-shirts that actually manage to make Harley snort when he sees them. He’s learned that Peter’s got a heart of gold and is too selfless for his own good, and he’s learned about his main priority, his top goal, the thing he cares about most – save everyone he can.

Ned told Harley that Peter’s never failed to reach his goal so far, said that there’s been close calls where Peter almost didn’t succeed in getting someone to safety, and that those moments haunt Peter in ways that he’ll never admit out loud. MJ said that Peter carries all of his guilt like a blanket, that he never lets it go.

Harley has learned a lot of little things about Peter Parker, and he knows, because of all these things he’s learned, that not being able to save the life of an innocent child is something that will weigh Peter down so much that he’s at risk of drowning in it, and Harley… Harley doesn’t know what he should do.

“You did your best,” he tries to tell Peter, after the bullet has been removed and Peter’s been sent to his bedroom in a pair of clean pajama’s and with the instructions to stay in bed until Helen comes to check on him in the morning. There’s school tomorrow and Harley has no real reason not to go, but he resigns himself to the fact that he’s gonna miss it anyway and sits on the floor next to Peter’s bed. “It’s not your fault, even if it might feel like it is.”

“You didn’t see her face,” Peter says, voice so strained that it grates against Harley’s ear drums. “She looked… she looked so, so scared, but when she saw me, she was just… she was relieved. She thought I was gonna save her, Harley. She had faith in me, and I don’t even know what her name is because I didn’t get the chance to ask, because I didn’t think fast enough. Because I couldn’t save her.”

Harley glances around the room, his heart sinking, and takes in the mostly barren walls and fairly empty state of the room. He remembers Peter telling him that his bedroom at the tower is only for emergencies, that he’s only used it once before – a story Harley still doesn’t know – and that he likely wouldn’t be using it soon, if ever again. A shiver runs down his spine, and he pushes himself off the floor to carefully sit on the edge of Peter’s bed instead, scanning over the lump under the blankets, the tuft of hair barely peeking out from beneath the duvet. Letting out a soft sigh, he leans back against the wall, brings his knees up to his chest, and says, “You know, Abbie broke her wrist once, because of me.”

Peter doesn’t respond, but there’s a slight shift under the blanket. Harley hopes that means he’s listening, and he hopes that doing this might actually help, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

“We were at this lake, about half a mile from my house,” Harley goes on, resting his chin on his knee and watching for any more movement, trying to see Peter’s reactions despite not being able to actually see Peter at all. “It was the fourth of July, and Ma told us to stay home while she was at work ‘cause there are some people in Rose Hill who start celebrating way too early, and she wanted to make sure we were safe, behind locked doors, you know? But it was hot as all hell outside, and I didn’t see the point in staying holed up in there when there was this perfect little lake in the woods behind my house, a lake that no one else knew about and a rope swing that I made, so I told Abbie that we should go swim for a while. Promised her that nothing would happen and Ma would never know, and she trusted me to keep that promise, so we packed up some snacks and made our way to the lake. Made it out there at about noon, and started just… just having fun, being dumb kids who didn’t have to worry about if Ma would be able to afford to pay the bills or not. I was fourteen, and I was already looking for jobs to help out, and I just wanted the chance to not be so stressed, and it was so nice.”

The tuft of hair becomes more visible as the duvet is lowered slightly, just enough to reveal Peter’s eyes, blinking up at Harley warily, uncertain and confused. “Why are you telling me this?”

Harley waves his hand in a wait a minute gesture, and continues with the story. “She wanted to try out the rope swing, but she had never done it before, and I didn’t want her to accidentally let go too soon and get hurt. So, like an absolute idiot, I said that I’d use the rope, hold onto her, and make sure to let go at the right time. Except both of our hands were wet from swimming, and I lost my grip almost immediately, and when she fell, she landed on her wrist wrong and it broke. Not a super bad break, thankfully, and it healed just fine, but I felt so bad because if I had just held on tighter or let her swing by herself, then she wouldn’t have gotten hurt, right?” He pauses, tilts his head to the side, and lets out a long, slow sigh, struggling to piece together the right words in his head. “I know it’s not the same thing, and what you’re feeling must be a hundred times worse, but… other people’s lives aren’t your responsibility, you know? The fact that you want to save people and that you try to save people doesn’t mean it’s your fault if they don’t end up being saved. You’re already doing more than enough by trying. It’s… It sucks, that she died, and I’m sorry that you blame yourself, that it happened, that you had to see it happen, but… but it’s amazing, what you do, and after doing this for over two years, the fact that you’ve managed to save every single person you’ve helped up until now is something to be proud of. Because you can’t save them all, Peter, but you want to, and you try to, and that… that’s fucking magical, okay?”

For a long moment, Peter just continues to blink up at Harley, his eyes shimmering with tears and reflecting some kind of disbelief. Then, with a shaky breath, he reaches one hand out, wraps it around Harley’s wrist, and squeezes gently as he murmurs a simple little, “Thank you.”

Harley hesitates, then simply nods. “No need to thank me, Spider-Man. You’re the hero here.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Peter says. Before Harley can question what that means, he rolls onto his side, keeping his hold on Harley’s wrist as he does so, and burrows his head into the pillows. Within seconds, his breathing has evened out, and Harley is left to ponder on his own.

Chapter Text

(“There’s a lot of love in your heart, you know. A lot of love that you could give to a lot of people.”)

-

Despite his best efforts, Harley isn’t allowed to skip a week of school just because Peter is. He does manage to give himself the one day, though. One day will have to be enough.

He finds this out the morning after Peter gets shot, when he blinks himself awake and finds that he’s still sitting on the edge of Peter’s bed and leaning against the wall. His back hurts like hell from falling asleep like that, but Peter still has a light grip on his wrist, and he’s puffing out almost-snores and looks somewhat peaceful, and Harley decides that he’d much rather see Peter like this than see him as shut down and closed off as he was last night. Seeing someone that he’s grown at least a little bit attached to in that kind of state is… it’s jarring, to say the least, and the only people Harley’s ever tried to comfort before are Abbie (on many occasions) and Tony (though Harley had literally been twelve and his attempts at helping sort of sent Tony spiraling into an even deeper panic, but he had tried, and Tony insists that he had done a decent job, because he wouldn’t have been able to make it through the whole Mandarin fiasco if he hadn’t ended up having Harley there to help him out). He’s not exactly an expert at being there for someone, but he’s also never really had friends before, either – some acquaintances, maybe, people at school who would smile at him or let him sit with them or partner up with him for projects, but no one that would sit and eat Jell-O with him just so that he wouldn’t be sitting alone.

Ned probably would do that, too, and MJ always makes room for him to sit next to her whenever he walks into one of the two classes he has with her, but it’s, like… he sees Peter more. MJ and Ned are his friends, too, and he kind of really adores them (and their group chat, which seems to always have new messages waiting for him), but he only really sees them at school, and he usually ends up spending a lot of time with Peter at the tower until the evening. It makes sense to have a closer bond with him.

And it also makes sense for his heart to physically crack within his chest when Dr. Cho comes in, all friendly smiles and gentle words as she carefully shakes Peter awake and tells him that she needs to check his wound, to make sure it’s healing like it should be. Peter is half asleep and dazed and looks a little scared, like he doesn’t really remember where he is or why he’s there, and he tightens his hold on Harley’s wrist with a shake of his head and murmured, “What happened?”

Helen sends Harley out into the hall, which both Harley and Peter try to protest before succumbing under her unwavering stare. Peter looks even more scared when he lets go of Harley’s wrist, and Harley just thinks about the fact that Peter told him he doesn’t like to be alone when he’s upset, and even though Helen is there, even though Peter knows Helen and trusts her, Harley still feels kind of like an asshole closing the door and leaning against the wall in the hallway with a long, deep sigh.

“Shouldn’t you be at school right now?” Tony asks, rounding the corner with a cup of steaming coffee and raised brows, looking at Harley in a way that makes it clear he knows the answer to his question.

Harley gestures towards the closed door vaguely instead of responding.

“Right,” Tony drawls, brows raising higher. He leans against the wall opposite of Harley, glances at Peter’s door with a slight frown, then decidedly states, “Happy’s taking you to school in thirty minutes.”

“What?!” Harley splutters, shaking his head and gesturing towards the door again, this time more emphatically. “But he’s- Peter’s- and I- I don’t- that’s such bullshit!”

Tony shrugs, taking a sip of his coffee. “Tough shit, kid. Pep and I are legally responsible for you, and letting you skip school for your friend, even if that friend is Pete, isn’t gonna slide. You’ve got grades to maintain, homework to turn in.” He lifts his mug slightly, in some kind of salute. “Pete’s gonna be here for a week or so, probably. May’s gonna come by in a few hours, talk to Helen about it, and we’ll figure it out, but you’re not skipping for no reason. Go get dressed, squirt.”

“Can I just stay here today and go back tomorrow?” Harley asks, crossing his arms over his chest and trying to summon up that pouty, pleading look that Abbie always uses to get what she wants. “I’m already late, right? And I haven’t gotten behind on a single assignment since I got here, so missing one day won’t, like, ruin my entire high school career or anything. And, y’know, Peter looks like he needs a friend. I’m one of those. A friend. I don’t… I don’t really wanna leave him here without a friend, okay?”

For a long moment, Tony only looks at Harley – just looks at him, kind of curious, a little scrutinizing, mostly hesitant. Then, with a heavy sigh, he murmurs, “I’m gonna regret this,” and spins on his heel to walk away. Harley just blinks and listens when Tony calls back, “You’re going to school tomorrow, kid!”

He’ll consider that a win, then.

Peter Parker has blood on his hands.

It’s red and it’s vibrant and it’s impossible to look away from, sticking to his skin and leaving stains on his clothes and smearing on his face when he goes to wipe away tears that have been dry for a long time now. The blood of his parents (not his fault, no, but what if he had demanded they not leave that week?) and the blood of Ben (on the street and on him and everywhere and Ben was still telling Peter that it would be okay and how could Peter ever be that strong?), and now this nameless little girl that he sees every time he blinks. He should look into it, know her name. He should apologize to her family, to her friends, to everyone who’s life will be changed by the loss of someone they live.

He considers this while he washes his hands, pointedly avoiding looking at his reflection in the mirror, not wanting to see his baggy eyes and pale skin, the grief in his features. The water is on way too hot and his hands are red and raw, but he gets some more soap and keeps scrubbing, wanting to feel clean, needing to rid himself of the feeling of the girl’s blood, of his own blood seeping from his abdomen. It’s too much blood, too much red, too much death and pain and—

A hand reaches out, turns off the water suddenly. Peter startles, confused on why his senses hadn’t alerted him of someone else being there, and looks up to see Harley trying for a tense smile. “I asked Friday to make sure you were decent before having her unlock the door,” Harley tells him simply, matter-of-factly, glancing down at Peter’s hands in mild concern before stepping back with a shrug. “You left for the bathroom thirty minutes ago. I got a little worried. Sorry for barging in.”

“No, it’s…” Peter looks down at his own hands, takes in just how red and tender they look, and he wonders how he had kept washing them without feeling any pain. He looks away, clears his throat, and shakes his head. “It’s okay. I just… I got a little lost. In, uh- in my head, you know? Lots of thoughts.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Harley says, taking a few more steps back, until he’s standing in the hallway outside the bathroom door rather than in the bathroom with Peter. He doesn’t hold out a hand, but he does shift an arm forward a bit, a silent offer, and Peter doesn’t really think before he reaches forward and presses the pads of his fingers to inside of Harley’s wrist. A steady heartbeat, healthy and strong, greets him. It helps him breathe, just a little bit – there’s no more blood on his hands if he can keep people alive. Harley is alive, and Ned is alive, and MJ and May and Mr. Stark and Happy and Pepper and the only people he really, truly cares about – the only people he won’t fight getting close to him, no matter how endangering it is, no matter the fact that Parker luck could very well take them from him, as well.

Maybe he’s selfish, then, for keeping these people close, for resting his fingers on their pulse point and letting out a sigh of relief, for their breathing helping make his own breathing easier. Part of him is convinced that he must not really love them, because if he did, he would separate himself from them, would become isolated and save them all the trouble, but the rest of him knows the truth. He loves them so much that he can’t even fathom the idea of not having them near. But if they ever get hurt because of him, if they’re ever killed and it’s his fault, more blood joining his list of losses, he won’t know what to do. He can’t imagine surviving the loss of another person that he loves so fucking much. God, if—

“Hey,” Harley says, tone going so soft that it makes his southern accent sound thicker. Peter takes in a shaky breath, doesn’t even realize he zoned out until he blinks his vision back into focus and settles his eyes on Harley once more, who’s looking at him in clear concern. “I’m starting to get the feelin’ that we need to keep you out of your head, huh? Like… distract you, from all the thoughts. That could help.”

Peter isn’t sure anything could really help, but he nods anyway, murmurs a little, “Sure,” and lets himself be guided out of the bathroom and down the hall, towards the living room. He doesn’t really know where anyone else is, can only assume that Pepper is at work and Helen is in the med bay and Tony is likely holed up in the lab again, but he does know that no one else seems to be in the penthouse, making it feel entirely too large and uncharacteristically empty. He wishes Ned were here, and MJ. Maybe being around them could help him feel a little less sluggish and vacant. Stop him from thinking about the still healing bullet wound and the dead eyes of the dead girl. Make him feel a little more… normal.

Will he ever feel normal again after this?

“What time is it?” Peter asks, now sitting on one of the sofa’s and accepting the blanket that Harley tosses at him letting it settle over his lap and curling his legs underneath him.

Harley glances at his watch. “Almost noon. Why?”

School isn’t over until quarter to three. Peter frowns, shuffles in his seat and looks down at his hands. “No reason,” he mumbles. “I just- I was hoping it’d be later, so I could try and get Ned and MJ over here.”

“Oh.” Harley sits next to Peter, close enough that their shoulders and knees can brush together, and he wastes no time in pulling out his phone. There’s a few short moments of him just tapping at the screen, angling the device a certain way so that Peter can’t see it even if he tried to look, and then sets his phone on the sofa next to him with a satisfied nod. “Happy’s gonna pick them up after lunch.”

He tells Friday to put on Peter’s favorite Star Wars movie (which Friday has stored in a file titled Spider-Boy’s Favorite Things, because of course she does) before Peter can really react to that, but he feels the gratitude swell in his chest. He is so grateful for Harley – for meeting him, for having the privilege of becoming friends with him over the last month and a half, for being there for him and having him being here for Peter now. He knows that Harley is skipping school, had unintentionally listened to that conversation Harley and Tony had in the hall while trying to grit his teeth and block out the ache that came with Helen checking over his wound, and he knows that the main reason Harley came to New York was to attend a better school, get a better education, land himself on a better path. And Harley is choosing to miss a day – is willing to miss a week, if Tony and Pepper allowed it – just to sit with Peter and tell him nice things and help him eat and talk and handing him a cup of water every couple hours or so.

And now, Harley is watching Star Wars with his shoulder pressed to Peter’s, even though Harley prefers Star Trek and has said so multiple times, and he’s subtly checking on Peter by glancing at him every few moments, and Peter finds himself wondering how he had ever lived a life without Harley Keener in it.

He reaches over, but instead of holding onto Harley’s wrist, as he has many times thus far, he carefully turns Harley’s hand, slides their palms together, and intertwines their fingers. This way, he can feel Harley’s pulse against his own, and he can hope the action says more than what Peter is able to choke out, because words are never easy for Peter Parker but when he’s still this distraught, they’re damn near impossible. Thankfully, he sees Harley’s lips twitch up into a smile, and when Harley squeezes his hand once, he knows that the message has been sent and received.

By the time Ned and MJ get there, Peter is fast asleep, kind of curled up on his side with his head on Harley’s lap, their hands still locked together. Harley’s using his free hand to absentmindedly brush through Peter’s hair, and he already has the lights dimmed and the volume lowered to prevent them from waking Peter up, because he’s come to notice that Peter’s senses can make it hard for him to stay asleep.

“You look cozy,” MJ says, walking out of the elevator without even bothering to look around. Harley wonders if she’s ever been here before, or if she’s just always able to look like she knows where she’s going, but he doesn’t bother to ask that.

Ned trails out of the elevator after her, though he is glancing around in some kind of trance, which Harley thinks is particularly hilarious considering the fact that he knows Ned has been here a few times. That doesn’t stop him from taking in the décor, the layout, and murmuring, “This is so badass.”

Happy, surprisingly, walks in after them, saying something to Ned about not breaking anything, and then kind of hovers a few feet away from the couch with his arms crossed over his chest and a firm look on his face, like he’s trying to hide that he’s concerned even though he definitely is. Harley just cocks his head to the side, pretends he doesn’t already know what’s happening, and barely manages to suppress his grin when Happy sighs, nods down at Peter, and grumpily asks, “How’s the kid?”

“Been better,” Harley answers simply, his nails lightly scratching at Peter’s scalp in a way that he hopes is comforting – his mother used to do that to him, when he was younger and upset. Peter lets out a content sigh in his sleep, curls even further into himself and presses his forehead to Harley’s stomach. Harley tries not to grin too wide as he says, “He’s still in some kinda shock, I think. Keeps gettin’ lost in his head.”

“Makes sense,” Happy murmurs, frowning slightly and scrubbing a hand over his features. “Kid has a guilty conscience worse than Tony, I swear. Even the smallest things, he blames himself for. This…”

There a moment of quiet, where Ned looks over from where he’s examining a piece of artwork on the wall, and MJ freezes in the middle of pulling a book out of her bag, and Harley just swallows the lump in his throat and nods. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s, uh… it’s really… it’s not good.”

Ned makes his way over to the couches, sits next to MJ on the other sofa, sad eyes stuck on Peter. “Can I… can I, like, ask what happened?” he asks slowly, cautiously. “I mean, you told us that something happened, that someone died, but we don’t… I don’t actually know anything.”

“That’s my cue to go,” Happy says, backing away with a nod towards Harley. “Let me know when to take these two home, alright? I’m gonna be helping Pep, but she knows I’ll need to leave at some point.”

“Yeah, ‘course,” Harley promises, watching as Happy spins on his heel and makes his way into the elevator. He feels Peter shift again, press closer to Harley, and let out a sigh, but this one isn’t a sleepy sigh, or a content sigh. The elevator doors slide shut, and Harley looks down to find that Peter is now frowning, eyes squeezed shut. Brushing a hand through Peter’s hair again, even more gently now than before, he softly asks, “You wanna tell them?” Instantly, Peter shakes his head, tightens his hold on Harley’s hand and taking in a shaky breath. “Want me to tell them?” Harley offers.

Peter doesn’t move for a moment, then offers a nod, very slight and barely there.

“Okay,” Harley murmurs, squeezing Peter’s hand once before looking back over to Ned and MJ, who are both watching the scene with quirked brows and sad eyes and fond little half-smiles. Harley doesn’t even bother trying to decipher what their expressions mean, just takes a deep breath, keeps carding his fingers through Peter’s hair, and tries to explain the night before.

Sometimes, after a particularly bad nightmare, Peter goes into sensory overload. No one knows this, because no one really knows about his sensory overloads – Tony has a basic understanding that his senses are heightened, sure, but  he doesn’t know what happens when his senses go into overdrive.

Of course, his first sensory overload to happen in six months has to happen when Harley Keener is staying in his room again, because Harley’s a good friend and when Peter silently grabbed his hand, he just nodded his head and sat down and fell asleep leaning against the wall and the sound of his gentle breathing helped Peter drift into his own restless slumber. In his nightmare, he sees the girl with a bullet hole in her head and she’s screaming at him, only he can’t hear her over the sound of his parents yelling, of Uncle Ben sneering, and there’s lights and he can’t see, and then there’s tons upon tons of concrete weighing him down and he’s in his old suit and he can’t breathe, and his entire body is crying out and everything is far away and blurry but also too close and vivid and he doesn’t even realize he’s awake and he’s screaming until a whisper pierces through his skull and says, “Peter, are you- fuck!”

There’s a car engine several blocks away that echoes in his mind and makes his head twist in a white hot flash of agony, and even his own breathing is too much, too much, too fucking much oh god—

“What do I do?” Harley asks, sounding pleading and afraid and Peter feels bad because he wants to say something, wants to reassure him and tell him that this has happened before and it’ll go away eventually, but all he can do is let out a groan and press his hands to his ears because Harley’s voice is too loud and the light shining under the doorway is too bright and his skin aches and burns everywhere it touches something else, his clothes and the mattress and even where his hair falls against his forehead. Harley curses, drawing out another pitiful whine, and Peter has never been so grateful to be friends with geniuses because Harley quickly connects the dots, murmuring, “Sound? Is it noise? Is that the problem?”

It isn’t the full picture, but it’s something. Peter tries to nod, but a few car horns blast a few streets away and he lets out another scream instead, throat feeling raw and it hurts so fucking bad, his brain feels like it’s melting and the bedroom door flies open and it’s so bright and it’s so loud and Tony is asking what the hell is going on and all Peter can do is scream again, this time with a sob, and when Tony tries to place a comforting hand on his shoulder, Peter lurches away and chokes out, “Everything’s at eleven!”

Tony freezes, and Peter can hear the two heartbeats in the room, the various heartbeats in the building, and he sobs again when Tony says, “Shit, okay, uh- Harley, we need to get out. Go, go, out, now!”

“But—” Harley stops, and Peter hears him stumble after Tony, the click of the door closing, the light under the door being blocked off and leaving him in total darkness. The ache in his eyes instantly starts to fade at the lack of strain, and he doesn’t know what happens, but it goes silent, too. The only thing he can hear is his own heartbeat and his own breathing, choppy and uneven but already steadier than before.

He doesn’t know how much time passes, feels far too disoriented to really process his surroundings in any way, but by the time the door opens again, his senses have dialed it down to a more reasonable level. Still higher than a normal person, but manageable nonetheless. Despite that, he doesn’t bother opening his eyes as timid footsteps approach the bed, doesn’t look as the mattress dips with their weight. He doesn’t do anything but let out a long, slow breath, listening to the heartbeat and feeling grateful to not be overwhelmed by the noise. He usually loves hearing heartbeats, loves the reassurance that comes with listening to the steady, healthy thrum. Sensory overloads always take the comfort away from him.

“Peter?”

There’s a waver in Harley’s voice that makes Peter’s eyes shoot open, because that’s something he’s never heard before. Harley usually sounds lighthearted when he talks, sometimes a bit slow and cautious when he’s talking about something more serious, like the night before, when he told Peter that story about his sister and said all those nice things. Since Peter’s met him, he’s never heard Harley sound… scared.

And he looks scared, too, when Peter props himself up on his elbows and looks at him. His eyes are a little red and he looks terrified, like he’s seen a ghost, pale and shaky and so much different than Peter’s ever seen him before. He still tries to smile, though, when Peter looks at him. It wobbles, doesn’t last.

“Did I scare you?” Peter asks, his heart sinking into his stomach. He knows that experiencing sensory overloads are horrifying, but he doesn’t know what it looks like when he has them. It can’t be a fun sight, though, him screaming and crying and clawing at his own ears because even the softest of breezes are too loud for him to handle. He has to assume that it must be a daunting thing to witness.

Harley barks out a humorless laugh, and Peter feels his sinking heart start to crumble when the dim lighting illuminates the tear the rolls down Harley’s cheek. He wipes the tear away with a nod, the laugh kind of dissolving into shaky exhale. When his hand drops, another tear falls, but he doesn’t wipe that one away, just stares down at the blanket and croaks out, “You just… you sounded like you were dying. I thought the worst thing I’d ever hear was Abbie’s screams when she broke her wrist, but that was…”

Peter feels a little bit sick with the guilt settling in his gut. He doesn’t want to scare his friends. He wants to protect them. He wants to keep them from ever being afraid. “I’m… I’m sorry, Harley.”

“No, I don’t—” Harley cuts off, brows pinched together and eyes fluttering shut momentarily. Peter just shuffles back, leans against the wall and draws his knees up to his chest and waits as Harley takes a deep breath, wipes his palms against the knees of his sweatpants and shakes his head. “You shouldn’t be sorry, Peter. I’m not- I’m not gonna lie and say that didn’t scare the shit out of me, but not because you did something wrong. It scared the shit out of me because I thought something was happening to you and there was absolutely nothing I could do to help. And Tony told me to go back to my room and promised that you’d be fine, but I couldn’t… I couldn’t just go to bed after that, you know? I had to make sure.”

“I’m still sorry,” Peter says, trying not to sound as pitiful as he feels. “I should’ve… I dunno. It happens sometimes, and I haven’t told anyone about it, and that’s my bad. You should’ve been warned about it.”

It looks like Harley is gonna protest for a moment, but then he falters, looks at Peter curiously, and carefully asks, “What, um… what was it that happened? Tony didn’t actually say what was going on. I’m guessing it’s something to do with noise, but I don’t actually know, and I’m… I wanna know what happened, and I wanna know how I can help if it happens again. If that’s okay.”

“I don’t think you can help,” Peter admits, frowning down at his hands and bunching up his shoulders in a half assed shrug. “It’s just… sometimes, my senses go haywire, dial all the way up and just… drive me insane. I can hear everything and if anything touches me then it hurts and any light is too much, and it just… it doesn’t happen as much as it used to, but it does happen sometimes, and it’s not… it’s not fun.” He tries for a small smile, sends it Harley’s way and hopes it doesn’t look as forced as it feels. “I don’t know how to stop it, or prevent it, or whatever. It just happens when it happens, and it stops when it stops. Sometimes it lasts a few minutes, sometimes it lasts a couple hours, but—”

“A couple hours?” Harley repeats incredulously, and it’s like all of his previous tension, his worry and his fear and everything else, gets thrown out the window. He turns around, a determined look in his eyes, and he says, “Fuck that shit. I’ll figure out how to help. There’s no way in hell that I’m gonna just go into the hall and sit there when this happens and not even try and do something about it. I’m a genius, right? And so are you, and both of us are literally sitting in the tower of one of the most, if not the most intelligent person on the planet. With the three of us workin’ on it, we can find a way to make it better.”

Instantly, Peter shakes his head, looking shell shocked by the fire in Harley’s eyes. “No, that’s- it’s fine, Harley, you don’t have to- I don’t wanna- don’t wanna be—”

But Harley just waves a hand dismissively and says, “Either we all work together, or I’ll work on it myself. I’m not gonna let someone I care about go through that without doing something about it.”

For a long moment, Peter just sits there, not sure how to react to that, because he doesn’t usually let people do things for him. Tony makes his suits, sure, but that’s because he’s Tony Stark and Peter couldn’t stop him even if he tried – plus, by this point, a lot of the creation process is done by Peter himself, and simply checked over and approved by Tony throughout the process. Ned has his kind gestures, and MJ does, too, and Aunt May takes care of him, always has and always will, but something like this? It’s unnecessary, and Peter feels just a little bit overwhelmed by the kindness that flows through Harley Keener’s veins. Maybe it’s partly southern hospitality. Maybe it’s just who Harley is.

Maybe it doesn’t matter, because maybe Peter’s quite fond of him either way.

“Okay,” he says, almost in a whisper, trying to will himself not to tear up because this is a lot and he’s pretty sure his heart skipping a beat in his chest is due to more than just simple gratitude. Harley quirks a brow, and Peter smiles, nods. “We can work on it. The three of us.”

“Good,” Harley grins, and Peter feels that simple settlement of normal and abnormal clump together in his bones, because Harley hasn’t had a real big smile like that since Peter showed up at the tower with a bullet in his stomach, but Harley’s real big smiles haven’t made butterflies erupt in Peter’s stomach before, either. It’s a sense of good, a sense of normal, and a sense of holy shit I think I really do like him, all mixed into one and dumped over Peter’s head like a bucket of ice water. Thankfully, he either manages to school his expression into a simple little smile or it’s too dark to see the slight panic on Peter’s face, because Harley just plops himself down, properly laying next to Peter and grinning up at the ceiling, and he says, “Y’know, you’re lucky I like you, Parker. I have to get up in three hours for school, and you get to sleep in ‘cause you’re still healin’ up. Which is good, but, like, I wanna sleep in, too.”

Peter settles against the pillows, consciously makes sure there’s a reasonable amount of space between them, and murmurs a quiet little, “Sorry.”

Harley shrugs. “Not your fault. I could’a gone to my own room if I really cared. This was my choice.”

“Probably made the wrong one, then,” Peter muses, pulling the blanket up over them and trying not to dwell on the unspoken agreement that Harley is sleeping in his room again, only this time properly, laying in the bed and everything. Not just sitting over the covers and leaning against the wall.

“Nah.” Harley rolls onto his side, yanks the blanket up to his chin, and reaches over to bop a finger against Peter’s nose, which instantly crinkles slightly at the touch. The action makes Harley honest to god giggle – which is so not fucking fair, considering Peter is still trying to recover from the last onslaught of unexpected butterflies swarming around his tummy – and he simply murmurs, “This was obviously the best choice,” before taking Peter’s hand in his own and letting his eyes flutter shut.

Within seconds, Harley is fast asleep, and Peter is trying to keep his heart from beating out of his chest.

Ned laughs at him.

Like, really laughs at him, too. Not a little chuckle, not a simple snort, but a full on, bent at the waist, clutching his chest and wheezing, belly-aching bellow of laughter that echoes down the hall at an embarrassing volume. Harley is kind of mortified by it, tries to offer a little wave when people look their way, but Ned’s laugh is so contagious that the wariness wears off quickly and he starts laughing along.

“Dude,” Ned wheezes, clapping a hand on Harley’s shoulder once he’s managed to stand up straight again. He takes one look at Harley’s face, eyes crinkled with his own chuckles but brows pinched in confusion because he’s not really sure what’s so funny in the first place, and he loses it again, another bark of laughter that makes Harley jump slightly. “Holy shit. Dude. Harley. Oh my god.”

“I’m kinda startin’ to feel like you’re laughin’ at me,” Harley says, slow and unsure.

Ned snorts, snuffles, goes red in the face with the effort it takes to stop himself from losing his cool all over again. He just shakes his head, lets out a few uneven breaths that are very poorly concealed giggles, and he says, “Peter said the past couple of days have been like a semi-depressing sleepover, because you guys have been sharing a bed while he’s been healing at the tower. Is that true?” Slowly, Harley nods, even more confused when Ned bursts into laughter again, squeezing Harley’s shoulder with one hand and wiping tears from his eyes with the other. “Dude,” is all he manages to choke out through his chortling, and then he just walks away, leaving Harley standing by his locker in confusion, glancing down at the stack of Peter’s homework that he’d collected from Peter’s teachers during lunch and wondering what, exactly, he’s missing. Judging by Ned’s behavior, it must be something pretty big.

MJ doesn’t laugh at him, but she has an amused smile on her face when he walks by her on the way to the front doors, where Happy is waiting to take him back to the tower. Harley still doesn’t get it.

Ned doesn’t laugh at Peter, but MJ certainly does.

It’s a gleeful little laugh, paired with an excited clap that almost ends the video call because she nearly drops her phone when she does it. “I knew it,” she sing-songs, grinning at her phone screen in the way she only does when she’s feeling especially smug. Which is fairly often, really, when it comes to her friends.

“You didn’t know anything,” Peter pouts, even though he knows he’s probably wrong. It feels good, though, bickering with her. He hasn’t left the tower in three days and he’s still feeling bad about… about everything that happened, but he’s been through grief before, and he wants to get back out there, to save people – to save kids and find out the name of the little girl he couldn’t save and try and make it up to her family somehow. Maybe he should figure out her name while he’s still here. He should do that later.

But, for now, he’s arguing with his friend about a sort of not really kind of crush.

“I didn’t even know anything!” Peter exclaims, pointing an accusing finger at his phone  “You couldn’t have known anything if I didn’t even know anything! That’s now how it works!”

“Peter, you are a painfully easy person to read,” MJ deadpans, shrugging her shoulders at the offended scoff he makes in response. “You might not have known it yet, but you didn’t see how cuddled up you two were when Ned and I were over yesterday. I’ve never seen you that touchy with someone.”

It’s a fair point, but it also isn’t. “Yesterday was a bad day,” Peter points out. “I was still… not really there, you know? I was so far in my own head that I barely even registered that you guys were there, even though I know I’m the one that told Harley I wanted to see you. No one else was there, and he’s, like, insanely nice and really warm, so it was comforting. I would’ve been cuddly with you, too, though, if you were the one that was sitting with me all day like he was. Or Ned, or May, or Mr. Stark. I just wanted comfort, and he was giving me that, so your point is both kind of valid and very much not valid.”

MJ squints at the camera, scrutinizing and calculating, then lets out a sigh. “You make a fair point,” she concedes, “but I still guessed that there would be feelings, if there weren’t already. So, I still win.”

“What do you win?” Peter asks, genuinely curious. “Like, is there a prize?”

“Bragging right,” she answers simply, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “When you two are together, I get to tell everything that I saw it coming before you even realized you like him.”

The noise that Peter makes sounds almost inhuman, and his voice squeaks and cracks when he tells her, “I’m still not even sure if I actually like him or if it was just, like, a situational thing, so you can’t say shit like that! And even if I do actually like him, I seriously doubt that anything’ll come out of it, so—”

MJ snorts, looking unimpressed. “Are you stupid, Parker?”

Peter snaps his mouth shut and pointedly does not offer a reply.

“Jesus Christ,” MJ murmurs, rolling her eyes with the smallest of fond smiles. She looks directly into the camera of her phone, making the impression that she’s looking Peter directly in the eyes, and she very clearly states, “You, Peter Parker, are a fucking catch. If I wasn’t a lesbian, I’d be into you, and don’t tell Ned I said this, but he used to have a crush on you in freshman year. Plus, you and Harley get along really well. Like, scarily well. It honestly terrified me when I saw how you guys acted around each other on his first day. Even if he doesn’t end up liking you, it’s pretty obvious that you two are meant to be in each other’s lives. So, get your head out of your ass and don’t be stupid about it, Spider Genius.”

Peter isn’t sure he believes all that, but he trusts MJ and knows she would never lie to spare his feelings, so it still brings him comfort, still makes him smile and nod and say, “Yeah, okay. Thanks, MJ.”

She flips off the camera and ends the call, but Peter is already thinking about other things, so he doesn’t really mind. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s hung up on him like that, anyway.

“What’s the first thing you notice when you go into sensory overload?”

Peter looks up from the equations scribbled out in front of him, already halfway through the stack of homework that Harley brought back from school for him, and takes a moment to consider before telling Tony, “Sound, I think. Sometimes sight, but it mostly just happens after I have a really bad nightmare, so the first thing I register when I wake up is all the noise. The worse the overload, the more I hear.”

Slowly, Tony nods, frowning at the holographic blueprints in front of him. “You wouldn’t happen to know exactly how enhanced your hearing is, would you? Or any of your senses, for that matter?”

“Not exactly, no,” Peter says slowly, confused. “Why are you asking?”

“Harley has some ideas,” is all Tony tells him, before checking the time and waving a hand towards the door. “Helen’s gonna be in the penthouse in ten minutes to check on you. You should head up.”

It’s not a lie, but it still sounds suspicious paired with the vague not-answers, so Peter hesitates a moment, wondering if he should press for more information – it’s obviously got something to do with Harley’s whole “we can work on something” speech that he gave Peter before, but he hadn’t realized that Harley had already gone to Tony about it, so he’s pretty curious to know what’s been told and what ideas he has. Still, Tony is right about Helen checking up on him, so Peter doesn’t stay for more than a few seconds before he’s gathering his stuff and making his way out of the lab and towards the elevator, his bullet wound only aching a little bit when he stands. It’s almost done healing, just some surface damage that’s almost just a scar that’ll eventually fade away, which Peter is very much excited about.

He knows the name of the girl now, the one he couldn’t save. Once he’s healed and can get back to going on patrol, he can find her family, offer them something to show how sorry he is.

Maybe that’ll help. Maybe it won’t. But Peter still has to try.

Chapter Text

(“Most of the time, there’s more to the story, things you don’t know, things that don’t make sense. But, sometimes, it simply is what it is, and there’s no reason for it.”)

-

Harley wants it on record that he doesn’t punch Flash straight in the nose. He just really fucking wants to.

The thing is, Harley doesn’t like Flash. Like, not even a little bit – everything he says pushes his buttons, because he knows that Flash is an asshole to Peter, and it doesn’t matter of the joke he says in Chem is funny, because Eugene is not funny and Harley will not laugh at anything that comes out of the guys mouth. Even if Peter insists over and over again that Flash isn’t really that bad, that it sounds worse than it is and that Harley doesn’t need to hold a grudge against someone he doesn’t really know, Harley still thinks that he has every right to dislike Flash, and that is just that.

Which is why he doesn’t think twice when he’s standing by his locker and trying to pile his books into his backpack at a record speed, just as antsy to get back to the tower as he has been since Peter got hurt (it’s day six of his healing, and Helen says that he should be good to go by tomorrow) and trying to map out the easiest way to avoid after school traffic (Tony is finally letting him drive his own car instead of having Happy drive him around, a relief to both Happy and Harley). He’s so invested in moving quick and speedy that he doesn’t notice Flash walking down the hall, doesn’t realize he’s there until Flash intentionally shoulders past Harley to grab his attention, leaning against the locker next to Harley’s with a weird sort of smile twisted over his features, and Harley barely has time to grind his teeth in annoyance before Flash is asking, “So, where the hell has Parker been? Missed Decathlon all week. MJ still won’t let me take his spot even though he always flakes on us, so what’s going on?”

“Pretty sure that’s none of your business,” Harley says, as chipper and bright as he possibly can, forcing a smile and making sure not to let his locker slam when he closes it. “He’ll be back soon.”

Flash looks displeased, though Harley can’t tell if it’s because Peter will be coming back to school soon, or if it’s just at the lack of details in Harley’s answer. Either way, he doesn’t seem satisfied by what he hears, leading him to question, “What, did someone die?”

Instantly, Harley has Flash pushed against the lockers, and he’s trying his damn best not to swing because bullies back in Rose Hill always got a fist full when they messed with him. This isn’t Rose Hill, though, and the faculty here won’t just look away at the sight of violence in the hall, no matter how much Harley thinks that violence might be justified. Instead of punching or kicking or literally spitting, Harley just takes a deep breath, harshly shoves a finger into Flash’s chest, drawing out a surprised yelp, and coldly says, “I told you, it’s none of your fucking business, Eugene.”

“Please don’t tell me his aunt died,” Flash says, gusting it out in a single breath, looking horrified and embarrassed and, oddly enough, genuinely concerned. The change from his cockiness to this is so jarring that all Harley can do is blink, taking a slight step back with furrowed brows. Flash rubs the spot on his chest where Harley had poked him with enough strength to leave a bruise, lips tugging down into a frown. “Did she?” Flash asks, voice lowered despite the hall being mostly empty by this point. “Did his aunt—?”

“No,” Harley cuts in, because this doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. Flash looks worried. Flash isn’t supposed to look worried, he’s supposed to be an asshole that Harley offers to beat up every few days, which is supposed to make Peter laugh and roll his eyes and promise that it isn’t necessary. He takes another step back, unsure, and scans over Flash with a scrutinizing expression. “Why do you care?”

Flash scrunches his nose, scoffs, both actions not at all convincing. “I don’t care, Keener. It was just annoyingly depressing seeing him walking around after his uncle was killed. I don’t want Parker to bum everyone out again, it took months before people could look at him without feeling awkward.”

“Killed?” Harley repeats, the rest of Flash’s words falling to the back burner, because Harley’s never heard about an uncle that got killed. He assumed that something had to have happened to Peter’s parents, because he lives with his Aunt, and he had been curious at one point if it was just May or if May had a partner (which he had disregarded because Peter never mentioned May having a partner), but so far, Peter hasn’t told him any specifics, and Harley hasn’t asked. He kinda wants to ask now. He also kinda doesn’t.

Looking a bit sheepish and regretful, Flash looks down the hall, like he’s debating just fleeing entirely, but winds up shrugging instead. “Yeah,” he says. “Dude got shot in the street. I guess Parker saw it happen, or whatever. It fucked him up for a while.”

Harley feels just a little bit sick when he hears that.

“Look, just—” Flash sighs, scrubs a hand over his features and looks physically pained as he levels Harley with an unreadable expression. “I don’t like Parker. He doesn’t like me. We aren’t friends, we never will be, and that’s just how it is, but both of us are only really friends with people on the Decathlon team, so there’s some kind of respect, I think. Point is, and I’ll deny this if you ever tell anyone I said this, if someone important to him died again, then I have a feeling it’s gonna be pretty bad. So, whatever happened, I… I hope he handles it better than last time. Because last time was fucking awkward.”

Then Flash is walking away, and Harley thinks that maybe Peter had a point, when he said that Flash isn’t a bully. He isn’t someone that Harley would ever want to sit down and have lunch with, sure, but he isn’t as bad as Harley had first assumed, based on the limited information he had collected.

Harley still feels a bit sick when he gets in his car and drives back to the tower.

Peter has a list of the worst things he’s been through, thoroughly thought out and numbered carefully and precisely. It had taken weeks of mental debate about six months ago to get the initial list figured out.

PETER PARKER’S TOP FIVE WORLD CHANGING TRAUMATIC LIFE EVENTS (LISTED IN ORDER FROM MOST TRAUMATIC TO LEAST TRAUMATIC):

1. Uncle Ben bleeding out right in front of him.
2. His parents dying in a plane crash and never coming back.
3. Skip Fucking Westcott.
4. Having a warehouse dropped on him and thinking he was going to die there.
5. When he tried to get in contact with Harry Osborn four years after he moved to some fancy boarding school and having Harry ask who he was and then instantly hang up the phone.

However, because of recent events, he has bumped his failed attempt to get in contact with Harry Osborn off the list (it was just embarrassing, really, not traumatic, but he felt the need to include it when he first made the list), because something much more traumatic happened to take its place.

5. Not being able to save Mandy Morales.

Based on Peter’s research, Mandy is a great kid. She does good in school and has a preference for creative, artistic things – despite only being ten years old, she’s already managed to get some artwork hung up in coffee shops and record stores around the city. He hasn’t been able to find any pictures of her art, but he’s planning on going down to one of the various places that have some pinned up so that he can get a look. Her birthday is in December, and she has a small but wonderful family, consisting of two loving mothers who, as Peter can tell from their Facebook pages, love Mandy with every piece of their soul. Along with her mother’s, Mandy also seems to be close to her Aunt Rio and Uncle Jefferson, and their son, Miles, as well as her Uncle Aaron, Jefferson’s brother. From the pictures that Peter’s found online, they seem like a close knit, happy family, every photo consisting of smiles and laughter.

But Mandy is dead now, has been for a week, and there’s been no sign of her family posting on any social media ever since. Not even Miles, who’s only twelve years old and attending a middle school in Brooklyn. Peter’s been so invested in trying to get updates on this family, on how they’re doing after Mandy’s death, that he almost hacked into the middle school’s security system to see if Miles has been attending at all, but then he realized that doing that would be taking it way too far. Plus, Peter hasn’t been at school this past week, either, so who is he to worry about a twelve year old boy who just lost a cousin he seemed to be extremely close to? That’d make him a hypocrite, and Spider-Man isn’t a hypocrite.

Spider-Man is getting ready to sneak out of the tower, though.

Technically, he isn’t really sneaking out, because Helen gave him the go-ahead at around noon to go back on patrol, though she had suggested he wait until after the weekend to go back to school, more for the purpose of mentally preparing himself than anything else. So, his doctor says he’s good, and he has some shit he needs to do, and he knows that May and Tony and Pepper would all insist he waits until tomorrow if he tried to tell him that he was going on patrol tonight. Especially since he isn’t really going on patrol, and he’s a horrible liar, so they’d be able to see right through him and call him out on his bullshit.

Still, it’s not sneaking out. It’s him knowing that he’s healed and going out in his suit to do something without asking first. Tony can track the damn thing anyway, so it’s not like Peter’s doing anything risky.

“Oh.”

No, Peter’s not doing anything risky, but he sure is standing in the middle of his room with his suit pulled halfway on, the door pushed open and Harley looking pointedly at the ceiling with raised brows. Peter suddenly feels very grateful that the suit is covering up his lower half and tries not to be too mortified as he tugs it up the rest of the way, tapping the spider emblem on his chest to make it fit his form once his arms are through. Harley is still staring at the ceiling. Peter clears his throat. “Um. I’m… I’m good now.”

Slowly, Harley drags his eyes back down, scanning over Peter once before meeting his eyes. He crosses his arms over his chest, frowns a bit. “Last time you wore that, you were bleeding out.”

“Most times I wear this, I’m bleeding out,” Peter corrects simply, shrugging his shoulders and picking up his mask from where it’s sitting by his feet on the floor. “You just haven’t been here long enough to see how often it happens. Because it happens a lot. Like… a lot. I almost die multiple times a week.”

“That’s comforting,” Harley deadpans, looking unimpressed. Peter snorts, and it makes Harley smile a little as he takes a step into the room and lightly kicks the door shut behind him. There’s a heavy sort of look on his features that’s been there since he got back from school earlier. Peter almost asked what was wrong when they were in the labs, but he’d opted not to push – based on the last two months, Peter’s fairly certain that Harley is the kind of person who will talk about whatever’s wrong when he’s ready and not a moment sooner, so asking will just end in a tense silence. He kind of wants to ask now, but he bites his tongue and waits, instead, until Harley is shifting his weight from foot to foot, and even then he keeps waiting. Eventually, Harley sighs, slumps his shoulders a bit, and states, “Flash said something today.”

Peter blinks once, twice. “He says things every day.”

Harley glares at him, but an amused smile plays at his lips, and he relaxes, just a little bit. “You know what I mean, asshole. He told me about something that I don’t think I was supposed to know.”

“What did he tell you?” Peter asks, sitting on the edge of his bed with his head cocked slightly to the side.

Harley falters, gnawing on his lower lip and cautiously moving forward, not sitting next to Peter, but kind of standing in front of him, their legs brushing together due to their close proximity. From here, Peter can practically see the cogs turning in Harley’s head, his thoughts running a million miles per hour, before he just lets out a long, slow breath. “He said something about how your uncle was… that he was killed.”

6. Peter’s crush finding out about traumatic life event number one.

“I’m not gonna, like, ask about what happened,” Harley rushes out, apparently seeing the way that Peter freezes. “It’s not my business and I’m not gonna try and make it my business. I just… I don’t know how much you’ve been through, you know? I know it’s a lot, but I don’t know how much, and it isn’t my place to know, but… there are all these little moments that are starting to add up, small hints and pieces that I haven’t really connected until now. Tony said the other day that he knows you’re going to get through this because you’ve been through so much worse already, and when I met May, she just smiled and said you’ve been toughened up and will be feeling more like yourself soon, but she said it in a way that made it sound like she knew from experience. And maybe I’ve just been thinking too much about something I shouldn’t be dwelling on anyway, but I just—”

“Do you want to help me with something?”

Harley’s jaw snaps shut so suddenly that the click of his teeth rings out in the silence of the room. He looks at Peter in confusion, face a little red from rambling. “Do I… do I what?”

Considering all things, Peter is pretty proud for not having a breakdown right now, instead feeling pretty calm as he maintains eye contact with Harley and repeats, “Do you want to help me with something?”

“Uh…” Harley looks over his shoulder, as if expecting to find someone else there, then looks back to Peter with a mixture of uncertainty, confusion, and curiosity all mixed into his eyes, brows twitching together slightly. “What do you want me to help you with?”

“You’ll see,” Peter says, getting to his feet without bothering to warn Harley about it, the two of them ending up nose to nose due to how close Harley had been standing to him. Harley’s eyes go a little wide, and Peter can’t really help it when he smiles. “You think you can handle a little bit of web slinging with everyone’s favorite friendly neighborhood Spider-Man? I promise I won’t drop you.”

Harley parts his lips, seals them shut, then decidedly nods. “Yeah, I can handle that.”

“Is it weird that I’m nervous?”

Peter makes a noncommittal noise as he brushes his fingers through Harley’s hair, trying to make it more presentable after having it get mussed up in the wind while swinging through the city. Karen still has the map up on display, letting him know that their destination is just around the corner. Peter could tell her to shrink it down, but he doesn’t. “I don’t think it’s weird, no.”

“I look more nervous than you do,” Harley points out with a slight pout.

“I’m wearing my mask,” Peter says. “You literally can’t even see how I look.”

Harley huffs out a half laugh. “Okay, yeah, but you don’t even sound nervous.”

“Well, take my word for it, I am sick to my stomach with nerves right now.”

Deeming Harley’s hair presentable enough, Peter takes a small step back, nodding to himself in satisfaction. Harley watches him back away with slightly pinched brows and a hesitant expression, gnawing on his lower lip for a moment before asking, “You’re sure about this?” Peter goes to respond, but Harley quickly adds, “Not just having me here for it, but doing it in the first place. Are you sure?”

Despite the anxiety swirling painfully in Peter’s gut, he nods, not a hint of hesitation on his face. “I have to do this,” he says with determination. “Not just for me, but for them, too. If they blame me—”

“They have no reason to blame you,” Harley cuts in firmly.

“But if they do,” Peter goes on, “then I want to give them the chance to take it out on me. If they want to yell at me, they can. If they just want to talk, want me to explain what happened, whatever… then I’m giving them their chance, because I never got a chance to talk to any of the people who ruined my life.”

That shuts Harley up for a long, tense moment. Then, a bit shakily, he repeats, “People? As in, multiple?”

The mask hides Peter’s sad smile, but he hopes the way his head tilts slightly to the side does well to convey his unseen expression. Instead of answering that, he asks, “You ready for this?”

Harley seems a little disappointed for the topic change, but he still smiles a little. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that? I’m just here for moral support. Vice President of the Spider-Man protection squad.”

“I don’t think I’m ever gonna feel ready,” Peter admits, quiet and meek. “That’s why I need you here.”

For a long moment, Harley just kind of stares at Peter, and Peter wonders what, exactly he’s seeing right now. The Spider-Man suit, yes, but is he seeing Spider-Man, or is he seeing Peter Parker? Is it a mixture of both? In Harley’s eyes, does he currently look like his friend, or does he look like a vigilante? Does he come across as confident, or does he radiate the fear coursing through his veins? Does Harley see Peter and Spider-Man as the same person, or does his separate the two identities from each other, the way that Peter himself tends to do sometimes? As if Spider-Man is a completely different side of him, a different person – because even Peter Parker doesn’t really believe that Peter Parker could be a superhero.

Peter Parker is a big too fragile in comparison, isn’t he?

“Let’s do this, Spider-Man,” Harley says softly, a gentle little smile playing on his lips as he tilts his head down slightly to nod down the road, in the direction of their destination. Peter follows the action, looks at the street sign with a shaky exhale, and nods once. He’s doing this. He has Harley with him, and he’s fucking terrified and choking on internalized guilt, but he’s doing this. He has to do this.

For Mandy Morales, for her family, and for himself, too.

When Harley knocks on the door, he does so with a slightly trembling hand. Peter stands behind him on the path leading to the porch, not exactly hiding, but trying not to make his presence too obvious. They had discussed some kind of plan for this while Peter was fixing Harley’s mess of wind rumpled hair, and they had decided that maybe having Spider-Man standing on someone’s doorstep with no one else to introduce him and act as a bit of a middle man might be a bit too much, especially for people still mourning the loss of a beloved family member. Harley looks over his shoulder at Peter, who gives him a slight nod of reassurance, then faces forward when the door is pulled open with a creek, revealing a somewhat disheveled looking woman on the other side, looking at Harley in confusion. Clearing his throat, Harley timidly asks, “Is this, uh- this is the Morales residence, right? Amy and Evelyn Morales?”

“Yes, it is,” the woman says slowly, confusion growing as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Why?”

“I, um—” Harley pauses, rubs a hand against the back of his neck nervously. “I’m- I’m Harley. Uh, Harley Keener. I intern at Stark Industries, and I happen to know someone who wants to talk to you about- about your daughter. He wants to, um…” he trails off, brows pinched together, and then subtly steps to the side, revealing Peter standing behind him. “Well, I guess that’s up to him to tell you.”

The woman, who Peter can recognize from his mild internet stalking as Mandy’s mother Amy, stares at him for a long moment. He can hear her heartrate pick up speed a bit, can see as she swallows roughly, averts her gaze to the left then returns it to Peter again. Then, with a wavering inhale, she holds the door open slightly, and she manages to sound cool and collected when she says, “Come on in. I’ll get Evie.”

Their home is quaint and welcoming, pictures on the walls and flowers on vases and a piano positioned in the corner of the living room. Harley and Peter sit on the sofa opposite of the TV, both feeling horrendously out of place, and Peter finds his eyes getting caught on the framed photo sitting on the table next to the couch – a picture of Mandy and her cousin Miles, both looking to be five or six years old, proudly holding up some of their artwork. Their papers are covered in messes of colors and shapes and don’t really look like anything, but they’re both sporting proud, cheeky little grins. Peter’s chest aches.

“Harley,” he whispers, sort of hisses it out with a heavy breath and tears in his eyes. He doesn’t look away from the picture, but he feels the sofa shift as Harley turns to him, and he just blindly grapples for Harley’s hand, needing something to hold onto. Instantly, Harley intertwines their fingers, makes sure their pulse points are lined up, and shuffles over a bit to sit closer to him. Peter feels like he can breathe a little bit better, and finally tears his gaze away when Amy and Evelyn enter the room.

Both of them take a seat on the other sofa, watching Peter and Harley warily, uncertain and cautious. Amy’s eyes flicker down to see their interlocked hands, but she doesn’t question it, only looks back up at them as Evelyn slowly asks, “Why did Stark send a kid and a superhero to talk about Mandy?”

“Mr. Stark didn’t send us,” Peter tells them quickly, tightening his hold on Harley’s hand slightly. “He doesn’t know we’re here, promise. This has nothing to do with him.”

“Then why are you here?” Amy questions, confused. “What do you want?”

Peter takes a deep breath, lets it out shakily, and says, “I came to apologize for your loss. I… I tried to save your daughter, I swear I did, but I wasn’t able to, and I don’t know what it’s like to lose a child, but I do know what it’s like to lose someone you love. I blame myself for what happened, and if you blame me, too, then I understand why. I just couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try and apologize.” He squeezes Harley’s hand, just for the reassurance of having the action returned, and adds, “Harley’s here because I’ve been in a bad place since not being able to save her, and I wasn’t sure I could do this alone.”

Amy is looking up at the ceiling, her eyes shining, and Evelyn is looking at Peter with pinched features, contemplative and scrutinizing and unsure. Then, as more of a statement than a question, Evelyn knowingly asks, “You’re just a kid, too, aren’t you?”

“I’m not supposed to say,” Peter tells her softly.

“So you are,” Evelyn says, not smug or malicious or any sort of negative. She just says it, leans back in her seat and crosses her arms over her chest, tilting slightly to the side until her shoulder is pressed against Amy’s. Peter hesitates, then decides to throw caution to the wind and offers a small, miniscule nod. Harley lets out a huff of a sigh, well aware that any hint towards Peter’s identity is strictly forbidden from being stated to untrusted people, but he doesn’t say anything.

“We don’t blame you,” Amy speaks up, voice soft and wavering towards the end. Peter almost physically flinches away in shock, looking at her with wide eyes that are hidden by his mask. She just gives him a small, sad smile and explains, “Evie’s brother, Jeff, he’s a cop, and we’ve seen how he beats himself up when he isn’t able to save someone. It happens with that kind of profession, you know? That doesn’t make him a bad person, though. And I’m sure with being a hero, you’re bound to not be able to save everyone, either. As much as we wish you could have saved Mandy, the fact that you were there and you tried to help her means the world to us. Who knows what would have happened if no one had interfered, you know? It could have been so much worse. Mandy could have—”

Amy stops, choked up and teary eyed and visibly upset. Evelyn settles a hand on her knee, looks a bit misty as well, and softly continues where Amy left off, saying, “We don’t know what those people would have done to Mandy if they had gotten away. Maybe she would have survived it, but considering how they killed her anyway, the police are pretty sure that the way she went was a lot more quick and painless then what could have happened. It’s not much of a bright side, but it’s something, and we have you to thank for that. So, thank you for trying to save her. She probably didn’t die scared because of you.”

Holding back some kind of sob, Peter harshly blinks away his tears, averts his eyes up to the ceiling, and very meekly asks, “You’re not- you’re not mad at me?” His voice comes out so small, so weak. So not what Spider-Man is supposed to sound like, because Spider-Man is strong. Peter Parker is not.

Right now, he’s not really Spider-Man. He’s just Peter Parker in a suit.

But neither Amy nor Evelyn looks judgmental by that, only sad and gentle and kind as Amy tells him, “No, we’re not. Upset about what happened, yes, but not upset with you.”

“If anything, our family adores you even more now,” Evelyn says with a somewhat weak, half-assed laugh. Her small smile is genuine, though, and her gaze flickers over to the stairs as she tells him, “Our nephew, Miles- he’s been staying here all week, mostly just staying in Mandy’s room, you know? But he already loved you before, and now he thinks you’re the coolest hero ever. Better than all the Avengers. All because you were the one who tried to save his cousin. You were the one who was there for Mandy.”

Tilting his head slightly to the side, Peter focuses his hearing slightly, until he can detect the heartbeat upstairs – a bit slow and relaxed, but not slow enough to indicate being asleep. Miles is upstairs, and he’s still awake. Peter looks over at Harley, who is already looking back at him, and he seems to read Peter’s mind as he softly assures him, “It’s your choice. I’m not going anywhere.”

Nodding slightly, Peter faces Amy and Evelyn again, carefully asking, “Can I meet him?”

-

(“You don’t have to be super to be someone’s hero. You can just be you, and that can be enough.”)

-

Miles Morales drops his phone when he sees Spider-Man.

Because his Auntie Amy and Auntie Evie had just called him down, saying that there was someone here who wanted to meet him, and his first thought was that there was another investigator trying to look into Mandy’s case, trying to make sense of why she had been taken off the street in the first place. There’s a lot of mystery to it, really – because no one really knows why Mandy had been walking around Queens in the first place, and no one knows why she had been targeted, and detectives have been stopping by every day or two to ask them about Mandy and trying to connect dots that probably aren’t even there.

So, it’s a shock, really, trotting down the stairs and finding Spider-Man sitting on the couch, holding hands with an unfamiliar boy that looks to be only invested in keeping an eye on Spider-Man. His phone slips from between his fingertips and clatters against the hardwood floor, but there’s no sound of shattering glass, so he just assumes that it isn’t broken and takes a small step back, eyes wide and confused as he glances between the two sofa’s. “Wh-Wuh-What—?”

“Hey.” Spider-Man says, casual and normal and like this is a regular thing that just happens when it very much is not. He looks at the guy sitting next to him, then slowly lets go of his hand and gets to his feet, crossing the room to stand a few feet away from Miles. He leans down slightly, until their at eye level with each other, and while the mask conceals his features, his soft smile is audible in his voice as he says, “It’s nice to meet you, Miles. I’m Spider-Man,” and hold out a hand in a silent offer.

“Hi,” Miles breathes, running on pure instinct as he reaches forward and shakes Spider-Man’s hand, knowing full well that he’s shaking like a leaf but not bothering to do anything about it. Feeling a bit dazed, he takes his hand back, runs it through his hair, and asks, “What are… what are you doing here?”

Spider-Man glances over his shoulder, at the blond boy sitting on the couch, who simply nods at him once with a small smile. Miles wants to know who the boy is, but he’s a little preoccupied with the fact that his favorite superhero is standing right in front of him. He’s so preoccupied, in fact, that, he almost misses it when Spider-Man faces him again and slowly says, “Well, I came to apologize to your family, for not being able to save your cousin Mandy. And I wanted to see how everyone was doing, after everything. So, I guess I should be asking the questions, right? How are you, Miles?”

That does well in sobering Miles up, reminding him that his life kind of sucks right now – he lost his cousin, little ten year old Mandy Morales, who looked up to Miles despite him only being two years older than her. She was more like a little sister to him than a cousin, and now she’s gone, and Miles…

Well, Miles is…

“I don’t know,” Miles says, quiet and timid and very unsure. “I don’t know how I am. I feel… weird.”

“Not knowing is okay,” Spider-Man assures him quickly, gentle voice and kind words. “You want to know a secret, Miles? I didn’t know how I felt, either, after I lost some of my loved ones.”

Miles scrubs a hand over his cheek, right under his eye, where a tear is threatening to escape. He didn’t even notice his eyes watering before now. Maybe he’s just a bit overwhelmed right now, but not necessarily in a bad way. Still, he focuses on the conversation rather than the context of the conversation, and in a very small, childish voice, he asks, “You didn’t? Really?”

“Yeah, really,” Spider-Man nods, carefully reaching forward and placing a hand on Miles’s shoulder, head tilting slightly to the side. “Y’know, was only a little older than you when I lost my uncle, and I was just a little kid when my parents died. It’s not… it… it isn’t easy, I know, but it gets better.”

Embarrassingly, Miles feels his lower lip tremble a bit, but he doesn’t try and hide it because Spider-Man sounds a little choked up himself. “How does it get better? And- And when?”

Spider-Man lets out a slow sigh at that, takes a moment to consider his answer, and then slowly responds with, “Well, that depends on the person, I guess. For me, it took a long time to get better after my parents died, because I was only four when it happened, and it didn’t really hit me that they were gone until after I started kindergarten. With my uncle, though, I was fourteen, and it was still hard, but I kept going to school, took the world on day by day, and after a few months, it didn’t feel so heavy anymore.”

“How old are you now?” Miles asks, not expecting to get an exact answer.

“Sixteen,” Spider-Man tells him instantly, no hesitation. He leans in a little, lowers his voice just a smidge, and adds, “That’s a secret, though, so you can’t tell anyone, okay? Only very special people are allowed to know that, but I trust you to keep it to yourself. You just gotta promise me—” he holds his free hand up, pinky finger extended, “—that you’ll keep it a secret. Can you do that for me, Miles?”

Dumbstruck, Miles simply nods, breathes out an airy little, “Yeah, I promise,” and hooks his pinky with Spider-Man’s, all the while wondering how he had been trusted with information like that – information that only special people get to know. Because Miles is, apparently, special in Spider-Man’s eyes, and Spider-Man says that Miles will be okay, that it will get better, and maybe Miles believes him.

Maybe Miles really will be okay one day, and maybe that day isn’t as far away as he thinks it is.

He leaves his special Spidey number with Amy and Evelyn before he leaves, promising them that if they ever need Spider-Man for anything, to just give that number a call and he’ll drop everything to help. Miles looks close to tears when Peter tells him that he has to leave, but Peter swears to him that he can use the number, too, whenever he needs Spider-Man, and Miles looks a little bit better after that. Even then, though, it takes a few minutes of hesitation before Peter is able to take Harley’s hand and leave the house entirely, his heart thundering in his chest, aching to turn around because he still feels like there’s more he can do, more he should do, to make it up to them. He still feels heavy with guilt and—

“Let’s make a pit stop on the way back to the tower,” Harley tells him, once they’re back around the corner and standing where they had been before going up to the house. Peter lets out a breath he doesn’t know he was holding, and before he can ask, Harley says, “A good rooftop, wherever you want, yeah?”

Peter isn’t really sure what the stop could be for, but he just nods, murmurs a little, “Yeah, okay,” and securely wraps an arm around Harley’s waist to hold him tight before shooting a web at the nearest building and swinging. Harley has his arms wrapped around Peter’s shoulders, clutching him tightly, hair getting fucked up all over again thanks to the wind, and Peter chooses to focus on the warmth of the embrace rather than the panic inducing thoughts while he finds one of his favorite nearby rooftops that he often likes to sit upon during patrol when he needs to take a breather, usually on the rougher nights.

This is definitely one of those. A rough night.

God, Peter wants to turn around.

They land on the roof of Peter’s choosing in less than five minutes, on top of an ice cream shop that’s close enough to Brooklyn Bridge to be able to overlook it from the top of the building. Peter knows this rooftop has no cameras, too, has had to sit here and nurse some wounds during patrol on a few occasions, so he doesn’t hesitate to rip off his mask once he’s made sure that Harley is standing and steady. He doesn’t know what he looks like, but Harley makes a distressed noise as soon as the mask is gone, and in a voice much different than any Peter’s heard before, Harley breathes out, “Oh, Pete.”

“Sorry,” Peter murmurs, not even bothering to make his way to the edge of the roof before heavily sitting down, his legs kind of just giving out underneath him. Harley sinks to his knees next to him, one hand rested on his shoulder, the other reaching for Peter’s hand, and the tears that Peter’s been swallowing back since arriving at the Morales residence finally spill over, rolling down his blotchy cheeks as he chokes out, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over again. “I’m so, so sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—"

“Peter,” Harley says, kind of pleading and a little bit stern. He slides his hand from Peter’s shoulder to the nape of his neck, then trailing over around until he’s cupping the side of Peter’s face, tears swimming in his own eyes. “Look at me, Pete. Just look at me, okay? Can you do that?”

No, Peter can’t do that, but he does it anyway, letting Harley guide his movements until their eyes meet, and that guilt curdling in Peter’s stomach only grows tenfold when he sees the sadness written across Harley’s features. “I’m sorry,” Peter tells him again, hoarse, lower lip trembling.

Harley shakes his head, leans their foreheads together with a sniffle and a shaky inhale followed by an uneven exhale. “You’re so good, Peter Parker. Do you understand that?”

“I’m not,” Peter sobs, eyes squeezing shut and free hand clutching onto Harley’s shirt like he’s going to disappear without having something to hold onto. It feels like the earth is about to open up and swallow him whole, and all he can see is the way Miles and Evelyn and Amy had all shed their tears and smiled at him like it isn’t his fault that they’re in pain, like he didn’t cause this by not doing enough, by not being enough. He feels sick. “Harley, I’m not- I’m not good, I’m just- I didn’t save her, Harley, I didn’t—"

“You are good, Peter,” Harley insists brokenly, voice cracking. “You’re better than good. You’re… Peter, you’re the best person I have ever met, okay? There is no one better than you.” Peter just starts to cry harder, his shoulders shaking, whole body trembling as he leans even further into Harley. Not knowing what to do, and feeling borderline afraid that Peter might send himself into another sensory overload if he doesn’t calm down soon, Harley guides Peter’s hand to his chest, rests it over his heart, and then uses his new free hand to cup the other side of Peter’s face, telling him, “Try and breathe with me, Pete, okay?”

“I can’t,” Peter chokes out, sucking in a harsh breath, letting it out choppy and uneven. “Harley, I can’t.”

But Harley just maintains eye contact, swipes away Peter’s tears with the pads of his thumbs, and keeps an encouraging tone as he says, “Yes, you can. Just try and match my breathing, okay? Keep looking at me, and keep breathing, and that’s enough. You can do this, Peter. I know you can. Just keep trying.”

It looks like Peter is going to protest again, but then he lets his eyes flutter shut, tears glistening in his lashes, and opens them again with determination mingled in his gaze. He nods once, a small, curt action that’s only noticeable because of the fact that their foreheads are still resting together, and he puts his full focus on trying to swallow back his sob and mimic Harley’s breathing.

“Good,” Harley murmurs, a wobbly smile on his face. “You’re doin’ good, Pete.”

“I’m—” Peter stops, lets out a slow breath, struggles to take in a steady one, then lets that one out, too. Every few moments, his breath catches, but his sobs have already dwindled down to something more manageable, a trickling of tears rolling down his cheeks, face still blotchy and red. Harley just keeps wiping away Peter’s tears, lets out a quiet, relieved sigh as Peter’s eyes focus on him, looking more present and Peter-like. Peter takes another deep breath, blinks a few times, and tries again. “I’m…”

When Peter just trails off, saying nothing else, Harley pulls back slightly, brows pinching. “What?”

Peter shakes his head, fists Harley’s jacket and tugs him closer again. “I don’t… I…”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say,” Harley says slowly, confused. “Pete—”

“Sorry,” Peter breathes, eyes closing again as he leans forward and—

Oh. Okay.

Holy shit.

The kiss is short, only a second or two, and both of their lips are salty and cold and not really appealing, but Harley feels his entire face burn red as soon as it happens. Peter pulls back with wide eyes, like he can’t really believe that he just did that, and the only reason Harley doesn’t spontaneously combust is because it’s getting a little late and the air is chilly enough to keep him cool. “Okay,” Harley says, dumb and simple and not really what he wants to say, but the only think he can manage to choke out.

“Okay?” Peter repeats, loosening his grip on Harley’s jacket nervously. “What do you mean, okay?”

“I don’t know,” Harley admits, looking up at the sky, down at the toes of his shoes, and then back at Peter, eyes shining a bit. “But, yeah. Okay. Are, uh… are you okay?”

Peter nods, looking kind of dazed, out of it, not really there. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Okay. Good.” Harley doesn’t really know where to go from here. He’s still worried about Peter, but he’s also kind of reeling because Peter kissed him and he hadn’t considered the idea of kissing Peter before but now that’s kind of the only thing on his mind and it’s a very tempting thought. He looks at Peter’s lips, considers it, then decides that it can wait until later, instead wiping away the last of Peter’s tears with a warm, if somewhat uneven smile. “We should go back to the tower, before Tony takes a suit to get us.”

“Yeah,” Peter murmurs, hesitating a moment before once again wrapping an arm securely around Harley’s waist, this time a bit more tender and gentle, like he isn’t sure that Harley will want to be touched by him. Harley shuts that thought up by leaning into Peter’s side, swiping up the Spider-Man mask from where it had been dropped on the ground during the tearful exchange. Peter blinks at Harley with wide eyes while Harley carefully pulls the mask over his head, faltering as it bunches up on the slope of his nose, covering his eyes but leaving the bottom half of his face exposed.

Harley swallows the lump in his throat that hadn’t been there a moment before. “You’re a treasure, Peter Parker,” he whispers, almost fearful of the admission. He can see the way Peter’s breath stutters on the exhale, gently trails a fingertip across Peter’s chin, below his lower lip. There’s something he wants to say, a lot of things he wants to say, about the things he heard Peter tell Miles, about all the details he doesn’t know but desperately wants to, about the uncertainty of just how much Peter has been through paired with the knowledge that it’s much more than Harley can even begin to imagine. He wants to say all of it, ask every question, listen to Peter talk for hours and learn everything he can, but instead of pushing for information that he’s not sure Peter is ready to share, he simply leans in, brushes his lips against Peter’s in a featherlight kiss that barely even counts, and murmurs, “Never forget that, okay?”

Peter is too speechless to respond, only standing stock still as Harley pulls the Spider-Man mask the rest of the way down, and he holds Harley a little tighter against him as he swings them back to Manhattan.

-

(“Guilt doesn’t go away. You don’t stop blaming yourself, the heaviness will always be there. But, if you’re lucky, you start to feel like you can live with it, and use it to better who you are.”)

-

“You kissed me.”

Peter rolls onto his side, the duvet pulled up to his chin and his knees drawn up to his chest. He had a feeling Harley was going to say something, isn’t too surprised to hear his voice cut through the silence that had been weighing over the room. It’s got to be close to one in the morning now, and Harley still has to be up early for school, and Peter is going back to his and May’s apartment after Helen does a final check up around noon, but neither of them has fallen asleep. Maybe that’s because of the fact that they’ve both been sleeping in Peter’s room all week, have been sharing the bed and everything, but now it feels a little different because now there’s been something to make things different.

Because Peter had acted without thinking in the aftermath of a breakdown, and he still isn’t sure if Harley’s reaction was a good sign or not. It looks like he’s about to find out.

“I did,” Peter says, soft spoken and a little afraid. Harley is looking up at the ceiling, a crease between his brows. Peter can hear his heart beating just a little bit faster than normal, and he thinks about reaching over and holding Harley’s hand, because that’s sort of just something they do now, but he opts not to, unsure of whether Harley would be okay with it or not. “Is that… is me kissing you a bad thing?”

Harley doesn’t answer for a moment, just blinks owlishly up at the ceiling before slowly saying, “I don’t know. It depends on why you did it, I guess. It depends on what it means to you. If it means anything.”

“To me?” Peter scans over Harley’s features, traces his nose and his brows and his chin and his jaw and his lips and his eyes with a simple gaze, a side profile that is unfairly nice to look at. “It means a lot to me,” he admits quietly, shuffling slightly, nervously. “Does it… does it mean anything to you?”

“I think so, yeah,” Harley whispers, brows pinching even more than before, taking a deep breath before tilting his head to the side to meet Peter’s eyes. There’s a moment where Peter almost looks away, a bit scared to see what’s written into Harley’s gaze, but all he finds is confusion and want and a little bit of fear. Harley looks down at Peter’s lips, face going a little red. “Can I—?”

Peter feels his fingers twitch with a relentless energy that he can’t suppress. “Can you what?”

Harley’s cheeks go redder. He looks away, then looks back at Peter’s mouth, then meets Peter’s eyes again, nervous and sucking in a deep breath. “Can… Can I kiss you again? Would that be okay?”

Within his chest, Peter feels his heart pick up speed. He licks his lips. “Do you really want to?”

“Yeah,” Harley breathes, no hesitation, no uncertainty. “Yeah, I really do.”

Peter props himself up on his elbow, leans over, and hesitantly presses their lips together, not much of a kiss, no movement. He’s only ever had innocent little pecks of kisses prior to now, and even then, he’s only kissed two people – Ned, when they were freshman, before Spider-Man happened and Uncle Ben died and everything kind of went wrong. They had been having a sleepover and both realized that neither of them had kissed anyone before, and they had made an agreement to be each other’s first, with the terms that they would laugh it off after and not let it be awkward. The second had been MJ, when she was trying to figure out if she liked boys or not, and that had been a quick peck as well, which ended in MJ squinting at the wall for a long moment, before decidedly stating, “I’m a lesbian,” and walking away.

Technically, Skip had kissed him, too, but Peter never wanted it, and he doesn’t count it now.

Kissing Harley Keener is different than Ned and MJ, because Harley gives him butterflies and holds his hand and has that dumb little cute smile that Peter quite enjoys to look at. When Peter goes to pull away, because he doesn’t know what he’s doing and he doesn’t know what happens next, Harley simply settles a hand on the nape of his neck and pulls him closer, tilting his head to the side and kissing him properly, a little bit of movement and all. Peter mimics his movements, presses closer as he does.

Kissing Harley Keener is kind of like breathing, natural and nice and relieving. Peter can’t remember the last time he felt like he was getting a full, deep breath of air – he doesn’t know the last time his lungs didn’t ache with each heavy inhale, every shaky exhale. For as long as he can remember, he’s felt weighted by the very core of his existence – the knowledge of his parents dying, Harry moving away, Skip Westcott stealing his innocence, the spider bite, Uncle Ben dying, the warehouse, the Vulture, everything. Parker luck has always been heavy and unkind, but in this moment, he feels weightless.

Kissing Harley Keener is everything that Peter Parker has ever wanted, and he never wants to stop.

Chapter Text

(“Love isn’t limited by age. You might be too young to understand the depth of what it really is, but being a teenager doesn’t mean you aren’t in love. It just means you still have a lot to learn.”)

-

Peter has a vague memory of an alarm going off, of weight being shifted on the mattress and the duvet moving a bit and a breeze of cold air brushing over his bare arms. He remembers shivering, frowning a little and trying to curl into himself, seeking warmth, only to let out a relieved sigh as the blanket was settled back over him. The door opened, clicked shut, and Peter must have drifted back off, because he doesn’t remember any sort of passing in time before the door opened again, fingers timidly brushing through the hair falling on Peter’s forehead, and gentle lips brushing against the corner of his mouth. Peter had almost forced himself awake because of it, but the lips were gone a second later, and he heard as Harley’s voice softly whispered, “I’ll see you later,” before Peter was drawn back into a deep slumber.

He wakes up again a few hours later, not sure if what he remembers had been a dream or not, and makes his way to the kitchen with a comfortable warmth settled in the center of his chest. It feels like a good day already. Good days are kind of rare and don’t usually last, so he soaks it in, floats around the kitchen to make some toast and get a cup of coffee that he always makes for himself despite May and Tony both telling him that he shouldn’t have so much caffeine. and by the time he’s got a plate of a small breakfast and a warm mug in hand, he feels wholeheartedly and undoubtedly good.

Then he turns around, sees that Tony has been sitting at the island the entire time, and almost drops the fine china in his hand with a surprised little squeak. “Jesus Christ, Mr. Stark! You scared me!”

Tony is sporting an amused smile, brow quirking a bit as he looks at Peter. “How’d you not know I was here? Don’t your senses tell you literally everything going on around you at all times?”

“Usually, yeah,” Peter says, shifting his weight from foot to foot in uncertainty before making his way to the seat on the opposite side of the island as Tony, setting the plate down and taking a greedy sip from the steaming mug in his hands. He scans over Tony’s features, takes in the seemingly permanent bags under his eyes, and cocks his head to the side. “Pull an all nighter in the lab again?

“Don’t I always?” Tony counters, lifting his own coffee in some kind of salute before taking a drink. Peter huffs out a half laugh and nods a bit, knowing that Tony has a point, before turning his attention to the toast in front of him. It’s not enough to satiate his metabolism, he knows, but his appetite hasn’t been the same since Mandy Morales died, so his usual full on meals that could feed multiple people have turned into small meals with many snacks thrown in throughout the day. Tony eyes Peter’s plate with an obvious hint of distress in his gaze, but he doesn’t say anything about it for the time being, instead taking another long drink of his coffee before casually asking, “So, how was your little field trip last night?”

Peter freezes, piece of toast hovering halfway towards his mouth, wide eyes flickering up to Tony before pointedly staring down at the countertop. He considers denying it, playing dumb and hoping Tony will drop it, but he’s never been good at lying and it’s pretty clear that Tony knows, at least to some extent, about the events of the night before. Taking a slow bite from his toast and forcing it down despite it tasting like sand, he considers his options for a moment, then says, “Dr. Cho said I’m healed.”

Surprisingly, Tony barks out a laugh, even more amused. “Yeah, Peter, I know. I would have interfered when I got the notification about you leaving if you weren’t healed up and ready to go.”

Of course he got a notification. Stupid fucking baby monitor protocol.

“I watched some of the footage, just to keep an eye on things, make sure you didn’t strain yourself too much on your first night back,” Tony goes on, still sounding normal and relaxed. Peter goes taut, tense, grinds his teeth and bites his tongue to stop himself from asking just what Tony had seen. Asking would be useless, anyway, as Tony continues with ease, saying, “I wasn’t expecting to see Harley with you.”

Peter bites on his tongue even harder, draws a little blood. “Moral support,” is all he says. “I went to—”

“I know, bud,” Tony interrupts, tone softer, catching Peter off guard. He looks back to Tony, sees that his gaze has gone gentle, a little smile on his face. “You went to her family. I watched that part. Gotta admit, I cried when I saw it, but if you ever tell anyone that, I’ll deny it. No one will believe you, anyway.”

“You cried?” Peter isn’t sure he understands.

“Like a baby,” Tony laughs, shaking his head. He sees the confusion written on Peter’s features and lets his laugh taper off into a sigh, setting his mug on the counter and leaning forward, just a bit. “You did good,” he says simply, shrugging his shoulders a bit. “What you said, to her moms and that kid… it was what they needed, I could tell. And I think it’s what you needed, too. So, yeah. I cried ‘cause I’m proud.”

Peter blinks once, twice, three times. He looks down at his plate, up at the ceiling, anywhere except directly at Tony. Tears sting the backs of his eyes, and he finally slumps his shoulders a few moments later, staring at his own hands with a shaky breath. “I felt like you,” he admits, kind of embarrassed and unsure and meek. Now it’s Tony’s turn to blink in shock. Peter goes on before he can respond, explaining, “Just, like- when you showed up at May and I’s apartment, it was exactly what I needed at the time, you know? Uncle Ben had only died six months before you got there, and I was trying to balance grief and Spider-Man and school and- and everything, and I didn’t really know how. And then you showed up, and you changed everything, and it was easier to handle because Tony Stark had my back. So, when I was there, and I realized Miles was upstairs, and his aunts said that he loves Spider-Man, I just… I tried to think of what I would want to hear from my hero, if I were in Miles’ place. Which I have been, multiple times, you know? And the way he trusted me, idolized me, it… it made me feel like you.”

There’s a moment where Tony appears to be frozen to the spot, no hint of movement, no reaction. Peter would be worried that he somehow died on the spot if he couldn’t hear his heartbeat, but that only serves to make him nervous, starting to question if he should have said anything at all. Then, suddenly, Tony clears his throat, downs the rest of his coffee, and tells him, “You’re not like me, kid.”

“Oh.” Peter stares intently down at his toast, rips off a piece and tries not to feel sick. “Uh. S-Sorry, I—”

“You’re better.”

And I wanted you to be better.

Peter can’t help the grin that breaks out on his face, that warmth in his chest that’s been there since he woke up, and Tony lets out a fond little huff of a laugh, reaching over to ruffle his hair as he gets to his feet. Peter kind of wants to say something else, but Tony is already setting his mug in the sink and making his way out of the room, so he happily focuses on finishing his toast, only to almost choke when Tony calls out, “Oh, and if you ever make out with Harley in front of me, I swear to god I won’t hesitate to ship him back to Tennessee and convince May to ground you for the rest of your life!”

The sound of Peter’s head hitting the countertop with a loud thunk, followed by a mortified squeak, can barely be heard over the echoing sound of Tony’s laughter.

Angela Keener answers on the third ring, sounding both worried and excited as she says, “Hi, honey!”

“Hi, Mama,” Harley replies, kind of breathing it out giddily as he stares down at the floor, the toe of his shoe scuffing against the tile. It’s instinctual, the need to keep his voice low – the bathroom is empty except for him, the locked door making sure that no one will be barging in anytime soon, and a majority of the school is either in class or at lunch, so it’s unlikely for anyone to be walking the halls and unintentionally overhearing whatever he says. Still, the paranoia is strong enough to keep him in the farthest stall, leaning against the corner and biting down on his lip to stop himself from bursting at the seams with everything that he wants to tell her.

“Oh, so it’s Mama now?” There’s a chiming laugh that follows those words, light and amused and, man, Harley misses his mom. He really, really does. “What, did something happen, or are you trying to be a suck up after forgetting to call me yesterday?”

Harley grins. “Both. Sorry about that, by the way.”

“You’ve been busy,” she dismisses quickly, easily. “I can survive. Now, talk to me. How is everything?”

Everything, meaning the things that Harley has told her – which is most things, to be fair, just missing some specific details. She knows that Harley has a friend named Peter that works for Tony, and she knows that Peter was involved in an accident of sorts, an accident that was not his fault, but that he blames himself for because someone else involved in the accident had died. She knows nothing about Spider-Man and Mandy Morales and the memory of Peter bleeding all over a pristine white carpet.

And she kind of knows about how Harley has been focusing a lot on being there for Peter, and she’s been humming along to his ramblings with a very knowing edge to her voice, which had been confusing up until today. He thinks he understands what she had been detecting in his words, now.

“He kissed me, Mama,” Harley whispers into the phone, as if it’s the biggest secret in the world. It isn’t, really, but it also kind of is – he knows that Tony knows, because he’d run into Tony after he’d worked up the courage to leave a soft little sort of kiss goodbye for Peter, and Tony had just laughed and walked away. If Tony knows, then Pepper definitely knows, and there’s a good chance that Happy has been or will be alerted of it, as well. Harley hasn’t told anyone until now, but he must have looked suspiciously dazed when he walked into school this morning, because Ned and MJ had shared knowing grins and high fived as soon as they saw him, so it’s safe to say that they know, too. Despite all that, though, this still feels like something precious, something worthy of being soft spoken over. This – Peter – is… gentle.

“He did?” There’s not even a hint of surprise in her voice. Damn her and her seamless ability to know everything there is to know about Harley – including the things he doesn’t even know yet. Super Mom.

Harley can’t even pretend to scoff at how smug she sounds, only clamps his teeth down on his lower lip and looks up at the ceiling with shining eyes. “Yeah,” he says, just as breathless, maybe even more so. “He… He kissed me twice. I didn’t even know I wanted him to kiss me until he did, and now I’m…” he trails off with a sigh, brows twitching together in thought. “Mama, I think I like him. Like, really like him, too, not like when I told you I had a crush on Phoebe from Friends, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.” So god damn smug. Harley thinks he got all his good qualities from his Ma. He wonders if that smugness is genetic, thinks it must have gone to Abbie rather than him. “Trust me, honey, I knew when you spent thirty minutes talking about his collection of science shirts and Lego sets.”

“I didn’t―” Harley stops, defense falling short. He totally did, didn’t he? “Okay. Fair point.”

His mother laughs again, and it makes him smile even wider. “Don’t worry, I thought it was cute,” she assures him, still chuckling under her breath. “What are you gonna do about it?”

Sometimes, Harley plays dumb. “About what?”

“Harley.”

Yeah, his Ma doesn’t let it slide when he plays dumb.

He’s not sure why he still tries, to be completely honest.

“I don’t know yet,” he tells her honestly, gnawing on the inside of his cheek nervously. “I- I mean, he kissed me, both times, right? And he said it means a lot to him, when I asked him, but he’s going through so much right now, Mama. I can’t… I mean, I know my life hasn’t been the easiest, hasn’t been the best, I’ve had my shit, too, but it’s, like… the world is so cruel to Peter Parker. It breaks my heart.”

It’s an understatement, Harley thinks, but it’s the best he can offer without telling his Ma things that he’s not supposed to. Though vague, it’s enough to make Angie let out a long, slow breath before softly telling her son, “Based on what you’ve told me, you’re good for him, honey. And he’s good for you, too.”

Harley lets out a long, slow breath. “But, what if it’s… what if what he’s going through is making him do things that he doesn’t actually want? What if he doesn’t really like me, and just likes that I’m here?”

And that’s all it is, really. Harley didn’t realize he likes Peter until last night, and he’s kind of scared that Peter doesn’t really like him. Maybe Harley is convenient. Maybe Peter kissed him because he was there, because he was distraught and upset and acting impulsively. But then, later, when they kissed again… that wasn’t convenience. That was something – something that’s been building up for two months now, since they met. That was personal, and slow, and in that kiss was every joke, every laugh, every second that Peter’s offered Harley comfort and that Harley’s offered Peter the same. That was whispered reassurances of it’s not your fault, Peter, and you’re nothing like your dad, Harley.

That second kiss, the one that seemed to last for hours… that was something special.

“I think we both know that isn’t true,” his mother tells him, and he already knows that she’s right.

May is waiting for him when Happy takes him home, and Peter can’t really decide if he’s happy to be back or if being here after a week in the tower is just… borderline uncomfortable.

But May is a comfort to him, and her warm smile and welcoming hug does more than enough to push away his uncertainty. He’s only seen her a small handful of times since he got shot, mostly because Peter had gotten Tony to help him convince her that she didn’t need to take time off work just for him. The day after the incident, she came rushing over, calling in to get the day off due to a family emergency, but the rest of the week, she still went to work. She managed to stop by the tower when she could, checking on Peter, asking if he wanted to come home yet, talking to Helen Cho about the best course of action for his recovery and making sure that there were no complications with his recovery. Not that the injury itself was too harrowing – Peter gets shot pretty often, to be honest, and sometimes those shots are in much more fatal places than his abdomen, not the mention that he’s healed just fine from worse wounds – but sometimes, Peter being in a bad place mentally slows down his healing, and fucks up the way he operates. He can’t remember any of the terms for it now, but he’s read quite a few papers about the mental state having a negative impact on the physical state, as well, and it’s not hard to assume that the same sort of phenomenon takes place in terms of his Spider-Man abilities as well as his normal ones.

Didn’t they talk about that in an episode of Teen Wolf? Peter vaguely remembers seeing it.

“How are you feeling, sweetie?” May asks him, flashing Happy a grateful smile as she leads him to the couch and has the both of them sit down. “Hungry? Tired? Anything still hurt?”

“No, I’m good,” Peter says with a shrug, glancing around the living room and wondering how a week away felt like so much more. Seven days isn’t long, yet he’s struggling to feel familiar, struggling to connect those dots in his head that this is his home, this is where he lives. It happens every time he’s away from the apartment for more than three or four days, but usually it’s to a much lesser degree. Never before has his home felt so foreign. “I’m completely healed, and Harley always makes breakfast for everyone before he goes to school, so I had some of that. Plus, Pepper made me eat a big lunch before leaving, too.”

He can practically see May make the mental note to give Pepper a call later, as if they don’t already have hour long phone calls on the days that they don’t see each other anyway. Honestly, the friendship between May and Pepper is one of the strongest Peter’s ever seen. It makes him happy, knowing that May has someone other than him. And he knows that Pepper often offers May help in terms of their financial situation, makes small hints at how they’d be happy to give them a hand, lend them some cash. May has yet to accept any of that help, but Peter is comforted by the fact that, if they stop being able to pay their bills altogether, Pepper and Tony won’t let them end up on the streets or in an unsafe situation. Though Peter would probably be fine, he doesn’t want May to have to deal with that.

Happy leaves soon after that, though he does get roped into having a cup of coffee and watching an episode of Criminal Minds with the two of them. The way he turns up his nose at some of the gore and narrows his eyes at certain Spencer Reid ramblings that only Peter is able to fully follow along with is unreasonably entertaining, and Peter winds up curling his knees to his chest and keeping his mouth hidden behind the hem of his blanket to hide his amused snickers. Happy rolls his eyes when he sees Peter’s poorly hidden laughter, and declines the offer to stay longer, offering only a scoff and a small smile before making his way out the door and down to his car parked up against the curb.

It isn’t until after the door clicks shut that May turns to Peter, her eyes crinkled with a smile and some sort of funny comment on the tip of her tongue, only to stop and ask, “Hey, where’d you get that?”

Peter frowns, brows furrowing together. “What?”

“That sweatshirt,” she says, reaching out and tugging at the dark blue fabric of the sleeve, her features giving away her amusement rather than curiosity. “I’ve never seen it before.”

Peter looks down, and instantly feels his face heat up with a blush. “O-Oh, uh- it’s Harley’s. He must have, um- must’ve left it in the living room, at the tower, and I grabbed it without checking.”

Truth is, it’s the sweatshirt Harley had been wearing when they went to talk with Amy and Evelyn Morales, and that he’d carelessly tossed to the floor of Peter’s room when they got back, because he was wearing a t-shirt underneath and had murmured something about overheating easily in his sleep. When Peter went to grab his small bag of items before leaving the tower, he’d seen it sitting on the floor and decided to put it on without really noticing that it was Harley’s to begin with.

Maybe that’s why Tony had snorted when Peter emerged from his room, duffel bag thrown over his shoulder and a confused frown tugging at his lips. Could also explain the fact that it smells like Harley, too, but he’d just dismissed that thought before because Harley has been staying in his room all week.

“Oh, okay.” He can hear the grin in May’s voice. He doesn’t acknowledge it, instead pulling out his phone and trying to force his blush away.

TO: harley!!!!

so uhh i might have accidentally stolen ur sweatshirt?

but i can get it back to u asap!!

FROM: harley!!!!

stolen?? just give it back when i get home from school lmao

TO: harley!!!!

im not at the tower tho

FROM: harley!!!!

what?

oh

i forgot you were going back today

right

TO: harley!!!!

im probably gonna patrol a little tonight

i can stop by and give it to u then?

or just when i see u Monday

or tomorrow whatever you prefer

FROM: harley!!!!

it’s gonna be weird

you not being at the tower, i mean

TO: harley!!!!

yeah trust me i know

being home feels really weird

like

this is where i live

but i haven’t been here for a week and it felt like longer than a week and??

idk it’s really weird but i mean i’ll get over it

FROM: harley!!!!

how am i supposed to get used to not having you around every day

i kind of really like you

i mean

i really like seeing you every day

and i’ll miss it

TO: harley!!!!

hey harley?

FROM: harley!!!!

yeah?

TO: harley!!!!

do u wanna come over when school is over?

to my apartment, i mean

may leaves for work in an hour and i can send u the address, so,,,

FROM: harley!!!!

so……??

OH

yeah!! okay!! i’ll see you then!!

also just keep the sweatshirt i have too many anyway and i bet it looks really cute on you

Aunt May does a poor job at hiding her amused chuckle when he beams down at his phone, but he chooses to act like he doesn’t notice anyway, instead focusing his attention back on the TV and checking his phone every few minutes to keep track of how much time is left until school gets out.

Harley gets approximately two minutes away from the school when Tony calls him and absentmindedly says, “Tower’s the other direction, kid,” as if he thinks Harley just randomly forgot where he lives.

“I know,” Harley says, tightening his grip on the steering wheel and biting down in the inside of his cheek lightly, trying to keep his excitement from seeping into his voice. “Peter accidentally took one of my sweatshirts when he left, so I’m going to his place to pick it up. Why are you stalking me, by the way?”

“Stalking?” Tony snorts, and Harley can faintly hear the sound of metal clanging together. He almost asks what Tony is working on, but stops himself short. “We never announced that a teenager was moving into the tower, but there’s some observant criminals who might put two and two together. Why do you think I kept your car from you for so long? It’s got a shit ton of safety precautions now, including a tracker. Pep and I had the same kinds of precautions made for Peter, too. It’s for your own safety.”

Honestly, Harley kind of knew all of that, but if he drops it now, Tony will focus on where he’s going and make some kind of joke about it and Harley is trying to focus on the road, thanks. So, trying to take another page from his sister’s book and forcing an annoyed tone, he says, “Yeah, well, I don’t need it.”

Tony just snorts, not at all convinced  by Harley’s attempt at attitude. “Try again, bud.”

“Whatever,” Harley huffs, slouching his shoulders slightly and glancing at his phone to follow the map displayed on the screen. He needs to take the next left. Flipping the blinker on, he asks, “Can I go now? I’ve only driven in Manhattan before and like to have full concentration when driving through new areas. Which means not having Iron Man’s pestering blastin’ from my speakers.”

“You still have a curfew,” Tony points out rather than answering. “Don’t think I won’t send a suit to collect your ass if you stay out past it. I know May’s working tonight, and I’m not gonna be the idiot that lets two teens who are clearly into each other have an unsupervised sleepover―”

“Please stop talking!” Harley interrupts, voice taking a higher pitch as his eyes go wide, absolutely mortified by not only the implications, but also the fact that it’s Tony implying them. “Jesus Christ!”

This time, Tony full on laughs, way too amused by the situation than Harley cares for. “I’m not saying you would do anything,” he dismisses, still snickering under his breath, “but I’m not gonna risk it. If you’re not back at the tower and getting ready for bed by midnight, Pepper will ground you.”

Harley parts his lips to respond, then falters. “Just Pepper? Why not you?”

“Pepper is better as deciding proper punishments than I am,” Tony tells him simply, and Harley can practically hear him shrugging through the line. “I took Peter’s suit once, and he was almost killed by a crazy metal bird that was trying to steal from me. Ever since then, Pep’s been in charge of those choices.”

There are about thirty questions that Harley could ask, but he just settles on, “Can I at least stay up after midnight when I get back? There’s no school tomorrow and I wanna work on my project.”

For a moment, Tony just hums, then chirpily answers, “Nope,” before ending the call.

“Asshole,” Harley murmurs, rolling his eyes with a barely contained grin. There’s no real bite to his words, no actual frustration or anger – he’s just… content, really. He’s really, really content. At this point, Tony Stark’s stupid pestering and teasing has become comforting and welcome. Still annoying, though.

Harley takes the next right, pulls into the parking lot of the apartment building, and spends five minutes just sitting in his car, feeling his heart thud in his chest and willing it to slow to a normal pace. Then he thinks of Peter, who is in this very apartment building, awaiting Harley’s arrival, and his heart picks up speed all over again. By the time he forces himself to get out of the car, he’s pretty sure he’s had at least three minor heart attacks, and his knees kind of shake and threaten to buckle beneath him.

Despite that, he stands, locks the car doors behind him, pockets his phone, and makes his way inside.

The Parker’s apartment is the textbook definition of cozy. There are blankets available to grab on the sofa, warm lighting and pillows and an overall sense of welcoming. As soon as Harley steps inside, he feels at ease, relaxing slightly and looking around in interest, taking in all the little details of the place. He can spot all the evidence of May’s presence, as well as the evidence of Peter’s presence, sprinkled in with the few hints of guests that frequent the place, like one of MJ’s sketchbooks and Ned’s half finished Lego set that him and Peter have been working on since before Harley even moved to New York. It’s a large set, taking up at least half of the dining room floor, and it looks to be three quarters of the way done.

Impressive, to say the least.

“I didn’t really think about what to expect,” Harley says, coming to a stop in the living room and spinning around slowly, scanning over everything a second time, “but if I had, this would be exactly it.”

Peter huffs out some kind of laugh, scratches at the back of his neck and smiles a sheepish smile. “It’s usually a little cleaner,” he points out, scanning over the small bit of clutter on the coffee table, a bit on the floor, too. “But May’s been working so much, and I was gone for a week, so…”

“This is ten times cleaner than my room was back in Rose Hill,” Harley shrugs.

“That’s… kind of gross, actually,” Peter says, brows rising. “Like, that sounds like a health hazard.”

Harley shrugs again, this time plopping himself down on the sofa with a wide grin. “Honestly, it could’ve been, but it’s fine,” he says dismissively, patting the spot next to him and looking up at Peter with pretty wide eyes and a softer version of the grin he was just sporting. For the second time that day, Peter feels oddly out of place in his own home, but he just sits down anyway, reaches for the remote, and hits play on the episode he was watching, Penelope Garcia explaining some newfound information to her team.

“Have you ever watched Criminal Minds before?” Peter asks, seeing the way Harley blinks owlishly at the screen, brows pinching together even as a hint of familiarity flickers in his gaze at some of the techy talk that Garcia is going on about. He shakes his head once, cocks his head to the side as the scene switches to the team giving to profile to the local police department. Peter smiles. “I think you’ll like it.”

There’s no verbal response, but Harley does shift his weight slightly, leaning into Peter’s side and keeping his eyes focused on the TV, eyes bright and intrigued. Peter watches him for a long moment, and he kind of just… kind of really wants to kiss him again, but he also really likes this comfortable feeling hanging in the air, so he faces the TV as well, zoning in on the show and soaking in the warmth of Harley pressed against his side. Harley shifts against, leans even closer to Peter, and, without taking his eyes off of the screen, softly (timidly) tells him, “I was right, by the way. You look really cute in my sweatshirt.”

Peter manages not to react for a total of ten seconds, and then he decides that Criminal Minds can wait, because it makes more sense to have Harley start from the beginning anyway, right? The logical solution is to distract him in order to prevent him from seeing any spoilers, and clearly the most obvious form of distraction is to face him fully, gently turn Harley’s face towards his with a finger curled beneath his chin, and guide their mouths together until they’re finally kissing again.

This kiss is different from the first two – three, if that little brush of lips that Harley had left Peter with this morning is counted as one. The first had been quick, kind of impulsive and ending as soon as it started. The second had been longer, drawn out and slow, but it had been the dead of night and they were both on the brink of falling asleep, and Peter honestly doesn’t remember it ending, doesn’t have any sort of recollection of when they stopped kissing and fell asleep. And that third one, Peter still thinks he might have dreamed up, honestly, because he’d barely been awake and aware of his surroundings.

But this one, there’s nothing else to fog over it – they’re both wide awake, there’s no tears or impulsive actions or seeking comfort. Peter really likes Harley, and he really wants to kiss him, so he does. He kisses him with his limited experience, trying to be tender and soft and caring, fingertips gentle as they brush against his jaw, trailing over his cheek before cupping his face in his palm, and Harley kisses him back, curls his fingers into the fabric of the sweatshirt that can be blamed (or, rather, thanked) for this reaction in the first place, tugs Peter just a little bit closer and tilts his head slightly to the side. Peter still feels a little bit out of his element, but that’s okay, because Harley doesn’t really know what he’s doing, either, is sort of just running on instinct with a vague idea from movies and TV shows of how kissing works, and it seems to span out well enough, because it’s a bit fumbled and messy, but it’s good.

“Peter.” Harley says when he manages to force himself to break the kiss and lean back slightly, though his eyes instantly drop down to Peter’s lips with his desire to keep kissing him written clear on his features. Still, he stays back, clears his throat slightly, and asks, “What, uh- what is this? What does this―?”

Peter kisses him again, because he really doesn’t want to stop, but he makes sure it’s a quick peck of a kiss rather than a lingering one, and he presses their foreheads together after, keeps his eyes shut and takes a deep breath before murmuring, “You are everything, Harley, and I- I’ve never had this big of a crush on someone before. I want this to be something, like… I want to date you, and kiss you, and call you my boyfriend, but it’s okay you don’t want that. This is whatever you want it to be.”

“Holy shit,” Harley breathes, and then he lunges forward, kisses Peter hard on the mouth and pulls him close before swinging a leg over Peter’s legs to settle himself in his lap because he can’t seem to get close enough from where he’d been sitting before. Peter melts into it, grips Harley’s sweater and hopes, hopes, hopes that something good can come out of this mess of a week that he’s had, hopes that Harley wants to date him, too – because it really seems like he does, with the way he’s kissing Peter right now.

It’s kind of drastic, the difference between how Peter feels now and how he’s felt with his previous crushes. With Liz, he could barely form a sentence, was always so nervous around her, even more so on Homecoming when the whole thing with her dad being the Vulture came up – he’d felt damn near sick, in a way that he thought was normal, but thinking back on it, was probably not the healthiest thing. He shouldn’t feel queasy with anxiety around someone he’s crushing on. It’s not Liz’s fault, obviously – she was, and still is, a wonderful person that keeps in contact with her friends from Midtown despite living all the way over in Oregon, and Peter isn’t really sure he could consider the two of them friends, but they have pleasant conversations every now and then. He’s glad he knows her.

With MJ, it had been a very brief consideration of a crush, because he wasn’t really sure if it actually meant something or if he was kind of struggling to get used to her being around all the time when she first joined him and Ned and made their duo into a trio. He hadn’t felt sick with nerves, or anything of the sort. He’d just felt intrigued, really, trying to make sense of his feelings, and then MJ had asked if she could kiss him, and she told him she’s a lesbian, and he dropped that crush instantly because she’s one of his best friends and he refuses to make things awkward between them. Now, closing on a year since that happened, he’s proud to say that he’s just as close to her as he is with Ned.

There had been a few other small crushes, mostly from his childhood, that he’s never really lingered on before. He’s fairly certain the reason he’d been so determined to get in contact with Harry Osborn again was because he’d had an embarrassing little schoolyard crush on the kid before his moved away, and he can vaguely remember a few particularly kind and attractive people he’s run into in stores and such that manages to stick in his thoughts for a day or two.

But never has he felt quite like this.

Harley Keener does not make Peter scared. Nervous, occasionally, yes, but no more so than the regular nerves Peter has about every day life, the small things that push on his anxiety, like struggling not to stammer over his words too much or trying to make sure he says the right thing. While Liz had made him so nervous he felt sick, and MJ merely made him intrigued, Harley has only made him feel safe, and relaxed, and warm. Harley has held his hand and let him press his fingers to the pulse point on his wrist and confided in him about his father and the conflict with his sister and Peter is only sixteen, and he knows that he doesn’t really know what romantic love is, but what he’s feeling has to be some kind of beginning stage, doesn’t it? He’s not in love with Harley, but he likes him more than anything and he can easily see himself falling in love as time goes on, as they grow older, more mature.

That’s… kind of an intimidating thought, actually. In a good way, though.

A really good, really welcome way.

Harley blinks his eyes open as the kiss comes to a slow end, neither of them pulling back very far, noses still brushing together and breathing the slightest bit heavier. “Okay,” he says airily, resting his forehead against Peter’s and huffing out some kind of laugh, looking perfectly content to still be sitting on Peter’s lap and winding his arms around Peter’s shoulders, some sort of half-hug thing going on. Peter blinks once, but before he can ask for clarification, Harley tells him, “What you said. All of it. It’s- I’m- yeah.”

“Yeah?” Peter repeats, unable to hold back the little laugh that rumbles somewhere from the center of his chest. “What, exactly, are you saying yeah to? I said a couple of things. I need clarification or I’ll cry.”

Rolling his eyes, Harley leans forward and kisses him again, though he pulls back with a smug sort of grin before Peter has the chance to return it. Peter pouts, and Harley snickers under his breath, his eyes sparkling with some kind of bright, beautiful joy. “Is that enough clarification for you?”

Peter doesn’t hesitate before shaking his head and stating, “Nope, not quite. You should try again.”

“I actually wanna watch this show at some point,” Harley says, looking over his shoulder towards the TV, where the BAU team is currently in the process of trying to take in the unsub. His brow furrows a bit in curiosity, the intrigue from before returning full force. “Hey, Pete? What’d that guy do?”

Thankfully, Peter has no problem with shifting their position a little bit, spinning them slightly so that Peter can lean against the arm rest of the sofa and see the screen for himself. Criminal Minds is easily May’s favorite show, and Peter has sat with her through various marathons, so it’s not surprise, really, that it only takes a few moments for him to remember what episode this is. “He’s trying to get his daughter back,” he explains, watching as the daughter in question explains her paintings to Emily Prentiss and Jennifer Jareau, telling the stories of how each Queen wasn’t able to make it back with the King to save the Princess. “Jody’s the Princess, and her dad tells her these stories about these Queens because he’s trying to find the right woman to be the perfect mother for his daughter. It’s… kind of fucked up, and it’s not okay, but he means well, and he’s trying to be a good dad, which is why…”

Harley glances at Peter. “Why what?”

Peter just nods towards the TV, slightly pinched brows and a small frown on his face. “Look.”

On the screen, Wade Hatchett murmurs tearfully into the radio in his car, a subtle goodbye to his daughter, who follows his instructions when he tells her to close her eyes, and then turns around at the gentle request of Emily. Derek Morgan runs towards the truck, but he doesn’t get there in time.

Wade Hatchett dies.

“Oh,” Harley says, blinking once, eyes going wide. “That’s fucked. Are all the episodes like this?”

“Some are more serious than others,” Peter answers simply. “This is the fifth season, though, so there’s a whole lot leading up to this that isn’t, like, necessary for the episode, but just makes the show better. Having full context, you know? It helps you understand what’s going on and know the characters more.”

Turning to look at Peter again, Harley tentatively asks, “Can we start from the first season?”

Peter looks over at the clock hanging on the wall, one of the antique ones that Uncle Ben randomly brought home when he was thirteen and put up with a grin, and decides that he can just push off going on patrol one more day, because he kind of has a really cute boy (who heavily implied that he wants to be Peter’s boyfriend, but nothing has officially been stated, so Peter doesn’t want to assume anything official just yet) that’s still sitting in his lap and looking all wide eyed and wonderful and he’s helpless, really, to do literally anything other than grin up at Harley and say, “Yeah, of course we can.”

-

(“Change is always difficult, even if it isn’t all that bad.”)

-

Being back at school is as much of a relief as it is a hindrance.

Peter loves school, really – he loves learning, loves figuring out problems and finding out solutions and providing the right answer in class. He loves the satisfaction that comes with getting a test back with a good score, seeing his teacher’s approving nod at his assignments, and he loves relaying what he’s learned to anyone who will listen – usually, that’s either Aunt May or Mr. Stark, whoever he sees first.

However, while Peter is feeling mostly like himself again, he still isn’t really… he isn’t the same Peter Parker that he was a week ago. He’s mostly the same, but not completely. Just like when Uncle Ben died, and Peter was almost the same as he was, but was also just a little bit more quiet. And after the Vulture incident, when Peter is pretty much the same, but with claustrophobia and slightly worse anxiety.

He’s basically Peter Parker, in the same way he was Peter Parker a week ago, but he’s also not the same.

He loses focus in the middle of his classes, finds himself staring at the wall and not really thinking about anything, mind uncharacteristically void, and he either has to blink himself back to reality, or he’ll be drawn out of it by Harley, Ned, or MJ, each in their own ways. MJ will start subtly tapping his arm with the eraser of her pencil until he looks at her with fogless eyes, Ned will nudge him with his elbow for however long it takes to get Peter back into focus, and Harley will subtly link their ankles, knock their knees together, or go as far as to intertwine their hands under the surface of the table, giving Peter a warm grin when Peter finally manages to look at him and smile. It’s a real smile, but it’s not a full one.

On his second day back, he gets tripped by Flash and the sound of his textbook slamming against the floor is so loud and sudden that it makes him think of a gunshot, and he can handle the sound of gunshots, he hears multiple times a week during his patrolling, but with the noise comes an image of Mandy Morales hopeful eyes turning dead and blank after the bullet went through her head, and then Harley has to help him into the nearest bathroom because Peter feels sick to his stomach and he loses his breakfast in the midst of a flashback that he knows will mingle in with the rest of his bad memories and haunt him for the rest of his life. Harley rubs his back, murmurs soft encouraging words and presses a kiss to Peter’s hairline when he slumps against the door of the bathroom stall, not crying, but close to it.

Maybe Dr. Cho should have instructed him to stay home for another week or something, because being back at school kind of sucks. It’s kind of drains him in a way it never has before.

But it’s rewarding, too, because he sees Ned and MJ every day again, and he finds a sense of normalcy when he finishes his homework in class and snickers under his breath to murmured jokes, and there’s a certain exhilaration that comes with all these little things that him and Harley do, pressing their legs together and sitting closer to each other than necessary but not enough so as to draw unwanted attention. They’ve left lunch early just to kiss in empty hallways and giggle to themselves, and the amount of times one of them has come up with some half assed excuse to drag the other away when they’re in one of the labs after school is honestly impressive, because there are only so many excuses that are actually believable. Not that Tony looks convinced at any of them anyway, but still, they’re trying.

The point is, Peter Parker is haunted, and right now, he has a little support group of people he loves, of people that love him, and the one that’s been the most constant, the most attentive, the most willing to shrug off his own shit in order to rush to Peter’s side when he needs it, is Harley Keener.

And he thinks that if anyone deserves to know the extent of what Parker luck has caused him, it’s Harley.

So, Peter decides he’s going to tell him. He’s going to tell him everything. All he has to do is figure out the place to do it, the most ideal time, and hope that it doesn’t turn around to bite him in the ass.

He gets his chance handed to him rather forcefully in the form of an uncomfortable looking Flash snatching him by the wrist and keeping him from leaving decathlon practice with everyone else. Peter splutters when it happens, and thankfully Harley has a newfound ability of being especially in tune with Peter’s noises of distress, because he turns around and lets Ned and MJ leave the room without him.

“What the hell are you doing, Flash?” Peter asks, ripping his wrist free from Flash’s grasp and taking a large step away from him, in the direction of Harley, who is already making his way back towards them with his brows furrows and his mouth set in a firm line. Peter knows that Harley has mentioned fighting with bullies back in Rose Hill, but Peter has only ever seen Harley’s kind side, his warm side, and a hint of his sad side and his worried side, so it’s definitely a difference, seeing him look borderline angry.

Flash huffs, crosses his arms over his chest and looks up at the ceiling with a grimace. Peter thinks it’s funny, how he acts like he’s the one being inconvenienced when the situation is his doing. Lowering his gaze, he squints at Harley in disdain, bitterly murmuring, “I was hoping he’d leave with everyone else.”

“Yeah, well, unless Peter wants me to go, I’m staying right here,” Harley says simply, sidling up next to Peter’s side and scanning over Flash in confusion, clear confliction in his eyes. Peter still isn’t sure what, exactly, happened between the two of them, other than the fact that Flash had somehow told Harley a bit about Uncle Ben being killed, but Harley’s blatant distaste towards Flash has shifted into a mild annoyance, which is precisely how Peter feels about Flash, too. Harley looks to Peter, brows raising slightly, and he sounds more soft and genuine when he asks, “Do you want me to go?”

“No,” Peter answers instantly, because he never wants Harley to go, honestly. He just prefers being in Harley’s presence. Harley’s lips twitch into a slight smile, and he simply nods, leaning just enough for their shoulders to brush together as both him and Peter look back to Flash with mild distrust. “So…?”

For a moment, Flash just hunches his shoulders a bit, glares at the two of them, then at the floor, then lets out a strained sigh, looks back at the ceiling with a sense of reluctance, and he forces out, “I’m sorry, okay? I wanted to say I’m sorry, about whatever happened after I tripped you. It was just supposed to be funny, but then you looked ready to puke and I didn’t even think about the noise and how it could fucking trigger you like that and I would never, like, intentionally do something like that, and I fucking hate this but I’m not that big of an asshole so I’m gonna fucking apologize about it, alright?”

There’s a lapse of silence, where Peter can only blink in shock and Harley can only glance at Peter in a mixture of worry and confusion, because he still doesn’t know much of anything about this part of Peter’s past and Peter thinks that he might as well use this as an opportunity to finally get it over with, so he just bobs his head in some kind of nod, murmurs a half-assed, “Thanks, I guess,” and then waits until Flash is out of the room before facing Harley fully, determination filling his lungs, strengthening his bones.

“That was interesting,” Harley quips, glancing at the door Flash just disappeared out of.

Peter squares his shoulders, takes a deep breath, and says, “My Uncle Ben was shot right in front of me.”

Harley’s gaze flickers back to Peter instantly, eyes wide and glistening with shock. “Peter―”

“I want to tell you,” Peter cuts in quickly, firmly, because he refuses to talk himself out of this. He’s spoken about these things plenty of times before, with the therapist that May tried making him see, to the school counselor who still calls him in once or twice a month to ask him questions that he can’t really answers, and to both Tony and Pepper, the night he stayed in his room at the tower for the first time. Ned and MJ have both heard him talk about it, and most of the people at school know a majority of the details, too, so it’s not like speaking up on the topic is foreign. But this isn’t just talking about it. This is opening up the can of worms that is his past to the boy he likes, telling him everything – and that’s exactly what he does, after taking Harley by the hand and guiding him over to one of the various tables in the room, keeping their fingers intertwined as he takes a deep breath and lets it out with an onslaught of words.

The logical place to start is his parents, so that’s what he does, telling Harley about the limited memories he has of his mom and his dad, the vague sound of Mary Parker’s laugh that he sometimes hears in his dreams, and a flash of a familiar looking see you soon sort of smile that he swears was a signature look on Richard Parker, and he tells Harley that he kind of remembers the week he spent waiting for his parents to come home, only to be sat down by two sympathetic looking police officers that came knocking on May and Ben’s door and told that he’d be staying with his Aunt and his Uncle from now on. He tells Harley the it hadn’t sunk in for a while, the fact that his parents were gone, and that he still sometimes feels like he’s just waiting for them to come home, even though they both have graves that Peter occasionally visits.

He tries to crack a joke about how he isn’t sure what home would count as, because he doesn’t remember where he lived before moving into the apartment. Harley squeezes his hand, swallows the lump in his throat, and Peter doesn’t attempt to joke again because Harley already looks on the brink of crying.

Peter talks about the real bullies he had as a kid, not the annoying people like Flash that he deals with now, and he talks about Harry Osborn, about his and Harry’s unspoken agreement, about how, even though him and Harry were never really friends, Peter always considered him as the first friend he ever had. He talks about how the bullying got worse after Harry moved away, to the point that May and Ben almost switched school, but how they decided not to after they met Skip Westcott, who seemed to protect Peter from the mean kids and wave all the bullies away. He chokes when he says Skip’s name.

And then he tells Harley all about Skip, too, because he can’t stop himself, not even when his eyes burn with tears and his voice shakes and he can barely force out the words to explain just how fucked up he had been after Skip, how fucked up he still is, how he’s worked so hard to keep the helplessness suppressed most of the time but it likes to bubble up from time to time. Harley looks sick and pale and shaky as Peter says this, and he shuffles closer to him, hugs him tightly and rubs circle lightly against his back as Peter shudders against him, words still falling uncontrollably, unstoppably. He spits out that he hates hearing about Einstein because the name has been ruined for him, and Harley’s breath gets caught in his chest as he holds Peter tighter and squeezes his eyes shut with an uneven exhale.

Everything aches when he tells Harley about the Vulture, about being trapped beneath a pile of rubble and thinking he wasn’t going to make it, about how hopeless he felt during the ferry incident, when Tony took his suit and he felt as though his was crumbling from the inside.

Talking about Uncle Ben is the worst of it, though.

He can’t hold back his crying as he tells Harley about how it was his fault, about how, if he had just done something, taken the bullet and been able to heal, convinced Ben to stay home that night, or any other possibility that could have prevented it from happening, then Ben would still be here. And then he’s not talking, isn’t even crying, either – he’s just clutching onto Harley, cheek pressed against his shoulder and sucking in deep, shuddering breaths that make his chest ache and his lungs cry out, but he feels at peace, for what he thinks must be the first time since before his parents died.

Harley murmurs soft words of support and reassurance, and Peter lets his eyes flutter shut, and he thinks that Harley Keener is a blessing that Peter Parker does not deserve. Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t, but no matter the case, he knows that he’s beyond lucky to have Harley, and he hopes to never have to let him go, because he’s not sure he can go back to a life where Harley isn’t there.

Pepper has a long talk with Harley that night, after Peter has left the tower to go on patrol, after she somehow manages to convince Tony to go to bed at a reasonable time, after she finds Harley sitting in the living room and staring at the muted TV, features making it clear that he’s deep in thought. She doesn’t scold him for being up past his curfew, because she isn’t his mother (not yet, anyway – she is starting to feel some kind of maternal bond with the boy, but she refuses to even acknowledge that before having a talk with Angela Keener to make sure that she’s not stepping on any toes) and it’s been made pretty clear that, as much as Harley likes to joke and snicker like Tony, he doesn’t really like breaking the rules that the three of them had established when Harley moved in with them. If he’s still awake, it’s not because he’s purposefully disobeying just for the hell of it – there has to be a reason, and Pepper thinks she knows what it is, if the tender pain in Harley’s eyes when he watched as Peter left is any indication.

Technically, Pepper only knows what Peter had told her six months ago, when he was a little beaten up, a little bruised, and sniffling uncontrollably as an endless amount of tears gathered in his eyes. Tony, apparently, already knew – after Germany and the Vulture and everything, he’d taken the whole mentorship thing seriously, and had done quite a bit of researching on Peter to make sure he knew who, exactly, Peter Parker is, outside of Spider-Man and Midtown – but Pepper had no previous knowledge of just what the poor boy has been through, and had been driven to tears listening to him croak it out. Not all of it, according to Tony, who’s patiently waiting for the day that Peter will eventually open up to them about other things that Tony already discovered during his research, but Peter had told her about Ben, and his parents, and how heavy it is, shouldering this responsibility that he’s given to himself. Pepper had kept her composure just fine, gave him a hug and thanked him for trusting her, telling him that he’s so strong and has survived things that most people would struggle to cope with. Then, she’d gotten to her feet, excused herself to use the restroom, and she cried for this kid who deserves so much better.

So, she gets it, in a sense. She understands.

Not in the same way, because Harley cares for Peter in a much different way than Pepper cares for Peter, but she knows that bone rattling ache that settles something within the space inside your ribcage, that heaviness of wishing there was something that could be done to take away Peter’s pain, to give him a happy childhood, a trauma free childhood, one that doesn’t give him nightmares every single night.

Pepper sits next to Harley on the sofa, pretends to be interested in whatever weird looking cartoon is on the TV, and then gently says, “It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?”

Harley looks over at Pepper, looking confused. “What?”

“What Peter’s been through,” Pepper explains, a warm smile gracing her features. “I don’t know all of it, but I feel sick just thinking about the little bit I do know. It’s a lot, right?”

“Oh.” Harley goes back to staring at the TV, only to then pull his phone out of his pocket, check the notifications, and then start flipping the device over in his hand absently as he murmurs, “Yeah, it is. I mean, I knew it had to have been something big enough, bad enough to make it so Peter never even wanting to tell me anything until now, but… but it’s so much, Pepper. And why is it him? Why does he have to go through all of this? He’s one of the best people I’ve ever met, and it’s… it’s not fair.”

Pepper hums lightly, wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him into some kind of side hug, and nods. “You’re right, it isn’t fair,” she agrees. “But that doesn’t change that it happened.”

“That it’s still happening,” Harley corrects bitterly, lips pulled down into a grimace as he leans into her. “Things are still happening to him. Mandy Morales dying happened to him. I just… I wish I could make the world stop for a little bit, give him a breather, a chance to process everything. Maybe that’d help.”

“Oh, it would definitely help,” Pepper says, rubbing his shoulder comfortingly and absently wondering if this is what it’s like to have a child. Maybe she should talk to Tony about their plans to postpone parenthood after their wedding, even though their reasons to postpone are all still valid and important. They can work around it, though, because Pepper isn’t really sure she wants to wait. That’s not important right now, though, so she pushes that thought process to the backburner, focuses her attention back on Harley, and tells him, “We can’t just make the world stop, though, so we have to do the next best thing.”

Harley looks at her with slightly raised brows, confused and intrigued. “What’s the next best thing?”

Tilting her head slightly to the side, she says, “Be there for him, care about him and make sure he knows just how much you care, and never give up on him, because he’s strong enough to get through this.”

Be there for him.

Harley thinks it’s safe to say he’s been doing well at this, because at least half of his focus is on Peter at all times, anyway, and he always reacts at the vaguest signs of distress. If Peter so much as frowns, Harley leans in, knocks their shoulders together or purposefully has their knees brush, just to give Peter the silent reminder that he’s not alone, that Harley is right here and will do anything he can to help. Sure, that usually just results in Peter giving him a soft, grateful sort of smile, but then there are the bigger moments, too, where Harley has to guide him to the hall in the middle of class because Peter is zoning out again and looks like he’s about to submerge himself head first into a panic attack, or where they have to leave the lab because Peter is shaking and wants to sit on the balcony and get some fresh air. Harley is there for Peter as much as he can be, and still wishes he could do more.

Care about him…

Well, of course Harley cares – he cares so fucking much about Peter Parker, but―

…and make sure he knows just how much you care.

―does Peter know that? Does Peter really understand how Harley knows that he could live without Peter but simply doesn’t want to? Does Peter get it? Has Harley made it clear? He isn’t sure if he has.

Never give up on him.

Giving up on Peter Parker isn’t possible, and Harley would sooner shoot himself in the foot than even consider the mere possibility of thinking that Peter isn’t strong enough. Peter is plenty strong, both physically and mentally – he struggles, yes, but that’s because he’s a sixteen year old boy and he’s been through enough to leave a fully developed adult with severe PTSD, and Peter walks the halls at school like nothing is wrong, like he’s fine and everything’s okay and anyone who doesn’t know any better just assumes that Peter Parker has never had a bad day. Harley isn’t sure how Peter manages to carry the weight of everything he’s been through, but he does it with a smile, a laugh, and only a few tears.

And Harley hasn’t even gained the courage to officially ask him to be his boyfriend.

If he wants Peter to know just how much Harley cares about him, then he has to do just that.

So, he does, and he does it while they’re watching Criminal Minds in Harley’s room, because Tony is having some kind of movie night with Pepper and Harley figured it’d be best to let them be alone. Plus, Harley has a TV that Tony had put in his room, one that he hasn’t really taken advantage of yet, so he continues the show where they left off a few days ago – halfway through the second season, and Harley’s kind of obsessed with it now, wants to keep watching it whenever he can but doesn’t want to watch it without Peter – and he settles back against the pillows on his bed while Peter sits cross legged at the foot of the bed, scanning over Harley’s room with curiously wide eyes. He’s never been in Harley’s room before, and Peter is the kind of person to want to see everything.

Harley smiles to himself, then clears his throat and pats the spot next to him, drawing Peter’s attention away from the pictures pinned to the wall and towards Harley instead. “You gonna come sit with me?”

“Depends,” Peter says, already shuffling up the bed to plop himself next to Harley. “Are you actually gonna watch and not get distracted like last time?”

Last time being the make out session that Harley admits he had wholeheartedly initiated, but he has absolutely no regrets, so he merely grins at Peter, eyes glimmering, and says, “I haven’t decided yet.”

Yes, he has – he’s not really planning on making much progress on the show right now, because he has to ask Peter out now, but Peter doesn’t know that yet, so he just intertwines their fingers and shuffles closer to Peter and pretends to turn his attention to the show. Peter huffs out a little laugh, but says nothing else, just leans into Harley and goes back to watching the episode.

The silence doesn’t last long, because Harley’s been hyping himself up all day for this very moment, and it only takes ten minutes before he manages to swat away his butterflies and force a casual sort of tone as he softly asks, “Hey, Peter?”

“Hm?” Peter hums, glancing away from the screen and towards Harley, brows furrowed slightly.

“Do you wanna be my boyfriend? Officially, I mean, since we already do things that boyfriend’s do.”

Peter’s lashes flutter with a surprised little blink, eyes going a little bit wide, but he’s already grinning, too, tightening his hold on Harley’s hand and using his free hand to turn Harley’s face towards him, drawing him in for a kiss that somehow manages to feel slow and meaningful despite it only lasting a few short seconds. He doesn’t lean far back when he breaks the kiss, is still very much in Harley’s space, not that Harley is complaining, and his voice comes out airy and light when he says, “I’d love to.”

“Good,” Harley grins, then kisses him again, feeling the delighted little giggle that Peter lets out against his lips, because he’d much rather kiss his boyfriend than continue marathoning a TV show.

Chapter Text

(“Having someone who really, truly understands you, whether it’s platonic or romantic or something else, is a complete game changer. You always want them around. They feel like an extension of who you are, like a piece of your very being, a part of your soul.”)

-

“Do you think they’ll need a break to take a nap?”

“Harley, they’re middle schoolers, not toddlers.”

“Yeah, but I took naps in middle school. Third period, every day. Still got straight A’s, too.”

Peter can’t help but bark out a laugh at that, looking at Harley with sparkling eyes and a wide grin, amusement etched into his features. “That’s because you’re super smart and already knew everything they were trying to teach you,” he points out simply, taking Harley’s hand that isn’t fiddling with his phone and absently playing with his fingers, just to give him something to do while they wait. “These kids are coming from the best STEM school for middle schoolers in New York, and they’re gonna be starting here next year. Pretty sure they don’t have the same ability to nap in class like you did.”

Humming, Harley finds himself nodding slightly, gaze caught on the upturn of Peter’s lips, the genuine glint of excitement in his gaze. Usually, Harley can detect just how heavy the dark fog in Peter’s mind is on certain days, if he’s having a rough day or not. Today, there’s nothing – Peter is just in a good mood, and nothing, not even his demons and his nightmares, are getting in his way. That makes Harley grin, too, mirroring the happiness that’s bright as day on his boyfriend’s face, and then he says, “You know what, sweetheart? You’re absolutely right. These kids are probably gonna be tiny little geniuses, running around with tiny little science experiments and getting ready to take over the world. We should call Tony.”

“How tiny do you think middle schoolers are?” Peter asks, snickering under his breath and cocking his head slightly to the side. “They’re eighth graders, Harley. They’re only, like, two or three years younger than us. There’s a good chance that a few of them could actually be taller than we are.”

“Oh, then we definitely need to call Tony and see his reaction to a twelve year old being taller than him.”

“Oh my fucking god, Harley, they’re not gonna be twelve―”

Harley frees his hand from Peter’s and uses it to cover Peter’s mouth, effectively cutting him off and damn near giggling as Peter’s eyes instantly narrow down into a half-assed glare. “You said a bad word,” he stage whispers, dramatically flickering his eyes over to the doors leading into the gym. They saw the bus for the middle school pull into the parking lot five minutes ago, so they know the sixty-something eighth graders are gonna be unleashed upon the unprepared high schooler’s at any second. “How are we supposed to be good role models to these little shits if you curse in front of them, huh?”

The protest that Peter tries to let out is muffled by Harley’s hand, which Peter could very easily swat away if he wanted, but he kind of really likes it when they bicker like this, finds it funny and relaxing and always loves the borderline competitive fire that ignites within him when Harley sports a cocky smile.

“What was that?” Harley asks, feigning innocence. Speaking of his cocky smile. “Sorry, honey, I couldn’t hear ya. Could you try ‘n speak a bit clearer? Enunciate some more, maybe?”

Peter’s glare softens a bit, his cheeks tinting red. He mumbles something again, still muffled. Harley decides to drop his hand, mostly out of curiosity about what Peter wants to say, and cocks his head to the side in a silent request for Peter to repeat himself. Letting out a soft sigh and looking somewhere between embarrassed and pleased, he says, “You keep catching me off guard with those names and it’s not fair.”

“Names?” Harley snorts, but it’s fond, and his chest feels warm, and he’s smiling wide and giddy and happy. “You mean pet names, like honey? Peter, I’m from the south. That’s what we call our partners.”

“Yeah, but I’m from New York,” Peter shrugs, lips quirking up in a barely suppressed smile of his own. “Stuff like that is usually just used against people and are just, like, derogatory. I’m used to stopping gross assholes from assaulting people when I hear those names, not feeling all fuzzy over them.”

If Harley could smile even wider than he is, then he would. “You said another bad word.”

“Yeah, and you literally just called the kids we haven’t even met yet little shits while telling me not to curse in front of them,” Peter scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Hypocrisy is not your shade, my dear.”

Oh, Harley’s face would definitely split in half if his grin could grow. “Did you just call me ‘my dear’?”

“I didn’t―” Peter stops, blinks once, and then looks at Harley in some kind of mock betrayal. “Oh my god! You’re southern pet name bullshit is rubbing off on me! What the hell, Keener?!”

Before Harley can do anything more than snort, the doors to the gymnasium are thrown open, and hell is unleashed in the form of a giant group of hyperactive middle schoolers piling into the room and talking a mile per minute. Collectively, the fourty high schoolers that had been selected for this particular event let out a strained sigh, and Harley just lets out a humph and simply says, “Well, shit.”

“Such a hypocrite,” Peter murmurs. Harley reaches over and pinches him lightly, then intertwines their fingers before Peter can retaliate. Not that he has the chance, anyway, as mere seconds after their hands connect, Mr. Harrington claps his hands together to silence the gym and gather everyone’s attention.

“Welcome, future students of Midtown!” Harrington calls, in a slightly more enthusiastic version of his usual voice. To his left, Harley can hear MJ murmur something under her breath, and he can’t make out any words, but Peter’s super hearing clearly picks it up as he suddenly raises a hand to his mouth to smother a snort. Ned, standing on MJ’s other side, looks mildly confused, apparently being in the same boat as Harley, but he also looks highly amused by the embarrassed look that crosses Peter’s face as a few of the people standing in front of them turn to look at him curiously. Thankfully, none of the staff take notice, and Mr. Harrington goes on to address everyone in the room as he says, “For anyone who might’ve missed the explanation on what this is, or, more likely, anyone who wasn’t paying attention when they were supposed to―” he looks pointedly at Abe, who had been playing with the bell and very much not listening at last week’s decathlon meeting, where Harrington had explained the whole thing to them, “―I’ll give you a quick run down of what the next two hours should look like for us.”

Peter drops his free hand and looks at Harley with a sigh. “Two hours?”

Harley shrugs. “Could be worse.”

“You’re pretty, and I adore you,” Peter says, “but never say that to a Parker. That’s just a guarantee that it’s gonna get worse. You’re tempting fate, Harley. Now the school’s gonna be blown up or something.”

“Both of you suck at whispering,” MJ tells them simply, not even looking at them. Ned snickers.

Peter and Harley both shut up after that.

“Me and Miss Warren have selected the top ten students from each grade to be here for this,” Mr. Harrington goes on to explain, gesturing towards the far right of the gym, where the high schoolers are all standing around in their respective little groups of friends, separated by grade, and looking at the middle schoolers like they’re wild animals that somehow escaped their enclosures at the zoo. “All of you,” he continues, now turning to gesture at the middle schoolers, “have already tested into Midtown and will be attending as freshman after the summer. Seeing as your school is the top rated middle school that has the most students coming to Midtown, your principal thought it would be a good idea to get you acquainted with some of the current students here. That way, you can ask some questions, get a basic understanding of what to expect while attending, and will be able to see some familiar faces in the halls next year. Excluding, of course, all the seniors in the room, who will be graduating next week.”

The seniors cheer, some of them sounding sarcastic, others genuine. One of them appears to be half-cheering, half-crying, but no one bothers to acknowledge it, instead focusing as Miss Warren picks up from where Mr. Harrington left off, telling the middle schoolers, “We have four teachers here to chaperone, me and Mr. Harrington included, as well as your teachers and Principal Morita, who is happy to answer questions, as well. Our students have been given their guidelines on expected behavior, but to make it clear, anything that would get you in trouble in class will still get you in trouble here, so behave.”

Mr. Harrington speaks up again, saying, “At the thirty minute mark, we will be bringing everyone lunch, seeing as most of our high schoolers will be spending their lunch period here instead, and you’ll have thirty minutes to eat and ask the high schoolers any last questions. Then, Miss Warren, Principal Morita and I will be leading you on a tour of the school, which is when the high schoolers will be returning to their classes. Your teachers will take you back to your busses at one, and you’ll be returning to your school in time to attend your last class of the day. Any questions, from any students or faculty?”

“I have one,” Flash says, voice monotone and dead as he raises a hand in the air. When Mr. Harrington had sat them down last week to explain the whole thing, finding that it was easier to tell the whole team at once since everyone on the team is in the top ten of their respective grades, he had also told them that someone would be required to speak up and ask a question that had been planned beforehand. After some debate, everyone had decided that Flash should be the one to do it, and it’s clear that he still isn’t very happy about that, as he glares at Mr. Harrington and repeats exactly what he had been told to say. “What if there’s a stupid question and I don’t want to answer it?”

“There’s no such thing as a stupid question, Flash,” Mr. Harrington says brightly, wearing a pleased expression, clearly proud of himself for having come up with this little rehearsed arrangement. “All questions are valid questions, and I know you’ll all be happy to answer them. Right?”

MJ raises her hand, but doesn’t wait to be called on. “Permission to call bullshit on that statement?”

Mr. Harrington falters, considers, then tells her, “Not with that language, Miss Jones.”

“Okay,” MJ says, not missing a beat. “Permission to declare blasphemy on that declaration?”

Harley has to duck his head and bury it against Peter’s shoulder to quiet his giggling, but Peter’s shoulder only jostles him as Peter tries to smother his own snickering. On MJ’s left, Ned is red in the face, biting back his laughter with valiant effort. Mr. Harrington sighs. “Just answer their questions, Michelle.”

MJ lowers her hand with the smallest hint of a smug smile. “As long as I don’t have to be happy about it.”

“Alright, well―” Mr. Harrington waves a hand through the air, gesturing from the middle schoolers to the high schoolers, “―be nice, everyone, and let’s get this show on the road.”

And with that, the crowd ascends upon them.

Thankfully, the only middle schoolers that come in their direction seem mostly interested in MJ, thanks to her little interjection at the end there, but she doesn’t seem to mind, listening intently to any of the questions thrown her way and answering with an almost scary amount of professionalism. One kid asks Peter is they have any art related classes offered, and the same kid asks Harley why he has a southern accent, which he doesn’t really understand the necessity of asking but answers anyway. Ned rounds MJ after a few minutes to stand by Harley and Peter, and the three of them watch and listen as the little crowd of a dozen eighth graders continues to raise their hands and wait for MJ to point at them.

“This looks a lot like a press conference,” Peter points out suddenly, blinking once with slightly raised brows. Harley huffs out a surprised laugh, but nods along anyway, unable to disagree.

“MJ does remind me a lot of Miss Potts,” Ned muses, crossing his arms over his chest with a grin. “Like, the way Miss Potts can hold a room? How much power she has just by talking? MJ has that, too. Which is, like, kinda scary, because just one of them is powerful enough to rule the world, but if MJ ever worked for Miss Potts like you two do for Mister Stark? I’d fear for my life, but in a good way, you know?”

“What do you mean, in a good way?” Peter asks, a confused bark of laughter leaving him involuntarily as he looks at Ned in slight amusement. “How do you always say things that make perfect sense but also make no sense at all? Because I’m kind of lost on what you just said, but I also agree, and that―”

Harley unintentionally tunes out of the conversation a bit, Ned and Peter’s words sort of blending together in his head as he glances around the room, taking in their surroundings and leaning a bit more into Peter’s side, just for the hell of it. A majority of the middle schoolers are scattered about the room, engaging in conversation mostly with the juniors and the seniors, though there is a small circle of two or three middle schoolers talking animatedly with a few of the freshman. If Harley were to guess, he’d say that they’re all friends already, taking advantage of a small scale field trip to be able to hang out during school hours, even if it is only for a limited time, which he thinks is pretty smart, to be honest, so he just looks away and silently wishes them luck on not getting caught for not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. The rest of the decathlon team is grouped together and taking turns answering questions from a group of about fifteen middle schoolers, occasionally gesturing over to where MJ, Ned, Harley and Peter are standing, likely indicating that the four of them are on the team, too – even though Harley never actually officially joined the team, is more of a cheerleader right now that will be actually assisting in competitions next year, but they all still consider him as an equal teammate anyway, which he appreciates.

The gym isn’t overwhelmed with noise, thankfully, but it is a little bit loud, all the different voices sort of coming together into an audio static sort of thing, and when Harley turns back to Peter, he can see the way he flinches slightly as someone across the room lets out a bark of laughter. Harley shuffles closer to him, checks to make sure he isn’t interrupting, and then softly asks, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Peter answers quickly, shrugging a shoulder and looking at Harley with a smile, though his does squeeze Harley’s hand once in silent gratitude for asking. “Just a little loud, but I’m fine. No overload.”

Harley grins at him, ready to quip something about how they can easily come up with an excuse to leave if the noise gets to be overwhelming, but suddenly freezes as his eyes flicker over Peter’s shoulder and meeting a familiar looking gaze. He blinks once, grin faltering, and then sucks in a sharp breath when the familiar gaze looks back at him, lighting up in recognition. Before Peter can turn around to investigate, Harley tightens his grip on Peter’s hand and quickly tells him, “Don’t panic.”

“What?” Peter looks confused, about to turn around before being stopped by Harley shaking his head.

“Don’t. Panic.”

“Harley, I don’t―”

But before Peter can properly question the meaning behind Harley’s words, a voice speaks up from behind him, asking, “Hey, you’re the guy that works with Tony Stark, right?”

And Peter goes rigid.

“Yeah, I am” Harley answers breezily, subtly stepping around Peter with a friendly smile and a worried glance in Peter’s direction. Slowly, Peter turns around, eyes bugging a little wide and grip tightening on Harley’s hand, though he manages to hold himself back in order to prevent accidentally hurting him. Miles Morales is standing behind him, looking at Harley with bright eyes and an excited grin, thankfully not paying much attention to Peter. “I don’t think I actually introduced myself to you. I’m Harley.”

Miles sticks his hand out instantly, grin widening. “I’m Miles!”

“I know,” Harley chuckles, reaching forward to shake Miles’s hand anyway, just because he was raised to be polite and he doesn’t want to do anything that might raise any warning bells. Ned has somehow been sucked into the press conference with MJ, leaving the two of them on their own, and the only reason Peter isn’t completely panicking is because Miles didn’t meet Peter Parker, he met Spider-Man, so all he has to do is act like he doesn’t know who Miles is and―

“Aren’t you, like, twelve?”

…and not say some dumb shit like that.

“Sorry, you just―” Peter looks to Harley, wide eyed and feeling like an idiot, then looks back at Miles who is looking at Peter with his head tilted to the side in confusion. “You don’t look old enough to be in high school,” he lies, trying to cover his tracks, because a stranger wouldn’t know that Miles is only twelve and definitely shouldn’t be on this field trip. Except, now that Peter is thinking about it, he remembers seeing during his research on the Morales family that Miles skipped a grade in elementary school, so his is in eighth grade, and that means this is actually happening, and Peter is a fucking fool.

“I’m a year ahead,” Miles says slowly, even more confused. He looks to Harley, who’s trying to a normal smile even though the turn of his lips is kind of twisted awkwardly and looks more like a grimace, and then he looks at Peter with some kind of forced politeness. “Who, uh- who are you?”

Right. Miles doesn’t know who he is. That’s good. “I’m Peter,” he says, considers holding out a hand the same way Miles did to Harley, but decides that initiating a hand shake after what he said would probably just make the situation work. So, instead, he adds, “I also work for Mister Stark.”

That seems to do the trick, Miles’s eyes lighting up all over again. “Really?!”

“Yeah,” Peter nods, letting himself relax a little, trying to reassure himself that he has the situation under control and reminding himself that Harley is quite literally pressed against his side. That reminder makes him subconsciously smile a bit, and then he nods towards Harley, just because, and says, “I’ve been working for him longer than the Tennessee baby, actually.”

Harley looks at Peter with a small noise of surprise, but it only takes a moment before his shock wears off into a wide grin. “Oh, really? Well, I’ve known him longer, so suck on that, Parker.”

“Technically, I met him when I was nine,” Peter points out, returning Harley’s grin with one of his own, the prime example of how Harley always manages to help him relax, make him feel safe. Even in the middle of a loud gym, faced with someone who was never supposed to meet Peter Parker, he feels at ease.

Harley scoffs. “You didn’t meet him, you were an idiot child who had to be saved by him, whereas I was an idiot child who saved him. Plus, I live in the tower, so I win. Give it up, honey, you can’t beat that.”

Miles lets out an overexcited gasp, and when they look back at him, his eyes are wide and full of energetic curiosity. “You live at the Stark Tower?” he asks, thankfully keeping his voice at a reasonable volume rather than exclaiming it loudly, like Ned used to do. “That’s so cool! Is that how you know Spider-Man? How well do you know him, by the way? I wanted to ask about that when you were at my auntie’s house but then I was getting all emotional so I didn’t, but you two were―”

There’s a tingle at the back of Peter’s neck, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it as Miles’s eyes fall to where Peter’s and Harley’s hands are clasped together, and for a long, slow moment, none of them speak, the gears turning in Miles’s brain, Harley tightening his hold on Peter while Peter holds his breath.

“Are…” Miles trails off, looking wide eyed at Peter, mouth opening and closing around words that won’t form. Something seems to click, and he almost gasps, but no noise comes out, so all that happens is his jaw dropping as he glances at Harley, looks over his shoulder, and then looks back at Peter, pitching his voice as low as possible as he asks, “Are you Spider-Man?”

“What?” Peter forces an unconvincing laugh. “No. Of course not.”

But Miles’s eyes just go even wider. “You sound like him,” he breathes, looking shell shocked. “And he… he said he was sixteen. And you look like you’re sixteen, and you sound like him, and you two are holding hands, just like he was holding hands with Spider-Man, and… oh my god. Oh my god―”

“Okay, Miles,” Harley cuts in, keeping his tone somewhat firm as he ducks his head and meets Miles’s frantic gaze. Thankfully, Miles quickly snaps his mouth shut and listens intently as Harley tells him, “We can’t talk about this in public, okay? It’s dangerous. Do you understand that?”

Miles nods, looks at Peter, back at Harley, then nods again. “Yeah. Yeah, I understand.”

Peter clears his throat, and he’s pretty sure his hands are shaking because this twelve year kid was able to piece his identity together like it was nothing, but he just takes a deep breath and leans even more into Harley and very calmly asks, “Your Aunt’s gave you that number, right?” Instantly, Miles nods again, looking a little starstruck. Peter tries for a smile. “Call it, but not until you’re home and safe. And preferably not until this weekend, because I need time to talk to Mister Stark about all of this. Okay?”

“Okay,” Miles breathes, taking a small step back, as if sensing that this means their conversation needs to be over for the time being. “I’ll do that. I’ll- I’ll call.” Then, he turns around and walks over to the group of kids still crowding around MJ and Ned, and when Peter lets out a long, uneven breath, it does nothing to quell the anxiety bubbling hot and angry in his gut.

“Did we just lowkey adopt a twelve year old?” Harley asks, sounding genuinely curious.

Peter squeezes his eyes shut. “Oh my god.”

“We’ve only been together for, like, a week. This is a pretty big step in our relationship.”

“Tony’s going to kill me.”

“Should his last name be Parker-Keener or Keener-Parker? Or should we just choose one? Or―”

“Harley, I swear to god―”

There is only a small handful of people who know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, and that handful has been carefully selected based on trust and relation to Peter. Tony, obviously, had been the one to track down Spider-Man and find out it was Peter, and Happy had been let in the loop at the very beginning, so that made two. Then Ned had found out, who Peter trusted, even if he wasn’t planning on telling him. May found out, too, but he had been considering telling her, anyway, when she happened to walk in on him in his suit, so that had done nothing more than speed up the process. MJ had figured it out on her own, because of fucking course she did, and Rhodey, though not around all that often, had been formally introduced to Peter and informed of him being Spider-Man when he came to visit for Tony’s birthday. Harley had also figured it out without even knowing Peter, just connecting the dot based on stories about Spider-Man and Peter that Tony told him. Maybe Peter hadn’t meant for all of them to know, but they’re all people he trusts with his secret, and that made it okay.

He isn’t sure if he trusts Miles Morales with this kind of information, though.

On one hand, Miles reminds him a lot of himself, and he’s already shown a pretty impressive amount of restraint by keeping his voice down while they were talking in the gym. He’s excitable and energetic and looked at Peter in a very similar way to how Peter grew up looking at Tony, and that’s kind of scary.

On the other hand, Miles is only twelve, and twelve year old’s do dumb shit sometimes.

“I was twelve when Tony broke into my garage,” Harley points out helpfully, one gentle hand settled on Peter’s shoulder as they make their way into the tower, Peter gnawing on the inside of his cheek as he tries to figure out the best way to break the news to Tony. “I mean, I wasn’t the greatest kid, but if I could keep my trap shut about Iron Man being in my house, then Miles can handle this.”

“But he shouldn’t have to,” Peter sighs, because that’s a whole other factor to this thing – Mandy Morales already died because Spider-Man wasn’t enough. What if Miles gets hurt, too? Is this the kind of fear that Tony has to face on a daily basis, the reason why he’s provided extra security measures to keep Harley, Peter and May safe, even going as far as to get MJ and Ned the newest Stark phones that are specifically built to never be hacked into, just to prevent anyone from being put in harm’s way?

Harley doesn’t respond for a long moment, just walks next to Peter as they head over to the elevator meant to go up to the top floors, Friday greeting them instantly. He only speaks up after Friday asks where they want to go, and it’s to tell her, “The lab, please.”

Peter blinks once, looks at Harley in confusion. “We’re supposed to finish our essays, though.”

“Yeah, but I wanna show you something first,” Harley says vaguely, gently tugging Peter closer to him until his arm is around his shoulders, Peter tucked into his side. “It’s a thing I’ve been working on.”

“We work together,” Peter says slowly, even more confused, but a little bit intrigued, too.

A smug sort of smile plays on Harley’s lips. “Usually, but I don’t always leave when you do,” he admits, because he kind of has been giving the impression that he went up to the penthouse whenever Peter left, but he’s been doing that intentionally, just so that, whenever this happened, Peter would be surprised.

The way that Peter subconsciously leans into his touch is just as butterfly stirring as always. “Oh,” Peter hums, confusion melting to give way to his curiosity. “What are you showing me, then?”

“How about you wait a sec and you can see for yourself,” Harley tells him, leading them into the lab as the elevator doors slide open, to the left side of the workspace, where Harley and Peter have both been given their own little areas to work in, even though they usually just share the space and work together anyway. He withdraws his arm from Peter’s shoulders, albeit reluctantly, and kneels down to pull open the bottom drawer of his desk, taking out the grey box that he’s had stored there for a few weeks now. He wipes off dust that isn’t there as he gets to his feet, then faces Peter with a nervous twist in his gut, because he consulted with Tony a lot over this, sure, and he tried his best with them, but the results can’t be refined to perfection without Peter’s help, so this isn’t anywhere near the final product. “It’s just a prototype,” he tells Peter, bites down on his lower lip and takes a deep breath. “Here.”

The box gets held out towards Peter before Harley can convince himself not to go through with this. Technically, he could have told Peter about the whole thing when he first finished the prototype, but he wanted to have a good moment to do it, and Peter is in need of a distraction before he stresses himself into a heart attack, so it seems like as good a time as ever. Even if Peter hates them, at least Harley succeeded in taking Peter’s mind off the issue at hand.

Plus, Harley is pretty damn proud of this, and he thinks Peter will be impressed, too.

“What is it?” Peter asks softly, mostly to himself as he turns the box in his hands, flipping it over slowly and carefully, just in case whatever’s inside is fragile. First prototypes tend to be easily breakable, as they’re the starting block for a design that needs more work, and he’d hate to damage something he hasn’t even had the chance to look at yet. Especially if it’s something Harley made.

“Open it,” Harley murmurs, wringing his hands nervously. “You’ll see.”

The box itself is simple, with no design or indication of what’s inside. Peter turns it over one more time, sweeps his gaze over it with slightly pinched brows, and then starts to pull off the lid. As soon as the lid is off and the contents within are exposed, Harley starts rambling an explanation.

“So, I had an idea,” he starts, casting his gaze over to his desk because he’s kind of nervous to see what Peter’s reaction to the prototype is. “When, uh- when you had that sensory overload, it seemed like noise was one of the biggest things, right? Any sort of sound just made things worse, and I don’t really know if that’s right, or if it varies from time to time, so you can tell me to fuck off if I’m wrong or whatever, but the idea is basically, like, hearing aids, you know? But instead of helping you hear, they’re sort of filtering noise, and you can have control over how much you can and can’t hear. I talked to Tony about it, and he said there’s already some enhanced shit built into your suit to help you pick up on things that are out of reach for you to hear, so I kind of, like… not really reverse engineered it, but kind of? I don’t know, but it’s just a prototype, like I said, because I don’t know exactly how enhanced your hearing is and you said all three of us could work on helping your overloads so I didn’t want to keep working on it without you, especially since we kind of need to test them and figure out a refined design and settings that work with your enhancements, and- and―”

“Harley.”

“And if you don’t like them, that’s obviously fine, it was just an idea―”

Peter sets the box on the desk with gentle care, his features doing little to conceal how touched he is, and he effectively cuts off Harley’s nervous rambling by curling his fingers into the collar of his T-Shirt and tugging him forward to silence him with a somewhat sudden and borderline forceful kiss. Instantly, Harley melts into it, settles a hand on Peter’s elbow, the other resting on his waist as he leans into it, tilts his head to the side. The kiss only lasts for a few short moments before Peter pulls back with shimmery eyes and a wide, toothy grin, sounding a bit breathless as he says, “You didn’t have to do that.”

Harley looks over to the desk, at the still open box with the ear pieces sitting carefully inside, and smiles softly. “I told you, I’m not gonna let someone I care about go through that without trying to help.”

The incredulous, airy little half-laugh that Peter lets out is nothing but fond, and he chooses to lean back in rather than come up with a response, hoping that his actions will speak louder than his words.

The nerves settle back in as soon as they enter the penthouse.

“It’s fine,” Harley says, even though he looks just as nervous as Peter feels. “We didn’t do anything wrong. Not our fault that there’s a genius twelve year old that connected the dots.”

Peter knows, objectively, that this is true, and that, after a moment to let the information settle Tony probably won’t even be mad, or even upset. He’ll probably even laugh. And then he’ll be there when Miles rings up the special Spidey number and he’ll help handle the situation, because Tony is the best and his main priority is to keep his family safe. Somehow, Peter is on that list of family to protect.

However, Peter kind of does everything he can to please everyone around him, dedicating his heart and soul to making everyone proud, being Spider-Man so he can do his part in keeping them safe. If Tony winds up with even a fraction of disappointment in his features, Peter will crumble.

He doesn’t want to crumble. He’s still piecing himself back together after everything else.

“C’mon,” Harley murmurs, leading the way into the living room, tugging Peter along by their interlocked hands. Peter stumbles a bit, sinks his teeth so hard into his lower lip that he can taste blood on his tongue, but he knows that trying to avoid this will only serve to make the situation harder, so he doesn’t fight being lead down the hall, and he doesn’t try to stop Harley when he loudly exclaims, “We have a son.”

From the couch, Tony snorts, not even looking up from his phone. “Seems a bit early for you two to have any kids,” he says breezily, typing at the screen absently, likely answering some kind of email or inquiry. He already looks a little stressed, and Peter remembers that he’s been in contact with Ross, trying to find some sort of fix to the whole mess with the accords, and he feels that guilt settle in his gut because he’s been taking up so much of Tony’s time and he doesn’t want to take up more.

“Well, he figured out that Peter’s Spider-Man, so we had no choice,” Harley shrugs, sounding nonchalant as he takes a seat on the sofa to the left of Tony, tugging Peter down to sit next to him. Tony chokes on his own spit and whips his head up to look at them with wide eyes, but Harley just goes on to casually say, “Peter hasn’t had any input on what his last name should be, but my vote’s on Parker-Keener.”

“Hold on, back up,” Tony says, leaning forward and carelessly letting his phone clatter to the coffee table without even bothering to make sure it’s okay, glancing between the two of them, eyes narrowing. “What the hell happened?”

Before Harley can speak up ― because he’s going to try and keep being funny, which Peter appreciates because it’s his way of trying to ease Peter’s anxiety, but he needs to just confront this and get it over with now ― Peter asks, “You remember Miles Morales, right? The kid I talked to, Mandy’s cousin?” Slowly, Tony nods, brows pinching together. Peter shuffles closer to Harley, and starts with, “Well, a funny thing happened at school today,” and he recounts the details of their interaction with Miles.

The entire time, Tony does nothing more than occasionally nod, thumbing thoughtfully at his lower lip and appearing to be deep in thought. Peter only stumbles over his words once, and he manages not to succumb to his anxiety as he trails off with a sigh, waiting to see what Tony is gonna say, because this isn’t like with Ned or MJ or May, people that Peter trusts, people that Tony trusted because he knew that Peter trusts them (and that he has grown to trust on his own, by this point). This is a risk.

“In other news, I showed him those headphone noise blocker things I make,” Harley adds, just to break the silence and ease the tension a bit. “He likes them. We’re gonna work on them over the summer.”

Tony doesn’t even react to what Harley says, just scratches at his beard with a weary sigh and questions, “Does Miles seem like a good kid?”

“Uh.” Peter looks to Harley, who seems just as caught of guard as him, and slowly nods. “Yeah, he does.”

“And he clearly hasn’t told anyone about you being sixteen, since you told him it’s a secret,” Tony points out, sounding like he’s talking more to himself than to the two boys in the room. Peter nods again, recalling his own words when he’d told Miles about his age ― Only very special people are allowed to know that, but I trust you to keep it to yourself.

If Miles had told anyone about Spider-Man being sixteen, there would have been wildfire, rumors and articles and speculation. Clearly, Miles has kept his promise so far. He’s kept quiet about it.

Tony nods, too, the action curt and decisive. “Your kid, your responsibility.”

“Wait, what―?”

But Tony is already getting to his feet with a funny sort of grin, kind of smug and amused. “Remember all the times you said I was being overbearing,” he says chirpily, making his way to the elevator, eyes alight. “After a week of taking care of this kid, come back to me and let me know if you understand.”

The elevator closes on Tony’s mischievous grin, and Harley sounds a little concerned when he murmurs, “Does he think we’re being serious about adopting him? Because I was joking. That was a joke.”

“Honestly?” Peter slumps back against the sofa, his backpack, which he has yet to take off, digging uncomfortably into his skin, though he makes no move to fix it and instead lulls his head to the side to rest comfortably against Harley’s shoulder. “I think he just gave us his blessing.”

“Oh my god.” Harley looks down at Peter in mild alarm. “Are we dads now? We’re sixteen!”

Despite the heaviness of the situation, Peter can’t help but crack an amused grin at the squeak in Harley’s voice. “What happened to trying to pick a last name for him? You seemed so excited.”

“That was before I realized Tony was actually gonna make us responsible for the kid!”

Peter laughs, and it feels like a weight being lifted off of his chest, because Tony isn’t mad. A little miffed, maybe, but he looks pretty entertained by the whole situation. Which means that Peter didn’t fuck up, and Tony probably thinks that Miles can be trusted. Or, at the very least, guided by Peter and Harley to avoid him spilling top secret information. “We’re not dads,” Peter assures, still snickering.

Harley pouts, rests his head on top of Peter’s with a huff. “At least Miles isn’t, like, an evil little asshole.”

“Optimism looks great on you,” Peter grins.

“Fuck off, Parker.”

“Nevermind, then.”

Two very important phone calls come in on the very same day.

The first call is made to Peter’s phone, which has been specially made to have two numbers attached to one device, making it so that he doesn’t need a second phone just to have a way of contact for people who know Spider-Man but don’t know Peter Parker. It’s also made so that neither number is trackable by anyone other than Tony and Ned, which does a lot in helping Peter feel more secure in his identity, because no one can just track down Spidey’s number and connect it to Peter in any way, shape or form.

It’s only ten in the morning, and it’s a Saturday, so Peter is half awake when it starts to ring, but he quickly perks up at the ringtone – a subtle one, in case it ever goes off in public, consisting of three short beeps and three quick buzzes, only to repeat three times until the call gets dropped. Peter has never let the call drop, though, because the people that have this number are his contacts around the city, people who call to Spider-Man for assistance and aid. There’s a cup of coffee in his hand that he picked up on his way over to the tower, and he chugs half of it before digging his phone out of his pocket, jogging the rest of the way through the lobby and into the private elevator, and then picks up the call with a quick, “Hello?”

The nervous voice of Miles Morales greets him with an eloquent, “Um…”

“Hi, Miles,” Peter says, smiling slightly ― he’s had a good few days to quell his panic and ease his worry, able to approach the situation more logically and thoughtfully than he could before. It’s still not ideal, sure, having a twelve year old know his identity, but he had a long talk with Tony, spent a while pondering, consulted some ideas with Harley, May, Ned, and MJ, and now he thinks he can handle this.

“Okay,” Miles says, followed by a pause, and then: “I meant to say hi.”

Peter barely manages to stop himself from snorting at that, not wanting it to come across as some sort of negative, ill-intentioned reaction. He can’t deny that it’s kind of embarrassing, but it’s the same kind of embarrassing shit that Peter used to do around Mr. Stark – that he probably will still do if he ever meets the rest of the Avengers, if he’s being honest with himself. Peter understand what it’s like to speak before you think while talking to someone you admire.

He never really expected to be the admired one in this situation, though.

“So, about the whole me being Spider-Man thing,” Peter starts, deciding not to beat around the bush and get this over with. The elevator doors open up to the penthouse, and he briskly walks into the barren living room, dumping his backpack onto the coffee table and resigning himself to how much studying he has to do today in prep for his upcoming finals. Harley is probably still asleep, Pepper left last night to handle some Stark Industry meetings in Japan, and Tony is either passed out somewhere or in the lab. Perfect opportunity for him to have this little talk, then.

“I won’t tell anyone,” Miles assures instantly, sounding a little fearful, as if expecting to be scolded for being smart enough to figure out the identity of someone who, Peter admits, isn’t the best at being subtle anyway. He’s introduced himself to people by his first name while in the Spidey suit before, so it’s not like he can be uptight about this. If anything, it’s more Peter’s fault than it is Miles’s – if he was better at keeping hints at his identity hidden, like they’re supposed to be, this wouldn’t have happened. “Promise.”

Peter plops himself down on the sofa, kicks off his shoes and leans back with a sigh, his nose scrunching a bit as he ponders over his words. “I know you won’t,” he tells Miles a bit slowly, trying to make sure his tone is leveled somewhere between casual and professional. It feels weird, forcing himself to grow ten years just for the sake of appearing more mature and adult in the eyes of this kid. Which isn’t completely foreign, to be honest – when he’s patrolling, he has to maintain a certain level of maturity that most sixteen year old’s don’t really carry naturally, and as immature as he can be, the trauma he’s been through has helped him grow up pretty fast. Still, he likes being able to be immature when he wants, and it feels strange, summoning that inner maturity and seriousness that he often tries to bat away.

But he’s the older one here. He’s a kid, but he’s the older kid, and this is his responsibility now.

“I’m not worried about you telling anyone,” Peter goes on, brows knitting together as he slumps his shoulders a bit, absently chewing on his thumb nail as he stares at the wall. “I’m just worried about the fact that you know. Knowing puts you in inherent danger, because it means you have something to hide, and if any super smart criminals happen to notice something, they could go after you in an attempt to get to me. Or to get to Mr. Stark through me. But, that being said, I obviously have people in my life who already know about this, like Harley, and my family―” he doesn’t mention that his family consists solely of May, because implying that it’s multiple people might help make this seem less scary, “―and some other trusted people, as well. Which means that, now that you know, we have to instate some, uh… security precautions, I guess? Stuff that’ll help keep you safe, like we do for everyone else that knows.”

“Oh…” Miles trails off, and Peter can’t help but deflate a little at the edge of fear in Miles’s voice. So much for trying to make it seem less scary. “Is, um… am I gonna get hurt? Like M―?”

Like Mandy?

That feels a bit like a punch in the gut, and Peter almost misses the shuffle of footsteps behind him as Harley makes his way into the room. He must hear the way Peter inhales sharply, because he rounds the couch in record time, and despite having just clearly rolled out of bed and only looking half awake, he sits himself next to Peter and takes his hand with wide eyes shimmering in equal parts curiosity and concern.

“No,” Peter says firmly, even though that’s not really a promise he can make – people get hurt and god, Peter tries to keep them safe, but sometimes they get bruised and scraped and need an ambulance. Miles, however, sounds terrified, and he’s asking Peter like Peter is capable of always keeping him safe and, god dammit, he’s already feeling obligated to keep an impossible promise. “You won’t get hurt, Miles. I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen, okay? And if I have your back, that means everyone I trust has your back, too. Including Mr. Stark. You’ve got a lot of people that’ll keep you safe. Understand?”

For a long moment, Miles doesn’t respond. Harley scoots a little closer, even more confused, but silently supportive nonetheless. Peter leans into him just a bit, gnaws on his lower lip as he waits, and then lets out a soft breath of relief when Miles murmurs, “I understand.” Then, a little louder, “Thank you, Peter.”

“If any twelve year old was gonna find this out,” Peter says, “I’m glad it was you, Miles.”

Miles doesn’t say anything, but Peter’s pretty sure he can hear the boys wide grin.

“We’ll talk more about this later, okay?” Peter tells him then, feeling infinitely more light now that the conversation has been dealt with. He still needs to iron out the details of how he’s gonna help keep Miles safe with Tony later, but they’re gonna wait until after the school year ends to actually take any sort of action, since summer officially starts in a week and a half anyway. “I’ll give you a call, from my number, not from Spidey’s number, and then we’ll get everything figured out. Sound good?”

“Sounds great!” Miles says, sounding much more like the energetic twelve year old that he should. It makes Peter feel even more at ease with the situation, and he doesn’t even have time to respond before Miles rushes out a quick, “Bye, Peter!” and then ends the call.

Peter pulls his phone away from his ear with slightly raised brows, feeling a bit like he’s just gotten a case of whiplash, and when he turns to Harley, all he can do is ask, “Do you think this is how Mr. Stark feels when I tell him about my favorite Star Wars conspiracy theories?”

Harley just snorts and pulls Peter closer, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Honey, that’s how everyone feels when you bring up Star Wars theories. You talk a mile a minute when it comes to that shit.”

“The sass isn’t needed.”

“Oh, it’s not only needed, it’s a necessity.”

Huffing out a little laugh, Peter reaches up and lightly pushes Harley’s face away from him, rolling his eyes and sporting a fond type of smile as he tells him, “Go take your stupid morning shower. I don’t feel like making anything, so I’m gonna order some breakfast burritos or something.”

“How is showering in the morning stupid?” Harley asks, looking genuinely confused.

Peter simply shrugs. “It’s just better to shower before bed. That’s a simple fact of life. Now get going, we agreed to spend the day studying, and I’m not touching a text book until you’re bathed and I have food.”

Letting out some kind of playful scoff, Harley presses another lingering kiss to Peter’s cheek before hopping to his feet and heading in the direction of the bathroom.

The second call ― the call that really hits home, presses all the buttons and twists the knife ― comes in around one in the afternoon, and the sound of Harley’s phone ringing catches the two of them so off guard that they can’t help but to giggle at themselves after jumping at the noise. Peter has his chem book opened and various pages of notes splayed out on the floor around him, and Harley is nose deep into running over his calculus equations, knowing logically that he has them memorized but not wanting to risk it in case his mind ends up blanking while he’s taking his final. The first season of Criminal Minds of playing on the TV, mostly just for background noise, but Harley is currently on season three and seeing these episodes again are a nice little refresher on little details he’s already forgotten.

When his phone rings, he’s in the middle of subtly watching the third episode and murmuring the equations under his breath, jotting them down from memory before looking at his text book to make sure they’re right. He’s been doing this for twenty minutes now, with every single equation that could possibly end up on his final, and he hasn’t gotten any of them wrong so far. That doesn’t do much to ease him, though – Midtown is very serious about maintaining attendance and grades, and while Harley knows that he tested in with ease and won’t be kicked out over a forgotten equation or two, he still wants to ace it.

“You should get that,” Peter tells him, nodding down at Harley’s phone, placed screen up on the coffee table. “It’s your mom. Plus, we were supposed to take a break for lunch at noon, so I can go look in the kitchen for something to eat while you two talk, if that’s okay?”

Harley looks over at his phone and blinks once when he finds that it really is his mom’s contact lighting up the screen. “Weird,” he murmurs, brows pinching together – the only time they talk during the day is when something big has happened (like when Harley called her to talk about Peter kissing him) or when their clashing schedules/outside circumstances make it necessary (like when that wind storm blew through Tennessee and cell signal was gonna be down for a few hours). Peter tosses his pencil to rest on his notebook and reaches over to place his hand on Harley’s knee, and when Harley looks at him, he’s wearing a gentle little smile that helps him push away the vaguely uncomfortable feeling bubbling in his chest. Harley smiles back, sets his own pencil aside, and says, “There should be the stuff for grilled cheese, if you’re up for cooking. Store brand tomato soup, too, because Tony let me do the shopping. He didn’t look very amused about it being ninety-nine cents, but store brand tastes better to me, anyway.”

Peter perks up at that, his smile growing as he quickly gets to his feet and ducks down to press a quick kiss to Harley’s lip. “I’ll try and have it done by the time you’re off the phone,” he says brightly.

“It probably won’t take long,” Harley dismisses, smile widening a bit as Peter backs away, still facing Harley but heading towards the kitchen. “I’ll be there in a few minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” Peter grins, then spins on his heel and makes his way into the kitchen with a little pep in his step, hearing as Harley pick up the phone and greets his mom behind him.

It’s easier to limit his senses from eavesdropping into other rooms while Peter’s busy, so he quickly focuses his full attention on locating all the stuff he’ll need to make the grilled cheese in order to prevent himself from accidentally picking up pieces of the phone call happening in the other room. Thankfully, it seems to work in his favor, as his hearing only manages to pick up the occasional word here and there, and not once does he listen in to hear what Harley’s mom says in response. He thinks he picks up on a tense sort of tone as one point, but it isn’t his business unless Harley decides to keep Peter in the loop, so he pushes his curiosity away in favor of buttering the bread and turning on the stove.

Peter hasn’t made grilled cheese since Uncle Ben died, and even then, it was just something they did when someone was sick. If Peter had to stay home from school, Ben called into work and they’d have grilled cheese for lunch because the tomato soup always helped settle his stomach. When May had the flu, they worked together to make the same little meal for her, and put it on a tray for her to eat in bed while they watched a movie on Ben’s laptop. Uncle Ben himself never really got sick, but if he ever had a cold, Peter made grilled cheese for him, too, because it was a tradition.

The tradition sort of died after Ben did. When Peter was sick those first few days after the spider bite, he saw Aunt May cast a wary look towards their kitchen, as if debating making their sick meal for him, but she ended up giving him a bowl of chicken noodle soup that didn’t sit well, instead.

Still, despite that, Peter falls into the familiarity of it pretty quickly, checking to make sure the bread is a good golden crisp before flipping the sandwiches, stirring the soup (which really is store brand, and Peter has to agree that store brand always seems to taste better than anything fancy) and making sure nothing gets burnt. He’s pretty damn proud of himself, too, as he plates their food, carefully pours the soup into two bowls and places spoons in the bowls as well, because there’s always left over soup and Peter has always been the kind of perfect to have every last drop of it. He’s just stepping back to admire it, stomach growling a bit in hunger, when he hears Harley step into the kitchen, and he spins around with a smile to exclaim, “Hey, perfect timing! I just finished―”

Harley is staring down at the floor with wide eyes and a blank expression, shocked.

“Are you okay?” Peter asks, tone going gentle instantly. He steps forward, gingerly rests a hand on Harley’s shoulder, and feels his stomach twist when it makes Harley flinch. “What happened?”

“Um―” Harley clears his throat, brows knitting together as he shakes his head. He doesn’t look sad, or angry, or distraught – he just looks extremely surprised, and a bit overwhelmed. Peter isn’t sure what to do with this, so he just shuffles a bit closer, wraps his arm around Harley’s shoulders in a sort of half embrace, and listens intently as Harley tells him, “My, uh― my dad. I guess he… he died, somehow.”

And Peter’s heart drops. “Oh, god. Harley, I’m―”

“No, I don’t care that much about that,” Harley cuts in, shaking his head again, though this time slower, more unsure. “It’s, uh- it’s how my mom found out that matters. There were a couple kids, I guess, that showed up, and when my mom asked who they were, they said they were his kids. My dad’s kids.”

Peter parts his lips, but he isn’t sure what to say.

Harley huffs out some kind of breathy laugh, and he murmurs, “My dad had more kids. Maybe that’s why he left us, for his other family.”

And that’s when he starts to cry.

-

(“And the people you call family, the place you call home, can become unfamiliar in the blink of an eye.”)