Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nothing interesting ever happens on the night shift.

It shouldn’t have bothered him as much as it did. Harley hadn’t gotten the job in the hopes of anything interesting happening, or really anything happening. The decision, like most of his decisions, had been primarily motivated by spite.

Two months ago, he’d called Tony to tell him that he was coming up to New York for college. Tony had been, well, Tony about it. He had cracked exactly three terrible jokes about the state of dorm living, asked Harley why the hell he was going to Columbia and not MIT, and proceeded to offer him one of the empty rooms in the Stark Tower Penthouse. It would have been fine, it would have been great, except for his closing remark.

“Thank fuck you’re going to college; I’ll finally be able to give you a job.”

Which. Well.

Harley had helped rebuild the iron suit when he was twelve years old, Tony shouldn’t need a cult of stodgy old professors to tell him that Harley knew enough about Newton’s laws of motion to be hireable. In retaliation to this gross underestimation of his competency, Harley’d switched his major to English, thrown a fit about how the intricacies of transcendental literature are far too complex and nuanced to be fully appreciated in the glaring light of day, and applied for the 6 P.M. to 2 A.M. job at Crêpes and Waffles.

Admittedly, this might have been a little bit of an overreaction, but at least it’s on-brand. Harley is the unofficial king of overreactions.

To be fair, it’s not a bad place. With its painted awning and small round tables topped with flower vases, it’s probably what his mom’s daytime TV shows would call “rustic.” His boss is terrifying, but she does have a floor-to-ceiling shelf devoted to an assortment of various sprinkles and sauces.

It’s not a bad place, it really isn’t.

The only problem is that working the night shift at a waffle place is possibly the dullest job in all of existence.

There are absolutely no customers, ever, and Harley’s kind of terrible at baking anyways. He finished his overhaul of the security system in the first week, so now the only thing he has to occupy himself is a mind-numbing collection of century old literature. But he made a plan, and he’s going to stick with it. He’s going to win. (How? He’s not entirely sure yet, but it’s going to end with him telling a remorseful Tony, “I told you so.”)

So, every night, after eight hours of waffle making and stuffy-book-reading and staring at the chequered floor in a state of debilitating boredom because who even goes into a waffle place in the middle of the night, he comes back to the tower. He slams all of the doors as loudly as possible (unless Pepper’s sleeping, he doesn’t have a death wish), and he sings ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ at the top of his lungs. Sometimes he switches the sugar for salt, or puts ketchup in Tony’s shoes. At one point, he codes Dum-E to shoot glitter in Tony’s general direction every time he plays a Black Sabbath song, though he had to put an end to that one pretty quickly for fear of completely burying the lab and Tony with it.

It occurs to him, about two weeks in, that he could probably do all of these things while getting an BSME and not fucking over his sleep schedule in the process.

(It also occurs to him that this might not be the best way to prove that he’s a responsible candidate for a job, but he quickly dismisses the thought as ridiculous. Tony is in desperate need for someone to knock him down a couple of pegs, and if that someone isn’t Harley, then who is it?)

It’s halfway through October, somewhere in the vicinity of one a.m., when he realizes that the Waffle job might have been a slight strategic miscalculation.

Just as he’s begun banging his head on the counter (which, ouch), the bell over the door rings. His first thought (he always has the same one when someone walks in this late) is that it’s too close to midnight for anyone to be buying breakfast food. His second thought, when he looks up, is:

“Shit, is it Halloween already?”

The guy in the suit blinks, and the suit blinks with him. He must have paid a lot for a spoof that good.

“What – it’s the seventeenth, why would–” the guy (a kid probably, from the sound of it) looks down at himself, and then in realization protests: “no, no I’m – I’m Spiderman.”

Harley gives him a once over, drawls, “Yes, I can see that.”

“No, I mean I’m actually Spiderman,” he shoots a web at the still-open door pulling it shut. Harley groans. Now he’s going to have to figure out how to dissolve artificial webbing. Lovely.

Spiderman (Spiderboy) takes several steps closer to the counter. It’s awkward. It’s all so awkward. Is anything about this kid not awkward? He makes an aborted gesture towards Harley, swallows (somehow audibly despite the suit) and asks, “Are you ok? Like, are you concussed?”

“What? No!”

“It’s just, you hit your head on the counter pretty hard when I came in here, and now you’re making pained noises, these lights are way too bright for someone dealing with head trauma, is it ok if I look at your pupils?”

Apparently, Spiderboy speaks exclusively in stutters and run on sentences.

“Oh my god, no. Just– no.” Harley valiantly fights the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Was there something that you wanted, or did you come in here to question my health?”

“Uhm– I–,” his eyes flick to the menu, somewhere behind Harley’s head. “Can I please have three – uhm – Nutella waffles, please?”

Harley, thankful for the excuse to escape, pours out batter into the irons.

In a strange moment of good grace from some higher being, he manages to only get approximately three-and-a-half drops on the countertop. It’s a PR for him, by no small margin. This merits more than a fist pump, this is deserving of a full-on victory dance, a three-act ballet maybe–

“Look, I know you said you were okay–” (Harley at no point recalls saying he was okay) “–but are you sure you’re doing fine?”

Harley almost crashes into the countertop (pirouettes are hard), turns, and wishes he really had brained himself on the marble. One a.m. is not the time to deal with a rouge superhero sitting on (dangling from?) the celling of the kitchen of his workplace.

“What the actual fuck.”

It’s not a question, Harley is past the point of questions.

Spiderboy doesn’t pick up on this.

“Well, it was boring in there,” if Harley rolls his eyes any harder, they’ll be in danger of popping out of his head and bloodily rolling across the black and white tiles, “so I came back here, but then you started doing a dance–seizure thing, and I wanted to make sure–”

Harley shuts the iron rather emphatically. Spiderman jumps. (Seriously, why is this kid not equipped to deal with loud noises? This does not bode well for the borough of Queens in the event of another alien invasion.)

“Right, we’re going to make a deal. I’m not going to mention the fact that you are violating several New York City health codes, and you are going to stop obsessing over my hypothetical head trauma. Cool?”

Spiderman’s responding nod could give bobbleheads a run for their money.

They both sit there, in one of the most stifling silences Harley has ever experienced, for five too many moments before Harley cracks.

“What are you doing downtown, anyways?”

“What?”

“I thought the whole ‘Friendly Neighbourhood Spider’ gig,” (Harley most definitely does not use finger quotes) “was more of a Forest Hills thing?”

“There was a…situation,” he gestures vaguely, “Wait, why do you know where I live?”

Harley just barrels right on through.

“What exactly does this ‘thing’ entail?”

Spiderboy, well, falls off of the ceiling and flops himself atop the nearest counter. It’s all very graceful. Harley doesn’t know whether he’s jealous, impressed, or just second hand dizzy.

“There was a whole altercation,” cue more hand waving, “and then there was a whole motorcycle chase, except then the motorcycle chase was in the sewers – Have you seen the rats down there? Oh my god they’re the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen, they were eating through my webs, I’ll probably have nightmares – and then I caught them (the criminals, not the rats), and now I’m here.”

Harley opens the irons, forks the waffles onto a plate, and adds a slightly ridiculous amount of Nutella and powdered sugar on top. The kid deserves it. No one should have to deal with facing the rats of New York City, whether that person has superpowers or not.

Harley grabs a fork, a knife, and a glorious napkin blue covered in a chicken–waffle motif (he’s rather fond of the napkins at Crêpes and Waffles, if nothing else) and pushes back through the swinging doors, Spiderboy in close pursuit. He sets the plate by the cash register and punches several keys in quick succession.

“That’ll be $7.85, please.”

Spiderboy stands stock still for half a moment and then proceeds – like he’s some sort of mime instead of a superhero – to comically pat at his spandex-covered thighs in search of a wallet.

Harley clears his throat.

The superhero looks up bashfully, and proceeds to bluster, “Y-you wouldn’t, uhm, maybe give them to me for free, uhm, y’know, on account of saving the city from criminals on motorcycles?”

“I’m really sorry, I wish I could,” he really does, rats are terrible, “but my boss would probably boil me alive,” she really would, Madame Boudinot she likes to check the security cameras bi-weekly to make sure Harley’s not been up to any ‘funny business.’ What with her habit of threatening him bodily harm by means of various kitchen paraphernalia, it really makes him regret fixing the shop’s security.

Harley looks from Spiderboy, to the waffles, and back up to Spiderboy again. His hand goes for his own wallet before his brain has quite decided on the action, ready to–

“No!” Spiderboy is loud enough that Harley nearly jumps half out of his skin, “Just… just… just don’t pay for me, please.” He scuffs his spandexed-feet (seriously, Harley’s going to have to ask Tony how the boots on this suit work) on the chequered floor. “Can I– can I come back tomorrow, and I’ll pay you then? Then your boss won’t murder you, right?”

Harley shrugs.

Spiderboy quite literally lets out a sigh of relief, “Great, good, great, great!” Harley raises an eyebrow, and the kid shrugs, “Causing civilian casualties probably goes against a superhero code somewhere, and I don’t want to get fired.”

“I didn’t realize ‘Superhero’ was a job that you got hired for.” As far as he can tell, Tony woke up one day and decided to make his suit-clad self the world’s problem (though, to be fair, he’d already been doing that before he built the suit.)

Spiderman waves his arms, barley on this side of wild, “you know what I mean.” He then proceeds to attempt to eat one of the waffles through his mask. He realizes just before smearing Nutella all in the fabric. The dry-cleaning bill for that thing must be insane.

The kid makes several sounds that may or may not be aborted words and flails an arm (the one that’s not holding the plate of waffles, thank heavens for small miracles). Harley is willing to bet his soldering iron – the nice one that he refuses to let Tony use – that he’s blushing underneath the suit. After several moments of this Spiderboy seems to collect himself enough to form a sentence.

With a muffled “Well thank you, happy Halloween!” he turns his tail and races out the door, the bell jingling behind him as he disappears, suit, waffles, and all, into the early October air.

Harley stares down at the counter, scrutinizing the remnants of the past interaction. Assorted cutlery, Harley’s wallet, and one incredibly fabulous napkin. No plate.

His first thought is that he really should quit this job.

His second is, “How the fuck am I going to replace that plate?”

Chapter Text

“Hey Peter?”

Peter makes a noise that could be optimistically interpreted as assent.

“Why do you have a plate in your bag?”

“Huh?”

Ned lets out the kind of sigh that implies that this is at least the third time he’s tried to ask this question, which is fairly likely considering that Peter has spent the entirety of this class caught somewhere between contemplating life’s shallowest mysteries and falling asleep. He wonders if it’s possible to blind yourself from staring at a light fixture for too long. Honestly, he kind of hopes it is. In this moment, he’d be incredibly willing to give up his eyesight if it meant that he didn’t have to observe this hellscape in the form an AP US History for any longer.

“Peter!” Ned’s whisper is getting worryingly close to not being a whisper anymore.

Peter somehow manages to pull his eyelids open (it takes way too much effort) (he should never get himself involved in late-night motorcycle chases) to see an almost angry Ned gesturing at the dish that is currently crammed between his physics notes and his gym uniform.

“Oh, that,” Peter struggles to articulate the intricacies of the series of events that led him to committing petty theft in a downtown waffle place at 1:00 AM.

The bell rings, and the room is filled with a cacophony of chair legs screeching and notebooks being haphazardly stuffed away.

Peter relates the whole night (subway rats, waffles and all) to Ned as they push through the lunchtime-rush filled hallways.

“You couldn’t have, I don’t know, just left the plate there?”

“Tony threatened to rid me of my child,” Ned snorts at Peter’s affectionate name for the Iron Spider, “after I got the suit all covered in tar, and that was part of a mission that he assigned me!” Yes, Peter is still angry, no, he will not be taking questions. “Can you imagine what he would do if I got Nutella on it because I wanted a snack?”

“You could have just…not gotten the Nutella.”

“Sewer rats, Ned, sewer rats.”

They find MJ sitting at their regular corner table, dejectedly picking at a piece of rubbery cafeteria pizza and reading a terrifyingly thick book. MJ, unlike Peter and Ned, is an Incredibly Wise Person who had the foresight to get her history requirement done before senior year and now has half a free period and a second art elective, something that fills Peter with envy and anger pretty much every day.

He’s barely sat down on the bench when Ned blurts, “Peter has a crush!” and Peter’s head snaps up so fast his neck makes a slightly alarming sound.

“What?” MJ responds incredulously.

“Yeah, Waffle Boy. Peter, tell her about him!”

Peter is strongly tempted to hide underneath the table, but he’s seen the gum underneath these things and it’s not pretty.

“I don’t have a crush.”

“You said his hair was pretty and then called him ‘cute’ four times.”

“I don’t have a crush.”

“Wait, you don’t even know his name?”

“Nope,” Ned pops the ‘p’, “and he’s planning on going back tonight, because spending two hours on the subway just to talk to a nameless Waffle Boy for three-and-a-half minutes is obviously the best way to spend a Friday afternoon.”
“Waffle Boy,” MJ snickers.

Peter’s face probably looks like it’s been coloured red with several magic markers, “Look, just because I don’t want to be a felon–”

“Peter, plate stealing is, like, a petty crime at best.”

MJ looks like she’s seconds away from pulling out her ‘People in Distress’ sketchbook. Peter would like to be anywhere but here. A volcano or a tank of starved piranhas would be preferable.

“Can you imagine what he must have been like in there?” MJ proceeds to do a Very Bad Impression which consists entirely of stutters, emphatic hand waving, and mangled ‘sorry’s, and is absolutely nothing like Peter at all.

Ned laughs so hard that water comes out of one of his nostrils.

Peter buries his head in his hands.

“Oh my god.”

Peter has his last class with MJ. It’s bio, so it’s usually not all that bad except for when she has something novel to tease him about, in which case it is very, very bad.

They’re walking out of the building together, and Peter’s praying to every god he can remember that MJ’s finally done, when she says, “Well, good luck with Waffles. I’m 74% sure that you’ll be able to find out his name.”

“You know, as a superpowered person, I could probably–”

“No, nope, bzzt,” she makes a gameshow buzzer sound, “people who are afraid of committing felony via plate theft aren’t allowed to make threats.”

Peter huffs, and MJ grins.

Her knuckles are very sharp, especially when she uses them to punch you in the upper arm.

“Go get your boy!”

Peter flips her the bird as he walks away.

Peter walks into Tony’s R&D lab only to find it full of inflatable pools. He closes his eyes pinches his arm several times, just to make sure that this isn’t some bizarre sleep deprivation-induced hallucination, but when he opens them again the room is still very literally stuffed, floor to ceiling, with what are probably upwards of seven hundred plastic kiddie pools. Peter shoves his shoulder at the nearest one, and several noodles and a single rainbow beach ball cascade from the barrier and fall at his feet. Clearly, whoever just spent way too much of their time trying to piss Tony off is quite creative, not to mention intimately familiar with the man’s abject terror of all things pool-party related.

“FRIDAY?”

“Yes, Peter?”

“D’you know where Mr. Stark is right now?”

“I believe the boss is currently hiding out on floor 103,” and if any AI could ever be described as smug, it would definitely be FRIDAY in this moment.

“Great, thanks FRI.”

“Anytime, Peter.”

Two hallways and one elevator ride later, Peter finds Tony sat on the back of one of Pepper’s nice couches and typing furiously away on a laptop. His hair’s all a mess, and as he strikes the keys with much more vindication than required, Peter can just barely hear him muttering about inflatable swans and cannibalism and somebody named “Harley.” It’s just slightly worrying, considering that Tony only ever types on an actual computer when something’s gone disastrously wrong, and Peter’s not quite sure that a pool toy prank is the calibre of world-ending merits the use of a MacBook.

Peter stands, still as the potted plant behind him, for several long moments. When Tony doesn’t look up, he clears his throat.

And then proceeds to clear his throat until it becomes clear that Tony is not going to look up before he does considerable damage to his hypopharynx.

“Mr. Stark?”

Tony quite nearly falls out of his skin and onto the hardwood floor below him. He snaps the MacBook (the MacBook, Peter’s brain continues to obsess) shut, runs a harried hand through his hair.

“Hey, kid, what the fuck are you doing here?”

“I was going to run some analysis on the fractal dimension of those silica particles but with the lab –”

“Fuck a duck, the lab,” Tony’s eyes widen comically, and Peter wonders what kind of absolute calamity it must have taken to make him forgotten its current state of disaster. “Christ, cock, and chrysanthemums, I will absolutely murder that hot mess of a teenager if he ever gets back –” and now Peter is getting more than slightly worried, because if Tony is cursing like Pepper, several important somethings have probably just been blown to very small shreds.

“Mr. Stark, what exactly is happening right now?”

Tony leaps off the couch and catches far too much air for a non-superpowered, middle-aged man (he’s a little manic at the best of times) (Peter has a sinking feeling that now is decidedly not the best of times) and opens up the MacBook (the honest-to-god MacBook) to show Peter a split screen of a Times article and a subreddit.

“The sewer rats have been dying – serves them right, the little fuckers, pizza rat should have been made an enemy of the state and I don’t want to hear what anyone else has to say about it – and their blood is getting all up in the sewage, which has got, like, half the city on verge of strike, and it turns out that apparently,” Tony nostrils flare, which is perhaps the most his face has moved since Peter walked into the room, “Apparently, they’ve all got teeth punctures in their throats, like there’s some sort of fucking vampire on the loose – ”

“Since when do dead rats mean a vampire?”

“Occam’s razor, kid. It’s either an incredibly fucked up raccoon or a vampire.”

“It’s more than a little bit scary that a vampire is the simpler answer in this situation.”

Tony nods so vigorously that Peter is a little scared for the structural integrity of his neck. “Anyway, since when has New York had a vampire infestation?”

“I know, it was bad enough with the rats and the hordes of murderous aliens. But three-one-one is yelling at me to fix it because apparently, they’re too busy rescuing cats from the goddam trees to deal with some sort of underground vampire organization and the FBI obviously can’t be bothered to deal with the YA thriller that’s about to take place in my city, and you can be sure as shit the second an actually half-respectable creature gets Dracula’d, every last one of them will be yelling up a storm at Pepper’s next press conference.”

“Have there been any sightings or just… dead rats?” (The irony that he had been fighting – and losing to – the self-same rats less than twelve hours ago is not lost on Peter.) (Honestly, if the vampire is getting rid of the rats, they might not be such a bad thing.)

“Currently, I’m still at the ‘Reddit Research,’ stage.”

Peter nods. Reddit Research generally consists of whiny textposts, grammatically challenged conspiracy stories, and some rather fantastically specific yet strangely versatile memes. Reddit Research also tends to mean that Tony is quite stuck.

Tony slams the laptop shut decisively.

“Maybe I’ll get Bruce to help. One of those Ph.D.’s has got to include vampirism somewhere – there’s only so many dissertations you can write before you stumble across resurrective cannibalism, right?” he reaches up to scratch at his temple, “Hey, how would you feel about incorporating some deployable shells into suit 13.5?” Peter blinks, struggling to figure out when exactly Tony switched subjects, but he never really gets a chance to pinpoint the exact moment because Tony barrels on, “There’s some negative space to be exploited behind the web shooters, so really, there’s no reason not to.”

Peter slowly nods, “We’d have to figure out how to keep the web fluid from reacting early, wait, no, actually, I think one of the old formulas might work for that.”

“On such a small scale it might even be a good idea to go with something vaguely thermobaric–”

“But would a that long of blast wave even be ideal?”

“If we modify the deployment so that the…”

More than several minutes later, they’re racing to the elevator in hopes of testing Karen 13’s compatibility with the vibranium detonators Shuri had sent Tony two weeks ago, only to once again confronted with the literal barricade of pool toys. DUM-E and U only are about a sixth of the way through unsystematically deconstructing this dubious feat of engineering, and the lab looks like what would happen if a war zone and a nineties sunscreen commercial had a child. When Tony sees it, he quite literally shudders.

Peter checks his watch, which confirms that it has not only been multiple minutes, but over two hours.

“Fuck!”

“Look, kid, I know I don’t keep it entirely PG,” Peter’s not sure that he succeeds in keeping his cringe on the inside, “but if you start talking like that at home around that lovely aunt of yours,” Peter officially wants to die under a table far, far away from here, “I’m not entirely certain that she wouldn’t ban you from ever setting foot in the Tower again– Peter, where are you going? Kid, you’ve got to stay here when I’m talking to you!”

“Sorry Mr. Stark, I’ve got to go return a plate to a – a friend,” he waves his backpack around, which probably doesn’t explain very much, “and now I’m gonna be really late. I’ll, uh, see you Sunday?”

He’s already halfway into the elevator before Tony can form much of a rebuttal (thank god for FRIDAY), but he piles on an extra “Sorry!” for good luck right before the doors close.

It’s only when Peter’s climbing out of the Spring Street subway station that he realizes he probably should have changed into his suit back at the tower. Luckily, or maybe in some strange plea of forgiveness from the universe after subjecting Peter to the sewer rats (no he will never be letting this go), there’s a very conveniently placed alley half a block down from the waffle place.

After grabbing the plate and webbing his backpack underneath the nearest fire escape, he walks back out onto the street. The street is still busy, it’s all a very different vibe when it’s seven at night, not two in the morning. The stares Peter is getting are making him seriously regret changing at all when he probably could have just dropped the plate by the door and ran.

But he’s committed now, so he pushes open the door to the bright sound of bells, slightly terrified of whatever Twitter nonsense he’s probably just caused.

And then he looks up, and Peter almost drops the plate right then and there.

It’s just that, well, he’d almost convinced himself that Waffle Boy had been a figment of his adrenaline riddled imagination, but apparently Peter hadn’t been hallucinating. Because there he is, hunched over a book behind the counter, with the most absolutely ridiculous jawline the world has ever seen, and Peter kind of wants to die.

And then Waffle Boy looks up and drawls, “Well, look who decided to show up,” and he smirks (He smirks!) (At Peter!), dimple popping, and Peter’s pretty sure he’s already dead.

“Hi, uhm, I’ve brought your plate,” Peter curses his brain for not being better at making words.

“I can see that,” and, oh, the smirk can get bigger.

Peter sets plate, with its eight dollar bills taped to its centre, down on the counter.

“You know, you could have just eaten in the shop instead of running out into the street like a cat faced with a bath.”

“What, like you haven’t got three security cameras running in here?” The cameras are almost too nice for a quaint little place like this: sleek, well-hidden enough that Peter almost missed the third one. He’d bet his LEGO Death Star that they’ve all got nice mics, too. “Why do you even need three of them, anyways? Lot of heists go down here?”

“Only yours.”

Peter probably deserves that.

“I’m so sorry about that, I really, really am,” Peter’s doing his level best not to start stuttering again but he’s not sure how well it’s working, “did your boss kill you? I know you said she was kind of scary, and I didn’t mean to make –”

“Dude, you’re fine. Breathe, okay?”

And now Peter’s back to wanting to melt right through the floor.

“Well, I’ll just be going, then. Thanks for everything, have a nice night –”

“Hey, hey, wait a minute!” Peter pauses, already halfway to the door, “You can’t walk into a waffle place and then not buy yourself some waffles,” He chances a glance over his shoulder. Waffle Boy’s eyes are bright, his forehead wrinkling as he grins at Peter, “it’s just not done.”

“Well,” Peter drags the ‘l’ out, ‘welllll’, “What would you recommend?”

“I, personally, am a sprinkles guy, so I’d probably go with the Saturday Special,” Waffle Boy gestures vaguely behind him, “but the Strawberry Waffles are a fan favourite.”

“What about the crêpes?”

“I’ll be honest with ya,” the boy’s cheeks are ever so slightly pink, and Peter is fairly sure that it’s messing with his capacity for coherent thought, “I don’t really have the best handle on flipping them over yet, so unless you want a slightly charred mess of scrambled dough, the waffles are probably a safer bet.”

“I don’t know, with a recommendation like that, the crêpes sound pretty good.”

The boy rolls his eyes, “I’ll make you the Saturday Special.”

This time, he doesn’t protest when Peter follows him into the back.

In the kitchen, Peter sits on the counter while Waffle Boy tells him how he overhauled the security system after an early morning shopping spree when he couldn’t stomach the idea of doing any more homework. They get to talking about beam detectors –Peter’s not really a security nerd, the fact that he even knows the difference between a multi-sensor and a beam detector is probably a sign that he spends too much time around Happy – and Waffle Boy gets halfway round to pulling up a cost-benefit analysis of different brands before he realizes the waffles are about to burn.

Somewhere in between piling approximately seventy-three toppings on the waffles, the boy explains that the “Saturday Special” isn’t actually a menu item but instead mark 12 of his attempts to make the most elaborate waffle known to humankind.

“It’ll be the eighth wonder of the world. They’ll put me in the history books. Harley Keener, inventor of the ultimate breakfast.”

They head back out through the doors, Harley with a waffles balanced on his plastic-gloved hand (“I hope you don’t mind, it’s just that I don’t really trust you not to abscond with my plates.”), Peter trailing behind.

“I can grab some money; I’ll be back in, like, thirteen seconds.”

“Nah, leave it,” the smirk is back, “you can bring it next time.”

Peter’s stomach performs a triple-backflip. Harley wants him to come back? Oh god, Harley wants him to come back. His cheeks make a valiant effort to cosplay as tomatoes, and he’s never been quite so glad to be wearing a mask.

He scuffs his suited-toe on the chequered floor as Harley deposits the waffles onto a paper napkin (apparently, he doesn’t trust Peter with chicken-and-waffle printed fabric napkins, either) and hands them over to Peter.

“T-thank you. Well. See you – see you next time?” Peter doesn’t mean for it to be a question, but that’s how it turns out anyways.

Harley grins, cheeks dimpling, “See you next time.”

So, Peter eats the waffle while perched on the fire escape with his mask rolled halfway up his face, trying to keep it from destroying his suit – it really is quite an elaborate waffle –trying not to think. Trying not to make up jokes so he can see Harley’s laugh again.  Trying not to calculate how long he’ll have to wait before he comes back so that he doesn’t look like some absolute stalker. Trying not to picture how soft Harley’s hair: how soft it looks, the way it flops over his forehead when he runs his fingers through it.

He’s trying, he really is, but it’s not quite working.

Chapter Text

Harley is working Halloween night, which in it of itself should be enough proof that Madame Boudinot is a supervillain hiding in the body of a five-foot even French woman. He’s been trying to get Tony to do something about her for months, but either he’s squandered enough of his trust with the whole nocturnal-major-switch-and-prank debacle, or Tony has more of a moral compass than anyone accounted for. 

Harley is morosely watching the face his watch as the minutes drag by, trying not to be sad about it. He really, truly is. It’s just that Halloween had always been his and Abby’s thing. He desperately wants to call her, but Madame Boudinot (someday it’ll come out that she’s actually Loki in disguise and Harley will be able to tell everyone that he told them so) has some sort of sixth sense for when he’s being unprofessional, even when she’s nowhere near Crêpes and Waffles.

He’s half-heartedly debating taking apart the standing mixer, just out of spite, when Spiderboy comes through the door.

Harley gives him a half-hearted little wave.

This does nothing to deter superhero. Over the past two weeks, he’s become so comfortable around Harley that he’s all but dropped the stuttering.

He bounces up to the counter, placing his now-customary crumpled handful of bills down on the counter.

“Why aren’t you out trick-or-treating, you fool?”

“Hey,” he whines into it, ‘heyyyyy,’ but Harley’s ninety-four percent certain that underneath that mask of his, he’s beaming. “How old do you think I am, twelve?”

“With that suit, people would be throwing candy at you. You’d barley be able to carry it all home.”

“I feel like you’re insinuating that I should take advantage of the inherently deceptive nature of my suit to dupe children of their candy.”

Harley blinks. Usually, Spiderboy talks like he’s the human equivalent of a golden retriever puppy, so it’s more than slightly off-putting when he pulls out words that make him sound like he’s the one getting an English major, not Harley. (Why is Harley even getting an English major?) (He regrets several of his life decisions.)

Despite this, he recovers quickly, “That’s exactly what I’m insinuating.”

“Well, you should – not insinuate that. I’m a superhero, not a vigilante. There are, like, rules for these types of things,” and puppy Spiderboy back. Harley breathes an internal sigh of relief.

“Well, if you haven’t been taking advantage of civilians, I’m assuming you’ll need some sustenance.”

They assume their regular positions: Spiderboy dangling from the ceiling, Harley at the waffle iron. From the corner of his eye, Harley can see the superhero edging towards the sprinkles shelf, going for the chocolate covered almonds. He thinks he’s subtle, but he’s not. It’s times like these (well, actually, most of the time) (Spiderboy is almost comically clumsy) when Harley wonders how he manages to catch criminals at all.

“What the heck?”

Harley spins around to make fun of Spiderboy’s conditional refusal to curse, only to have a m&m strike his cheek.

“Ow, what was that for?”

Spiderboy drops off the ceiling, and holds out a hand full of chocolates. Harley’s pretty sure he’s attempting what might be described as a ‘menacing prowl,’ but it’s not quite working out for him.

“Do you see what’s wrong with this picture?”

“No…?”

“They’re all blue!” he throws his hands in the air, sending the aforementioned blue m&ms bouncing off the walls, “Shit, sorry!”

“What the actual fuck?”

“Hey, don’t look at me like I’m the one who did something wrong here.”

Harley raises a silent eyebrow.

Spiderboy pauses from where he’s crouched, picking m&ms out from behind a baseboard, to let out a huff, “You’re the one who’s harbouring blue food in your eclectic eating establishment!”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re one of them.”

“One of who?”

“One of those ridiculous ‘food can’t be blue, it’s just not cosmically wrong,’ people.”

Spiderboy shakes his head, “well, whatever it is, it’s definitely not cosmically right.”

“I raise you,” Harley no amateur when it comes to dramatic pauses, but this one is particularly good, “blueberries.”

“They’re literally purple,” his voice is just barely on this side of a screech.

Harley rolls his eyes, “Ridiculous.”

(It turns out that his Halloween doesn’t end up so bad after all.)

The next time Spiderboy shows up to Harleys’ ‘eclectic eating establishment,’ he barely makes it through the door before falling rather dramatically (Harley would know, he’s a connoisseur of drama.) (Tony’s sock drawer can attest to this.) all over the floor.

“Woah there, cowboy. What’s going on?”

Several muffled sounds emerge from the slumped superhero, but Harley can’t for the life of him puzzle them into any form of coherent language.

He crouches, pokes a blue-spandex-covered shoulder.

“Watcha doing on my floor, bud?”

“Don’t call me buddy,” or at least that’s what Harley assumes he says, it sort of sounds like ‘dnntcllleebdddyy.’

“C’mon, we’re getting up now,” he toes at Spiderman’s shoulder. When he shows no signs of moving, Harley drags him across the tiles to prop him against the counter. “Look, you’re going to have to tell me if you’re hurt at all, because I’m starting to get a little bit scared here.”

“M’not hurt,” he mumbles petulantly, then pauses to take stock. “Well, nothing hurts, except for maybe my pride. My pride might as well be slowly bleeding out underneath the FDR.”

“There’s no space for your pride underneath the FDR, bleeding out or not.”

“Exactly!”

Harley pokes a shoulder again and receives a disgruntled noise in response.

“You gonna tell me what happened?”

A half laugh, “You get all southern-sounding when you’re worried about me.”

Against his will, Harley feels his cheeks reddening.

And then Spiderboy says, “Don’t worry about it, it’s cute,” which most certainly does not help with the tomato cheek problem.

Spiderboy blinks, “Shit, sorry,” and then his face is in his palms and now they’re back to half-muffled words, “I very much did not mean to say that. Just ignore my existence, okay?”

“I’ve been trying, but you keep showing up at my place of employment. What am I supposed to do, attempt to get a restraining order for someone who’s name I don’t even know?”

This earns him a huff of a laugh. It makes the tips of Harley’s fingers feel warm, just a little bit.

“I’m sorry, I can go.”

“You’re absolutely fine,” Harley’s not quite sure what else to say to make him believe it. “Dude, I literally just want to make sure you’re not having some sort of existential crisis on my floor.”

“No, no, I’m okay. Just really sleep deprived,” there’s an expansive hand gesture that almost catches Harley by the stomach, “feeling like a sort of bad hero right now.”

“No, that’s nonsense. Your bar is just too high. You can’t possibly be worse than the Hulk.”

The only response that Harley receives is a half-hearted shrug.

“You can’t possibly think that you’re worse at your job than a big green monster who’s only effective because he hasn’t sorted through his anger management issues.”

Spiderboy gives another shrug, his whole-body slumping.

Harley racks his brain.

“Hey, you know what would probably make it better?”

“What?”

“Some blue food.”

And then Harley has a shrieking superhero chasing him through the swinging doors, causing enough noise that they’ve probably woken the upstairs tenants.

In the kitchen, they fight over the food dye. Harley holds the little bottle high above the hero’s head, ridiculously thrilled for the extra inches he has on the superhero. When Spiderboy tries to web it from him, he calls foul.

“Nope, no way. You can’t complain about your powers and then turn around and use them in a crusade against coloured food.”

“Uhm, yes, I can, because the laws of the universe state that blue food is a crime and therefore, I am allowed, neigh, compelled to do everything in my power to prevent you from creating such an abomination.”

(He lets Harley win anyways.)

They talk about the matter loss dilemma and Harley staunchly argues that black holes are simply collections of teeny-weeny little wormholes, a concept which confounds and abhors Spiderboy almost as much as the idea of blue food.

Harley tops the waffles with whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and blueberries, and the superhero stares at them in dismay.

“How can something so wrong smell so good?”

“You sound like you just stepped out of a bodice ripper novel.”

He clamps his hands over where his ears must be under the suit, “H-Harley, don’t!” and Harley would bet Tony’s favourite suit that Spiderboy is blushing.

He hands him the waffles, all wrapped in a napkin, and Spiderboy pretends to grimace. Harley follows him to the door, taps him on the shoulder right before he lets in the brisk November air.

“You sure you’re okay?”

Spiderboy pauses, looks down at the pile of blue carbs and whipped cream in his hand, and then back up again. He doesn’t quite meet Harley’s eyes.

He shrugs, “Well, there was a whole thing with a skyscraper, but I’m very okay,” he seems to consider this for a second, “though I guess that depends on how you define okay. I might be just a sight bit concussed, but that’s fine.”

“You filthy hypocrite, you can’t come in here and not tell me you have head trauma–”

But Spiderboy is already gone.

––––––––––––––––––

It’s cold, colder than it has any right to be this far out from Christmas, when Harley climbs out of the subway, half a block from home. And that, that is new. When did he start thinking of Stark Tower as home? He trudges through the biting air towards the revolving doors, trying to shake the melancholy from his fingertips.

For the first time in twelve nights (yes, Harley counted) (shut up, he doesn’t have a problem) Spiderboy hadn’t come to Crêpes and Waffles, and it’s … well, it feels odder than expected. He doesn’t feel betrayed. Or abandoned. Or hurt. Or scared. As a matter of fact, Harley feels absolutely no emotions about this. Really.

The more he thinks about the very perplexing twinge that’s happening in his gut, the more his thoughts start to tangle, until it’s impossible to follow one without getting struck in the face by at least five others.

He really hopes Spiderboy is okay.

(He really hopes Spiderboy hasn’t forgotten him.)

The elevator ride feels like it lasts three times longer than usual.

It’s just as he’s sliding under his comforter when he realises why. (Why the solemn fingertips, why the empty feeling, why seemingly source-less fear.) He blindly fumbles for his phone, hastily pulls up Abby’s phone number with the brightness turned all the way down.

It’s late, but hey, it’s an hour earlier in Tennessee. Anyways, Abby is a little chaos gremlin with a propensity for being awake at all hours of day and night.

“Hi?” her voice is sleep-heavy. Harley feels bad, but not bad enough to hang up. This is an emergency, after all.

“Hey, I have a little bit of a problem.”

He can almost feel her raising her eyebrows in the silence that ensues.

He scratches his left eyebrow, trying to psych himself up to admitting it.

“I might, maybe, have a little bit of a crush on someone.”

“That’s good, I was getting worried that you’d woken me up for no reason.”

“Sorry about that, by the –”

“Nope,” she pops the ‘p,’ “you’re all good. Now shut up and tell me about them.”

“Well… he can get kind of nervous, but he’s loud when you get to know him. And really sweet, sort of like a golden retriever,” he waves his hands around, trying to better articulate the intricacies of Spiderboy, before he realises that she’s in a different state.

“Jesus,” (‘gee-SUS’) “you are whipped. What’s his name? What does he look like?”

“Uhm…”

“Uhm?”

“Well, you see, the thing is –”

“Harley. My least favourite brother –

“Hey, what the hell? I’m your only brother!”

“– don’t tell me you met him on Tumblr or some shit.”

He bites his lip.

“Harley, did you seriously meet him on Tumblr? You know he could be, like, a serial killer? You could have just been comparing a mass murderer to America’s favourite dog, you know that?”

“No, it’s a bit worse than that.”

“What could possibly be worse than crushing on a super-secret Tumblr assassin?”

His lip might as well be bleeding at this point.

“Harley?”

“It’s Spiderman.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then the line is filled with Abby’s snorting laughter.

“Shut up!”

“I absolutely will not. I will laugh clear through your wedding ceremony. I will laugh at the births of your children.”

“That is entirely uncalled for.”

“It really isn’t, Harley. Of all the stupidly ridiculous and dramatic things that you’ve done–”

“Hey!” Harley prides himself on being ridiculous and dramatic.

“– crushing on a superhero definitely takes the cake.”

“I feel so attacked right now.”

“As you should. Do you have his number yet?”

“Abby, he’s a superhero.”

“Well, you’ve got to use that Keener charm for something.”

Harley covers his head with a pillow. Through it, he can faintly here Abby’s muffled voice:

“So, how’d you meet him?”

Harley shouldn’t be shocked when Spiderboy shows up to Crêpes and Waffles covered in blood. He’s seen the hero in the throes of a concussion-induced existential crisis, heard stories about his less than pretty fights. Harley should be very equipped to handle this.

Spiderboy slumps against the counter, a trail of murky red tracing his path to the door. His head seems unbearably heavy when he rests it in his hands, and his gloves are ripped, showing just the slightest bit of bloodied skin. His shoulders are shaking very slightly, and – and – oh. A sob emits from the superhero. Harley has seen him loopy, seen him sleep deprived, seen him worried, but he has not seen him like this. Never like this. And Harley thought he could handle it, told himself he could handle it, was positive he would be fine with a death drenched Spiderboy. Maybe he could, if it were different. Maybe he could, if there were less tears. Because Harley Keener can deal with a lot of things, but it turns out that he most certainly cannot handle Spiderboy crying.

He’s on the other side of the counter before he’s made any sort of conscious decision to move. He reaches out to touch a shoulder (the suit is slippery to the touch, so different from the time they’d fought in the kitchen), fighting a grimace.

Spiderboy – and he’s never seemed more like a boy than he does now – collapses into him.

And Harley – Harley –

Harley feels like someone took a demolition drill to his insides, set each and every one of his fingers aflame.

He wants to burn down this city to the ground, turn every last lamppost and mailbox to ash. He wants to tear it’s streets apart, limb from limb (Do streets have limbs?) (He’s not sure of very much right now). He wants to find whoever did this, whoever made such a mess of Spiderboy, and he wants to bury them so deep underneath the surface of the earth that their bones melt away into nothingness.

But he can’t.

Instead, he stains his clothes, clutches on to this boy. This boy who’s name he might never know, who’s face he might never see. This wonderful boy, who deserves much more than the world he tries so desperately to save. This broken boy, who is slowly being taken apart by the world, piece by piece. This boy, who is shaking apart in Harley’s helpless embrace.

He doesn’t know how long they stand there until the sounds of Spiderboy’s tears start to slow. When Harley pulls back, his skin feels sticky.

“Hey –” he reaches for the hero’s chin, but pauses just before the tips of his fingers make contact. “Hey. Look at me, please?” (Harley is pleading.) (Harley never pleads.)

Spiderboy’s masked face rises a fraction of a centimetre.

“I’m going to take you to the bathroom, okay? I’ve got an extra sweatshirt and jeans; you can get clean up a little bit.”

There’s a head tilt that may or may not be a nod.

Harley guides him through the swinging doors, pausing to grab the worn StarkTech hoodie he’d left on one of the counters, and leads him to the bathroom. Spiderboy pauses on the threshold.

“There aren’t any cameras in the bathroom. State law.”

“N-no, I know,” and his voice is raw, scraping in Harley’s ears, “I-I think – I d-don’t want to take your c-clothes.”

“Oh my god,” how on earth is he like this, even traumatized and battle-worn? “Just – just get rid of the blood, okay?”

“Okay.”

He closes the door behind him. His hands are shaking.

Harley breathes out through his nose, eyes caught on the wood panelling in front of him.

“Okay.”

Harley’s getting a little scared that Spiderboy is passed out or drowning or something when he finally emerges from the bathroom.

And.

Well.

He’s got his mask on, but the rest of the suit is clutched in his hands. He’s got on an extra pair of Harley’s jeans (god only knows why he had them at the shop) and he’s– well– he’s wearing his hoodie. Spiderboy is wearing Harley’s hoodie. This is not what he should be thinking about right now, these are not the right thoughts, not for this situation. But. It’s just–

Pull yourself together, Keener.

Spiderboy hoists himself up, perching next to Harley, and wraps his arms around his knees. The sleeves are too long on him, covering his hands completely.

“There were kids, you know?” his voice is small. Harley hates it. “God – there were – there were fucking kids.” He lets out a wet sound may or may not be a sob, “I sound like – like such a cliché, but – but –” he buries his face in his hands, “he almost got them. He almost got them, and I almost wasn’t fast enough, and what if next time –”

“No.”

Spiderboy’s head jerks up.

“No. You can’t do that to yourself.”

“Harley, people were bleeding. People were dying. And it was – it was all my fault.”

Harley breathes out through his nose, “Look, I don’t know what happened –”

“He said he was some sort of vampire.”

“Right, okay. A vampire attack – what the fuck? A vampire attack? Since when does New York have a vampire infestation?”

Spiderboy offers a shrug.

“Regardless, an undead human-mosquito hybrid,” and hey, was that almost a laugh? “deciding that he wants a midnight snack in the form of some kindergarteners is a lot of things, but it is most definitely not your fault.”

“But–”

Harley shakes his head, “How many ways am I going to have to rephrase this,” he pokes at Spiderboy’s forehead, “until it gets through your skull? You have no control over other people. If they decide that they want to do terrible things, then that was their choice to make, not yours.”

“But the Atlantic published an –”

“Well, the Atlantic can go fuck themselves.”

“But–”

“Shh.” Harley holds a finger to Spiderboy’s face, millimetres away from where he figures his lips must be, underneath the mask.

Spiderboy blinks.

The silence expands between them, thick and stagnant.

And then, and then, Spiderboy slowly (so ridiculously slowly) shifts until his head is resting warmly on Harley’s shoulder.

“I-is this o-okay?”

“Yeah,” Harley’s voice comes out breathier than it probably should, “Yeah, you’re okay.”

The waffle iron produces a faint ding. The batch Harley had mixed up while Spiderboy was cleaning up is going to be a mess if he leaves it there much longer. But there are probably some leftovers in a fridge somewhere, and besides, the boy’s breath is evening out, soft on his shoulder, halfway asleep already.

Harley wouldn’t move, not for the world, not if there was a bomb that needed defusing and he was the only person left who knew how.

He thinks maybe that’s the difference between the two of them.

When he Harley receives the email, late one December night, he’d almost forgotten the whole thing.

Dear Mr. Keener,

            We are pleased to inform you that your request to switch into the engineering program has been accepted. Please report to …

He scans through it, eyes catching on the last line.

… we expect to see you on campus January 3 …

Harley closes his laptop with a dull thud.

“Well, shit.”

Chapter Text

It’s been almost six days since he last saw Harley. It’s been almost six days since the last time he’ll see Harley. Probably forever. (He knows he’s being whiny.) (He sort of hates himself for it, but not enough to stop.)

It’s just.

It’s just that the Thing is (it’s a Thing with a capitol T type of Thing), Harley is a genius. The type of genius that would be entirely wasted if he spent the next four years of his life working the night shift at a 24-hour waffle place while he gouged his eyes out over Hemmingway. Peter knows this. And the other Thing is, the night time visits hadn’t been too great for Peter. Not that he hadn’t liked seeing Harley, Peter would give up at least two of his toes to see Harley regularly (and isn’t that just ridiculous? They’ve only known each other for, what, three months?), but all the commuting and patrolling and school-working and slightly alarming amounts of time spent talking had added up so that he’d been getting four hours of sleep a night, tops. And, sure, while being bit by a radioactive spider means that he can deal with sleep deprivation without going medically insane, it doesn’t mean it’s good for him.

But despite that, when he’d pushed through the door of Crepes and Waffles clutching Harley’s jeans threadbare sweatshirt and the boy in question’s first words to him had been “I’m sorry,” neither of the Things (fuck the Things, both of the Things, all of the Things) had mattered all that much to Peter.

(The same sweatshirt is still in Peter’s closet. Harley wouldn’t take it back, claiming that it “looked better on him.”) (Sometimes Peter sleeps with it under his pillow, because he is a creep.)

And it would have been fine – well, fine is maybe a bit of an overstatement, but it would have been manageable, at the very least – if Harley had just texted him. Honestly, he’s starting to think writing his number down on a napkin (God, he’s a cliché, isn’t he?) and pressing it into Harley’s slightly shaking hand had been some sort of tear induced hallucination. Maybe Harley doesn’t like Peter as much as Peter likes him. Well, obviously he doesn’t like Peter that much, but… 

He just.

He just thought, because of the leftover traces of a tear on Harley’s cheek, that maybe he’d liked him. Tolerated him. At the very least, not hated him. Maybe it hadn’t been a tear, after all. Maybe Harley had just been really sweaty. Specifically on one cheek. In the middle of winter.

It’s just that Peter thought that maybe he’d text. Maybe he wrote it out his number all wrong, and Harley’s been having long, pedantic conversations about the layout of the Millennium Falcon with some lovely old lady who has an incredibly extensive knowledge of Star Wars. Probably not, though. Peter’s ninety-three percent sure that Harley just didn't want to text him. He might have even been glad to quit, so that he wouldn’t have to deal with Peter anymore. The tear was probably just some sort of freak droplet of water that had fallen from a lightbulb–

Peter just.

Peter just thought – well. Harley had laughed at his jokes, sometimes. And smiled, right at him. And he’d given him his sweatshirt when he’d cried. And. Peter thought. He thinks – Peter doesn’t know what he’d been thinking.

Needless to say, Peter’s been moping.

At school, MJ had poked him in the side (with various instruments, all in the same location) on eight separate occasions. Ned keeps giving him conciliatory handshakes. Peter knows he means well, but conciliatory handshakes are the worst type of handshakes. They’re all sad and slow and the only thing they accomplish is making him feel slower and sadder than he already does.

“Something wrong with you, kid?”

“How could you tell?” Peter’s voice is muffled by the lab table he’s pressing his face into.

“Your pathetic energy is leaking out all over my lab and I don’t like it. FRIDAY doesn’t like it –”

“I’ve found several peer-reviewed sources that inform me sadness is a perfectly normal response in humans when –”

“Shut up, FRI. Up and at ‘em, Peter,” he somehow manages to jab a flathead screw in exactly the same spot below his ribs that MJ had been prodding at. It’s more painful than the plastic fork, but less than her pencil. MJ really loves to sharpen her pencils. “We’ve got heroing to do.”

“Hm?” Peter makes a concerted effort to move but just ends up sliding further onto the table.

Tony lets out an impressive sigh, all but throwing himself down on the bench next to Peter.

“I’ve got news. On your vampire.”

“Hey, wait a minute, when did he become my vampire?”

“I thought that would get you moving.”

Peter shrugs, looking down at the table which is now about a foot farther away from him than it had been moments before.

“Anyways, Bruce had a run-in with him–”

“Dr. Banner saw him? When? Why didn’t he get me?”

“It was your Christmas break, kid, we both thought you deserved a bit of a rest.” Yeah, great rest he’d had. Maybe if he’d been fighting crime, he wouldn’t have had the time to stop by the waffle shop and he wouldn’t have had to hear Harley’s hiccupping apology–

“Peter? Hello? Are you still breathing? Peter?” Tony’s waving a hand back and forth in front of his face.

“I should sue you for emotional damages.”

“Kid, I know for a fact that Pepper is your only source for legal advice, and she’s not letting anyone with plans of a legal battle get within ten miles of the Stark name, not even her you, and everyone knows you’re her favourite.”

“I am Ms. Pott’s favourite.”

“See, there are things in life worth living for. Now, can we get back to me telling you about your villain? Or, if you want to have emotions, we can take the elevator up to the couch, it’s much better for crying–”

“Mr. Stark, I don’t know where you’ve been, but he is not my villain.”

“Shockingly, that works every time.”

Peter glares at him.

“Anyways, Bruce got into a bit of an altercation with him last week in a grocery store. He got away – turns out that our dear green friend’s proportions aren’t all that suited to the sewers – but before that Bruce managed to learn a bit about him. Turns out that his name is Morbius. I’ve got FRI on lookout for anything related to him, but so far, nothing yet. Also, Bruce said something about him being an ‘alive’ vampire, or some shit?”

“Oh.” Peter sits up straighter, “Oh!”

“Kid?”

Peter already has his laptop out of his bag, “He said something, when we were fighting, about being a ‘living vampire.’”

“And you didn’t think to mention it until now?”

Peter hadn’t paid much attention to it, really. He’d been more focused on the blood, and the kids screaming, and how long the police were taking to show up. How he hadn’t been enough to get everyone out of danger’s way. He doesn’t usually remember that much about his fights, just vague colours and the curling, smothering panic that tightens deep in his chest.

“Hey, kid. Kid! You’re okay, alright? You’re here.”

“Yeah, yes.” Peter unclenches his fists, blinks at his laptop screen three times. “Uhm. Sorry, Mr. Stark.”

Peter sees Tony shake his head out of the corner of his eye (dismissively, comfortingly, he’s not quite sure) before he hunches back over the keyboard, typing furiously.

He flicks through several searches before he jabs his finger at the screen.

“Look!”

It’s a paper, entitled Porphyria cutanea tarda: Recent update.

“Did you seriously just google scholar this shit?”

Peter shrugs, pointing at the author line.

First published is someone named Michael Morbius.

“If you’ve just found this villain we’ve been tracking for months on honest-to-god google scholar I swear on the soul of every–”

“Mr. Stark, when I told you there were papers that might be related to this subject, you told me, and I quote, ‘Published science is a load of geriatric septuagenarian fucktards jerking each other off when they’re not grooming or abusing grad students.’”

“And I still stand by that, FRI, but you could have told me that it was important–”

“I did, to which you replied, and I quote –”

“Okay, okay, we get it. I regret 97% of all the things I’ve ever said, now could you let me read this please?”

Porphyria cutanea tarda (PCT), referred to commonly as Living Vampirism, is the most common human porphyria, due to hepatic deficiency of uroporphyrinogen decarboxylase (UROD), which is acquired in the presence of iron overload and various susceptibility factors, such as alcohol abuse, smoking, hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, HIV infection, iron overload with HFE gene mutations, use of estrogens, and UROD mutation. PCT clinically manifests with increased skin fragility and blistering skin lesions on sun exposed areas. The common age of presentation is 5th to 6th decade and occurs slightly more commonly in males. Although mild liver biochemical profile are common, advanced fibrosis and cirrhosis with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) can occasionally develop. Scanty data from retrospective and observational studies shows the relapse rate to be somewhat higher after remission with low-dose hydroxychloroquine as compared to phlebotomy induced remission. Future studies are needed on exploring mechanism of action of 4-aminoquinolines, understanding interaction of HCV and PCT, and relapse of PCT on long-term follow-up.

Peter breath whistles on its way in through his teeth, “Holy shit.”

“Holy shit is right – wait, does your aunt know about this mouth of yours? Because I really – and I do mean really – do not want that woman getting mad at me.”

Peter rolls his eyes, “FRIDAY, could you please run a search on Michael Morbius? I’d like every address, every place of employment, every co-worker and friend, dead or alive.”

Tony bounces halfway across the room, skimming through the results that FRIDAY is displaying on one of the monitors. Peter’s halfway up to follow him when his phone buzzes in his back pocket. He fumbles for it, clumsy fingers almost dropping it on the floor.

When he sees the message, he sits down with a quiet thud.

(Unknown Number)

hi

Is it Harley? It couldn’t be Harley, could it? Peter’s fingers fumble over themselves as he types out and subsequently deletes several replies. “Hello” is way too formal. “Who is this?” sounds accusatory, and “Hi” is what Possibly Harley sent him, so he can’t just–

(Unknown Number)

i assume this is spiderboy

Harley?

obviously

Peter stares at the screen, having a not-so-small crisis. What in the actual world is he supposed to say to – oh dear lord, the typing dots are back.

(Harley)

im sorry i didn’t text

im pretty sure schools trying to murdre me

Despite his panic, Peter smiles at the phone. He should have expected Harley would have no respect for the rules of grammar while texting. He’s just shocked he made it through a full semester of English classes.

(Harley)

No, it’s totally okay

Einstein on a fucking popsicle stick, why can’t he just text like a normal person? Peter curses himself, the bench he’s sitting on, and about half of the lightbulbs in the room before he realizes that Harley’s sent him another text.

(Harley)

shut up

let me apologise ok

it was a dick move

…

It kind of was a dick move

omg i did it

i got you to fuckin stand up for yourself

im practcially a god among men

you cant see me but you shoudl know im fist pumping so hard rn

Peter snorts at the phone.

“Hormones,” Tony mutters from across the room, and then more loudly, “I’m glad you’re laughing again, now could you get your ass over here? There’s a paper on haemostasis systems and blood-sucking anthropoids that’s right up your alley–”

Peter mumbles a “Sorry, Mr. Stark,” and is halfway off of the bench when he hears footsteps coming down the hall. Expecting Bruce, he turns half-way around, raising his hand for an awkward wave.

It is not Bruce. It’s very much not Bruce.

The only thing Peter has time to notice is that the newcomer’s ridiculously fluffy hair is held back with what he’s almost sure are a pair of Tony’s Ray-Bans, and then he’s tripping over himself, narrowly avoiding sending his laptop clattering to the ground. From his new position on the floor, he stares at Harley’s Chuck Taylors in disbelief.

At least, he thinks they’re Harley’s Chuck Taylors. Maybe this is just some random guy who has similar hair and clothes to Harley. Maybe Peter’s hallucinating; he hasn’t been getting a lot of sleep lately –

“Hey Tony.” And, nope. That’s most certainly Harley, “Who’s this?”

Which is around when Peter realizes that he’s still lying face first on the lab floor, his legs somehow tangled in his backpack straps. He rolls over and sits up, struggling in vain to free his feet from his bag before giving up (honestly, he’s a superhero, he should be able to handle a few stubborn pieces of fabric) and raises his eyes at the boy standing in the doorway. And, okay, Peter had known it was Harley from the moment he heard his voice (his brain has spent the past few weeks replaying every single conversation they’d ever had, until the memories had gotten all worn out and faded) (yes, he knows he has a problem) but he hadn’t really processed the fact that he was going to have to deal with Harley standing in front of him.

His face misses the floor.

“Oh, you mean the puddle of pathetic currently getting intimate with my concrete? Harley, meet the best and brightest of my interns,” Tony gestures elaborately in Peter’s direction with an electric screwdriver he’d gotten from god-knows-where, “Peter, this is Harley, my–”

“Most esteemed guest.”

“I was going to say freeloader.”

“Don’t pretend didn’t send me an invitation.”

“Fine, you’re a walking self-imposed migraine. That work better for you?”

“Hey, at least it’s accurate.”

“Glad I could help,” if Tony could roll his eyes any harder, they’d probably pop out of his skull. “Peter, say hi to Harley. Harley, say hi to Peter.”

“Hello, Peter,” Harley gives a little wave, his voice curving around the syllables of his name.

And, oh shit. What if he recognizes his voice? If Tony finds pit that he’d been spending time in the suit flirting with his barley of age roommate (Temporary ward?) (He’s highly confused by the nature of their relationship) he’d never let him forget it. Peter is very much not prepared for this.

But Harley is staring at him keenly (keenly, ha) so he raises hand in a responding wave.

“H-hi.”

It’s likely that statistical analysis would point towards a direct correlation between the intensity behind his eyes and the heat staining Peter’s cheeks. He wants to raise his palms to cover them, but he has a feeling that would be worse.

“You need any help down there?”

Peter opens his mouth, but no sound comes out.

Harley nods with certainty, “You seem like you need some help down there.”

He’s crouching in front of Peter’s tangled legs in the space of three breaths, and then there are warm hands brushing against his jeans and– well–

It’s not as if Peter hadn’t touched Harley before, he’d fallen asleep on his shoulder, for god’s sake, but there’s something different about it when he’s not in costume. It’s not that the suit changes the physical sensation all that much, it’s just that when he’s wearing it, he’s not just Peter, he’s Spiderman. Spiderman has a brain that can function, that has to function, when cute boys put their hands on his calves. Peter’s most certainly does not.

He's still trying to fix the moment firmly in his memory when Harley clears his throat. Peter looks up at his outstretched hand, down at his newly freed legs, and back up again. He’s probably redder than a tomato at this point, but he nonetheless attempts to contort his face into a normal looking smile, and grabs Harley’s offered limb to pull himself off the ground.

Harley smiles down at him, and Peter is caught, barely keeping himself from falling into the blue of his eyes.

It’s ridiculous, Peter knows this. Blue is the second most common eye colour world-wide. He sees people with blue eyes every day. It’s not as if Harley’s eyes are anything particularly special to write home about – or at least they shouldn’t be. With the way his smile reaches them, though, Peter’s just about ready to start penning sonnets. And he doesn’t even like writing. The last time he’d been assigned an essay he’d written an algorithm to do it for him.

“Are you two going to come over here and help or are you too caught up staring into each other’s eyes?”

“I have a problem.”

“Oh, good, you’ve acquired an emotion other than ‘mope.’”

Peter throws a middle finger in MJ’s general direction and she rolls her eyes back at him from across the cafeteria table.

“Oh my god, be civil! Peter, your problem?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s a big one.”

“Dude, you’re going to have be a little bit more specific than that. Coming from you, a big problem could be anything from accidentally dyeing your aunt’s favourite bra green in a chemistry experiment to the actual end of the world.”

“Ned! You promised me you’d never tell anyone else about the Aunt May thing!” Peter can already feel the tips of his ears turning red, the traitors.

“No, no I want to hear more about this bra debacle, do tell, Peter.”

“I’ll tell you later, MJ, I just want to hear what the problem is.”

“You will do no such thing, Ned, you promised on our LEGO collection.”

“No, no, Peter, I think you should tell us what your problem is,” Peter wants to wipe MJ’s smirk off of her smug face.

“We’ll see how you feel about that when you wake up with LEGOs in your bed.”

“Ooh, stooping to threats now? What happened to only using your powers for good?”

“You know what–”

“Children!” Ned raises his voice as much as is societally acceptable in the middle of a crowded room, and snatches the plastic fork Peter is now brandishing threateningly in MJ’s direction. “Would you focus for just one singular moment?”

MJ glares in his direction, “You know, I really miss when you were still scared of me.”

“Yeah, but if I was still scared of you, I probably wouldn’t offer to tell you about Peter’s aunt’s bra., now –”

“If you were still scared of me, I would make you tell me about Peter’s aunt’s bra.”

“Ned, what I say about talking about Aunt–”

“Yes, I know the LEGO collection, etc. etc. Would you just focus and tell us the problem? Trying to have a conversation with the two of you is like herding cats.”

“So, you remember Harley?”

“Do we remember Harley? The esteemed waffle boy? The love of your life, the apple of your eye? The central topic of our every conversation for the last –”

Ned shoots MJ a quelling look, “Be nice. Peter?”

“So, it turns out that he’s, like, Tony’s godson or something.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What do you mean, ‘and what’? He lives at the tower. He saw me at the tower!”

“Let me get this straight…”

“I don’t think it’s straight at all,” MJ snickers under her breath.

“MJ, silence.” Ned turns back to Peter, “The guy who you’ve been crushing on for months and moping over for the last few weeks finally turns back up and you’re upset because he can see you?”

“Yes,” Peter waves his hands in frustration. “He saw me, without the suit, at the tower. And he didn’t know it was me.”

Ned and MJ blink back at him.

“I talked to him for three hours. He untangled my legs from a backpack and then we researched obscure blood diseases and then I destroyed him at Mario Kart and the whole time he had no idea that I’m – I’m,” Peter barely restrains himself from shouting ‘Spiderman’ in the middle of the school cafeteria, “the guy he’s been talking to about Mario Kart in a waffle shop since September!”

“So, ignoring the fact that you apparently got tangled in a backpack, the problem is that he doesn’t know you’re,” Ned waves his hand vaguely, “you know? Just tell him.”

“I can’t, it’s a secret.”

MJ rolls her eyes, “Peter, he quite literally lives at Stark Tower. I’m pretty sure he’s allowed to know.”

“But Tony didn’t tell him. He just introduced me as his intern. So, if I tell him, Tony’s gonna ask why he knows who I am, and then he’s going to find out that I was spending hours when I could have been sleeping or studying in the suit talking to a boy and then he’s gonna tell Aunt May and then she’s gonna ban me from patrolling ever again!”

“Peter, take a breath.”

Peter makes an exaggerated show of pulling air in through his nose and then loudly pushing it out of his mouth.

“You’re not going to suddenly going to stop being a superhero because you’re aunt finds out you flirted with a boy.”

“And, anyway,” MJ says around a bite of pizza, “Tony probably won’t tell May, he’ll just make fun of you until the end of time.”

“I don’t know, sometimes he’s a responsible adult.”

Ned interjects, “Tony’s level of maturity aside, you’re going to have to tell Harley at some point. He’s going to find out either way, if he lives with Tony, and I’m sure he’d appreciate it more if it came from you.”

“You know how much I hate admitting that Ned is right, but Ned is right, Peter. People don’t appreciate being lied to.”

“It’s barely even lying. I don’t tell anyone. I didn’t tell either of you,” his tone is bordering on pleading and he knows it.

They fix him with twin Looks.

“Okay, okay. I’ll tell him.”

Peter doesn’t tell him.

It’s not that he doesn’t mean to, he really does. It’s just that every time he thinks that the moment might be right something happens – Tony comes rushing in with some new Morbius development that they need to do more research on, a reaction they’re supposed to be monitoring boils over and the Bunsen burner starts glowing green, and, on one memorable occasion, Dr. Strange flies through a window right beside them. He supposes he could do it over text, but what would he say? ‘Hey, Harley, you know that Peter guy that you keep seeing around the lab? That’s actually me.’ No, that’s terrible. Besides, it’s an important conversation, he should have it in person.

You should probably get on with it, then, whispers a voice in the back of his head that sounds suspiciously like Ned. He ignores it.

So, Harley hangs out with him (Peter) in the lab, and they plot new ways to take down Morbius and play a ridiculous amount of Mario Kart.

And Harley texts him (Spiderman) cat TikToks and equations he can’t quite get his head around and they have conversations about their favourite songs late into the night.

It’s great, honestly. He knows he should fix it, but it’s great.

One night, after a particularly vicious bout of Smash Bros that had devolved into a violent pillow fight, they lie on their backs in the middle of the green carpet of Harley’s living room, trying to get their breath back.

“What do you think …” Peter, who’s deathly tired but doesn’t want the evening to be over yet, grasps for something to say. Eventually he settles on the classic: “What do you think happens when we die?”

Harley pauses to consider this. It’s one of the things Peter likes so much about him, the way he takes his silly questions seriously, even if it’s just for comedy.

“I think… probably it’s game over, you know? Black ending screen, poof, no more Peter and Harley.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You?”

“I don’t know. I used to think that it was just – nothing. But now… I don’t know. There’s magic and aliens–”

“Oh, come on, don’t act like aliens weren’t a given. Statistically speaking, there was never a chance that we were the only life in the universe.”

“Yeah, I guess so. But still, there’s magic and infinity stones and vampires and whatever else. Who are we to say there’s not something that comes after, too?”

“I mean scientifically–”

“Magic, Harley, magic.”

“You make a fair point.”

“I make all the fair points.” Harley reaches over and flicks his cheek. Peter wants to hold his fingers there forever.

“I think, even if there is something after this, I don’t want to think about it. Why would I, when I could be living right now, you know?”

Peter thinks he does.

They lie there in comfortable silence, listening to each other’s breathing. Or at least that’s what Peter’s doing. Harley might be thinking about Teletubbies or something equally terrifying, for all he knows.

“Do you ever wonder if–” Harley cuts himself off. When Peter looks over at him, he’s biting his lip.

“If…?”

“Do you ever wonder if it’s you’re destined to ruin things?”

“I don’t know, probably. Everyone does at one point, right?”

“Yeah, I guess,” in the screen-saver light, Peter can see his throat bob as he swallows. “It’s just, my dad left, when I was really little, you know? And before he left, he used to get mad, just so goddamn mad at us, all of us, but especially me. And sometimes I think, if it hadn’t been for me, if I was just a little less,” he waves his hands in the air above his face, “like this, maybe he would still be there. Maybe there’s just something about me that makes people want to leave. And one day, maybe they all will.”

“Harley–” Peter breaths in, trying to steady himself, “Harley, I don’t know your dad, or what he said to you, or why he did it. But I do know that when people decide to do terrible things, it’s no one’s fault but their own. Someone I admire a lot once told me that.”

“I know.”

In the space after the words, Peter can hear the unspoken, “But I don’t know how to believe it.”

“Yeah,” Peter sighs.

“Anyways, that’s why I don’t like thinking about what happens after we die. Because I get scared no one will wait for me.”

Peter props himself up on his elbows, so he can look down at Harley’s face. “I’ll wait for you.”

And, oh shit, is that too dramatic of a thing to tell someone that you’re supposed to only have met a month and a half ago?

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Promise. And then I’ll destroy you at whatever videogames they have there.”

“Hey, that win was purely due to sabotage. It’s against the rules to pour water on your opponent’s head right as they’re about to beat you.”

“If you can’t stay focused while getting drenched, I don’t know if you deserve to win.”

“I was trying to protect the controller; those things are expensive. See how you like it when I try to destroy your electronics.”

Peter giggles, and then shivers.

“You cold?”

“Little bit,” he shrugs.

“Lemme go get you a blanket,” Harley begins to sit up and then drops back down to the ground with a dramatic sigh. “Nope, too tired. FRI, could you–”

Before Harley can finish his sentence Peter rolls right on top of him, tucking his face into the warm skin of Harley’s neck.

The boy beneath him freezes.

“Peter?”

It’s only then that he realizes what he’s done. He doesn’t know quite how he managed to get himself here, only that there’s always some part of him that wants to reach out for Harley. Usually he’s better at controlling it, but when he’s tired, though, his impulse control gets shot to hell. And when that happens, he does idiotic, friendship ruining things like this.

“Sorry, oh my god, I’m so sorry, I just thought it would be easier than having FRI turn up the heat, I’ll just be–”

“No!” Harley practically yelps, arms tighten around Peter's torso to keep him from pulling away, “no, sorry, I didn’t mean to be that loud. Please stay.”

“Okay,” Peter whispers.

They spend the next several moments silently shuffling in the half-darkness, trying to find the way that their bodies best fit together. Eventually they settle, Peter curled up on Harley’s chest, Harley’s arms snug around his shoulders and both their legs tangled below.

“Good?”

He can feel Harley’s jaw brushing the top of his head when he nods, “Good.”

Peter wonders what it would be like to have Harley like this, to truly have him, to tangle himself in his warmth whenever he wanted. How can it be possible to pine so much for someone who’s right there, right underneath his fingertips? He has him, almost, it should be enough. But the almost keeps tripping him up.

“Hey,” Harley interrupts his train of thought, “did I ever tell you the story about how my Spanish teacher had seven dogs with the same name?”

“What?”

“I went into her office once; she had pictures of them all up on the wall. Seven nearly identical cocker spaniels all with plaques that read ‘Larry.’”

“That’s serial killer behaviour right there.”

“I know, right?” Harley brings his hand up to comb through Peter’s hair and his heart almost beats out of his chest. “What kind of person names one dog Larry, let alone seven? Anyways, I asked her about it, and she said…”

Harley tells him stories about his grade school teachers until his voice fades off into sleep. Peter relishes in the warmth of his arms until the darkness comes to take him, too.

When he wakes to hazy afternoon light, he’s alone on the couch, pillow under his head and blanket draped over his shoulders. He blinks sand from his eyes and stretches his stiff neck until he can see Harley perched in the armchair next to him, scrolling on his phone. Which reminds him…

Peter fishes his own phone out of the pocket of his jeans. The time reads 14:40. He sits straight up, sending a cascade of pillows to the ground. He's going to have detention for the rest of the year.

“Don’t worry, sleepy, it’s a Saturday.”

“Oh, thank god,” he collapses. 

He looks back down at his phone, and below May’s worried “where are you” text is a notification from Harley. He thumbs it open, to find, as per usual, an animal TikTok, this one of a husky and a racoon.

If he’s being honest with himself, this is why he doesn’t want to tell Harley who he is. Because Harley sends videos to Spiderman, not Peter. Because Peter is scared that Harley likes Spiderman more than he likes Peter. And, sure, Spiderman may be him, but he is sure as hell not Spiderman.

He’s scared that if Harley finds out that Spiderman is just Peter, he’ll be disappointed.

Chapter Text

After The Incident (which is how Harley has taken to referring to the night he’d spent with Peter tucked into his chest), their friendship solidifies. Not that they hadn’t been close before, they had, but it feels more concrete now, like it’s not going to go up in flames if one of them happens to breathe too hard in the wrong direction. Peter is willing to tease him in a way he hadn’t been before. Once, Bruce complimented them on their collaboration and had left Peter blushing for the next twelve minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Harley timed it. He’s been covertly conducting research on how long the other boy’s face will stay red.

The most notable change, Harley thinks, is the touching. As it turns out, Peter is a very touch-oriented person. Harley hadn’t noticed before, but now that he’s realized he sees it everywhere. It’s in the way he stands closer to Tony to encourage him to throw an arm around his shoulders, in the way he always hugs Pepper twice every time she comes down to the lab: once when she shows up and once as she’s leaving, in the way his face lights up when Black Widow ruffles his hair after she’s just finished thoroughly destroying him at chess (which brings up an important question: why the hell is Peter so close with all of the Avengers?) (All of them, Harley once saw him explaining the concept of a fist bump to Thor). He touches everyone, all of the time, but most especially he touches Harley.

Every time he walks by Harley his hands find a way to brush against Harley’s shoulders or arms or back. On the weekends where they stay up too late binging whatever low budget paranormal drama they’ve managed to find, more often than not he ends up asleep against Harley’s shoulder. When he first sees Harley after each of his disappearing stunts (every so often, Peter doesn’t come to the Tower for days on end. Somehow, Tony hasn’t mentioned it), he hugs him tight.

And it’s fine, he gets it. He’s spent his fair share of time on the internet, he knows about love languages and being touch starved and everything else. This is how Peter happens to show affection and recharge, and Harley just happens to often be the most readily available option.

Or at least, it would be fine, except that his body can’t seem to get with the program. Every time Peter touches him it goes on red alert, DEFCON 5, nerve endings running haywire all over the place. No matter how much he tries to tell himself that this is normal and platonic and so very completely chill, his brain eventually drifts back to The Incident. And he starts to think (even though he’s not supposed to be thinking about this at all, goddamn it) about how maybe, just maybe he could have kissed the crown of Peter’s head. Or maybe his cheek. Or maybe–

But that’s not normal or chill or least of all platonic, so he would really appreciate it if Peter would just stop touching him altogether until he manages to resolve this slight issue. Not that he’d tell Peter that, of course, because it would be awkward, and then Peter would actually stop touching him as much, and probably wouldn’t survive that, either.

Harley’s just really fucking confused, if he’s being honest. Because he likes Peter, he really likes him: likes his jokes and his touches and the way his hair falls over his forehead. But he also likes Spiderman – he gets the same swooping sensation in his stomach when he sees a text notification from the superhero as he does when Peter touches his arm. One crush was already more than enough to deal with, emotionally speaking, but now –

It'll be fine.

It is fine. It’s so very fine. He’s got this under control.

It’s just barley Thursday morning and they’re fucking around in R&D. What started as a productive research session had spiraled into prank planning around three hours in. They haven’t had food or water since before sunset. When Peter tries to stand up to go wash a pipette, somehow managing to trip over his shoelaces, a stool, and a hex key and almost murdering DUM-E in the process, Harley makes the executive decision it’s time for a break.

“But Harley,” he drags the name out, ‘Haaaarleyy,’ “If we do idiotic things like take breaks, then we’ll never finish, and if we don’t finish Tony’s suit will not be neon yellow for his press conference. The world won’t even know what beauty it has lost.”

“Nope, food. Now.”

“I don’t think you fully comprehend the severity of what we’re dealing with here,” Peter retorts, stabbing a finger into the center of Harley’s chest. “Think of the memes.”

Harley grabs Peter’s wrist, tries not to think about the warmth of his pulse against his fingertips. “Peter, you know I’m as passionate about memes as the next man, but they will still happen even if we take a fifteen-minute break for food.”

“Five minutes.”

“Twelve.”

“Eight, and–” Peter takes a step closer and sways dangerously left. Harley steadies him with a hand to the shoulder.

“Okay, that’s it, we’re going.”

He pulls Peter forward by the wrist he’s still holding (and, what, how did that happen?) (fucking traitorous body) and any retort Peter was planning is cut off by the indignant squawk he emits at the rough treatment. 

Harley rolls his eyes, “Drama queen.”

“I thought that was you.”

“Rude.”

“Case and point,” Peter giggles.

“You know what, Parker –”

Somehow, eventually they make it to the nearest kitchen, though who the kitchen belongs to Harley could not say. The tower has a ridiculous number of redundant rooms that all have Very Important and Specific theoretical uses, but even Tony can't quite remember why most of them exist.

Peter immediately grabs just about every bag of chips in the place, a spoon, and a jar of peanut butter. He then proceeds to hop up on the marble counter and lay his loot out in a meticulous row. He’s just started spooning the peanut butter onto a Dorito when he realizes that Harley is staring at him.

He freezes, blinks down at the chip in his hand, back up at Harley, “‘S just my stupid metabolism. You know how it is,” it comes out more of a question than anything else.

“Sure bud, you keep telling yourself that.”

Peter shoves the thing in his mouth before replying, “Hey, I’m sure you eat gross stuff when you’re hungry too.”

Harley raises his eyebrow, “Yeah, but not that gross.”

“It’s really not that bad, you can have one if you want,” Peter swallows down several peanut-covered Cheetos.

“You know what, I’ve got a better idea. I’ll make you a sandwich, and if you eat it, I’ll try one of your peanut-fast-food-hybrid monstrosities. Pinky promise.”

“Okay, you’re on,” Peter holds out his smallest digit, waits for Harley to reciprocate, and then starts on the barbeque chips – which, well, Harley doesn’t even want to think about that.

Harley grabs pickles, mayonnaise, and several tangerines from the fridge, fish sticks from the freezer, and bread from the pantry. He then carries his haul to the cutting board and begins construction. Behind him, Peter has returned to the Doritos, unaware of the horror that awaits him. Harley smirks and begins slathering on the mayo.

Once his masterpiece is complete, he plates it and brings it over to Peter for judgment. Peter peers at it for a moment, taking in the off-putting orange-green juice that has accumulated in the bottom of the dish before lifting a hand to waft the smell closer to his nose. Harley thinks the wafting is probably a wise precaution, given that the odor emanating from the sandwich borders just on this side of rancid. Having come to some decision, he nods, rearranges some of the chip bags, and pats the counter by his hip.

Harley raises his eyebrows, hands Peter the plate, and hoists himself up. He does not think about the warm length of Peter’s thigh, pressed up against his own, and he most definitely doesn’t think about how easy it would be to lean over and –

“You know what, it’s actually not that – Ow! What the fuck was that?”

“That’ll be the fish sticks.”

Peter takes another bite, grimaces as he swallows. “On second thought,” he shovels several Takis in his mouth, “I can’t believe you used to work at a restaurant.”

“Peter!” Harley gasps, affronted, “Are you implying that people wouldn’t want to eat the delicacy that I’ve so meticulously prepared for you?”

“Not for midtown prices, they wouldn’t.”

“Hey!” Harley cries in offense. And then, a beat later, “Wait, when did I tell you where I worked?”

Peter shrugs, suddenly red again, “I dunno, might’ve been Tony. Anyways, I held up my end of the deal, now it’s your turn.”

“You know, on second thought…”

“Harley Jedediah Keener–”

“Jedediah,” Harley scoffs underneath his breath.

“– are you backing out on me? You promised. You pinkypromised. Honestly, I thought you’d be more attached to your fingers.”

“My fingers? What are you even talking about?”

“Break a promise break a pinky? What, don’t you do this in Tennessee?”

“No, what the fuck?”

And then Peter’s hands are wrapped warmly around his smallest finger and Harley’s brain shorts out.

“You’re really going to let me break it?”

“There’s no way you will, Parker.”

Peter raises his eyebrows, “Oh really? Try me.”

Harley looks at him. Peter gazes right back. Harley’s stomach feels like it’s been invaded by a butterfly colony. Peter’s grip tightens on his pinky. The butterflies exponentially increase.

“Okay, fine, I’ll try it, but only so you won’t be embarrassed when you can’t do it.”

“Oh, sure, it’s for me. As if your finger doesn’t have the same density as a carrot.”

“The same density, sure, but a very different rigidity. And anyways, I doubt your shrimpy ass,” Harley shakes Peter’s bony shoulder, “could even break a carrot.”

Peter giggles at that, raises an eyebrow, “You want to find out?”

“Fine! Fine,” Harley throws his free hand up in the air, “I’ll eat it, I’ll eat it, okay?”

Peter quite literally grins from ear to ear (it’s unnerving, how the hell does his mouth stretch so wide?) and hands him the somehow already half-empty peanut butter jar, “Pick your poison. I’d recommend the Cheetos, but do what feels right.”

“None of this feels right.”

“It’s this or the pinky, so get on it, Keener.”

Harley gives a put-upon sigh and dips the Cheeto in the peanut butter, wincing a little at the absolute blasphemy of it all. “I’d just like to reiterate that I’m doing this for your dignity and your dignity only.”

Peter rolls his eyes.

Harley gives the Cheeto a wary sniff and then pops it into his mouth. The texture is – well, the texture isn’t all that bad, actually, but the taste… leave it to say that it takes Harley rather too long to convince his mouth that the food is okay to swallow.

“Sometimes I question how you’re still alive.”

Peter cackles and vaults off of the counter. Harley tries not to be too sad about the loss of contact.

“Come on, we’ve got a prank to finish.”

It’s four in the morning by the time the finishing touches of Mission: Neon Iron Man are finally complete. The second they’re done, Peter slumps, a marionette whose strings have been cut. The circles underneath his eyes grow two shades darker in a matter of moments. Harley yawns in sympathy. He’s able to handle the late (or early, he supposes) hour a little better than Peter, his sleep schedule still a mess from months of working at Crêpes and Waffles, but exhaustion is still tugging at his eyelids.

“Come on, let’s go sleep.”

“Don’ wanna move, m’ comfy ‘ere,” Peter’s barley managing coherent words at this point and what little manages to leave his lips is obscured by the table he’s mashed his face into.

“You won’t be when you wake up with the neck cramp of the century.”

Peter lets out a pitiful groan.

“At least sleep on the couch. It’s only, like, seven yards away.” When Peter makes no visible effort to move, Harley laces his hands underneath his arms and yanks him up and off of the bench he’s sitting on, ignoring the boy’s sleepy protests.

It takes a surprising amount of effort to get Peter over to the sectional on the other side of the room. Harley has half a foot and probably a lot of muscle mass over him, but Peter is doing his best to collapse onto the floor every third step. Harley finally manages to deposit him against the pillows and is just about to leave the room when an incomprehensible sleepy word emanates from Peter’s general direction.

“What?”

Peter lifts his head, ever so slightly, “Stay?”

Harley freezes in his tracks, trying desperately to convince all his vital organs to stay inside of his chest.

“Please?”

Harley crumbles, his feet leading him back towards the couch before his mind can have the chance to them to.

He perches awkwardly on the blue velvet, just to the left of where Peter’s curled up. He’s cute like this, Harley thinks. Shut up, Harley thinks.

Peter lets out an impressive sigh. Harley tries not to smile. Apparently, that wasn’t the result Peter was looking for. After several upset mumbles, he raises his head up ever so slightly to glare at Harley.

“I meant over here,” his arm flails disjointedly to the thin strip of sofa between him and the pillows.

“Oh,” says Harley. At least the lights are out. Hopefully Peter can’t tell he’s blushing.

It takes a lot of stray elbows and knees, but he manages to squeeze himself up against the back of the sofa. Peter instantly pushes his head into Harley’s chest, makes a happy little sound when Harley hesitantly wraps an arm around his shoulders. Harley decides right then and there that he’d fight an alligator – he’d fight three alligators, maybe even a bear – if it meant that Peter would make that noise more often.

On second thought, he may not have to fight anything…

Harley’s hand somehow manages to find his way into Peter’s hair because Harley is an idiot with a lack impulse control that is very much not compatible with his tendency for dramatics. He’s gonna die. Peter’s hair is soft and he’s making his happy noise again and everything about this is such a goddamn cliché. This is how Harley Keener fucking dies, right on the R&D couch with a ridiculous boy in his arms.

A fatigued hand comes to bat at his face. “Stop thinking. Sleep now.”

Despite himself, Harley smiles.

It takes Harley waking up with Peter’s hair in his mouth for the second time in as many months for him to finally admit that he might not have his dual-crush situation under control. ‘Admit’ might not be strong enough of a word. More accurately, he panics and hides, avoiding R&D and Spiderboy’s text notifications. He does his very best the human equivalent of an ostrich sticking its head in the ground. It’s only when Tony asks him (slightly unexpectedly, he’d sworn off talking to Harley after the neon suit debacle) (Harley hadn’t thought he'd break for at least another two days) why he never comes to the lab anymore that Harley realizes that he needs to come up with a better solution.

So, he does what he always does when he has people problems. He calls his younger sister.

“Let me guess, you want to talk about your superhero.”

“No– well, kind of– wait, how did you know?”

Harley can practically hear Abby rolling her eyes. God, he regrets this already.

“It’s not a holiday and you didn’t text me, so chances are it’s boy problems.”

“You’re actually terrifying, you know that?”

“Of course I do. Now, are you going to tell me or am I going to have to pull it out of you?”

Harley drums his fingers along his windowsill, then runs them through his hair. “So, the thing is, I have a crush.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

He shakes his head, remembers she can’t see him, “No, another crush.”

The line is silent as she waits for him to continue.

“He’s– his name is Peter, and he’s Tony’s intern, and he’s, well, super fucking smart. And kind of awkward but funny, goofy funny, you know? He makes all these stupid puns, and he likes the worst food ever. When he blushes his ears go red and I can’t handle it and– and– he keeps falling asleep on me –he sleeps on top of me, Abby– and he’s so fucking cute and I can’t stand it.”

Abby keeps quiet.

“Aren’t you gonna say something?”

“Well, to be honest, I don’t really understand what the problem is.”

A disbelieving sound escapes Harley’s lips.

“I mean, aside from the fact that you very clearly have a type–”

“What? I do not.”

“You obviously do. Cute fumbling nerds who can’t take proper care of themselves? Really, this Peter guy and Spiderman sound similar enough they could be the same person. Have you checked?” She’s using the tone of voice she always does when she’s fun of him. He wishes they were in the same room so she could see when he sticks his tongue out at her.

“No, I have not checked, Abby,” he snarks, “because that would be ridiculous. Now could you please be serious and help me?”

“With what? You had a crush on one guy, and now you have a crush on another one. Do you need help with your flirting, or something?”

“Obviously not, I’m–”

“Irresistible,” goddamn, she’s rolling her eyes again, isn’t she? “What’s your problem?”

“I– well, I feel bad?”

“You feel bad?”

“I mean, yeah. I had a crush on Spiderboy, I might still have a crush on him, but then I met Peter and­­– I don’t know. But I still text Spiderboy, and then I go and cuddle Peter, and I’m just–” he sighs. “I feel gross and I’m so goddamn confused and I don’t like it.”

He can hear the sound of Abby spinning around in her desk chair over the line as she thinks.

“You haven’t done anything with either of them, or led either of them on, have you?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so.”

“Then you have nothing to feel bad about. Now you just gotta decide if you want to do something about one of them.”

She made it sound so simple. It didn’t feel that simple.

“But which one?”

“How am I supposed to know? I’m not the one with a crush.”

Harley blows a frustrated raspberry, kicks at one of the pillows near his feet.

“Look, if you want to hear my opinion, I think you should ask Peter out. He seems like he likes you, and he’s a real guy. I still haven’t ruled out the possibility that Spiderman is in his late sixties or owns a chainsaw collection or something.”

“Peter could own a chainsaw collection, for all we know.”

She laughs, “Not from what you’ve told me, he wouldn’t.”

He shakes his head. “No, you’re probably right.”

“I always am.”

He rolls his eyes, “Shut up, no you’re not. Remember that time with the superglue and that pinata…”

Later that night, long after Abby hung up, Harley rolls over, reaches towards the windowsill where he left his phone. He pinches his lips, rakes a hand through his hair for one last time. Thumbs it open, scrolls through his texts, and starts typing.

(spiderboy :o)

hi

ok so storu

story

)))$)$)$))$)$)))

??

Oapsdifopaipasoz

spdierboy

r u;;;; swing texting

aqiuqopeiuoUOIUiouoiOI

…

Oops that was supposed to say “no, I would

never”

yea clearly

I know, it’s despicable of me

youre suposed to be a role model for the youths

for shame

shame on u

Like you’d make a good role model

irrelevant i dont fight crime in spandex

also

“aqiuqopeiuoUOIUiouoiOI”

Yeah, you would know, Mr. “storu spdierboy”

Don’t think I didn’t notice

ssshhhhhhhh

Are you going to tell me your story?

I’m on a roof waiting in anticipation

oh yea

Harley tries to swallow around the anxiety building in his throat, thinks back to the script he and Abby had come up with. The plan was to tell Spiderboy about his crush on Peter to avoid leading him on. Harley had been flirting with the superhero for the past couple of months and he didn’t want to cause any confusion – though to be fair Spiderboy’s response to this tended to be stuttering until he thought of a way to change the subject, so he probably wouldn’t be that upset to be free of Harley’s pestering.

(spiderboy :o)

so i met this guy

Wow what a start

goddamn let a guy type, will you?

anyways

i met this guy

You met this guy…

yea

and he’s good at biochem and like engineering

and v funny

and like lowkey kind of cute

This isn’t a story these are just statements

…

AnYwAyS

i think i’m gonna ask him out

Out?

yea

like

on a date

idk i really like him

spiderboy?

u ok?

Yeah sorry there’s a thing with guns

oh shit

good luck

text me when its over?

Spiderboy very much does not text him when it’s over.

Harley spends another hour with his eyes locked on the dark screen of his phone, wondering what he did wrong.

Harley is eating breakfast the next morning – oh the wonders of not working a graveyard shift – when he hears Peter’s voice.

“Harley, have you seen Mr. Stark anywhere?”

Harley looks up and his response flies right out of his head. It’s not because he’s confused that Peter is here when he’s definitely supposed to be at school (though he is, Peter doesn’t skip classes). It’s not even because of Peter’s face, his tearstained cheeks and bloodshot eyes. On any other day he’d want to pull him into his arms and keep him away from the world until he was absolutely sure Peter was alright. But today, Harley’s eyes are stuck on Peter’s hoodie. It’s a StarkTech one, the print cracked and faded. The sleeves swallow Peter’s arms right up, concealing even his fingertips. It has a hole, right above the hem, just like Harley’s old sweatshirt did. The old sweatshirt he gave to Spiderboy.

“Hello, earth to Harley?” his voice quavers, “have you –”

“Where did you get that hoodie?”

Peter blinks.

Harley must have stood up because Peter’s face is much closer than it was moments ago, but he doesn’t remember telling his legs to do anything.

“That’s my hoodie, isn’t it, Peter?”

“I– well, t-the–” Harley watches him swallow, take a deep breath. “Yes. It’s the hoodie gave it to Spiderman – to me, I guess – a couple months ago. And I–”

“You’re Spiderman?”

“It’s disappointing, isn’t it? Spiderman being a normal, boring guy like me," Peter's laugh rings hollow as he looks down at Harley's ratty sweatshirt, as he pulls it over his head. He strips off his jeans, too, and then Peter's just standing in the suit. The goddamned spandex spider suit. Shit. He's really him, isn't he?

Harley opens his mouth, closes it again.

Peter shakes his head takes two quick steps towards the kitchen counter. He presses the sweatshirt into Harley's hands, but his fingers won't work, and the worn fabric falls to the floor between them.

Peter stares down at it, "Look, Harley, I know I'm not –," he blinks, shakes his head again, "I need you to tell me where Mr. Stark is."

“You lied. You lied to me.”

“People are gonna get hurt, Harley. Just tell me –”

“I’m hurt,” and Harley is crying now, salt on his lips. “I am hurt. I – I trusted you, both times, and I told you things, and I– how much of it was a lie?”

“None of it was a lie, Harley. I never lied. I just didn’t tell you – I didn’t tell you I was me.”

“You let me befriend you twice. You let me fall for you, twice.”

Peter looks up, confusion pulling his eyebrows tight, “But – you were going to ask some bio-chem guy out.”

It’s Harley’s turn to laugh, now, and the sound tears at him as it leaves his throat. “It was you. It was always you. What a fucking mistake.”

“I–” on the floor, underneath Peter’s crumpled jeans, his phone makes a sound. “Shit. He wasn’t supposed to attack until – fuck. Goddamn vampire.” Somehow, he’s halfway into his suit already, “For what it’s worth, Harley, I’m sorry. I really am.”

And then he’s pulling on the mask, prying open the nearest window. Somewhere, FRIDAY is blaring warnings, but Harley doesn’t hear it.

“Peter –”

“People are gonna get hurt, Harley. I’m so sorry.”

And then he’s gone, and Harley is left staring at his hoodie as water dries on his cheeks.

Chapter Text

 Crying in the Spiderman suit is suboptimal in just about every situation. The tears fog up the lenses and dry sticky on his face, making the spandex pull uncomfortably.  Peter knows that he’ll have a better chance of getting people to safety if he just gets his shit together. But every time he blinks, he sees Harley’s crumpling face, and. Well. He’s trying to get himself under control, he’s just not doing a very good job of it.

At some point, Karen offers to download a therapy module. Peter doesn’t even bother responding, just squints through his smeared lenses and tries to get to the source of the screaming as fast as possible. He swings across an intersection and turns right onto 42^nd street, perching on the side of a building when he gets to Grand Central.

In the road, abandoned cars stand skewed, their doors left wide open. The asphalt is littered with newspaper pages and rolling mandarins – one of the market stalls must have been knocked over in the rush. People are running, screaming, clutching children and briefcases and grocery bags to their sides as they flee up the street. Police sirens start ringing. In front of the golden bridge that covers the entrance to the station, a taxicab lies, flipped, its yellow sides scratched an angry gray. It’s roof sign – advertising the Spiderman musical, of all things – is crushed and blinking on the asphalt. The passenger door hangs ajar, revealing a trail of blood glistening on the dented running board.

The blood leads onto the street, stains the center line red, and under the bridge where Morbius stands, cloaked in shadow, his clawed fingers wrapped around some poor tourist’s neck, teeth already in his throat. Peter can hear the man’s heart beating – it’s faint, he won’t last much longer, not like this. Shit. Morbius is stronger than him, and almost as fast. The only way he’ll be able to get this guy away from him is by surprise.

Peter flips off the building. Webs once, twice, and then he’s plummeting feet-first into Morbius’s chest. The vampire flails, grip loosening on the tourist. Peter grabs the guy around the waist and shoots a web back towards 42^nd. Once they’re airborne, he slaps a hasty web over the puncture wounds in the man’s throat, but he’ll need immediate medical attention. Peter drops him in the intersection by a semi-competent looking cop before launching himself back towards Morbius. The vampire is up and making his way towards the nearest incapacitated pedestrian. Peter webs one of the squashed mandarins off the street and spikes it at him, landing right between the eyes. And then he's in swiping distance of those sharpened claws and teeth, that haggard face (newly orange-juice-sticky), those gleaming red eyes.

Peter remembers reading something about Morbius’s condition and sunlight. He just needs to get him out in the sun, and then everything will be all right. He throws a punch, and Morbius blocks it, sending sparks of pain shooting up his arm. He returns the favor, knocking Peter right in the gut, and, oh. Right. Morbius is stronger. Morbius is almost as fast. Peter might be a little bit screwed, here.

The fight is a blur. Peter knows there’s a lot of flipping and quipping, but he’s not sure beyond that. Each time he manages to get a piece of Morbius’s flesh into the sun, the vampire only allows it for a second before pulling Peter back under the bridge. He retaliates for each bit of singed flesh by sinking his teeth into Peter’s neck, his arms, his back. The suit is in tatters. Karen is blaring warnings. It’s a battle of attrition, and Peter is losing.

“Getting tired, Spiderboy?” Morbius mocks, lips curling into a grin to reveal his bloody incisors. Harley’s nickname sounds so unfamiliar in the vampire’s cold tone. It throws Peter for a loop – for the briefest moment, he’s back on the 87^th floor of Stark Tower, staring at Harley’s tearstained cheeks, you lied to me –

Morbius lunges for him and Peter just barley manages to slip out of his reach. The edges of his vision are filled with tiny stars. Blood loss, probably. Peter can’t last long, not like this. But, with him out of the equation, there’ll be nothing to stop Morbius from hurting the civilians. I’m hurt. I am hurt, Harley’s voice echoes in his ears. Peter shakes his foggy head. Where the fuck is Mr. Stark?

“Peter? Can you hear me? Peter?” Harley’s voice is back, stronger now. Shit. He can’t space like this, not in the middle of a fight.

“Peter! It’s me, I’m hacked into your suit.”

“Harley?” Peter jolts, jumping away from Morbius’s next swing, moving towards the sunlight beyond the bridge.

“This guy you’re fighting, he’s the vampire from December, right?”

“Yeah,” Peter pants, throwing a weak punch in said vampire’s direction.

“So, you just need to get him into the light – Shit! Peter!” Morbius grabs his arm, teeth bared. Peter barely manages to flip away, clinging to the underside of the bridge.

“He’s too strong – I can’t get him out of the shade –” he jumps away from Morbius again, back to the asphalt, head spinning.

“Then get rid of the shade! Your suit has explosives, right?”

Peter gets a good kick at Morbius this time, sends him stumbling into the sun for the briefest of moments, “Yeah, but Karen’s offline. I can’t –” and then teeth sink into his shoulder, and he does his best not to scream.

There’s a flurry of typing, and then, “I’m in the system, I can trigger them, just count me in.”

Peter grinds his jaw through the burning in his shoulder and tries to think. The explosives are in the back of his suit, and without Karen’s auto-aiming, he’ll have to position himself just right. He lets himself go limp in Morbius’s grasp, throwing a feeble arm around the vampire’s torso.

“Peter? Are you–”

Morbius’s cold laugh cuts through Harley’s worried tone, “You know, I always thought it would be harder to beat you, Spider Man. Really, I’m almost disappointed,” his mouth grazes the base of Peter’s throat.

“Harley! Three,” he tightens his grip around Morbius, “Two,” teeth cut through the reinforced fabric at his neck, “One!” Peter jumps, vampire still in his arms, and several things happen in quick succession.

First, Morbius’s teeth sink through the soft skin of Peter’s throat. Second, the explosions trigger, blowing through the bridge (Peter sends a silent apology to all the New York taxpayers out there). Third, blinding sunlight meets Morbius’s pallid flesh, and as it scorches, he starts to scream.

Through the corner of the suit’s tear-stained lenses, Peter can see cops approaching, plastic shields glinting. He shrugs away from the screaming vampire, slaps webs on his bleeding throat and shoulder, and swings up and off the street, vision blurring alarmingly. Somehow, he manages to get himself on top of a building.

“Peter? Peter, can you hear me?”

Peter blinks up at the blue sky, “Harley, I’m…”

“Hey, it’s okay, you’re okay,” his voice is labored, “just say with me, alright? You’re gonna be okay. I’ll make sure you’re okay.”

Peter’s wounds burn. The sunlight is so bright it hurts his eyes, even though the suit’s lenses. Somewhere in the distance, Morbius is still screaming.

“Harley?”

“Yes, Peter?” the comm fills with the sounds of boot on metal. Peter winces.

“It hurts, Harley. It hurts.”

Even through the all the clamor on the other end of the line, Peter can hear him swallow.

“I know. I know, I’m so sorry. Just – just stay where you are, okay? I’m –” There’s a clanging noise, scraping the inside of Peter’s ears, making his head ring. He wrenches the mask off, pants into the brisk midmorning air. Harley’s voice is gone.

Later, he won’t remember the endless minutes he spent curled on that lonely rooftop. He won’t remember the way he closed his eyes against the brutal sun, the way he stuffed fingers into his overburdened ears to block out the sounds of the aftermath below. He won’t remember wondering where Harley’s voice had gone, brain too addled from blood loss to think to look for his mask. But what he will remember, what he’ll always remember, is the muffled sound of the roof’s access door squealing open.

Peter hears five quick steps and then someone’s hands are ghosting over his chest, his shoulder, the wound at his neck. He tenses, tries to squirm out and away. The hands, warm and calloused, land hesitantly on his face. Peter finally figures out how to get his eyes to open.

He’s so out of it takes him a second to identify the face in front of him, to piece together the wide blue eyes and the chapped lips and the creased brows. When he realizes it’s Harley, he sags against the roof, all the fight draining out of him.

Peter grins, “Hi.”

“Hi,” Harley’s left cheek gives a complicated twitch before settling into a smile. Later, Peter will realize how terrified he’d been, staring at a broken superhero sprawled across the concrete. Now, he’s just happy that Harley’s here, that Harley’s smiling at him.

“Can you walk?”

Peter concentrates hard, wiggles his toes. His feels sluggish, like his whole body’s been encased in a marshmallow. “I can try.”

He manages to peel his head and shoulders off the roof before wincing, and then Harley’s hands are there, supporting the base of his skull. His face is closer now, close enough that Peter could probably count his eyelashes, if he still had a couple more pints of blood left in his body. God, his eyes are beautiful. For a second, Peter’s back in Mr. Stark’s kitchen, watching them fill with tears. Shit. Harley doesn’t want to be this close to him, probably, not with him in the suit. Definitely not up on a roof. Is he scared of heights? Peter remembers him asking about how it felt to use the webs, late one night at Crêpes and Waffles, but he can’t remember how the conversation ended.

“I’m sorry, Harley. I’m so –”

“Don’t.”

“But I –”

Harley places a hand over his mouth. Peter blinks up at him.

“I’m gonna get you out of here, okay? But I can’t talk to you about this,” he nudges his chin towards the space between them, “while I’m doing it. Alright?”

Peter nods his head weakly, nose brushing against Harley’s thumb.

“Good,” Harley says, and then his hand leaves Peter’s face and he’s pressing the discarded mask (when did he pick that up?) into Peter’s loose grasp.

“Hold on to this for me, okay?”

Harley doesn’t wait for a response before sliding an arm beneath Peter’s legs, readjusting his grip on his head and shoulders. The world tilts and then Peter’s in the air, cheek pressed to Harley’s chest. He blinks, trying to check if the blood loss has finally got him hallucinating. Then he starts to laugh.

“What is it?” Harley’s concerned face swims into view.

Peter laughs harder, until his whole body is shaking, until Harley’s arms tighten around him.

“Lay off it, I don’t want to drop you.”

Peter bites back the last of his laughter, clumsily forming words with a heavy tongue, “I’m the superhero, I ‘m supposed to be prince- print–” shit, why can’t he say it right? “Princess-carrying people.”

The world is starting to look more and more kaleidoscope-y, but he’s pretty sure Harley rolls his eyes.

“Don’t call it that.”

Peter’s not sure what else he would call it. He feels – well, horrible, mostly, but attended to, contained in Harley’s arms. Safe. He can’t figure out how the words he’d need to say all that to Harley, though, so he just hums.

“Peter?”

Harley’s face is really blurring now, his features indistinguishable.

“Just stay with me, okay?”

Peter thinks he laughs again. He’s basically a rag doll at this point, couldn’t get away from Harley if he tried.

“Peter, stay …”

And then the world fades away.

When he wakes up, he’s laid out on the R&D couch. Late afternoon light streams through the windows. If it weren’t for the beeping of an EKG machine and the IV in the back of his hand, he’d think the whole Morbius thing had been a dream.

He’s easing himself into an upright position when he notices the faded StarkTech logo on his chest. Someone’s dressed him in Harley’s hoodie. Harley’s disastrous hoodie. He’s trying not to read too much into that when Mr. Stark bursts into the room, Harley trailing behind him. Peter moves to stand.

“Woah there, tiger, take it easy. You lost five pints of blood to that overgrown mosquito this morning.”

Peter settles back into the couch. Mr. Stark nods approvingly before bending to sit in an armchair Peter’s always avoided because pretty sure Harley rigged it with something. Sure enough, when Mr. Stark’s back touches the cushion, the chair erupts in a cloud of hot pink glitter. Mr. Stark stands, glares at Harley, who’s hovering awkwardly by the door.

“God fucking dammit,” Mr. Stark shakes his head, and a wave of magenta flies out of it. “DUM-E’s going to be cleaning this shit up for weeks. Motherfucking –” he presses fingers to his temples, pulls them back away when they set off another cascade of glitter. Then, he pivots back towards Peter, “I’ve told your aunt what happened, so you’re good to stay here. Which you should do, by the way. Don’t leave the couch until FRIDAY says it’s ok. Drink lots of fluids. Replenish blood responsibly, and all that.”

Peter tries not to roll his eyes. He’s pretty sure Mr. Stark has never followed FRIDAY’s health advice when it comes to injury recovery.”

“And speaking of being responsible,” he whirls back towards Harley, who’s still hovering in the doorway, “what the hell were either of you thinking? On what planet is it a good idea for a civilian with no medical training to carry a seriously injured victim off an easily accessible rooftop and into a thirty-five-story building with a broken elevator? You probably would have dropped him on the third flight of stairs if I hadn’t caught up to you, and then he would have bled out, and then I would have had to explain it to his terrifying aunt.”

Harley starts to protest, but Mr. Stark cuts him off.

“Call 9-1-1. Or me. Or him,” he points at Peter, “if he isn’t bleeding out. Wait for the goddamned superheroes to deal with that shit,” he turns back to Peter, “and the goddamned superheroes should be able to instruct terrified civilians on proper emergency procedure.”

Peter shrugs. What little brain function he’d had left at that point had mostly been focused on Harley’s arms. And hands. And eyes.

Mr. Stark deflates, “Anyways. I’m gonna go stand in a car wash and then rig both your textbooks with stink bombs. Have fun having emotions at each other, or whatever.” He strides out of the room, leaving only shimmering pink in his wake.

Peter twists to get a better look at Harley. His hair’s a mess, like he’s been running his fingers through it since he got back to the tower. His eyebags are probably visible from space.

“What did he mean, ‘have emotions at each other?’”

“Ah,” Harley shoves his hands in to his pockets, walks into the room, “I told him about our fight while he was flying us back to the tower.” He stops right behind the couch, close enough that Peter has to crane his neck to see his face.

“Oh. Am I allowed to apologize now?”

Harley nods, drums his fingers along the back of the couch.

“Okay,” Peter bites the inside of his cheek, looks up into blue eyes. “Harley, I’m really sorry for not telling you sooner.”

Harley nods again.

“I–” Peter stops, clears his throat, “Do you want – could you sit down, please? Trying to have emotions at you while you’re standing up is hurting my neck.”

Harley gives a short laugh, a sound of acknowledgement more than anything else, and rounds the far end of the couch. When he’s fully seated, back pressed up against the opposite arm, Peter clears his throat again.

“I’ve never had to tell anyone I’m Spiderman. I’ve never wanted to tell anyone that I’m Spiderman. Everyone who knows found out on their own. Including you, I guess.”

Harley shrugs, “I was going to find out, sooner or later. I knew you both ways.”

“I know. I thought I could avoid it, or put it off, or something. I don’t know.”

“Because you didn’t trust me.”

Peter shakes his head so hard he’s surprised his ears don’t fly off, “No. No. It wasn’t that I didn’t –” Peter shakes his head again, “Everyone who knows has been in danger because of it. Aunt May almost got killed last summer. Ned and MJ –”

“Peter, Tony’s practically my godfather. If anyone went after me to get to a superhero, it’d be because of him, not because I know who Spiderman is.”

“You were out on a rooftop over a crime scene literally forty minutes after finding out my identity.”

Harley stares at him, long and hard, “Look, if you’re not going to tell me the truth, we might as well not have this conversation.”

Peter sighs, looks down at his hands, “I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”

“What?”

“I didn’t want you to be disappointed that I was Spiderman.”

“Peter, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Spiderman is cool and suave and saves people, and I’m a kid from Queens who trips over his shoelaces. I was scared that you liked him more than me. I thought, if you found out, you’d wish he was someone else.”

Harley scoffs, “Spiderman is literally the dorkiest person I’ve ever met.”

Peter splutters, “What– no–”

“The first time I met you, you repeatedly asked if I had a concussion and then stole my plate.”

Peter can feel his face turning red.

“I like that you’re kind of a mess, Peter. I liked that about Spiderman, too.”

Peter’s brain is malfunctioning. He’s pretty sure steam is coming out of his ears.

Harley scoots half a foot closer, “I liked you, both versions of you, too much. I’d never felt so goddamned confused in my life. I talked to Abby about it. I never talk to Abby about anything serious. She’s got too much blackmail on me already.”

“Really?”

“She’s my sister, of course she has blackmail on me. I know you’re an only child, but–”

“No, I mean, you like me?”

Harley stares at him incredulously, “Were you not there this morning when I told you I fell for you and then you jumped out of a window?”

“I lost half the blood in my body right after that, give me a break.”

Harley snorts. He’s halfway across the couch now, his knee brushing against Peter’s thigh.

“And anyways, that was before I– well.”

“Peter, I ran up thirty-five flights of stairs to inadvisedly princess carry you, clearly–”

Peter points a finger at him, “I told you that’s what it was called.”

“Oh my god,” Harley pulls a hand through his hair. Peter wants to put his hands in Harley’s hair instead. Or on his face. Or shoulders. Wherever, really.

Peter bites his cheek again. At this point, he’s going to make it bleed, “So. You still like me.”

Harley rolls is eyes, “What are we, twelve?”

Peter opens his mouth to reply, but Harley beats him to it.

“Don’t answer that. I’m going to kiss you now, okay?”

“Okay.”

And then Harley’s got a hand on Peter’s neck and the other in his hair and they’re kissing. It takes them a second to figure out the geometry of it, and then Harley’s lips are moving against Peter’s, and his nails are scratching softly at his scalp and Peter’s pretty sure if he died right now, he’d have had a life well lived. He tugs Harley closer by the front of his shirt and tries to get his other hand on him, but the IV line tugs at his skin and oh, he forgot about that. Peter pulls back to check that he hasn’t dislodged the needle. Harley kisses his forehead, his jaw, the tip of his nose, until Peter starts laughing and pushes him away.

“Wait, so you talked to Mr. Stark about me?”

Harley goes red, just a little bit.

“That I was maybe overthinking it and you were pretty squirrelly about your identity anyway and also not to do anything perverted on the communal furniture.”

Peter laughs, and Harley ruffles a hand through his hair.

“I can’t believe you thought you were suave as Spiderboy.”

“Oh my god, shut all the way up," Peter says around a smile.

Careful of the IV line, he leans in to kiss Harley again.